Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. Thankfully, considering the content of this chapter.

I am on a roll. I love the holidays so much. Especially when I don't have any work to do.

Well, when I say work, I mean pressing work.

This chapter is dedicated to Mominator, for having some interesting ideas about what exactly would happen to Carlotta after having taken part in a dread, arcane ceremony and tasting of forbidden fruit (hem, hem), and for being quite near the mark, I feel, though not right on target. Also, she wields the Punjab Frying PanTM.

(You are one strange monkey, Barb.)

Shylock: Go with me to a notary, seal me there

Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,

If you repay me not on such a day,

In such a place, such sum or sums as are

Express'd in the condition, let the forfeit

Be nominated for an equal pound

Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken

In what part of your body pleaseth me.

The Merchant of Venice, Act I Scene III, by William Shakespeare

'I am willing,' said the little mermaid. She was now as pale as death.

'But I want my payment too,' said the witch, 'and it's not a small one either. You have the most beautiful voice of anyone here in the sea. You think that you'll be able to charm him with it, but you're going to give that voice to me. The price of my precious drink is the finest thing you possess. For I shall have to put some of my own blood into it, to make it as sharp as a two edged sword.'

'But if you take my voice', said the little mermaid, 'what shall I have left?'

'Your beauty,' said the witch, 'your grace in moving, your lovely, speaking eyes – with these you can easily catch a human heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue; I'll cut it off as my payment, and you shall have the magic drink.'

The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Anderson, translated by Naomi Lewis.

Repercussions

It was an extremely depleted gathering that had made their way to the main dining room in the de Chagny mansion, crafted of sumptuous black stone veined with pearl white, for the customary evening meal, despite the large numbers of guests lodged in the many various rooms of the mansion. Christine, it had been learned, had had a small relapse of her weakness, meaning that she would of course be attended in her room by her own maid, and Raoul appeared to be too exhausted to make it down to the dinner table after his exuberance of the night before; a tremendous breach of manners, but the elders of the family were willing to overlook the digression of their golden boy, so soon before his wedding. Madame Giry too had made her excuses, as she pleaded weariness and fatigue after her night of dancing with Comte Philippe the Younger, who was apparently less than pleased at her absence, though he said nothing on the subject.

Genevieve was secretly relieved, though she mourned the loss of Madame Giry in particular, being an extremely interesting conversationalist as she was. Nevertheless she much preferred more private meals; and more private places in general. The masquerade ball last night was…something she could well have done without. If her dear Bernard had not persuaded her, she would have abstained from this dinner as well, and simply have had one of the maids bring her a discreet meal in her own room, next to a roaring fire, as was being done for many if not most of the guests this evening. But she could never refuse Bernard anything, and nor, for that matter, could she refuse the head of the household, though for quite different reasons; and so here she was, sitting opposite her sister, Grandpére at the head of the table, and half way through a plate of chocolate profiteroles, that she nevertheless really had no stomach for.

She found that she truly envied Carlotta, who was eating away happily further along the table. Strictly speaking this particular dinner was a family affair, but since the Spanish girl had stayed for so long, she had temporarily become an unofficial part of the household, like the Girys', which allowed her to sit in on smaller gatherings within the larger gathering of the wedding. Still, despite Genevieve's growing envy at the younger woman's enthusiastic appetite, she was glad that she was enjoying her food more now; when she had first come to the mansion she had eaten less than was healthy, proper or courteous towards her hosts. She hoped that Carlotta developed more of a liking for French food after her stay here; otherwise she might have a word to say with her guardians who were taking less than moderate care with her integration into French society.

Meg, on the other hand, sitting right next to Carlotta, was virtually picking at her dessert, something she considered a crime in everybody, even herself on this occasion, taking into account the genius of the main cook. Genevieve had no idea why she was so morose today. The girl had seemed happy enough yesterday, eager for the ball and during the ball, though a little worried about Christine's health, which was certainly understandable. She allowed herself a little smile, if only in her mind, at the love between the two. It was more than affection between friends; it was like the love between sisters.

Sisters…

She turned her eyes to Celandine, picking at her plate like Meg. Her younger sister looked worse than ever this evening; her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair was lank and her cheeks looked positively sunken as she chewed slowly, as if each mouthful was painful to her. As she watched, she swallowed and raised her fork to her lips again, obviously loathing everything on her plate. Genevieve could not help but feel a pang of sympathy; but very quickly she squashed it, like an annoying fly.

She forced herself not to look at her any further, lest their eyes should meet by accident. She deserves no sympathy. It will only weaken her resolve. She knows what she did as well as I do.

Sometimes she could not sleep at night and lay awake long after Bernard fell into a comfortable sleep, wrapped in his warm arms, gazing up at the canopy of her bed. Was it the knowledge that her sister, her own sister, for heavens' sakes, was an adulteress, that a bastard child begotten in sin was growing inside her, that robbed her of her sleep? Was the memory of that wretched cordial preying on her mind; was it the starkness of the choice she had imposed on sweet, innocent little Celandine? Or was it…what had Celandine said, when she had first revealed the dreadful news?

"He was kind to me – gentle. You have to have as little as I have to understand just what that means."

Truly, it was hard for her to understand it. She knew what Louis was like, but how could Celandine have lost control like that? How could she bring this potential disgrace upon the family, so soon before the wedding. She had had to do something. And yes, perhaps she had meant to punish Celandine a little, or more than a little, for behaving so recklessly.

She caused this whole mess. She needs to rectify it, or pay the consequences.

Still, as she listened to Louis talking at the head of the table, she could not resist savagely digging her fork into a particular profiterole. She could generally find something nice to say about anybody, but with Louis she drew a bit of a blank. Why did Philippe the Elder let him behave like this? Actually allowing him to bring his mistress – his mistress, of all people, a direct flout in Celandine's face – to the occasion of the wedding? She simply could not understand it. Then again, she could not understand a lot of what their grandfather thought these days. It disconcerted her, her and Philippe both. Who knew what the old man was thinking these days?

She concentrated once more on the discussion further up the table. Louis was speaking, his mouth full.

"…and as I was just coming down for dinner, my man-servant told me that there'd been a terrific fuss in the kitchens earlier. One of the maidservants – quiet little thing, never raised a peep before, apparently – suddenly started screaming like a goose, dropped a loaded tray she'd just been given and fell to the floor, still shrieking, and writhing about in all the soup and things she'd spilled. Wouldn't calm down until they'd taken her out of the kitchens, apparently, and even then all she'd been able to say was 'fire' and 'burning'." He took another bite of his dessert.

"Do they know what was wrong with her?" Genevieve took a far greater interest in the household staff than she was strictly supposed to. She knew that Louis certainly did not share this selfsame opinion, and therefore was not so surprised when he answered, "I don't know, and I don't care. Might have ruined this dinner if she'd been allowed, to say nothing of messing up the meal she was supposed to take upstairs."

"Who was it? Do you know that?" Meg Giry had ceased eating altogether, her fork half way to her lips, as she stared up the table at Louis. He, flattered by the attention from a pretty girl, the idiot, smoothed back his moustache as he answered, almost preening himself.

"Well, Mademoiselle Giry, I believe it was Cecile…something. Yes, I've got it – Cecile Jammes, Miss. Daaé's maid."

"Mademoiselle Gudicelli? Are you well? You seem to have gone very pale. And you too, Mademoiselle Giry – or perhaps even paler," Grandpére remarked suddenly, seemingly nonchalantly, taking a sip of his pudding wine.

"I…I…" This was very odd indeed; even Celandine had woken out of her own sullen contemplation of her bowl to look at the two. Carlotta's fork had dropped from her fingers. All the enjoyment had gone out of her face; if it were at all possible, she looked faintly green. Meg, meanwhile, was paler than ever. She too had let go of her fork, to clatter into her half-full bowl, and now her fingers were digging into the table, as she stared across the table at the place where Christine would normally sit.

What on-

"Oh…oh, dio, por favor…" Carlotta quickly clapped a hand to her mouth. "Excusé, I must go!" Abruptly she started up, knocking her chair backwards, and fairly raced for the door of the room. Absorbed as she was in this, Genevieve could not help noticing a very odd sound echoing about the room.

"Co-ack! Co-ack!"

Almost as if Carlotta were…coughing something up! Already Meg had gotten to her feet as well, her beautiful face gaunt in the candlelight. The dead set of those blue eyes were beginning to make her feel distinctly uneasy, as she realised the girl was not actually looking at the place setting, but – she twisted around in her seat to see – at the mirror, set on the far wall. Slowly, she began to realise that the reflection didn't quite match the original-

"I should go after her; she may need my help." And with a rustle of skirts, Meg was gone as well.

The remaining occupants of the room were left staring at each other, non-plussed. Forgetting her policy, she even stared at Celandine.

Bernard was the first to speak: "What do you think that that was about?"

"Most likely little Carlotta has food poisoning again," Louis said shortly and harshly, returning his attention to his sweet. "A more finicky eater I never saw in my life."

There was another scrape of chair against stone as Celandine stood up in her turn, snidely shooting a rare glance of pure venom at her husband. "Since I have finished my meal, I believe I may well copy them, and retire. Good evening, Grandpére. Louis. Philippe.Berenard." She paused, before adding softly, "Genevieve."

Grandpére, her brother and her husband all courteously rose to bid her farewell, and so did Louis, though his eyes did not rise to meet those of his wife, who looked through him as harshly as Meg had looked through her, only a few moments ago.

And she stood as well, drawn by the subtle plea in her sister's voice. There was only so long she could ignore her. "I will accompany you, sister."

She waited until they had safely quit the dining room, and shut the door behind them, before she turned on Celandine, releasing all the tension in her frame. "What do you want now, sister?"

Celandine's eyes were bright with tears, as she blinked frantically. "I can't do this, Genevieve. God help me, I can't do this. I cannot take it anymore, truly I cannot."

"Hush!" She drew her away from the door, further along the corridor, before she went on, letting her irritation take over. "Do you think you can come whining and complaining to me? I have given you a solution to your problems, Celandine. Is it my fault if you are too cowardly to take it?"

There was silence, as the sisters stared at each other. Genevieve herself was faintly shocked at what she had just said. But she knew why she had said it; Celandine's very skin seemed caustic to her, caustic with her sins. She wouldn't be dragged down with her. This was her fault, all her fault. It wasn't her fault at all.

At last, Celandine breathed in a choking sigh. "I suppose it is not, Genevieve, though I wonder if that is truly you. The Genevieve of old would not treat me like this. She would not-"

No, not here, it's not safe, not here!

"Hush! Hush!" Seizing her sister's arm, she dragged her along and along the corridors, away even further from the dining room, opening a random door and pushing her into a random, disused parlour, hardly able to see what was in it.

As soon as they were both safely in, Celandine wrenched her arm away, with surprising roughness. "I suppose it disgusts you to touch me, Genevieve. The feeling is mutual, I assure you." Her little sister blinked back bright tears, illuminated by the moon that shone faintly through the distant window, barely outlining their faces. "Why are you doing this to me, Genevieve?"

"Celandine, you committed a great sin. I am simply helping you as best I can."

"By aiding a murder? By urging me to commit a greater sin? I know I did wrong, Genevieve. God knows I regret what I did, every day and night, when He punishes me through my body. But why should He punish me through you, sister? Why should I have you turn against me as well? Why didn't you give me poison instead of showing me how much you hate me now?"

"I don't hate you!" The accusation hurt her more than she thought possible.

"Then why should you give me such a choice? Why should you give me the choice to…to kill my baby? When we were little, you said, you said that you'd always…you'd always be as much a mother to my children as I was." Celandine shook her head savagely in the darkness. "You lied. Why did you lie? Why did you…"

And Celandine, her precious little sister, whom she had always adored and perhaps looked upon as a fore-runner of her own babies, was in her arms, her own sin-begotten baby inside her and pressed against her in an embrace and her tears were wet upon her shoulder. She found that tears were creeping out of her eyes too, as she whispered, "I'm sorry, Celandine. I'm so, so sorry. I'm, I'm sorry, I…you're not wicked. You're not evil, I'm the evil one. You don't deserve this; you don't deserve any of this. You don't have to do this. It's your choice, but whatever you do, I promise that Bernard and I will support you. If Louis turns his back on you, we'll help you" She hugged her sister closer. "We won't abandon you. I won't turn my back on you any more. You can do what you wish. Please, please forgive me, little sister. I'm sorry."

She strained to hear the words of her sister, her darling, and her tears truly began to come as she heard Celandine saying, in a dry, dead little voice, hardly aware anymore of the world around her and the life within her

"Where did it go, Genevieve? We were happy once, when we were young. We were hopeful once. We could live without fear, once. Where did it all go, Genevieve? Where did it go?"

"Co-ack! Co-ack!"

Meg concentrated as hard as she could on holding back Carlotta's long hair, as her friend voided the contents of her stomach into the wash bowl, set down beside Christine's bed by its owner. It was very hard work making sure that both of them did not collapse forward under the weight of their heavy skirts; added to that was the fact that they were both trembling like the ague, and she felt herself sweating as much as Carlotta was, little beads trickling down what she could see of her golden temples.

"Co-ack! Co-ack!"

The noise that Carlotta was making was not exactly helping either. It was not at all nice; it was ugly and violent and wrong. It sounded as if Carlotta was bringing up more than her dinner – as if she was coughing up…well, a toad. A live toad, that was struggling and croaking frantically all the time. She did not like to think of what such an experience must be like.

"Co-ack!"

Christine's gentle hand was on the back of her hot neck, soothing and cooling, and the other hand was helping to support poor Carlotta. It was not just her hand that was cool; despite her heat Meg longed to be near a roaring fire, if only to melt the chill away from her bones, but the fire had been damped down considerably, for some reason, meaning there was far more darkness and coolness in the room than she was comfortable with. It reminded her far too much of the black, cold, bleak dining room, and the cool candlelight, and that mirror, and what she had seen in it.

But that meant nothing now. She had to help Carlotta through this terrible, mysterious attack.

Finally, at long, long last, the retching coughs died away, and after a few gasps and wheezes a shaky voice whispered from beneath her, "I…I think I am done now, Meg."

"Good," she replied as firmly as she could, pulling her up once more, supporting her weight. Why Carlotta had decided to rush here to be sick, rather than to her own room, she had no idea, but rush here she had, letting out those odd, terrible croaks all the way; barely able to bend over the basin in time before truly everything had come spilling out of her mouth.

"How do you feel now?" Christine asked anxiously, kneeling down in front of her and wiping the corner of her mouth with a handkerchief, her nightgown trailing on the floor and her feet bare, since she had neglected to even put on her slippers when she had leapt out of bed to aid her struggling friend.

"I…I feel…" Carlotta sat back down heavily upon the carpet, and massaged her stomach with her still glove-clad hand, surprise of a none too pleasant kind spreading across her face. "I feel…fine."

"That's good, isn't it?" Christine said, more cheerful than - Meg felt certain - any of them felt, Cecile bundled up as she was on the bed since she had shakily brought up another tray of dinner included in the number, as she stood up again.

"No." Carlotta's voice was husky, and quiet, and somehow more disturbing still than her retching and coughing and croaking. "I…this has happened before, today. I was having some lunch after my music practice, and then suddenly I…I began to make those noises, and then, I was sick. Violently. My stomach did not even have time to break my food down before it happened."

Against her better sensibilities, Meg looked over into the basin at her feet, holding her nose in preparation for the smell. She was surprised, but no more reassured that Carlotta had been, to see the distinct shapes of food in the basin; bites of profiteroles and chocolate, shreds of chewed chicken and vegetables, nuts and raisins, all floating in the distinctive tint of the beef consommé they had had to begin the meal. All the food, apart from having been chewed, looked relatively unaffected, as if Carlotta's stomach hadn't even begun to digest it before rejecting it. It even lacked the customary sharp smell that so commonly accompanied nausea. It was as if the food had simply been…refused.

"Carlotta – you can't eat anything, can you?"

There was silence behind her. "Can you?" she asked cautiously, rising from her inspection of the basin, trying not to let her eyes be caught by the mirror, helplessly.

A sigh, then; more like a groan, really. "No. At first I thought that I might have food poisoning again, but I felt perfectly fine before and afterwards, and later on I tried to eat an apple. I had only taken a few bites before the noises came again, and I coughed the pieces up, and I could not go on. I was so happy tonight, because I thought that it had gone away, and I would be able to eat, at last. But no matter how hard I try, my…my body will not let me eat. And I am so hungry."

In the mirror, fatally drawing her attention, she saw Carlotta put her arms around her knees, hugging herself into herself, and Christine bending down to hug her, and– no! Not the mirror! Who turned that the right way – the wrong way around? She walked quickly over to the mirror, and twisted it so hard and so fast in her desperation that the frame holding it wobbled and fell forwards, and the mirror tumbled and fell off the table and it smashed…

The crash sent her crawling backwards frantically as she fell to the floor, hard, Christine's cry of dismay ringing in her ears like a terrible echo, pulling herself away from the terrible, sharp, shining pieces reflecting her screaming face, her wide eyes, a thousand times over, stretching her face, tearing her apart piece by piece! She couldn't stand it; she hated it, she hated it, oh how she hated it!

"Get it away! Away!" she hissed, desperately trying to seek a refuge from that red mouth which was her own, and those eyes which were her own, but foreign and alien and infinite, stretching her soul out thin and into oblivion – or until it snapped.

"Meg? Meg, what's the matter? Why are you doing this?" Christine grabbed her none too gently by the arms, pulled her upwards and onto her feet with some effort, staring at her. Now that all were gazing at her, now that she was upright once more and not sprawling, she felt deep, red, raw embarrassment, but not as much as the fear she still felt. She had thought, for an instant, that he, he might be coming…

I have to tell them. I can't keep this a secret anymore. I don't want to be alone with it anymore.

"I'm afraid of the mirror. All the mirrors. They're watching me, Christine," she admitted, begrudgingly. "They're waiting for me. They're waiting to let something loose, to let something free, something that will come after all of us. They…burn me." She held up her fingers, still sore from the sparks that had hurt her early in the morning of the day.

Christine's brown eyes looked lost, until they hardened unexpectedly. She turned to look at Cecile, a cold compress on her face and hand where the soup she had spilled and apparently wallowed in had scalded her, her eyes still wide with the fear she had so obviously felt.

"And you, Cecile? Are you afraid?"

Cecile mumbled something, but all Meg managed to hear, with the judders of the mirror's breaking still tearing through her mind and body, was "The fire…in the kitchen. So frightened…" The maid pointed to the minute fire in the grate, and then fell still again, huddling into her blankets.

Carlotta raised her head wearily from her knees. "Then Raoul is not the only one to have paid a price. In some strange, unseen way, we have all paid, in a peculiar coin. Perhaps this is the punishment that you have feared, Meg."

"Carlotta, don't – don't say that!" Christine burst out, righteous with anger but also tinged with desperation, Meg dully found. For her part, she found no falsehood in Carlotta's words. We went against nature. It was worth it, but this is retribution for our deeds. "You're not being punished! You haven't done anything wrong, any of you!"

"Perhaps we have not done anything wrong, Christine. But we are still being punished, all of us," the dark-eyed girl said, the faint light of the fire flickering upon her tired, slightly haggard face.

Christine shook her head, her eyes filling with furious tears, as she clenched her little fists. "No – no! This isn't fair! It isn't right! All you did was help me – I won't let this happen to you! It's not fair, that you should have to suffer!"

"It is fair, Christine," Meg said softly, reaching forward and placing a hand on the lace clad shoulder. "We would have done anything to rescue you, and in carrying out that wish we did something, something that we perhaps should not have done." She held out a hand to Carlotta, who took it and stood up as well, shakily but determinedly. "It's too late for regrets, Christine. Grudge who grudges it, it's done. And I can speak for all of us when I say that we still do not regret it, even now."

There was a little grunt from Cecile as she struggled up off the bed, still clutching blankets about her, and walked over to the trio, who reached out for her. Tears were beading at the corners of Christine's eyes as she saw the red mark on the maid's face brighter in the light of the fire, and her nervousness as she drew nearer to it. "You don't deserve this," she was still fervently protesting. "None of you deserve this. And I don't deserve for you to have given up so much for me."

The three girls closed in around their friend, hugging her in their arms, despite her protests.

"Don't ever say that."

"If you do, we won't believe it."

"You are so much better than us, Christine."

"I'm not." But she was murmuring now, her face damp. "I'm really not."

You really are, Christine, Meg thought wistfully, as she buried her face in lank but sweet smelling brown hair, and felt the arms of her friends, those she had grown to love as well as the one she had always loved, near her and around her. To have you back…is worth having to live in eternal fear.

But…we cannot ignore this, as much as we would want to. Something has happened to us.

What have we become?

I'm fonder of Genevieve than I really should perhaps be. Putting pressure on your little sister to abort her baby, even if you or she might not want to, doesn't exactly put you at the top of anyone's Christmas list, on consideration. But I have excuses for her. She's always been very spoilt, always believing in upholding the honour of the family and doing her duty, and a very strict believer in what is right and what is not right. That's not necessarily wrong, in itself, but in this case it's perhaps not the best attitude to have, especially when Celandine's already on the edge.

I am, however, very proud of her relationship with her husband. They're just about the only couple in this story that aren't messed up or in trouble in some way. (Carlotta and Piangi are just starting out, so they don't count.)

Just in case you're wondering, Carlotta isn't bulimic(a condition where a person eats a lot, then makes themselves sick on purpose to purge themselves - not that she's really had a chance to do that anyway). There'll be an explanation along in a minute about what's happened to her.

These references for odd occurrences are taken from myths and legends I've read about witches and fairy changelings. Not that our girls have actually become witches or fairy changelings, but dabbling in the occult always has a price, I find. Or rather I imagine, because I'm a good little Catholic girl (among other things) and haven't summoned any ghosts or spirits or demons or trapped comrades from the underworld.

Yet.

The girls' conditions are explained, or at least expanded upon, below;

Meg's fear of mirrors: Mirrors have always had a special place in fairy stories, because they were rumoured to have magical powers. People believed that you could see the future in a mirror, like a crystal ball. However, despite the benefits mirrors provided, such as the procedure I mentioned back in chapter 41 (I wonder if anyone actually tried that?), people were also superstitious around them. Lots of people still believe that breaking a mirror is extremely bad luck, and in the middle ages, and later on as well, when a person was dying people would often take all the mirrors out of the room or even the house, or if that was impossible turn the surfaces to the wall, so that when the person died their spirit would not be trapped in the mirror. There was, supposedly, also a rather nastier superstition, which said that a person, and especially a witch, should never get between two mirrors; otherwise, as written so very aptly by the great Terry Pratchett in 'Witches Abroad':

"Something…like…a witch should never stand between two mirrors because, because, because the person that walked away might not be the same person. Or something. Like…you were spread out among the images, your whole soul was pulled out thin, and somewhere in the distant images a dark part of you would get out and come looking for you, if you weren't very careful. Or something."

(So that's done it for Kate Moss, I should reckon.)

Cecile's fear of fire: This one may be pretty obvious. Lots of witches got burned to death, after all. Or did they? England, it seems, never actually burned any witches at the stake (though Scotland more than made up for it) and France and Germany preferred to strangle the victims as an act of mercy before sending them to the hanging stand or to be garrotted (which defeats the object of the exercise, when you think about it). However, fire has always been regarded as a protection against apparent evil. New born babies, before they were baptised and therefore given the church's blessing, often had small rings of candles placed around their cribs while they slept (again, used in chapter 37). Now, although we know that Cecile's not evil, the living world doesn't know that, and it's acting accordingly to attempt to remove her as a threat. You really have to feel sorry for the girl.

Carlotta's sickness: For Carlotta's condition(no, I tell a lie, it's this girl you really have to feel sorry for), I turned to Irish folklore, and the theory of changelings; supernatural imitations substituted for people spirited away from the human world by 'The Shining Ones' – fairies, if you like. Most changelings mentioned are when babies were switched in the cradle in stories, leaving a deformed creature in place of the human child. The theory then is to raise the changeling as your own, and hope that your own child will eventually be returned in exchange for protecting and nurturing the changeling. However, lots of understandably ticked off Irish couples set out to get their kids back – with mixed results.

But the myth of changelings was not harmless, and not restricted to legends, often with terrifying results. For example, in March 1894 a man who lived in Clonmeal, County Tipperary, called Michael O'Leary, became obsessed with the idea that his faithful wife Bridget was in fact a fairy changeling, and his real wife had been spirited away, especially since he claimed she had grown at least two inches over night. When Bridget protested her innocence he turned violent, and with the help of friends and neighbours began to torture her to ensure her confession. Going along with the idea that fairies could not eat normal human food (much like the unfortunate Carlotta now can't keep her meals down for long), they challenged her to eat some bread; since poor Bridget was too terrified to swallow the food she was held down and it was forced down her throat. Understandably she most likely vomited from being force-fed in such a brutal manner, giving O'Leary the excuse he needed to destroy the 'evil spirit'. And so he poured lamp oil over her, after burning her again and again with a red hot piece of metal, and set her alight, leaving her to die in the hearth of her house. A horrified neighbour who had called to visit swiftly alerted the police, and O'Leary and the others were arrested and eventually charged with man-slaughter, since they had genuinely believed the fairy kidnap idea. O'Leary was sentenced to twenty years hard labour.

O'Leary was of course completely insane, but some of the people who had aided him had truly believed in what he had said, and acted accordingly. Of course, nobody suspects our three girls of anything suspicious – yet. But that doesn't change the fact that it's rather eerie (and coming from me, that's a major statement) to think that people could still believe in fairies, and act in such an atrocious way, just over a hundred years ago.

Reviews for the half-Irish seamstress!