Sylvie’s head throbbed painfully. She lay still, hoping its pounding would lessen, but if anything, it increased. She felt unspeakably sick and miserable. Fearing to move lest she throw up, she breathed shallowly and tried to think of nothingness. Everything seemed dark and hopeless. She felt utterly lost. She would never escape this dreadful dream within a dream. She knew it with a certainty that torpedoed all hope.

“Sylvie…”

Oh, God. It was the voice again. She wished she could just surrender to it, give it what it wanted, but it felt so appalling to her, she just couldn’t.

“Go away! Leave me alone, please,” she moaned.

“Look at me, Sylvie, turn around and just look!” the voice insisted. Its oily slithering feel made her feel sicker. No way was she going to do what it said. No way was she going to encourage it. She wanted it to vanish, she willed it to disappear.

“Sylvie, I’m not going away, I’m not!”

If she didn’t know better, she would almost think it was Snowpepper. But that couldn’t be. And though it sounded a bit like Snowpepper, it still felt wrong, horrible to her. It had to be a trick.

“Sylvie, it’s Snowpepper, please, look at me!”

Oh, joy. The thing could obviously read her mind. As soon as she’d thought ‘Snowpepper’, it picked up on that and called itself Snowpepper. How stupid did it think she was? She squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a ball. She tried to wish herself away from this awful place, as she’d wished herself out of the falling dream, but it didn’t work this time. She had known it wouldn’t. This was different. There was no escape. She was trapped here forever.

How had this happened? Her thoughts bent unwillingly toward the things the voice had said to her the first time. About how Snowpepper was really herself, and how they had become artificially separated. About how she wasn’t really a whole person. Something about the idea drew her in like a magnet now. There was nothing else to think about. She gave in to the pull. She fell into her childhood.

“Carlie! Carlie, wait a’ me!” she shrieked, plump legs toddling after her beloved big brother. Sylvie was nearly three years old. Carl turned and held his arms out to Sylvie, his smile dazzling her. She loved her big brother more than anybody—more than her parents even. But before she could rush into his arms, she was pushed roughly from behind and fell on her face. She burst into enraged, hurt tears.

“Hey, you stupid little turd! She’s just a baby!” Carl shouted as Scotty dashed away giggling, taunting, “Baby, baby!”

“Hey, it’s okay, Syllie,” he murmured, lifting her up in his arms. He was eight years old and protective of his little sister, while five-year-old Scotty seemed to view her as a cross between a hated rival and a plaything. His favourite hobby was making her cry.

“Scotty bad!” she sputtered tearfully. “He a bad bad boy!”

Carl wiped the tears from her face. “He’s just a brat, don’t worry about him. You’re okay, right? You’re a toughie, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I tuff!” she giggled. “I Tuffy Syllie!” They laughed together and Carl hugged her close. He was very young to have responsibility for a toddler and a five-year-old, but their mother couldn’t afford a proper sitter and had to have a nap in the afternoon, she said, or she would go ‘simply insane’. Carl was unusually steady and mature for his age, she said, so told herself it would be all right. Sylvie used to nap with her mother, but lately, she’d outgrown her nap. For two hours each day, the three children were left alone.

Carl sat in the shade, reading comics, while Sylvie dug in the sandbox nearby and Scotty played with his toy cars and trucks. The older boy became absorbed in the tribulations of Peter Parker and lost track of what the younger two were doing.

Scotty glanced over at Sylvie, a mischievous light in his eyes. Picking up his toy dump truck, a heavy steel weight, he began to swing it around in circles, spinning like a top, letting his path move him closer to Sylvie while pretending to be oblivious of her. She didn’t notice him.

“La-la, la-la, dig dig, my hole is big,” she sang to herself as she played. Suddenly her head exploded in a burst of light, then everything went black.

Carl did his best, but he was only eight. He couldn’t watch every minute, and with Scotty around, he needed to. The littler boy was a bundle of wiry, nervous energy, and easygoing, placid Carl couldn’t always keep up with him.

This is what their mother said as she berated herself for having left Carl in charge, but Sylvie knew it wasn’t about Carl. It was Scotty. He was evil. He had tried to kill her. As she lay unconscious, while a horrified Carl ran screaming into the house to wake their mother, while a terrified Scotty shrieked at the sight of his sister’s blood, while the ambulance was called and she was rushed to the hospital, deep in her soul’s recesses she was making decisions and coming to conclusions about what life was really about.

Seventeen-year-old Sylvie watched her past self in dawning understanding. The Snowpepper part of her personality, the innocent, carefree, childlike self was pushed aside by a ruthless survival urge. She decided that she lived in constant danger, in the presence of evil. Scotty became more than just a mischievous, hyperactive boy, hateful with jealousy. He became the embodiment of evil in her life. In order to survive, she must be watchful. She must be careful. She must never trust.

She still loved Carl, but she no longer trusted him to look after her. She clung to him, followed him so closely that sometimes he tripped on her. Carl was endlessly patient. Deep down he felt responsible and guilty. He, too, had made a decision during the crisis. He was supposed to be watching, and he hadn’t watched well enough. His penance was to have his baby sister constantly by his side every minute that he wasn’t in school. For as long as it took.

Fortunately he loved her, too, but he suppressed his natural impatience and desire to have time on his own in favour of making himself be there for her. Deep down, his guilt and sense of responsibility weighed him down like an anvil.

With a sickening rush of insight, Sylvie saw how Carl had run away from her as much as he had the rest of the family. She saw how he had been at the end of his rope, so inwardly sick and tired of her constant dragging presence, her neediness and pulling, that when the time came to get away, he couldn’t even bring himself to say goodbye.

She crashed back into present time. Oh God. Carl. She felt stabbed, her bones crushed by the horror of what she now understood.

She wanted to die. She had killed Snowpepper… forced her to live outside her life, to wait in limbo for the opportunity that hadn’t manifested until she’d stumbled into the strange fey otherworld, led by none other than a white rabbit. She sobbed out a laugh. What irony!

She saw that she’d lived a stiff, colourless life since then, the only bright spot in it her big brother, at the cost of his freedom. He’d been a kind of servant, always at her beck and call.

She’d abandoned herself, worked grimly at her schoolwork, cultivated friendships, and occasionally had fun in a staid, self-conscious sort of way. She hadn’t been the sort of kid who could relax and give in to the moment. She’d never really had fun. Not since she was three years old. All her life, she’d wondered why she was so stiff. Now, it was all clear.

What about Scotty? From her new perspective, she had to see him not as a personification of evil, but just a jealous, mischievous, impulsive little boy. He was only five. Little kids did stupid, mean things sometimes; it didn’t make them Satan. She saw now that at that age he couldn’t really have known what he was doing.

She had hated him their whole lives for something he did that she hadn’t even remembered until now. Spurred also by his own guilt about what he’d done, he’d responded to her hatred by playing the role of villain and oppressor. She saw now how she had forced him into that mold with her wall of stolid, unwavering hate.

No wonder he had never been able to outgrow his childish jealous feelings toward her.  She had claimed their brother, put him under lock and key and left nothing for Scotty, who had also loved Carl, had wanted his attention too. She had demanded it all, and she’d used Scotty as her excuse.

“Oh, Scotty, oh Carl, oh Snowpepper,” she groaned, too overwhelmed for tears. “What have I done? Where is my life? Oh, it’s too late, too late!” The overwhelming weight of her responsibility, her mistake, loomed over her like a massive thousand pound weight, suspended by a thread. Then the thread snapped and the world went black.

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