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But I was a real girl. My name was Aspen, and I was a real girl.

And my mother was not a fucking fool.

I was not the distorted child of a fool.

After I breached the castle and took what I needed, no one would question that.

3

Fantasy

At nightfall, I got ready to break the law.

Shadows crept across my house, draping the cupboards in murk. A pumpkin sat on the window sill, hollowed out and glowing from the candle inside.

If you wanted to sneak into a castle, in order to pluck something from a vault, you had to be quiet. Unseen and unheard.

Okay. Common sense, even for an amateur.

Made of wood, and with my buxom size, this presented a challenge. Whenever I walked, I made noise, so the shirt that matched my gray skirt would do fine for indistinct, silent clothes.

Ironically, my boots—which weren’t constructed of timber but rather typical leather—had to be the trickiest issue. I’d attached thick wool liners to the soles, then tested them, making sure that I could move quickly.

Without hobbling. Without a sound. Without slipping.

In between laps, I glanced at the ceiling.

Don’t wake up.

Do. Not. Wake. Up.

I listened for my mother’s footfalls in the bedroom, or a wince in the workshop floorboards.

Nothing. My frame dropped into an exhale.

Whether or not to take my feather hat? A whine wriggled from my lips as I forced myself to leave it behind, hanging on the rack. Too many people had seen me wear it anyway. It could fall off, or identify me, or both.

I harnessed a sack to my hip, loaded with the stick key from this morning and a damp ball of oiled cloth that, when held close to the nostrils, emitted a concentrated scent. It might come in handy, in case anyone tried to botch my plans.

Under my skirt, the most important item jangled from a garter around my thigh. I checked for the hundredth time, making sure I’d secured it correctly.

After that, I collected my duo of compact axes. Caulked end knobs. Stain gradients from the grips to the handle shoulders. Beveled edges with perfect curvatures.

Fierce tools of beauty.

I clipped one to the hinges on my calf. The other to the nape of my neck.

When on a mission to steal from the Crown, it didn’t hurt to spruce up. In the mirror by the front door, I pouted at my reflection.

What. A. Disaster.

It might have been the darkness, but were those specks of mold in my pores? And look at those grains across my forehead!

My face crinkled. I shouldn’t have looked.

People used to call me distorted: a girl with a skin deformation, not normal, not an actual girl, not real. Maybe they still thought so behind my back.

You’d have to be real to be a bitch. Not some puppet.