I’d rather hear a thousand hard and bitter truths, that’s what he said, but little Peggy knew that there was one truth he didn’t ever want to hear, and so she kept it to herself. She’d never shout it at him, even if it made him break the hazel rod, cause whenever she thought of saying aught about that lady, she kept picturing her father dead, and that was a thing she never hoped to see for real. Besides, the lady that haunted his heartfire, she didn’t have no clothes on, and little Peggy knew that she’d be whipped for sure if she talked about people being naked.

So she took the whacks and cried till she could taste that her nose was running. Papa left the room right away, and Mama came back to fix up breakfast for the blacksmith and the visitors and the hands, but neither one said boo to her, just as if they didn’t even notice. She cried even harder and louder for a minute, but it didn’t help. Finally she picked up her Bugy from the sewing basket and walked all stiff-legged out to Oldpappy’s cabin and woke him right up.

He listened to her story like he always did.

“I know about Bloody Mary,” he said, “and I told your papa fifty times if I told him once, wring that chicken’s neck and be done. She’s a crazy bird. Every week or so she gets crazy and breaks all her own eggs, even the ones ready to hatch. Kills her own chicks. It’s a lunatic what kills its own.”

“Papa like to killed me,” said little Peggy.

“I reckon if you can walk somewhat it ain’t so bad altogether.”

“I can’t walk much.”

“No, I can see you’re nigh crippled forever,” said Oldpappy. “But I tell you what, the way I see it your mama and your papa’s mostly mad at each other. So why don’t you just disappear for a couple of hours?”

“I wish I could turn into a bird and fly.”

“Next best thing, though,” said Pappy, “is to have a secret place where nobody knows to look for you. Do you have a place like that? No, don’t tell me—it wrecks it if you tell even a single other person. You just go to that place for a while. As long as it’s a safe place, not out in the woods where a Red might take your pretty hair, and not a high place where you might fall off, and not a tiny place where you might get stuck.”

“It’s big and it’s low and it ain’t in the woods,” said little Peggy.

“Then you go there, Maggie.”