The air in the spring house was cool and heavy, dark and wet. Sometimes when little Peggy caught a nap here, she woke up gasping like as if the whole place was under water. She had dreams of water even when she wasn’t here—that was one of the things that made some folks say she was a seeper instead of a torch. But when she dreamed outside, she always knew she was dreaming. Here the water was real.

Real in the drips that formed like sweat on the milkjars setting in the stream. Real in the cold damp clay of the spring house floor. Real in the swallowing sound of the stream as it hurried through the middle of the house.

Keeping it cool all summer long, cold water spilling right out of the hill and into this place, shaded all the way by trees so old the moon made a point of passing through their branches just to hear some good old tales. That was what little Peggy always came here for, even when Papa didn’t hate her. Not the wetness of the air, she could do just fine without that. It was the way the fire went right out of her and she didn’t have to be a torch. Didn’t have to see into all the dark places where folks hid theirselfs.

From her they hid theirselfs as if it would do some good. Whatever they didn’t like most about theirself they tried to tuck away in some dark corner but they didn’t know how all them dark places burned in little Peggy’s eyes. Even when she was so little that she spit out her corn mash cause she was still hoping for a suck, she knew all the stories that the folks around her kept all hid. She saw the bits of their past that they most wished they could bury, and she saw the bits of their future that they most feared.

And that was why she took to coming up here to the spring house. Here she didn’t have to see those things. Not even the lady in Papa’s memory. There was nothing here but the heavy wet dark cool air to quench the fire and dim the light so she could be—just for a few minutes in the day—a little five-year-old girl with a straw poppet named Bugy and not even have to think about any of them grown-up secrets.

I’m not wicked, she told herself. Again and again, but it didn’t work because she knew she was.

All right then, she said to herself, I am wicked. But I won’t be wicked anymore. I’ll tell the truth like Papa says, or I’ll say nothing at all.

Even at five years old, little Peggy knew that if she kept that vow, she’d be better off saying nothing.