Emily looks exactly like the painting accompanying the text of “Prince Teddy Bear.” In the story she was a precocious little girl living Cinderella-style with a stepmother and stepsister, only she didn’t have a fairy godmother, and there was no royal ball waiting for her to attend and lose a glass slipper. All she had was a toy teddy bear she’d found in the garbage, missing an eye and so old and used up that all its plush was worn off. But she loved it. She called it Prince Teddy Bear, and in the end, her love brought it to life like the Velveteen Rabbit and it rescued her from her life of drudgery and toil.

I know, I know. I never said Wentworth wasn’t above borrowing the best from other stories to use in her own. But that’s not the point. The point is, I had it worse and I didn’t have a magical teddy bear. I didn’t have anything. I was all on my own, this little kid trying to deal with crap that no one should have to, but especially not a three-year-old whose family is supposed to protect them, not abuse them.

When my brother first started coming into my room at night, I used to pretend that the things he was doing weren’t happening to me. They were happening to Mattie—the girl in the picture book. She was the awful little girl who made my brother do the things he did, not me.

I didn’t know about the Eadar then.

I didn’t know that I was creating one.

I never knew until right now, until I’m facing her here in the otherworld and understand what it was that I did all those years ago. How I’m responsible for the nightmare she’s been living—trapped in these memories of abuse that were my experiences, not hers.

“None of that happened to you,” I tell her. “Your name’s Mattie Finn and you were born in a story. Your bear is just a version of Prince Teddy Bear, your companion in the story. All those awful things happened to me, when I was a little girl. I just pretended they happened to you so that it wouldn’t hurt me so much.”

“I know all that”

“You do?”

“Why do you think I hate you? Why do you think I’m going to let Grath eat you?”

“But I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“So that makes it okay.”

“Of course it doesn’t. Nothing can make it okay. Just like nothing made it okay for me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “You still have to feel the pain I had to feel.”

“But I already have. Those things all happened to me first.”

Mattie turns to look up at the big bear by her side. When she looks back at me, she seems confused.