cassandra darling, arsonist
wrote herself a little list
and dancing through the streets of town
she burned the stables to the ground...
Cassandra Darling
Janet Wood
smart | compassionate | resilient
wrathful | unpredictable | paranoid
At 22, Cassandra is a bent, strange-looking creature, underfed and having a strange slackness of face that hides the handsome contours of her skull: her defined jaw and high cheekbones masked by sunken sockets and the looseness of her cheeks, the corners of her mouth subsiding into lines that make her appear older than she is. Her mouth and eyes are colorless, but her cheeks swim in freckles and an unhealthy ruddiness, and her hair, lifeless and coarse, is the color of old paper. She looks like an old thing left to bleach in the sun. She looks like a woman who lives in the shade.
Her story began in Oldcastle. Although her typical demeanor was quiet, even demure, there was a paranoid and angry streak in her that manifested in uncontrollable rages and bizarre, manic spells of laughter that fizzles out into weeping. One of these rages, when she was nineteen, was brought on by the unwelcome and cruel comments of a local stable owner as she ran errands for her mother. That night was fine and cool and Cassandra, giddy with violent anger, took off her boots and danced barefoot through the streets as the town looked on in bafflement.
And then she set the stable alight.
Only the terrified shrieking of the horses jolted her out of her daydream, and she was the first to plunge in and begin trying to lead them out, blindfolding them with her skirts, horrified at her own wanton cruelty, her thoughtlessness for the innocent bystanders that they were, and the town saved all but two.
Cassandra Darling was put into prison, and narrowly avoided the madhouse.
And for years, she found the gentle ennui of the work she was given a palliative, and became a sweet girl, a calm girl. Her prospects were good. She was encouraged with talk of commutation and a job in the factories.
But one night as she lay in bed the longing came. For weeks it was merely a niggling thought, as though she'd forgotten what she was going to say. But the strangeness of it grew into a terror until she was clawing at the walls of her cell in somnambulent need and they began to speak of the madhouse.
She dreamed of forests...
