shayna ♡’s Reviews > We Have Always Lived in the Castle > Status Update

"What's funny?" Constance asked, turning to see.
"I was thinking that you might make a gingerbread man, and I could name him Charles and eat him."
"Oh, Merricat, please."

(I thought Constance was laughing again but she was apparently becoming irritable according to Merricat, which is disappointing, so I am going to pretend she was laughing when she said please.)

I wondered about going down to the creek, but I had no reason to suppose that the creek would even be there, since I never visited it on Tuesday mornings....

"Listen," Charles said. He put down his chicken. "You stop that,"…
Constance was laughing. "Oh, Merricat," she said.."you are silly. I taught her," she told Charles, "there are mushrooms by the creek and in the fields and I made her learn the deadly ones. Oh, Merricat."
"Death occurs between five and ten days after eating," I said.
"I don't think that's very funny," Charles said.
"Silly Merricat," Constance said.

There is amanitin, which works slowly and is most potent. There is phalloidin, which acts at once, and there is phallin, which dissolves red corpuscles, although it is the least potent. The first symptoms do not appear until seven to twelve hours after eating, in some cases not before twenty-four or even forty hours. The symptoms begin with violent stomach pains, cold sweat, vomiting-"
…
(Cont next update)

"So I'm taking little Cousin Mary's job away from her," Charles said, looking at me again. "You'll have to find something else for her to do, Connie."
I had made sure of what to say to him before I came to the table. "The Amanita phalloides," I said to him, "holds three different poisons. …(cont next update)

"Cousin Mary doesn't like me," Charles said again to Jonas.
"I wonder if Cousin Mary knows how I get even with people who don't like me? Can I help you with that chair, Constance?”

…

Constance made sandwiches for Jonas and me, and we ate them in a tree; I sat in a low fork and Jonas sat on a small branch near me, watching for birds.
"Jonas," I told him, "you are not to listen any more to Cousin Charles," and Jonas regarded me in wide-eyed astonishment, that I should attempt to make decisions for him. "Jonas," I said, "he is a ghost," and Jonas closed his eyes and turned away.

I dusted the wedding-cake trim with a cloth on the end of a broom, staggering, and looking up and pretending that the ceiling was the floor...

When we had neatened the upstairs rooms we came downstairs together, carrying our dust cloths and the broom and dustpan and mop like a pair of witches walking home.

There were sparkles at the sink where a drop of water was swelling to fall. Perhaps if I held my breath until the drop fell Charles would go away, but I knew that was not true; holding my breath was too easy.