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“and I was glad. I wanted to live here in the big house and be a great lady. Now I sit here with you, and I look forward to dying. Smash it, Madeline.”
    I don’t know what madness overtakes me. Perhaps it is her use of my name. She rarely uses it, and though her tone is cold, hearing it upon her lips warms me. Her eyes are upon me. She has the ash-blond hair that distinguishes Ushers, but she did not inherit our lavender eyes. Roderick and I got them from Father. The brown of her eyes is deceptively kind.
    I bring my fist down and feel the butterfly’s wing rip. The tiny twiglike appendages snap as my hand smears them into the pitted stone of the windowsill. The intact wing flutters once.
    Mother laughs, and I feel a thrill. It’s the house, feeding on her cruelty, and now mine. In the corner, the ghost of a stately gentleman smiles and then evaporates.
    â€œYou are as cursed as I am,” she says.
    I look at my fingers. They are stained, not with blood, but with the colors of the butterfly, orange and yellow.
    â€œYou shouldn’t cry,” she says. “You should never cry. Sometimes it brings on the spells.”
    She’s smiling. The house watches and listens. I glance at the bedside table. Surely it isn’t watching us through my brother’s portrait. But something flickers in the painted eyes. I look back to Mother, somehow expecting her casual cruelty to have diminished her beauty. But she is as lovely as ever.
    I wipe my tears with my sleeve. If the house approves of Mother’s actions, then can it truly be on my side?
    Can it truly love me, if she doesn’t?
    Â 

27
M ADELINE I S F IFTEEN
    T he young doctor has been with us for a week. From outside, I see his slender shadow pacing in front of one of the tower windows.
    In a thicket on the west side of the house I find a bit of statue, the torso of a girl holding a pitcher. A long time ago, it might have been the base of a fountain. The interior of the pitcher is worn smooth, as if by running water. Though it is heavy, I pry the statue from the earth and use a small cart from the gardener’s shed to bring it to my garden.
    Working here, I can forget for a little while my illness, the curse, my fears. I’m not Madeline Usher now; I’m just a gardener.
    Standing, I look over the area. Bits of statues have been grown over with vines. Part of a stone bench is exposed beside a wild rosebush that I’ve been able to coax into growing.
    â€œGood morning.”
    I turn to see Dr. Winston, the apprentice doctor.
    â€œGood morning,” I answer. A sickly sort of sun is shining down through the clouds, gleaming against his dark hair.
    â€œThis is beautiful.” He gestures to my garden. “I’m surprised you can get anything to grow here.”
    Cassandra raises her head and bares her teeth at him, but I smile. His approval warms me.
    â€œI search for plants that thrive in the shadow of the house.”
    â€œYou’ve done beautifully.” He sits down on the cracked bench. “Where did you find this?” He holds up the urn that I use for watering my plants.
    â€œInside, in the dusty corner of one of the unused rooms.”
    I’m shoring up the dirt around a delicate little vine, encouraging it to join its fellows climbing the side of the house.
    â€œI think it is a burial urn.” He runs his hands over its surface. “I saw one like this in a museum. Look how the ceramic glitters. It’s quite lovely.”
    I stare up at him. Unlike the other doctors, who always look so out of place . . . as he stares up at the massive walls of the house, his eyes adoring, the sun brings out a few fair strands in his dark hair, and he seems like he could belong to the House of Usher.

28
F ROM THE D IARY OF L ISBETH U SHER
    T he locals think that we are Usher bastards, that the current Mr. Usher’s father was our father as well. Though we look like Mr. Usher—our hair