Roughly 80 years ago little Mary was a normal 9 year old girl. She lived on in a small house with a loving mother, a father she barely saw because he was working so hard, an older brother who always looked after her and an older sister who was full of useful advice. They were a poor family but they didn’t starve. Their life was simple, the only toy Mary had was a rag doll that mother saved up scraps of material to make. Mary carried that doll with her every where she went. So when Mary went missing, so did her doll.
Mary barely remembers anything about her time in Arcadia. But the world now compared to that of 1920’s is, sometimes, just as unreal. While she is adapting to the modern world with a child’s flexibility, the transition isn’t seamless. Her Durance has left its mark, as it does on all the Lost. For Mary this means a certain duality that, as a child, she merely accepts. On the one side she is very much a happy vivacious child who loves cartoons and plays with as many toys as she can talk Alex into buying. On the other she can reach close enough to death to speak to those who are dead and discover that which you fear most. A graveyard in the dead of night is just as much her playground as the sunniest park.
Despite this she does her best to just be a little girl. But it’s frustrating sometimes. Alex, who has adopted her as his daughter, sometimes treats her too much like a normal little girl. There is much that only experience can teach, she’s knows this, but that doesn’t mean she can handle discussing some ‘adult themes’ in a hypothetical manner. She gets confused sometimes at what Alex and some of the other Court changeling's expect of her. Sometimes they want her to behave as if she was an adult like them and other times they seem upset if the does. Also she worries that she's causes Alex too much trouble at times. She doesn't mean too but sometimes things just don't turn out like she thought they would.
She knows that very few children who have been in Arcadia for as long as she was ever escape. There are some who think that she should have never escaped, going so far to call her a ‘little fae monster.’ Those comments hurt her a lot. Not because they are mean spirited, but because deep down she’s afraid they might be right. She’s afraid that something will come again and steal her away in her sleep because she doesn’t really belong here in the real world. So she tries to sleep as little as possible, spending her time watching TV and surfing the internet, voraciously consuming media so can get caught up and fit in. The rest of the time she is determined not to waste. Happily cramming whatever time she has with has much happiness and fun as she can. So that if something comes to take her again she will have enough reasons and memories, that nothing can hide the way back from her.
The exact nature of Mary's Keeper is somewhat uncertain, tainted as it is by Mary's youth and the fragmentary memories she bears of her time in Faerie. It is certain that this darkened being walks the earth, forging powerful pacts with those near death. Some simply die, others he kills, and many find their souls dragged into his dark and sunless realm where their spirits linger for all eternity. Others he saves for reasons known only to him, or no reason at all, spirits barely clinging to life or bound to "living" shells. If he possesses the ability to restore true health, Mary is not sure...
For all that Antubis is fascinated by death, the dead interest him only a little. Those souls he takes barely hold his interest, lingering in the dark places until they wither away to nothing or meet some other unpleasant fate. Still, Mary thinks she was able to lead some away, into the Hedge where they were able to flee. Hopefully to a better reward than the eventual dissolution that awaited them in the care of her Keeper.
In form, Antubis usually appeared to Mary as a huge and powerful beast something like an Ant-eater. Only something like, however, for this creature was black and twisted with a maw filled with teeth and sharp claws that could rend flesh and soul alike. It's tempestuous behavior was more confusing than anything else, however, shifting between an almost gentleness to horrors that no young child should ever have to endure. In his own way, he was both wonderful and terrible, beautiful and hideous, protector and tormentor.
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