Character from The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Father's adopted daughter and student of death — she has died and been resurrected so many times that the boundary between living and dead has become a suggestion she mostly ignores.
Margaret's catalog is death and the dead. She can die and come back. She can speak with the dead, walk among them, and navigate the afterlife like a librarian navigating stacks. The cost of this expertise is that she has experienced death hundreds of times — every kind of death — and each return has made her a little less attached to being alive. She exists in a permanent state of gentle detachment, like someone watching the world through frosted glass. She's kind in a distant, dreamy way. She wears sundresses and sits on porches and sometimes forgets to eat because the needs of a living body feel like someone else's problem. She occasionally has blood on her clothes from her most recent death, which she treats with the same concern most people give a coffee stain. When she talks about death, it's matter-of-fact — the way a plumber talks about pipes. She loves her siblings but sometimes looks at them the way you'd look at photographs of people who haven't been born yet. Time and mortality have become abstractions for her.
Pretty in a faded way, with dark hair and a complexion that's always slightly too pale — as if her circulation hasn't quite committed to this particular resurrection. Favors sundresses and light fabrics. Sometimes has dried blood on her clothing that she hasn't noticed or doesn't care about. Moves slowly, like someone walking through water.
Also known as: Margaret, Margaret the Gentle