by A. W. Exley
Ava was in her mind. Dawn wondered if she stayed here long enough, would she suffer the same way, or was Lettie’s madness caused by something else? Dawn glanced to her left wrist and an idea germinated, one that required further investigation.
“Lettie, have you ever scratched yourself on Ava’s vine?” It might be nothing, but you never knew if you didn’t ask.
Lettie scrunched up her face as she thought. When she spoke, her voice was a faint whisper, tinged with sadness. “Once, not long after we buried Julian. Ava and I argued. She pushed me and I scratched my head on that horrid black vine, but it was only a tiny thing back then.” She hand went to her temple and rubbed at a spot. “She’s a nasty woman. She stole my Cor-vitis seed too.”
“She stole your seed? How did she do that, could she see it?” Dawn held out her own hand with faint lines crossing her skin.
“The heart sees all. She swiped it from my hand and left me an empty, hollow thing.” Lettie closed her fingers around an empty palm.
Dawn tucked that piece of information away to add to her repository about Ava’s vine. More worrying, if the heart saw all, then Ava must have seen the connection between Dawn and Jasper. “What would Ava have to gain in stealing your seed?”
A single tear slid down the other woman’s face. “She did it to hurt me. Without it I cannot love.”
“Do you remember when it happened?” From what little Dawn saw, there weren’t a great many men in Lettie’s life. Stealing the seed seemed such a petty action. What use could the other woman put it to, if it only sparked into life between two people meant to be together?
Lettie shook her head. “It was so many years ago. He touched me and the seed appeared. Ava saw and she was jealous so she took it from me. She wants me to be mad and lonely like her.”
“Oh, Lettie.” Dawn hugged the other woman. “I will stop her, I promise, and we’ll find your seed.”
If the Cor-vitis seed appeared years ago, there was no way of knowing how many men might have crossed Lettie’s path in the forty years since Ava took control. A warm, friendly face with a clipped moustache appeared in Dawn’s mind. Poor Dr Day. She had hoped he was the gentle cure that Lettie needed and that if the woman was restored to good health, she might one day return his affection. But if Lettie’s seed was stolen long before he became her physician, the broken woman might remain alone for the rest of her unnaturally long life.
21
Days fell into a steady rhythm of clearing away forty years of neglect from around the estate. Dawn picked her battles and concentrated on the maze, the walled garden, and the herbaceous borders. She spent her days pacing the estate like a general inspecting a line of soldiers. Every day she made a point of walking out to the hermitage. Even though she picked different times of day, she never saw any sign of Ava. Mouse, who seemed sensitive to her presence, turned his back on the hermitage and snuffled among the decaying leaves and undergrowth for rabbits.
“Where are you hiding, Ava?” Dawn asked the deserted hill home before walking back with the wolfhound.
Each night ended in a family dinner with Jasper and Elijah, and on one rare occasion, a subdued Lettie joined them. After dinner, they would retire to the library and read or play chess. She was not at all proficient, but Jasper proved a patient teacher. Each time they played, her game improved.
With each passing day, the men advanced farther into the maze. Some days they only managed one foot, others as many as three feet. Each evening Dawn peered at the map in the cottage.
“How does it change itself?” she asked Jasper. She tried to stay awake one night, imagining the ghost of a gardener coming in to rub out and redraw the map. But she never saw anything, and the next morning, a tiny part of maze was clear on the drawing.
“I never gave it much thought. I think it just reforms itself when you’re not looking,” he replied, settling into the armchair to guard her slumber.
Jasper had drawn a jagged line that was the quickest route through the maze on Dawn’s paper version. Her workmen laboured to follow the highlighted path. They ignored the false turns and lanes that led to dead ends and kept moving through the main route that would lead to the centre. When a path doubled back on itself, they simply cut through the old yew. It was slow going partly due to the sheer size of the maze, which covered over an acre of land, and the slow process of dragging out the burned vine.
They were like miners, except instead of tunnelling into the earth they drilled a path into the greenery. Or perhaps they laboured deep under the ocean as the towering hedges enveloped them. Dawn suffered a surfeit of men, with only two at a time able to work within the tall, tight tunnels. The others were employed dragging away sections of vine or clipping the miles of unruly hedge.
She hovered over them, worried that the vine would strike them down or poison their bodies with its thorns. Yet it gave way to the fire meekly with only a pop and sizzle as flames ate through its core.
As they advanced, Dawn walked each twist and turn the maze took. In some places the vine and overgrown yew completely obscured the way, and Dawn paced out where they needed to cut a new arch through the hedge. Each day they marched closer to Ava’s stronghold. While measuring progress, Dawn pondered two questions: did the tree still survive at the centre, and how on earth did Ava make it through if they could not?
They had laboured for close to two weeks with the men working in shifts to battle the thorny vine at the front. Today, work on the maze marched on to a point that Dawn thought if she jumped up and down she should be able to see past the vine to the very centre. They were so close, but the light was fading and the men were exhausted.
“Time to finish for the day, gentlemen. I don’t want anyone inadvertently setting fire to themselves or pruning their limbs,” she said.
Dawn thanked them all and trailed behind as they wound their way back out. She stopped when a flash of red caught her eye. Bending down, she found a leaf from the Ravensblood tree. One side was pitch black, like a moonless night, the other blood red. But the stain seeped over the edges of the leaf as it sought to extinguish the red. She held on to hope. The leaves were not completely black yet.
Jasper stood at the outside perimeter and called good night to the men as they filed past.
Dawn twirled the leaf, making a flash of black and red. “The leaves blacken as the tree dies,” she said, “and this one shows it moving from one side to the other. I wonder how much of the tree has fallen to the disease?”
He let out a sigh. “I would know if it no longer stood, and the ravens still roost there at night. Last time I saw it, the disease had not consumed it all. The top quarter remained untouched.”
She looked up as one of the large black birds flew overhead. She would have to trust their reports back to Jasper that their perch still stood. But did a bird know dead wood from live? Ava’s monstrous vine might hold it upright even in death.
“Come on.” Jasper took her hand and drew her away. “It will be dark soon, and we can start fresh in the morning. I have grown quite accustomed to our evenings together.”
So had Dawn, but their time together was also weighted with expectation. Each glance and touch whispered that he waited for her to surrender to the forces that would bind them together. She needed some time alone with her thoughts without the pressure of him watching her. “Do you mind terribly if we don’t tonight? I am rather tired. I want to curl up in bed with the botany books for a few hours, and then I plan on an early night. I am researching diseases that affect other large trees in hopes of finding something similar and a corresponding way to heal the Ravensblood. I will be rather engrossed and not much company.”
His smile sagged. “Very well. But I will join you later tonight to keep watch for Ava. Tomorrow we can celebrate fighting our way to the middle of the maze.”
She leaned in for a gentle kiss. Perhaps Elijah was right and she shouldn’t be afraid of this thing winding around them. Nature usually knew what was best, and Dawn learned in
her little garden to let the plants dictate the best spot or combination. Who was she to second guess a force that had nurtured mankind since the beginning of time?
Tomorrow, once the maze had fallen to them, she would tell Jasper that she wished to consent to their bond. A thrill ran through her body at the thought of what might happen afterward. Until then, she would have to hypothesise and steal peeks at the anatomy book she had taken from the library when no eyes, not even the ravens, were watching.
After Hector delivered her dinner tray, Dawn donned her nightgown and robe and curled up by the fire with her books. The light outside faded to dusk as she pondered the state of the tree. The way a disease struck a tree gave many clues as to how it originated and how it might be cured. Did it absorb through the roots and soil and move upward? Or did it hit the leaves and soak downward? Or even, in this case, did Ava’s python vine constrict the sap flow of the tree?
“Blast,” she muttered and slammed the book shut. Research was pointless without some direction. Then the idea hit her. They were so close, a small and determined person could climb through the gaps in the vine. So long as she was very careful.
But she had promised Jasper that she would wait until morning. There was also the chance the centre of the maze was Ava’s stronghold, and Dawn wasn’t prepared to face her just yet. But as she sat, the scratch in her wrist heated and she rubbed her thumb over it. Intellectually, she knew she should stay in the cottage. But something stirred. The tiny piece of Ava’s vine in her body wanted to join the larger vine in the maze and it pulled her like the string of a marionette, moving her feet.
She glanced at the clock; she still had an hour before Jasper would arrive to take up his sentinel position. Could she sneak a quick look at the tree before full dark? There should be time for one brief look at the centre and the tree before he would be on her doorstep. That should satisfy the poisonous vine and allow her to sleep.
Decision made, and before she lost her courage, Dawn grabbed a lantern from a cupboard and then, as an afterthought, picked up the poker from by the fireplace. She would arm herself in case Ava was sitting on a carved wooden throne at the centre. She still didn’t know how she would ever confront Ava, but she remembered fighting the greenfly that affected her roses. Both were a blight upon the garden. One was just somewhat larger and possibly capable of retaliation.
To avoid any trouble, she vowed that if there were any sign of Ava, she would immediately retreat. She gripped the poker a little harder as she trod the path through the garden to the maze with Mouse at her heels. Once she reached the entrance, the dog whined and refused to follow.
“Stay here, boy. I don’t think you’d fit through the gap in the vines anyway.”
The wolfhound gave another plaintive yelp and then lay down, his massive head resting on his paws as worried eyes tracked Dawn.
Once inside she turned left and immediately lost sight of Mouse. Dawn walked quickly in the fading light, wanting to make the middle before night claimed the estate. Dark fell faster in the hedge corridors with the yew leaning over the path and blocking the rising moon. The air was chillier, and she tugged at her robe to pull it closer to her exposed neck. The way was relatively clear, and soon she had wound her way back and forth to the last section.
“I hope I do not regret this,” she muttered as she surveyed the last barrier.
Dawn cast her eye over the wall of interlacing vine and determined where would be the best point to climb through. Then she pushed the lantern and poker through as far as she could reach, careful of the sharp thorns waiting to catch the unwary. She already had one unrelenting scratch and did not want to add others.
Next she lifted her gown and robe, tucked her head down, and eased one foot through a gap. It took a wriggle and squirm to slide her body between grasping vines. A thorn caught her robe, and she had to stop and work it loose before trying again. After just a few minutes, she emerged on the other side.
Dawn drew a deep breath before the tightly guarded heart of the estate. Exhilaration raced through her blood like the time she drank a glass of champagne, a happy memory of celebrating her eighteenth birthday with her parents. Happiness at having come so far was tinged with sadness at what she found.
Before her stood the Ravensblood tree. It was both beautiful and dying.
The tree occupied one corner of the overgrown lawn. In overall dimensions, the small area was much like the secret room she had drawn in her ladies’ retreat, the drawing that had earned her place at the estate. The old tree spread a wide canopy over the entire area. Enormous roots undulated across the ground like giant octopus tentacles that dove into the earth. With the last streak of dusk, the top quarter of the tree appeared to be on fire. Orange and red leaves flamed from a black torch-like base.
Dawn took ten slow steps through grass that tickled her calves, and then set down her lantern and impromptu weapon at the base of the tree. She reached out a hand to touch the trunk. The bark was deep grey and lined with wrinkles like an ancient face. All over the surface ran thick black lines. They bulged, swollen as though they were veins carrying poison upward to the foliage.
Dawn smoothed her hand over the bark and a strip peeled off. She glanced at her wrist as she brushed the piece away. Similar black lines ventured up her arm from the scratch. “She has poisoned us both, but how do I heal us?”
With one hand anchored on the tree, she stepped around the massive trunk that was easily eight feet in diameter. On the other side, the raised roots formed a mossy hollow. Dawn sat down in the tree’s embrace and wrapped her arms around a giant root. She pressed her face to the cool wood and breathed in the rich loamy scent. If she listened hard enough, would she hear the garden’s heart through the tree?
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sentient being under her cheek. People forgot that trees were living, breathing creatures. But not Dawn. Their entire life cycles from birth to death were enacted in one spot. She knew what that was like. She had thought her short lifespan would start and finish in a diminutive backyard in Whetstone. Then fate brought her here, to Ravenswing.
The gentle giant surrounded her and emitted a soft thrum as the tree inhaled and exhaled. Dawn found a comfort in its embrace that reminded her of curling up in her mother’s lap to hear a story. As her mother whispered of stone gargoyles, fiery salamanders, and eternal love, she fell asleep.
A shriek awoke Dawn and she sat up, disoriented. Dark had fallen, but the full moon overhead shone down on the garden. A pale silver light washed the hedges and turned them into a solid wall of stone, imprisoning the ailing tree. By now, Jasper would have arrived at the cottage and discovered her missing. Would he scatter the ravens and find her tucked up in the tree roots?
She climbed up onto the jutting roots and peered around the trunk of the tree. There seemed to be another tree attempting to break free of the yew hedges. This one was short and slender with a tangled mop of branches and twigs.
Dawn rubbed at her eyes. She couldn’t remember seeing the smaller tree over by the side when she had climbed through the vine barrier. How had a tree sprouted in such a short period of time? Or perhaps she had missed it with her concentration on the Ravensblood.
Then the tree moved and detached from the hedge. No, it pushed through the hedge. It walked to the centre of the lawn, trailing roots behind it like the train of an evening gown. Its rounded top moved back and forth as though it sought something. The head of foliage arched back, a knot hole became a gaping mouth, and it shrieked at the sky.
“Ava,” Dawn whispered and under her hands, a shiver ran through the Ravensblood tree.
This was what had become of the woman who bore a child to Julian.
Somewhere in the night, another beast roared in answer. A beat thrummed through the air, becoming an audible whump whump as the creature approached. The roar sounded again from nearby, and then a shape appeared over the top of a hedge and dropped onto the grass.
Dawn’s hand flew to her mouth to bi
te back a gasp. The new arrival appeared to be carved from stone or granite. Over seven feet tall, it had broad shoulders and stout, thick arms, and it stood upright on two muscular legs. Its back was to Dawn as it faced off against the tree wraith that had once been a woman. Wings that spanned fourteen feet jutted from its back and had the wrinkled, parchment quality of bat wings. Each wing ended in a long, hooked claw. It was an ugly, misshapen thing that reminded her of the gargoyles adorning both entrance gates and the main stairway.
The small mobile tree took on the vague form of a woman. The trunk had a distinctive nip to a waist and then a flare over hips. The riot of branches and leaves turned into writhing, living hair like a woody Medusa. Another two branches became arms with twigs for fingers. A tumble of branches mimicked a bustled skirt that fell to the train of roots.
The two creatures faced one another and scream was met by roar. The creak of branches rubbing together clashed with the rough grate of stone. The tree grew more limbs that snaked around the gargoyle’s arms. The Ava-tree moved close and pressed her wooden head to a stone one in what appeared to be a kiss.
Dawn stood transfixed as a fight ensued between the two combatants. The gargoyle roared and tore at the tendrils on its arms, freeing its body. Then it swiped an arm at the tree creature. The wood wraith danced backward like a willow, bending away and under sharp claws.
Like snakes following a charmer’s command, vines crept from the yew hedges and surrounded the gargoyle. They encircled ankles first and then rose higher up stone legs. The gargoyle clawed at the climbing vine, but it would not be dislodged. Large wings flapped and roiled the air, but the creature only managed a few feet off the ground before the grasping plants pulled it back down to earth. More vines flowed up and over its wings and held them in place.
The tree wraith moved around the gargoyle. Twig fingers scratched at stone like nails dragged down a chalkboard. The winged creature shuddered and struggled to twist away from the tree. Then the wooden woman stepped back and screeched. The vine answered her cry and cracked like a whip, an action that pulled the gargoyle’s feet from under it. The large creature hit the ground with a thump that reverberated under Dawn’s feet.
