by A. W. Exley
Opening her eyes, she was ready. She took the small pruning knife from her apron and cast one last glance at Jasper. His massive hands and claw-tipped wings kept Ava submersed even as branches rose up like tentacles, trying to stab him.
Dawn loved Jasper. She loved all of them. This was her family now, and she would give everything she was to protect them. Holding the knife in one hand, she pulled up the sleeve on her left arm. She took a deep breath to steel herself and then ran the blade along the inside of her wrist, opening up the festering scratch given to her by Ava’s vine.
The knife slipped from her hand as pain washed over her. With her arm outstretched, she stumbled to the enormous trunk and pressed her skin against it. Her fingers dug into the bark to anchor herself to the old sentinel. Her blood would nourish the Ravensblood tree. Her life would replenish the estate and ensure Jasper and his clan continued to have their sanctuary to enable them to protect the village.
She would die, but be reborn through the roots of the tree.
Dawn walked around the tree, drawing a design in her blood on its rough surface as she paced. The splinter in her hand wriggled and she cried out as fresh pain travelled downward, tearing flesh and tendons to reach the open wound in her wrist.
The tree’s dry bark drank her blood and demanded more. It fastened upon her skin like a hungry mouth, and as the tree inhaled it drew more blood from her arm into its veins. It sucked and pulled, drawing more and more of her essence into itself. At the same time, the tree exhaled the tiny fragments of black vine that poisoned Dawn from within. With each gulp from the tree, Dawn became more light-headed even as her feet grew heavier.
Her pulse pounded faster as she stepped over the jutting roots and sank into the nook. She curled up and wrapped her arms around a woody limb. She laid the inside of her arm flat to the rough surface as her blood continued to flow and soak into the deep wrinkles of the Ravensblood.
“This is my gift to you. You will be restored,” she murmured. Then her heavy eyelids closed and her heart gave one last thud.
Then a slower, stronger thrum coursed through her body and took up the burden that her body could no longer sustain.
No, she flowed through it.
The Ravensblood gathered Dawn to it in a gentle embrace, and they became one. The tree shared its lifespan and knowledge with her. An ancient being resided within its form, and its every breath and pulse fed the life force of the family and estate.
With each inhale, visions washed over Dawn as the tree showed her its history. She saw hands take a cutting from a tree of immense age and size. A Warder nurtured and fed the cutting until it grew roots, and it was passed to an older couple. Next she saw the couple in an empty paddock as they laid out string to mark a pattern on the ground. Twigs that would one day become the yew hedges were pressed into the damp earth surrounding the tiny sapling.
Time advanced and three children ran and shrieked through the growing maze. Hedges were now waist height. Young bodies climbed the tree and dangled from the branches. As the tree grew bigger and stronger, so did the children, the maze, and the wider estate.
A man appeared, achingly similar to Jasper. He walked to the centre of the maze and took his lover into his embrace. As their bodies entwined, she dug woody tendrils deep into his body, the vines pulsed as she sucked his essence into her greedy maw. Ava was more like the greenfly than Dawn ever imagined. Both were parasites that sucked their hosts dry of their life force.
The man staggered backward, weakened and shocked. As he lurched back through the maze, realisation and horror at what he had done rolled off him as the wraith laughed.
Time rolled forward and a babe crawled through the maze. Thorns from the spreading vine caught on tender new skin and blood dripped from his hands and knees. Jasper was on his knees in the centre, pleading with a familiar wooden shape. He swore that he would do anything if only she would release the child from her thrall.
Tears blurred Dawn’s vision as the history of the estate and its deterioration at Ava’s hands played out in her mind.
She opened her eyes and found herself suspended within the tree. The heartbeat became a drum beat that occurred outside her body. Around her, the tree’s sap was a thick, black, slow-moving substance like tar or the pitch used to coat torches. No wonder the tree burned; its very essence was combustible. Only small spots of red light remained among the darkness. The tiny pinpricks of life tried to keep the heart in the old tree working.
Dawn was one such bright spot within the Ravensblood. She moved as though in a warm bath, her body meeting soft resistance as she reached out with glowing hands and plucked the lights one by one, as though they were stars in the sky. She gathered them to her, piling them up in her apron until she had all the ones she could reach.
Then she picked up two bright red blobs and pushed them together as if they were dough and she worked bread. They were soft and malleable in her hands as she formed the two into a larger ball. Dawn added the next one from the stash in her apron and kept working the glowing spheres until she had one large ball of light and life.
Warmth flowed through her body as she imagined her short lifetime of nurturing plants. As she cradled the large orb, she visualised digging her hands into dirt as she planted thousands of tiny seedlings. She called a light gentle rain to mist the container and encouraged it to grow tall and strong like a sunflower, to flourish like a bright zinnia, and to multiply like a spent sweet pea.
The ball pulsed and grew until it became so large she couldn’t hold it any more. She let it go to spin into the blackness, no longer a small star but now a glowing moon. Then there came a flash and the ball split it in two. Now two balls of light spun in the black tar. Dawn whispered to them, encouraging them to use her life force to keep growing. Another burst of light hurt her eyes as two orbs became four.
Her sacrifice was working, but would it be enough? The tree was enormous and old. If only she had more blood to give, if she could drain her body dry of every drop and give it all to the tree, she would.
No, the Ravensblood whispered to her. You have given enough.
Then it plucked the final strands of Ava’s vine from Dawn’s flesh and blood, and the tree released her with a gentle push. Dawn spun through an inky sky now full of exploding stars. Then with a gasp she slammed back into her body as a cool breeze washed over her skin. She sat up, clutching her cut arm to her chest, and opened her eyes.
The wound in her wrist had clotted shut. A small strip of bark from the Ravenswood now sealed the wound and tiny lines spun out from it like a web and formed a bandage. Unlike the shard from the black vine that had festered, her body incorporated the Ravensblood flake into itself and began to heal. All along her exposed skin, the faint lines left by the Cor-vitis glowed a luminous green. Her heart beat slow and strong, in perfect time with the tree beside her. Or were they one and the same now?
Dawn rose to her feet as calm strength washed through her. She was the heart of the estate and clan. Jasper was her bonded Lord Warder, and Ava was no more than a nuisance bug that needed to be removed. The other woman was already defeated, she just didn’t know it yet.
How long had she dwelt inside the tree? It seemed she took centuries to nurture the orbs, but only minutes had passed. Dawn stepped around the large trunk to find Ava and Jasper still locked in aquatic combat within the moat. The talons on the end of his wings dug into her branches to wrench them away with powerful flaps. Each time he tore off a branch, Ava grew another to replace it.
“Let her go, Jasper. She is nothing now,” Dawn said.
The large gargoyle froze, his hands still wrapped around the slender trunk in his grasp. Then he turned and climbed out of the moat, dragging Ava behind him like an exhausted walrus. His grey eyes contained pure steel as he stared at Dawn. Then he shoved Ava away.
“You’re glowing,” he murmured as he reached out, and Dawn touched his stone hand. When their fingertips touched, a spark from the Cor-vitis jumped from Dawn to Ja
sper and raced along his granite surface. The same intricate pattern ignited over his surface. United, they faced Ava.
“It is done, Ava. You are no longer a part of this sanctuary,” Dawn said.
The woodland sprite rose to her feet. Her form shimmered and became less tree and more human, but she was still a deformed and rotten version of humanity. Her limbs were made of bundles of twigs lashed together. The leaves fell from her hair and branches hung limp down her back. Only her eyes retained the bright green that must have once entranced Julian. Her mouth hung open on seeing the light radiating from Dawn and Jasper.
“No. This is all mine. Join with me, Jasper.” She opened her arms and pitched her voice low, but it was tinged with fear and desperation.
“You are nothing to me, Ava. I am free of you, as is this family.” Jasper’s arm moved to encircle Dawn’s waist and he sheltered her with his outstretched wings.
Lettie shimmered and glided along the moat to where Elijah stood. She stepped out of the water and it ran off her body as she stood next to her nephew. She took his hand so he did not stand alone before the creature who had given him life.
“No! Your father ruined my family, and I vowed to destroy his. They promised me revenge, and I will wring every drop of life essence from all of you.” Ava dropped to the ground and scrambled in the dirt and grass. She found the knife discarded by Dawn and barked in triumph as she held it up. Light glinted on the blade as she ran it along her arm as Dawn had done. “You will fail. I will take it back.”
She threw the knife away and raised her hand. The same black tar that had clogged up the Ravensblood tree dripped from Ava’s wooden arm. Large, fat drops formed but took their time to fall to the ground. One broke loose but the others simply hung, as though it was too congealed to break free.
Dawn watched the viscous fluid pool around Ava’s cut, but already it clotted. “Your veins are full of poison. The Ravensblood rejects you, we reject you, this land rejects you.”
Safe in Jasper’s embrace and with the Ravensblood beating through her body, Dawn closed her eyes and touched her Meidh power again. This time she sought not the light, but the dark. Instead of dawning light, she thought of extinguishing dusk. She gathered a void into a ball and made an orb of pure nothingness in her hands. This one was cold and sparked memories of snow in the garden. When she could stand the cold radiating from the ball no longer, Dawn hurled it at Ava as though it were a snowball.
The black sphere hit her in the chest and vanished under her bark. Ava cried out and staggered backward, looking at where the ball entered her body. She swatted at her trunk, digging twig fingers into her torso, and pulled parts from her as she screamed. Ava fell to her timber knees, and her scream became a high-pitched keen as she tore at herself. Bark littered the ground around her.
“What have you done?” Jasper asked as Ava writhed on the ground, shredding herself.
A calm detachment flowed over Dawn. She was the head gardener and had plucked the unwanted weed from the estate. “You said that there are two sides to every trait, so I channelled my dark side. Just as I can stimulate life, I can also snuff it out. Ava is extinguished.”
As Dawn said the last word, Ava let out a shrill cry and the gleam of intelligence drained from her eyes. She froze as the life fled her form, and she rolled to one side like a tree felled at ground level.
Hector jumped the moat with an axe in his grasp. Whacks echoed around the enclosed space as wood chips flew from his blade. Piece by piece, he hacked Ava into a pile of rough and uneven kindling.
Only when nothing resembling either a woman or woodland wraith remained did he drop the axe to the ground. He wiped his hands on his trousers. “I’ve waited forty years to do that. Horrible piece of work she was. Never liked her from the first day she showed her face.”
Dawn glanced at the pile of wood. While she didn’t want anything of Ava left on the estate, she wanted to pick her next words carefully. The wraith had been Elijah’s mother, and no matter her crimes against the family, they would also be grateful for the one gift she gave them.
“What would you have us do with her, Elijah?” she asked.
Elijah stared for a long time, his stone hands clenching into fists and then opening. At length he said, “We burn her. Her father was a salamander, and she should be returned to her maker by fire.”
The Warders shook themselves free of their elemental forms and gathered under the Ravensblood. Hector picked up a rake used to gather hedge clippings and scraped the kindling and twigs into a pile. Then he poured the last of the kerosene over the impromptu bonfire. He handed the matchbox to Elijah.
The young man glanced to his uncle, then lit a match and threw it onto the remains of his mother.
28
It was a subdued party that moved back through the maze to the house. Dawn was mindful that Elijah had now lost both his parents, and while the lad said Ava meant nothing to him, the death of his mother wasn’t something to celebrate.
Lettie walked arm in arm with the young man. Marjory and Hector held hands, although the nurse kept pushing at the retainer and telling him to get away. Dr Day walked at the back of the small group, his black bag dangling from one hand.
Dawn pulled Jasper to a halt and let the others vanish around a bend in the maze. “What did Ava mean when she said your father ruined her family?”
“I don’t know. My father lived for a thousand years and fought many battles. The last, in which he was greatly injured, was when Elizabeth Tudor made him earl, gifted him this land, and the Warder council entrusted my parents with a Ravensblood sapling. Perhaps in saving England he wronged her family, or it might have been from an earlier time.” He ran one hand through his hair and removed a leaf from his battle with Ava.
Dawn let out a sigh. So many families locked in a never-ending battle for vengeance. When would it be over, or did they ride the swing of the pendulum until the end of time? She had thought defeating Ava would be the end to their concerns, but so many strands remained. “Lettie said that Ava stole her Cor-vitis seed. If she did, how do we recover it now she has been destroyed?”
Jasper glanced at the corner of yew where his sister had disappeared. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think such a thing was possible. Did she say when?”
“Years ago, possibly even decades.” Sadness dropped through Dawn. How she wished the quiet doctor was Lettie’s perfect match, but if the seed had germinated from someone’s touch decades ago, it couldn’t possibly be him. How would they ever pinpoint when it happened, let alone who was at the estate at the time? Finding Lettie’s seed and match would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
“Ava might have thought to use it to trick me or Julian into thinking she was a true mate. But as to how we find it, I have no idea. It would have to be here, somewhere.” Jasper gestured to the tall green walls and beyond.
Dawn’s analogy of needle in haystack evaporated, now she was searching for one tiny invisible seed hidden somewhere in hundreds of acres. It was even more hopeless than diving into a pile of hay.
She tried not to be disappointed. Just as the Ravensblood had healed her by removing the traces of Ava’s vine, she hoped the tendril in Lettie’s head was likewise squashed. Perhaps when her mind healed, she might remember more about who awoke the seed. Even if they never found her Cor-vitis, she could still have a chance at a happy life with the gentleman who sparked the reaction. Unless he had married decades ago and was now a fat, old grandfather.
Jasper pulled Dawn close and placed a finger under her chin. He tilted her face. “Lettie will heal and then I suspect will want to set sail. We have all been prisoners for too long.”
Then he kissed her, a leisurely taking as the moon rose above then. Dawn had pressed closer to him when something nudged against her side.
Mouse.
She laughed and patted the wolfhound.
“We were probably taking too long for him,” Jasper said. “I suspect he’s going to want to sleep
in my room now.”
“Is that an invitation? I’ve not seen your room.” She smiled in the growing dark. She had tried to imagine where he might sleep in the big house. Would his room have some remnant of the boy in there, like a toy hidden under the bed, or would it be the domain of a man nearly three hundred years old and full of cobwebs and dusty reminders of lives long since passed?
“We can remedy that oversight,” he growled.
The dog barked and trotted ahead as they left the maze.
The lines drawn by the Cor-vitis on Dawn and Jasper faded over the next few days, and an identical intricate knot work pattern slowly emerged on both their upper arms. As her wrist healed, the splinter merged with her skin to form a trunk with tiny leaf-covered branches curved around her wrist like a bracelet – a miniature replica of the Ravensblood tree.
Each day she discovered more about the unique connection between Lord Warder and the Ravensblood. Dawn was aware of each Warder on the estate as silver strands that radiated out from the tree to the individual. The link to Jasper was stronger and pulsed with a life of its own. She had only to pluck a strand as though it were a harp string and the Warder would answer.
Dawn couldn’t completely abandon the cosy gardener’s cottage, and it didn’t feel right to move into Jasper’s enormous suite. Their nights were divided between a number of different beds, including the one in the lavender room. The gentle civility of the furnishings reminded her of home and made her feel closer to her parents, and she sought its soothing purple and grey tones when grief raised its head.
Jasper never uttered a word of complaint but simply laid his head next to wherever Dawn chose to sleep. Although he did occasionally mutter under his breath about the bed in the cottage being both too small for certain activities but not so large that she could escape his grasp while they slept.
