Silence fell over the room and the rest of the meal passed quietly, with both Dawn and Lord Seton lost in their own thoughts. She wondered that she had stumbled into a fairytale in the pages of a book that some evil force had taken hold of the family and estate. What role did young Elijah play – doomed princeling, perhaps?

After dinner, the earl once again walked her across a silent lawn. The moon washed everything in pale silver light, and Mouse looked as though he had turned to burnished metal. The raven was missing from his accustomed perch on the brick wall, but Dawn assumed even her silent watcher eventually went home to roost. The book on local fauna said they nested in the Ravensblood tree, and she wondered if she ever made the middle of the maze, how many of the large black birds would she find?

At the cottage door, the earl took her hand in his and placed a kiss on her knuckles. Her skin tingled and wriggled as the imaginary seedling writhed inside her. Did he do this to all his employees? She imagined all the staff, including the rough stable hands, lined up for a goodnight kiss from the earl and she bit her lip to stop from laughing.

“Would you kiss all your gardeners goodnight?” she asked.

He stared at her, but at least he didn’t frown. “Only those that intrigued me. Good night, Miss Uxbridge.”

“Good night, Lord Seton,” she said and stepped into the cottage. He had denounced her for being a woman when she first arrived at the estate, but now she intrigued him.

A shaft of moonlight swept through the window and illuminated her hand. Dawn held it up as the vine appeared and looped its way around her wrist and across her forearm. A single leaf burst from its stem before it puffed out of existence.

Dawn rubbed her hand down her arm and over her knuckles. “I’m going mad.”

Impossible ideas swirled in Dawn’s head as she undressed for bed and hung up her gown. The story of Julian and Ava seemed achingly like the diary entry dated 1840. The earl obsessed with a woman who poisoned family and estate. Everything circled back to this particular piece of land. Thinking of land, Dawn needed to investigate if the soil was affected. Certainly something allowed the suffocating black vine to thrive.

The history of the estate was unfolding like one of her mother’s fanciful tales. Was it possible that the family was cursed, with the current members of the family doomed to re-enact the same ill-fated choices as their parents?

She brushed out her hair while she waited for Mouse to return from his toilet stop. Then he settled on the rug and Dawn climbed into bed. She eased the tiny diary out from its spot between two larger books and then crawled under the blankets. A lantern on the shelf behind her head cast a faint light over her shoulder as she flicked through the brittle pages, looking for passages similar to what she heard that evening.

At last she found the paragraph that gnawed at her mind… Today I worked with Lettie in the garden. It is rewarding to see things flourish under her care.

The first read through, she assumed she misread the handwriting and the narrator meant they worked with lettuce. Now she studied the diary in detail for clues about what occurred to start the estate on the path of neglect.

The problem with old accounts referring to noble families is that the earl was simply the earl. No first names were ever given, for that would be terribly inappropriate. Even the more formal Lord Seton didn’t tell the reader which one the author meant. Did he mean Julian, his father, or grandfather? Could the Lettie from forty years ago be a relative of Jasper’s? Letitia didn’t seem a terribly common name, but it could be one passed down through the family.

Dawn’s forays around the estate uncovered decades of neglect, not just a few years. Forty years unattended was possible, if Elijah’s father had died four decades ago. However, his son appeared to be in his late teens, not early forties. That left her with only two options. Either history had repeated itself and two tragedies occurred at the estate, one in 1840 and the other just prior to Elijah’s birth. Or secondly, members of the Seton family were far older than they appeared.

Here was a puzzle for her to solve. Was there more to this family and estate than met the eye? And what happened to Ava, Elijah’s mother? No one had said she also died, so could she be the presence Dawn had sensed in the hermitage?

She needed to determine if the people now on the estate saw the beginning of the garden’s deterioration forty years ago, or if it were mere coincidence. As a first step, she was going to ask Elijah’s actual age, as opposed to the age he appeared. She was also curious as to Lord Seton’s age. Was he in his twenties, as he appeared, or was there also a discrepancy between his chronological age and appearance? Finding Julian’s gravestone inscribed with his date of death would be convenient, but there was no family cemetery on the map of the estate.

Trying to figure out a solution reminded her of an experience a few years before. She had a period of feeling particularly healthy, almost like a normal child, and her parents took her to an outing at a gallery. They had an exhibition of optical illusions, and her parents thought staring at the paintings wouldn’t be too taxing on her constitution.

Dawn found that if one stared directly at an optical illusion, then it resisted all attempts to reveal its secret. One had to glance to the side and pretend you weren’t looking at the middle of the picture at all. Only then, did the image appear. This mystery was the same; she needed to worry at the edges, not confront it face on. And she knew exactly where to begin.

Hector.

The night time screaming only briefly interrupted Dawn’s sleep. She roused enough to acknowledge the eerie sound, then rolled over and ignored it. Yet she woke with fatigue sinking into her bones.

“It must be the extra exercise, that is all,” she told herself as she took a mouthful of tonic to revive her tired constitution. After breakfast, she found her workforce waiting in the courtyard and gave them jobs to complete in the walled garden.

Dawn watched them head off and then struck out on a different course. She walked the length of the herbaceous border as she considered her course of action, both in tackling the mystery of the family and in restoring the grounds to their former glory. Mouse was a constant presence at her side.

The border was a double length of weeds, patches of bare earth, and scraggly hedges that would have given the original gardener nightmares. The black vine snaked through the hedge, spreading fingers that caused the yew to grow at odd angles as it tried to escape the grasp holding it tight. Large patches were dead where the vine suffocated a branch.

“What did you do, Ava?” Dawn wondered aloud.

The vine rustled and slithered, much like a snake through undergrowth. No, it must just be the wind, blowing the yew and making the vine appear to move. Dawn lifted the hem of her skirt and stepped over the weeds and grass to stand closer to the vine where it laced through the hedge.

Mouse whimpered and sat at the edge of the bed, but didn’t venture any closer. His ears were pricked and his large eyes tracked Dawn’s movement.

“Ava,” she whispered.

Mouse leapt to his feet and yapped as the vine slid along the hedge. Did it move, or did it grow on hearing that word? Or it might be a pure coincidence as the hedge bent and bowed under the vine’s weight.

“Brussel sprouts,” she said, to no reaction at all. Not even a splutter of horror from either plant or wolfhound.

Silly. I just imagined it. She found a path back across the debris-riddled bed to the lawn. Dawn glared at the vine.

“Ava.” She still kept her voice low in case someone overheard. Once again, the vine twisted and tightened its hold on the hedge a fraction more. A branch broke with a snap under the attack, and a piece of yew slumped, defeated. Mouse nudged her side and whined nervously as though asking her to stop it.

“All right, boy.” She patted his head and ruffled his ears.

Having challenged the vine with Ava’s name, Dawn headed for the maze. As she approached, a raven took flight and soared over her head, straight toward the middle. Dawn watched the bird with envy. Since she couldn’t fly, they would need to formulate a plan of attack to find their way inside.

She stopped next to Hector and examined the vine. Mouse padded to a shady spot and threw himself to the ground. Now was Dawn’s opportunity to ask the old retainer a few questions while it was just the two of them. “Do you remember when Nurse Hatton came to work for the family?”

“Oh yes.” He took the boater off his head and stared at it in his hands for a moment. “I thought a fairy had come to live among us. She was such a delicate, wee thing, with fiery red hair and vivid blue eyes. I thought she had drifted down from a sunflower.”

The look on his face made Dawn wonder what obstacle kept the two apart. They should have had a life together. She supposed they had in a way, just not as man and wife. “She said you cut quite the impressive figure, and girls used to swoon as you walked by.”

“Well, did she now?” The boater went back on his head and the toothless grin lit his face. “Quite true, too. Terribly inconvenient having to step over all them fainted women littering my way.”

He winked and Dawn burst into laughter. She could well imagine him as a handsome rogue beguiling the local women. Later she might ask if there were old photographs, but for now she needed to steer the conversation to a more delicate topic.

“Was Lady Letitia so terribly broken when Nurse Hatton came to care for her?” She almost held her breath, waiting for his reply. She glanced at the leaves on the grass, trying to spot another leaf from the mythical Ravensblood tree.

His shoulders slumped as a silent sigh deflated his chest. “Poor mite. She took it terribly seeing her brother die.”

Dawn breathed in a gasp at both his revelation and the realisation it was this Lettie the journal spoke of in the entry from the 1830s. “Lady Letitia saw him die?”

Hector nodded and laid a hand on the vine where the men had managed to scrape off the thorns. He stood for a long moment, lost in memories best buried and left to rest. “From her very first day here, Marjory took Lady Lettie under her fairy wings. Then the babe fell into her care when he was born a few months later. Helping care for Master Elijah gave Lettie something to grasp in those dark days. We were all concerned she would do harm to herself, but she was ever so gentle around the baby.”

As impossible as it sounded, the young Nurse Hatton took charge of both Lady Letitia and Master Elijah forty years ago. Yet her charges had barely aged with the passage of four decades, unlike their nurse. Did it prove something not of this earth touched the noble family? Dawn wrapped a hand around a bare width of vine. She gripped it tight to anchor herself in this world, lest she get sucked into a tale unfolding in a book.

As events played out in her mind, Dawn fought a tight wedge of grief that formed within her. Her pain at losing her parents was still raw, and she only had a second-hand account of what had happened. How would it have altered her mind if she had stood by the railway tracks and watched the tragedy unfold? How would it impact a person to watch a loved one suffer and die and yet be powerless to do anything to help them?

“How did he die?” The question slipped out before she could call it back.

“I guess you’re part of this family now.” Hector patted the branch. “There’s another family, Hamilton, who are a pack of evil bastards, if you’ll excuse my language, Miss Uxbridge. They own a textile factory in the next village, and there has long been rivalry and bad blood between the two families. Lady Letitia and Lord Julian were riding to the family mill to see Jasper when the Hamiltons attacked them. She barely survived, and he didn’t.”

“How terrible! Did the authorities bring the culprits to justice?”

Hector’s hands tightened into fists and his knuckles turned white. “No. The other family denied all knowledge, and Lady Letitia wasn’t a fit witness. I’m sure it eats Lord Seton up that he can’t avenge his brother and sister. Mayhap one day the truth will be revealed.” He rolled his shoulders and dispelled the tension in his body. “Let’s concentrate on today’s problem and this damned vine.”

“Yes. Let us bring a little joy back to Alysblud and restore the grounds to their former glory. So sad they deteriorated under Ava’s touch.” It was a risk, a casually thrown last comment to see if the name elicited any response from either man or vine.

One gasped, and the other made a clicking rattle like a snake issuing a warning before it struck. Mouse’s head dropped to his paws and he closed his eyes.

Hector glanced at the vine and then glared at her. “Don’t mention her name. Not here and never aloud. She is always listening.”

Dawn opened her mouth, but so many questions rushed that she tripped over her tongue.

“No.” Hector shook his head, his eyes wide and startled. That conversation was over.

Dawn swallowed her words and nearly choked on the unvoiced concerns. The old retainer looked genuinely afraid, and she would not cause him further distress. She had enough to keep her curious mind occupied.

She waved at the monstrous vine, so unlike the delicate one that sprouted from her skin. “How do you propose we tackle this monster? Do we don armour and wield swords? Enlist a fire-breathing dragon, perhaps?”

The grin returned. “You’re close. I’ve been giving it some thought, and we could try a controlled burn. If we brush kerosene along the branches, set fire to it, and then douse it before it catches on the yew, we might make the vine brittle enough to smash it free.”

“How would we ensure the fire didn’t spread?” Dawn asked.

There was a sufficient quantity of dead wood to send the entire thing up in a bonfire to rival Guy Fawkes. Lord Seton had suggested burning the estate to the ground, tilling the soil, and starting again, but Dawn didn’t want to do that. The estate was sick, but not yet fatally so. Instead of a Viking burial, they simply needed a way to expunge the sickness from its body.

Ava. She had cast some curse over the garden, and it was connected to the vine that knew her name. Did the plant do her bidding like a witch commanded a snake familiar?

“Blankets,” Hector said.

“What?” Dawn lost track of the conversation.

“We’ll give the men wool blankets to beat out the flames once the vine becomes charred.”

Dawn stared at the impenetrable fortress. Hedge shears and machetes weren’t working. Time to try heavy artillery. “All right, let’s try. But we do a small section at a time. I don’t want this getting out of hand, especially if it decides to fight back.”

“In all my years here, I’ve not seen the blasted plant pick up a weapon yet, but it does grow awfully fast behind your back,” Hector muttered.

They fetched the men from the vegetable garden and allocated new tasks. They were set to work hauling carts laden with buckets of water. Old tin baths were lined up in a row by the hedge and filled up, as an emergency measure. Or for bath time after they finished work for the day.

Then each man was given a woollen blanket.

“What do you think we’ll find inside, miss?” Teddy asked, clutching his blanket in leather-gloved hands.

“Answers,” she replied.

Hector painted a line of kerosene along a woody limb. Not too much, only two feet or so, as an initial experiment. Then he touched a match to the glistening trail. Blue-green flame danced along the vine.

Dawn wasn’t sure what she expected, perhaps a shriek of pain from the vine and for it to uncoil and strike at them, or for Ava to rise up from the ground to defend her minion. As the length burned, a similar hot brand pressed against Dawn’s skin and she sucked in a breath. She wrapped her fingers around her wrist above the scratch, the pressure easing the flames under her skin. She glanced down to see a thin black line creep out from under her hand. When she lifted her fingers it appeared like pencil lines feathered out along the length of the scratch. She needed to heed Nurse Hatton’s advice and scrub it clean or risk a deadly infection.

The vine hissed, as though it expelled air through gritted teeth.

“What’s that noise?” Teddy held his blanket a little higher in front of him like a shield.

“Just the wood burning,” one of the other lads replied and flicked the back of Teddy’s head.

Dawn glanced to Hector, and the concern on his face echoed her own. Let the men think it was just the hiss of sap burning in the wood.

“How will we know if it’s working?” Dawn asked, peering at the hypnotic flames.

“We want it to eat through as much as possible. I suspect it will take some trial and error, but I reckon we leave it as long as we can stand given how tough the old vine is.” Hector handed off the can of kerosene and brush and kept watch.

Minutes ticked by with hisses, crackles, and pops. Fire battled the plant in a collection of odd gurgles and cracks. The vine writhed and tightened as though trying to douse the burning patch, but the oil fed the flame. The men glanced at each other at the movement.

“Just a reaction to heat,” Hector said, but his sidelong squint at Dawn said otherwise.

As the flames started to lick higher up the branch, Hector wrapped his blanket over the branch and smothered the life from the fire. One moment edged into another, then he peeled back one end of the blanket. Satisfied the fire was doused, he removed the covering.

“Well?” She moved closer to peer at the smouldering length of vine. As one fire was extinguished, the tiny one on her wrist guttered out and the pain eased.

Hector picked up a hammer and brought it down on the branch. A crack rent the air, and it split. The vine still held its pieces as the rupture didn’t go all the way through.

“It will work, but we need a slight change to our approach.” He pointed to where a black char had eaten through the top layers of the vine. “If we paint all the way around, it will burn all the way through.”

Dawn took the pail of kerosene and brush and studied the mass. “We need to encircle strategic points that will allow us to pull the vine away from the entrance.”

She approached one large limb and painted a hand width of kerosene, making sure to coat the entire circumference.

“Try again.” She gestured to Hector.

Once more he lit the oil, and they watched the flame race around the entire section. Flames burned downward until they righted themselves. After a few minutes, a clear pop sounded as the vine burst and the section sagged.

“Douse it now,” Dawn said.

One of the men wrapped his blanket around the fiery spot. When he pulled the blanket away, the fire had devoured the entire thickness of the vine. Hector tugged and the end moved. They had caused a break and knew the plant’s weakness. It could hiss, spit, and wriggle, but it couldn’t fight off fire.

Dawn resisted the urge to chortle. She was a general on this battlefield and had struck the first damaging blow against her enemy. But she couldn’t celebrate her victory just yet. “It will work, but we need to think strategically.”

They plotted their course through the tangle of vines. One of the lads ran back to the shed and fetched a pail of paint and a brush. Dawn studied the vine and plotted which bits to attack to remove sections. She painted the vine where she wanted the lads to burn through.

One by one, larger supporting limbs at either side of the entranceway were encircled with fire and charred through until they snapped. Next the men brought ropes and tied them around branches. With three or four men pulling at once, they soon started to clear away larger sections of the monster.

The horse was enlisted to take away cart loads of fallen vine, and by the time the light began to fade, they had battled all day and almost cleared the entranceway. Dawn couldn’t contain her excitement. She picked up her skirts and pushed through the sliver of gap that remained between two overgrown yew.

The hedge bristled past her skin, and she was grateful for the long sleeves of her gown. She stepped into the first alleyway of the maze, and disappointment plunged down to her toes.

“There’s more of it in here!” she called out to Hector, waiting on the other side of the dense green wall. She strained her eyes peering left and then right, but the maze clung to its secrets. She could see nothing past the overgrowth. The vine had laced thick fingers into the middle and blocked the paths.

While not quite as dense inside the old corridors, the rapacious plant still strove to keep out all intruders. The battle would continue tomorrow. They had a methodology now, it was slow going but they would make progress. It would not win.

“I am coming for you, Ava, and I will reclaim the garden from you,” Dawn whispered.

The towering hedges shivered at the sound of the woman’s name and a length of vine fell at Dawn’s feet. Stepping around the wooden limb, she returned to the other side as though parting a curtain. The hedges had languished so long untrimmed, they had almost interconnected and erased all trace of the original paths.

“We will need a map of the original layout to ensure we don’t become lost in there. Let’s regroup tomorrow. Thank you, gentlemen, you have all earned your supper today.”

She trailed the men as they headed back to their horses to ride home. Hector chatted with a couple at the back of the group. Dawn reflected on her first week at Ravenswing Manor. She had feared her weak constitution would bring a quick death and a reunion with her parents. Instead she seemed invigorated. By all the predictions of the doctors her parents consulted, she should be unable to even walk from cottage to maze.

Yet she worked alongside the men. The weariness in her limbs could simply be the unfamiliar burn in her muscles from the exercise. Each day, her heart seemed to beat stronger within her chest. The erratic flurry still returned at times, mainly tied to moments of panic like when she fled the forest, fell through the roof of the hermitage, or was trapped in the pineapple pits. But one touch from Lord Seton did more to restore a steady calm than any amount of tonic.

What magic resided in this place?