AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS SITS A HAUNTED MANOR BY THE NAME of Thorn
Grove.
Stories say that the old man who owns it once had a daughter, though none could remember her name. There were rumors, though—ones that said the girl had married a handsome prince and was spirited away to a palace hidden in the mountains, where all who attempted to find her lost their way among endless hedges and mazes of briar.
Others claimed to have seen her once or twice around the manor, her skin forever plump with youth. They claimed that the girl had stopped aging somewhere in her late twenties. That her hair had turned as white as powdered snow, and her eyes as gray as storm clouds. Some thought her a witch and believed that all who slept within the walls of Thorn Grove were forever marked by the devil and made to do his bidding.
Blythe had never minded the stories; she kept a collection of them for her records, filling ledgers and laughing over the myths with her father and cousin as she built a fairy tale of her own design. What she did mind was that as the years passed and her face remained unchanged, too many curious minds came to Wisteria Gardens searching for her.
She’d let them at first, inspecting each new arrival for signs of the late husband she’d hoped to lure in with her tales that spread around the countryside. Twenty-seven years had passed since the death of Aris Dryden, and still Blythe wore her wedding ring. The band of light beneath it, however, had not shone since the night of his death.
Each time Blythe caught a glimpse of someone standing beneath the
splendor of her wisteria tree she would rush outside, chest aching with false hope. And every time they’d break her heart, having come only to question the impossibility of an ageless girl. To see whether the rumors were true.
Once, a pious woman had come ready to maim, and Signa—who had years of experience with murderous, pious women—had urged Blythe to do the very thing she’d resisted for so long: bar access to Wisteria Gardens by making the palace as much of an impossibility as she was.
From the earth Blythe brought forth endless mazes of hedges where people dared not venture after one too many souls had lost themselves seeking validity in the tales. She rose towering oaks and splendid cherry blossoms, and built herself a briar patch with thorns to which only her father was immune. Well, him and the clever foxes who forever lived at Wisteria—Beasty’s lineage was every bit as monstrous as their ancestor and made the palace as much theirs as it was Blythe’s.
Every day she hoped that Aris would one day find his way around the briars. That the foxes would carve his path.
That was not to say that Blythe was alone. Signa had become the most steadfast companion, as had Sylas. Her cousin, too, had stopped aging around the very same time as Blythe, simply because she’d decided to.
Signa was happy fulfilling a small fraction of Blythe’s desires to travel, though it was never the same as it was with Aris. Signa needed more breaks, her insides continuing to age despite how she looked on the surface. It became clear over the years that one day, Signa would die. Though given her powers, Blythe wasn’t worried. Signa was something strange, just like the rest of them. Something special, bridging the space between Life and Death for any soul too anxious or unable to pass on. One day, Signa’s body would perish. But she would live on at Death’s side, and Blythe would have her cousin with her forevermore.
Still, there was not a day that went by in which Blythe did not wish for someone else traveling at her side, whispering secrets as they visited museums or scowling about the pretentiousness of poetry. Signa was wonderful, but she did not burn for the world or simmer with the same passion as Aris. She was far more content to curl up on a couch at Foxglove, which was fine for Blythe every so often, but she yearned to be on the move. She’d built her own stories over the years, finding favorite places that she might one day share with her late husband if she was so
lucky.
It would always and forever only be him, because Blythe understood now why Aris hadn’t been able to move on. He was part of her very soul, and there was not a person in this world who would ever be able to fill the absence that his loss had carved within her.
With every breath she thought of Aris, unable to look at art without remembering how he’d come alive while creating Verena. Unable to eat without observing how the meal would never satisfy his palate. He was in every inch of her home and hearth, and in the very fabric of the world itself. She thought of him even now, as she sat in her garden at her father’s side, her bare hands caked with earth. In them she held a small mound that she molded to her will, breathing life into it until another of the strange creatures she’d become so fond of scampered off, some of them gathering bits of branches or flower petals and using them as hair. Pebbles or berries for eyes. They were always so fascinatingly creative.
Blythe could spend hours watching them, though most of the souls never remained long. They would disappear in the blink of an eye, gone to find their bodies. Others were shier, following Blythe as she worked and taking their time to leave her side.
Her father, too, had taken a liking to them. He was an older man now, his beard graying and the strength of his bones no longer what they used to be. His eyes, however, hadn’t lost a hint of their sharpness.
He stayed with Blythe most days, a constant reassurance whenever she needed it. There were no secrets between her and Elijah any longer; he knew the truth of who she was and all that Signa could do, and the peace of that honesty between them was worth so much more than Blythe could ever have imagined.
Elijah sat in a chair, tea in hand as he scratched behind the ear of one of the foxes that had curled in his lap.
There were a dozen more foxes that nestled near the trees around her and observed Blythe with eyes that always seemed to understand what she was doing. They never bothered her souls. Never pestered them. Usually, they watched in silence.
Except for that day, when the small black kit in Elijah’s lap stood with a sharp chittering that pulled Blythe from her focus.
Elijah leaned back, protecting his drink as the fox paced circles, its ears
and tail twitching.
“What’s this about?” she asked her father, who was trying to mollify the fox to no avail.
“Perhaps it’s heard something.”
Blythe brushed the earth from her hands, shifting her attention to the woods surrounding her. To the briar patches and the hedges, trying to sense if they’d been disturbed or whether someone was coming.
But there was no one.
“Quiet, you silly thing,” Blythe whispered, soothing the gooseflesh that had prickled along her skin.
But the fox did not quiet, nor did it move closer to the trees as Blythe might have expected. Instead, its head swiveled toward the front door of Wisteria, and Elijah went still.
It was possible the young kit heard a distant sound, or that it had picked up a scent in the air. It wouldn’t be unfounded; animals, after all, always sensed things that humans could not.
And yet there was a tightness in Blythe’s chest that she could not ignore. She stood as the fox leapt from Elijah’s lap and looped a circle around her feet before it sprinted to the front door. Blythe looked to her father, breathless. She expected to see him hesitant. Expected that the hope that burned within her was all in her head. But Elijah’s hands trembled as he waved her forward, his damp eyes gleaming bright in the sun.
“Go.” His laugh was a joyous, radiant sound. “What are you waiting for? Go!”
Blythe didn’t hear what he said next. Her body raced forward of its own accord, following the fox toward a door she’d walked through thousands of times before.
A door that had her stomach dropping to the ground, for on it was something she had not seen in twenty-seven years:
A golden thread.
There was but a single one, so thin and gossamer that Blythe would have missed it had the sunlight not shone upon the thread at precisely the right angle. It glistened, the most beautiful beacon she’d ever seen.
Blythe did not breathe as she picked up her skirts, racing toward it. Hoping and praying and yearning with everything in her that this was not her imagination. That the thread in front of her outstretched fingertips was
no cruel trick or a leftover artifact that she’d not noticed before.
But then another thread wound around the handle, and then another, urging her on until Blythe fell against the door, clasping the handle tight in her hands.
“Take me to him,” she demanded, pleading with the band of light on her finger to shine once more. To burn into her skin and forever leave its mark. “Please, take me to my husband.”
Shock numbed her, but still Blythe managed to force the door open, not into the halls of her home but in to a familiar town where the tune of the accordion swelled.
On the wisteria laden streets of Brude stood a man obscured by petals that trickled around him with a languid grace, as if time itself had slowed to watch their descent. Blythe drew a step forward, squinting at a face she’d not seen before but whose skin carried the golden touch of the sun itself. There were cuts on his cheeks. His neck, his hands. From thorns, Blythe realized. From the thorns of her briar patch.
Sunlight lanced through the vines of the wisteria, tipping toward the man whose golden eyes turned to Blythe and drank her in like she was his very world.
“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” she whispered as the man closed the space between them, drawing Blythe into arms that were somehow familiar. Arms in which she would spend every moment for the rest of her life content. “Tell me that it’s you.”
His very touch was the balm she’d waited for. The salve that she could never be sure would come as he cupped her cheek in his palm.
“Hello, Sweetbrier.” He took her chin in his hand, and between her lips Aris whispered, “I’ve finally found you.”
