“Magareen. I am loath to the notion of a request for you to sojourn to that ghastly chateau of licentiousness. Yarrow Hart.” Kassia hissed the words as she stalked the pale ash flooring of the sunny kitchen. “The rumors alone!” 

I settled into composure onto a spindle legged chair. “They are but rumors. Kassia, you always told me as much, even as your stories tempted nightmares from my sleep.” 

Kassia’s mother, my Aunt Ama, had not so boldly shared her daughter’s brash display of sentiment. I wondered if it was the span of years between the women, or a deeper knowledge of the haunting stories, that seemed to cause the elder to harbor less quick assumptions of actual events. 

As Ama doddered, though not without a semblance of grace, across the diminutive scullery from stove to table, her cane tapped a discordant rhythm to the shuffle of her slippered feet. I metered the tune of that rapping rather than the cadence in her voice.

“Kassia, it was indeed your own childish imaginings that brought tears and terrors to the both of you as foolish children.” Light flashed off the metallic tea kettle as it dangled from Ama’s hand.

Lily appeared seemingly from air to steady Ama and relinquish the kettle from her grasp. “Ma’am, please, let me.”

With a sigh we had become increasingly accustomed to, Ama unfurled her fingers from the handle into the maid’s waiting palm. 

My hands encircled a pale china tea cup as I sat awaiting Ama’s steady approach.

“I do so hope I have not outlived my usefulness in this world.” She steadied again on her cane before completing her march to a waiting chair.

 Kassia’s hands guided her mother into the seat across from mine. “Nonsense Mama, your mind is as fit as ever. Your body merely demands you assert more will upon others to do service to you, as you have offered so much.”

 Steaming water crepted to the rim of the cup, activating the deep green flush that danced within the liquid from the base of the vessel. Lily seemed to loom over me as she poured.

With little more than a tilt of her head the maid seemed once more to meld into the items of the kitchen. Near invisibility was a skill that served the woman well in her tasks and a trait I only found unnerving on occasion when it was used to confound me. Such seemed the case now as I continued to feel Lily’s gaze upon me.

Resisting urge to turn in search of the maid’s position, I eyed instead the letter crouched at the heart of the tatted lace tablecloth, beside the steeping brew of leaves and water. 

“I know that the stories were Kassia’s way to amuse and frighten me in our innocence.”  

“I regret that now, confronted with the idea of your being summoned there....” Kassia’s hands flew to her heart, her palm seeking the charm that hung hidden beneath the lace of her collar.

Contemplating Kassia’s pacing of the room, my eyes flitted from draft, to draft. I pondered on relics configured by suspended crocks and kettles. Tendriled bundles of dried herbs and flora that cast a creeping gloom in the elsewise cheery room. A blot of shadow positioned as if to emanate from the summons. 

The essence of those childhood stories and nightmares carried on the perfume of this invitation of Yarrow Hart had already begun to marr the sanctity of our little home. 

With a motion I hoped to be subtle, I shook free of dim and gathering thoughts. “Kassia, come now. You always said I was a little demon that stole your peace.” 

As she settled and seated across the table from me, a queer sort of anxiety curdled the light in Kassia’s eyes. 

“Would you not be less maligned  to be free of my presence for a spell?” My focus passed through Kassia and her growing histrionics to settle upon the only mother figure I had ever truly known. “Even Aunt Ama does not hide that there are things in my heart that vex our bright cottage. I am growing out of this place.” 

“Magareen. Do not say such things. Words said in youth were the mean spirited taunts of a child jealous for her mother’s attention. There is nothing haunted about you.” Kassia’s shift in posture recaptured my attention. “Your childhood troubles your heart, that is all. Anyone would feel the same weight at the loss of loved ones so young.” 

“Of course.” I watched the creeping woe of the letter enclose as Kassia’s hand came to rest upon the table. 

“Magareen is right.” Aunt Ama sipped her tea in circumspection. 

The dusk that crossed her face seemed to bloom from a place within her soul. 

“Mama?” Kassia fixed a deep scrutiny on her mother’s stately pose. “How can you acquiesce to sending dear Magareen to a place as abhorrent as Yarrow Hart? The abode is vile, its residents depraved. In little time at all they will make Magareen as monstrous as they are.” 

Aunt Ama’s stoicism swirled the lingering leaves in her tea. The particles of herb and flora settled as she reached across the breadth of the table, keen to avoid the inky obscuration of the letter as her hand found mine. 

Our fingers intertwined.

The sunlight in her eyes, in an eerie flash, stole life from them and reflected my own image as if in glass.

“Magareen had always needed to know both sides of her.” Ama’s sigh flowed cumbersome with emotion. “I denied them once. I confess now, I often second guessed my choices from the past.”

Her diaphanous flesh rested on the starched cotton sleeve shrouding my arm. Ama surveyed the leaves of my nearly depleted brew.

Kassia’s protestations cut into the moment. “You yourself conveyed that the Hadowen had no affection for Magareen when she was an orphaned child. Why should they display sympathy now? Moreover, why do they deserve the respect of a response to such abrupt summons?”  

Ama squeezed my arm with more strength than I imagined possible. “Magareen is of an age that all Hadowen are summoned to the Hart. Tradition will not overlook even those as estranged as Magareen.” 

Little emotion graced my countenance as I evaluated the woman. Ama had fostered me as her own for nearly twenty years, yet it seemed the face of a stranger peered across the span of the table. 

We studied one another as much as we endeared ourselves to the moment. “Auntie, I do understand your appreciation for the importance of rituals in all levels of society.”

“But do they mean more than emotion and bonds of the heart?” Lily drew the attention of all in the room with this unexpected outburst, soft spoken as the maid so often was.

Ama had managed the house for thirty years following what she referred as an unexpected passing of her husband, and in that time taken in not only myself, but Lily as well. 

Closer in age to Kassia, the maid had been far more privy to mature conversations before I. She had however become a confidant when my youthful curiosity begged for secrets. It was easy to see through stories of her youth, most important however had always been to be silent.

The stories for Lily and Kassia both taught more than intended as I had flowered under both women’s tutelage and guidance. Aunt Ama had used brilliance and social cunning to become a creature both dangerous and powerful to house Hadowen, and her charges were in line to do the same. 

Ama stilled both Lilly and Kassia with a sweep of her clouded gaze. “Though I often swore the Boughwin line and that of the Hadowen were never meant to further mingle, it remains that I acutely grasp Hadowen rites and traditions. As I have taught all of you.” 

A pause filled the air as Ama breathed, her eyes looking upon me. “An understanding to a greater degree than many of the Hadowen extended cousins would care admit.” 

“Mama, you are not saying that tradition remained the primary reason to have taken interest in Magareen following the passing of aunt Marguerite.” Kassia’s words slammed as a gavel rather than fleeting query.

Aunt Ama passed a deliberate glance and nod over the tea leaves in brash ignorance of her daughter’s outburst. 

“We knew this day would come, Magareen.” A haunted whimsy returned to her visage in the next moment. “It is right for you to go as you are called.”

Outwardly, I renounced the letter’s arrival with a shake of my head, yet at my core a seed twitched free a spur, a force to witness the mystery, if not the terror, and the infamy of Yarrow Hart with my own eyes. 

A calm acceptance resolved my thoughts as Aunt Ama continued in her observance of settling tea leaves. “Some things are prophesied.” 

My eyes begged to study the symbols and whirls that certainly floated in the leaves, but Aunt Ama’s sudden shift of gaze held prisoner my full and rapt  attention, willing me to look only into those reflecting pools of grey. 

“I will go,” My words induced the expected shock to Kassia’s posture and as well a halt to Lily’s stalking. 

Eyes never wavering, I continued, “But only insofar as you Aunt Ama have said. I go to see the other side of me. The Hadowen. And perhaps to chase ghosts and apparitions with the light of truth.”

Kassia’s mood felt more distressed than ever I had experienced, “And if you find you like it? Living in such hedonistic ways? To return to those roots no matter the rot that lies there.”

“Then it is her business to live as she desires, Kassia.” Aunt Ama’s words shattered the spell that held my gaze, yet I still dared not drop my eyes to the cup. “Magareen’s heart is as it always has been, and what it always will be, a season at the Hart will change nothing.” Her voice slit the air to pierce the bubble of the conversation.

To make clear, it was my choice, and that discussion on the topic was complete. This pillar of a woman, who had played part of guardian and mother for so many years upended both my cup and her own onto their respective saucers. I would be denied the forenotions of divination that could shift my free will or whim of fortune’s favor.

Cue taken, Lily alighted at Ama’s elbow. Yet Ama brushed the maid away, leaving the young woman to hang back. A shimmer in the maid’s eye gave pause to think she might burst with emotion equal to Kassia’s.

With more grace than expected of a woman of her years, Aunt Ama, on her own power, hobbled to the passage leading to her room.

“Lily will have your things packed, and you will be off on the morrow.” Ama scarcely offered a glance over her shoulder with the words before she was gone from view.

The room was left to Kassia, Lily, and myself. 

“They will destroy what’s left of your soul.” An unfamiliar wickedness edged Lily’s tone and shocked me to my soul. 

I could sense her eyes drilling into my spine even as my gaze lingered on the absence of Ama.

“Pardon?” The word wilted into a whimper as I turned my eyes to the duo of women I had for so long considered sisters and confidants. 

“It stole so much of her, of my mother, and of yours, to bring you away from those monsters.” Kassia’s eyes glinted like flint stones. “If you succumb to the Hart it will kill her as it did her sister. Consider that before you tread so easily on ground more precarious than you could imagine.”

I allowed the weight of emotion to draw down my brows as I flitted from Lilly’s weighty gaze to Kassia’s flashing eyes.

In a sweep, Kassia snatched the delicate tea cup in her hand. Whether she thought to shatter the tiny vessel upon the floor or attempt to dash it upon my foolish head, I would know not as the fine handle broke free in Kassia’s sudden and violent assault. 

My attention at once trained on the saucer, and the patch of wilted leaves nestled at its well. The portend had stayed. A silhouette appeared in the sepia liquid and moved to dilate, it’s shape the distinct form of a reticent rose.

“Damn it.” Kassia’s voice softened to a despondent whine.

Symbol seen, yet undeciphered, I moved from my chair to bring a linen to the crimson gash growing across Kassia’s hand. 

The cloth was snatched into Lily’s grasp before I could complete my motion to aid. 

“You always took your own stories too deeply to heart.” The maid consoled.

The words were not for me. 

As Lily pressed cloth to the wound Kassia had inflicted upon herself with the broken cup, I stood aside, my initial purpose forgotten now focused on the crimson.

“You know nothing, Magareen.” Kassia’s voice emerged as a pained hiss choked by a sorrow I had never experienced in her.

My eye caught Lily’s once more subtle movements, sudden as they were, at the passage to the kitchen. “I’ll fetch water and a salve.” 

The maid was away with a nod. 

I moved to replace her care with my own, yet Kassia claimed my caress into a crushing grasp that raised the blood of the wound through the surface of the linen to act as salve to my own hand. “Tragedy is the only end to this, Magareen.” 

Released with a violence born of fear, the space between Kassia and I became a crevasse bridged only by the sight of her blood. 

My hands fell to my skirts as Lily returned with salve and proper bandage. As Lily worked the wound, Kassia’s eyes flared upon my retreating form. The fire from both women continued to burn even as I backed from the kitchen. The maid sidled Kassia’s to a chair leaving me to slip with sheepish dismay away to my rooms. 

Once the footfalls announced Lily’s retirement to her room, I pondered the twists and turns of the evening. 

Kassia’s blood left a faint swath of color along the folds of my dress. Aimlessly, I traced the feathery stain with the tips of my fingers, mind roving as the last slivers of sunlight receded through the sheer curtains of my room. 

A sudden anxiety consumed me as I thought of the letter left unattended in the moonlight and returned to the kitchen. 

In the lingering threads of looming dusk a glare of moonglow caught across the paper. I tilted my gaze and doubtless enough an image revealed itself in the dying light. 

The paper was not in fact flat and free of decoration. Instead a nearly imperceptible embellishment adorned the small square.

“Damask.” The word slithered from my parted lips. 

 Hidden, until exposed in the harmony of light and shadow, adding yet more depth to the message between the lines. 

“Roses.” I thought of the tea, of the messenger’s coat, and here, of the letter.

Snatching the papers I hurried away. Once sealed behind the door to my chamber I came aware I had been clutching the letter to my bosom. Astonished at my own manner I flipped the papers from my body. They came to rest, fanned clear of my reach at the foot of the bed. In the half light invited through the window the papers once more cast a haze. They urged to my eager hands from the pastel of the duvet.

My fingers followed the hint of labyrinth raised along the surface of the stationary. Meandering with thoughts of gossip that surrounded Yarrow Hart. Unnerved once more by the addictive draw of the fine whirl of ink and paper I snapped up the stationary and shoved it into the bedside drawer. 

Out of sight it’s power seemed no more diminished. I stared with a melding of dread and desire at the drawer and the nightmarish treasure it contained.

Morning could not come soon enough. Though my dreams stole my mind even before I fully weighed my head upon the pillow.