A hollow sound echoed through the great house as Elara burst into a bitter laugh. Today held no distinction from any other desolate day. Always, she told herself, everything would eventually settle.
The precise date of her birth had long since withered from her memory, a superfluous detail shed like dead leaves from a winter branch.
Morwen, a figure of perpetual motion and keen-eyed assessment, had conducted her own thorough inspection upon their initial arrival. Every cornice, every creaking floorboard, every piece of the house’s grand, decaying furniture seemed to pass beneath her calculating gaze. A silent nod, a pursing of lips – these were her annotations, confirming the substantial, if crumbling, worth of their current predicament.
“He rises in the dark, does he not?” Morwen queried one brittle morning, her voice barely a murmur as she polished a tarnished silver frame.
Elara paused, grinding dried belladonna root with a pestle. “Rises?”
“Indeed. Like a man possessed by some restless spirit. Pacing the upper gallery.”
A chill, unrelated to the moorland draughts, traced Elara’s spine. Lysander's 'sleepwalking' had been a convenient fabrication, a whisper she’d planted to explain away the odd creaks from the floor above. A lie, like so many others, to preserve her fragile control. She had not expected it to take root in Morwen’s mind so completely. “Perhaps a restless night, nothing more.”
“Restless? He stands as a sentinel, stark and pale against the moonlight.” Morwen’s eyes, sharp and dark as jet beads, fixed on Elara. “Near gave me a fright, seeing him. But then, his eyes were blank, his breath shallow.”
Elara’s pestle stilled. Morwen's words painted a disquieting image, far too close to the truth of Lysander’s medicated slumber. Her gaze flickered to the closed door that led to the upper floor, a silent guardian over her careful deceit. A knot tightened in her stomach.
“I once approached him, without thinking,” Morwen continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “To see if he might stir. His skin, so unblemished for a man of his… constitution.” A long finger, gnarled and surprisingly quick, darted towards the ceiling.
Elara snatched Morwen’s wrist, her grip surprisingly firm. “Do not touch him, Morwen.”
Morwen blinked, her hand arrested mid-air. “Why, child? He sleeps like the dead. I prodded him once, quite vigorously, and he stirred no more than a felled oak.”
“Regardless.” Elara released her, stepping back from the work table, a sudden aversion to the belladonna’s sickly sweetness. “It is best to leave him undisturbed.”
The small commotion of the last few weeks now felt distant, hazy, like a fever dream receding with the dawn. A quietude had settled over Blackwood Manor, fragile and precious. She glanced up towards the silent chamber, a silent plea forming on her lips. Let him merely sleep. Let this uneasy truce endure.
Morwen clicked her tongue, picking up a crumpled sheet of the Moors’ Clarion. “Did you peruse the gazette this morning? The old Master Thorne, down near Blackwood’s Folly—remember the land he claimed for that new quarry? They say the ground has opened up, swallowed half the equipment. A curse, some whisper, for disturbing the ancient peat bog.” Morwen’s eyes narrowed, sweeping over Elara’s face. “You wouldn’t have… no, you couldn’t have.”
Elara felt a flush creep up her neck, a familiar prickle of indignation. She scratched at a phantom itch on her cheek.
Morwen’s eyes widened. “Good heavens, Elara! Did you submit that anonymous account to the Clarion? The one detailing the blight upon the bog-heather, the draining of the fen?”
“Perhaps,” Elara admitted, her voice low. “It was an affront to the land, Morwen. The bog-heather had grown there for centuries. The rare sundews, the asphodel – all destroyed for some paltry stone.”
Morwen threw the paper down onto the scrubbed pine table with a sharp crack. “Are you quite mad? Our very livelihood hangs by a thread here! Are you not to attend to the estate, to Lysander’s needs? We are meant to maintain this house, to ensure our patronage remains secure, not to stir up trouble with the local gentry!”
Elara walked out, leaving Morwen’s indignant squawks echoing in the kitchen. She descended the narrow, creaking back stairs, each step a deliberate attempt to drown out the older woman’s furious monologue. “Do you even possess a working brain, girl?!” Morwen’s voice followed her, sharp as a whip-crack.
A small, defiant smile tugged at the corner of Elara’s lips. It was not merely Master Thorne who abused the land, who saw nature as a mere resource to be plundered. A world where the ancient roots of the Moors were valued above the whims of men would never arrive, she knew. Yet, that grim truth had never stopped her.
A sudden, unexpected shiver ran through her, despite the warmth of the day. Morwen’s words returned to her – Lysander, unmoving, his skin unblemished. It had been nearly a fortnight since he had truly woken. Perhaps, Elara mused, Lysander Blackwood had anticipated this prolonged slumber. Or perhaps, she considered, her breath catching, *she* had ensured it.
---
The air in Oakhaven village reeked of stale ale, wet wool, and the faint, unsettling tang of something acrid. Elara burst through the heavy oak door of the Blackwood’s Arms, her face grim.
She pulled off her straw hat, its brim battered from endless forays into the untamed moors. The bitter taste still lingered on her tongue, an unmistakable metallic sharp edge beneath the earthiness.
“Sir!”
A burly man behind the counter, his face florid and apron stained, looked up with a start. “Welcome! Ah, *you*.” His expression soured immediately. “Begone, woman! I’ll have no more of your meddling.”
“Are you attempting to murder them again?” Elara’s voice, though quiet, held the razor-edge of accusation.
“I know not what you speak of,” the proprietor grunted, his meaty hand roughly gripping Elara’s shoulder. He tried to steer her back towards the door, but she braced herself, her fingers digging into the worn wood of the doorframe.
“Last season, it was the elm. You poisoned the well, did you not, with the runoff from your malting barrels?”
“If you persist in disrupting my custom, I shall summon the constable!” He glared, his features tightening with barely suppressed fury.
“This time,” Elara pressed, ignoring his bluster, “it was brine. Saltwater. I could taste it this morning, on the very bark.” Her mouth still puckered with the unpleasant memory.
A murmur rippled through the few patrons gathered for their midday draughts. Eyes turned, curious and wary, towards the confrontation. The proprietor’s face flushed a deep crimson. This troublesome witch, disrupting his business again.
“I found it peculiar, how the ancient yew outside your establishment continued to sicken,” Elara continued, her gaze fixed on the wilting branches visible through the grimy window.
“I never sent for you! This is no concern of yours!” He shoved her roughly, forcing her out onto the cobbled street. He narrowed his eyes, but to Elara, the flicker of anxiety, the tremor in his jaw, were as legible as any printed word.
“Your apothecary went under, did it not?” he spat, his voice laced with sneering contempt. “Because you insisted on poking your nose into every other man’s business, meddling with what wasn’t yours. Didn’t mind your own affairs then, did you?”
“I know,” Elara said, her voice flat.
“Then if you know, why persist in the same folly?” He hawked and spat onto the cobbles near her boots.
Everyone in Oakhaven knew Elara Thorne, once the promising proprietress of Thorne’s Apothecary. More recently, she had gained an even greater notoriety from the Clarion’s anonymous reports, tales of land abuses across the Moors. Many residents, deceived by her innocent, almost ethereal appearance, failed to grasp the steel beneath her quiet demeanor.
This ‘tree doctor,’ as some derisively called her, rarely concerned herself with the superficialities of human commerce or property lines. She rushed to the aid of any blighted growth, any suffering patch of fen, and the villagers largely thought her mad.
“Just hold your tongue and depart, woman,” the innkeeper growled, stepping closer, his bulk imposing. “I hold the right to do as I please with the growth on my own property! And I shall never summon your… services! Cease being a vexation and be gone! You overstep your bounds!”
“Then who will?” Elara asked, her voice dangerously quiet.
The man faltered. “What?”
“If not I, then who will tend to that yew tree?” Elara pointed a stark finger towards the ancient sentinel, its branches skeletal, its needles browning. “I know you are bent on its demise, for it obscures your sign, does it not?”
The innkeeper’s face stiffened, betraying his guilt.
“Every morn, you spray it with brine, then peel away its bark. You daub it with waste oil, a slow poison. You inject insecticides into its canopy, then hack at its limbs with an axe, hoping no one will notice the deliberate wounds.” Her voice trembled now, not from fear, but from a raw, building fury. “What becomes of them, if I cease to care? Even if they appear no more than a weathered post in the eyes of men, these are living things! Once their roots have gripped the earth, they possess a right to endure!” The unease Elara had repressed since that morning, since Morwen’s prying questions, erupted in a violent, passionate torrent.
“Who are you to fell these ancient lives? What arrogance grants you such dominion? What harm have they ever wrought upon you?” A sickness churned in her gut, a familiar bile that tasted of old injustices. It brought forth a ghost from her past: the memory of a small, trembling hand, gripping a pencil, forced to scrawl endless lines upon endless sheets of reflection papers, piled as high as her child-self. Each word a futile apology for daring to care too deeply, for seeing life where others saw only timber or obstruction.
“It is not just that they are used and then cast aside,” Elara rasped, her vision blurring at the edges. “It is the deliberate cruelty.”
The innkeeper, initially bristling with anger at her childish stubbornness, found his breath suddenly caught in his throat. He saw the fire in her red-rimmed eyes, and for a fleeting moment, a primal fear gripped him.
“Do you wish to hear something truly chilling?” Elara’s voice was a low, guttural growl now. “Long after your bones have turned to dust, those trees will still stand.”
They would stand through centuries, through seasons of sun and blight, their roots grasping deeper, their boughs reaching higher. Elara clenched her jaw, biting back the tears that threatened to spill, a silent oath made to the enduring, suffering world.