Before her first memory of light, before her first memory of breath, there had been the tower.

   It had always been there, hidden away in the depths of the Wood. It seemed older than the forest that cradled it, older than the mountains, huge giants of stone she had only heard of in old tales, never seen. There was an air about it that suggested the mountains themselves would fall before the tower moved a single inch. It was tall, solid and unyielding, with stones the color of old bones and roots of granite that fingered their way far, far down into the very heart of the earth. And in turn the tower was the heart of the Wildwood. The Wood, for it was the only one around, spreading its dominion until its twisting depths completely enclosed their small land. And it indeed was very wild.

   On some days, if she listened hard enough, she could feel it breathing, feel its heartbeat pulsing through the earth and up into the soles of her feet. And that was her first memory. Dark, warmth, and the heartbeat of the tower pulsing through her tiny body. She never knew her mother's heartbeat.

   At birth she was named Adamina, but as she matured she grew slender and willowy, fair and golden like the autumn ivy. Her mother, and her mother only, took to calling this sole child of hers Ivy.

    As she would grow, more and more names would amass around her, each one true in a different way. Strangers would see something in her eyes and call her Tara. The people of the village would watch her roam in the Wood and call her Sheridon. But to her father she was still his Adamina, and her mother held her close to her heart with the name of Ivy. And so the girl child thought of herself as.

   As soon as she knew how to walk she was testing the boundaries of her small world. She was too young to realize it, but the shadows of the Wood called to her, promising her hidden secrets, something beyond the sunlight and open meadows. Her parents were frightened by their tiny daughter's obsession with the Wildwood. Her mother, especially, looked on the forest with fear in her eyes.

   Shortly after her third birthday, a young boy with her mother's raven hair and green eyes appeared at their door. Ivy was placed in her tiny bedroom, where she stood, hugging the wall, listening to the urgent voices rise and fall. Doors opened, and closed, and their stout grey pony was tacked up in the front of their small house. Ivy, still imprisoned in her room, climbed up to the window to watch her mother step into the wagon with the boy on the seat beside her and urge the pony on as if the spirits of the woods were after her.

   Her father, with his early crop of silver hair and his smooth, thoughtful face, picked her up and carried her out to their labyrinthine garden, where he began to work in the radishes. She watched him for a while at first. His eyes, as grey as his hair, were troubled as the sky before a heavy rain, and he absently ran his fingers through his shaggy hair from time to time, a sure sign he was troubled.

   As she watched her father, however, she caught a glimpse of the Wood reaching its black fingers toward their house, and she toddled off towards the back of the garden, captivated. Her father, thinking of radishes and sister-in-laws, did not notice.

   A solitary vine had reached through a weak slat in the garden fence, prying apart the rotted wood. Ivy slipped through it. As she stumbled on towards the edge of the Wood, the vine slowly withdrew back into the ground.

   As she reached the trees, she slowed down, touching a silvery slice of bark here, caressing a glossy green leaf there. As she went deeper into the forest, more and more of the sun's light was blocked overhead by the gnarled woody creepers. Then, when she was completely surrounded in dappled shadows, she saw a light ahead. Smiling, she went forward faster, clutching at each tree to keep her balance.

   A woman stood before her, in a circle of light where the sun had clawed its way through the top growth to kiss the forest floor. But the sunlight did not touch her. She smiled lovingly at the little one, with hair as black as Ivy's mother's, and a flowing white dress clinging to her. She knelt, opening her arms towards Ivy, her smile drawing Ivy nearer as a moth to a flame. Just before she reached the woman's arms, however, the woman stood up, flowing away into the undergrowth to the right, and off the path. Ivy fluttered after.

   The lady in white led Ivy on farther into the forest, farther than she had ever moved her chubby baby legs before. But as the forest closed more and more around her, her little legs did not tire. Something seemed to be urging her on, and she moved within the forest with more grace than she ever had before.

   The woman stopped and turned a smiling face back at Ivy, wildflowers and ferns hugging her skirts. Ivy slipped through the last of the protecting undergrowth and stumbled out into the glade that the woman had led her to. The ferns rose up over her head, and she was surrounded by exotic flowers the color of blood. But neither of these she saw.

   A tower rose up above her head. Up, up, it seemed to reach forever into the sky and down, down forever into the ground. She wondered at this strange creature that stood so tall and stared down at her, speaking of forbidden riddles and old, old eyes that looked on nothing with surprise. She waded through the ferns to it, laying her hot cheek against an unexpectedly cool surface. Here the heartbeat throbbed strongest against her ear that she had heard all her short life.

  The shadow the tower cast wrapped around her. The warm air of the clearing flowed across her, covering her small form curled up against the tower as a mother would tuck a blanket around her child. The woman, forgotten by the softly sleeping baby, gazed at the dreamer, her warm, loving eyes hardening, and her smile turning colder than the stones Ivy's cheek lay upon. Her white robe faded to grey as she disappeared, melting into the black shadow of the tower.