It did not take many of Ivy's daily visits for her to notice the sprouting of her sown ivy leaf. Against all odds, it had grown, twining itself around the headstone and nearly swallowing it up in its glossy leaves. It had grown just in time to catch a little green before it had to redress in autumnal gold.

   Ivy took this as a sign, and felt the happier for it. But one look and Ronan brought out the shears, muttering something darkly about the Wood trying to take his wife's dead body as well as—but with a look towards his daughter he clamped his mouth shut and muttered no more. Instead, he opened and closed the shears with a menacing shing sound, advancing towards the innocent ivy vines as a warrior to battle.

   It was not to be, however. Ivy defended her namesake stoutly, placing her own slight body between her ivy and her father's steel. Ronan retreated back to the tool shed; here was an adversary unthought of. The shears went back in, and never threatened the vine-covered headstone again.

   One day, Ivy could not even see the stone for all the gold-veined leaves covering it. She was delighted that day, but with a terrible blow she was distraught the next; a visit revealed all the glory of the climbing ivy utterly vanished. No leaves, no stem, nothing even scattered about the ground. Ivy immediately suspected her father, but he was both indignant and reproachful. She believed his denial of responsibility. He had never lied, especially to her. It was as if the ivy had grown wings and flown away from its perch on her mother's grave.

   She was devastated. She had truly believed that the ivy was some sort of message, some sort of sign from her mother. Silly as it would have seemed to her father if she had told him, she was not so far wrong. For she did not see it, when she was at the grave. She did not see it, the white that flashed in the treetops, nor the same white that could just be barely seen as a flicker, here, there, accompanying her unobtrusively over the next few days.

   Perhaps one of the reasons she did not notice this new follower was the fact that a gradual change had begun to take place when she visited the tower, even when she was away from it. The pulse from the heart of the forest had begun to grow in strength. It became insistent, overpowering even, until she could barely hear the sounds of the world around her for its uncontrollable sound in her ear, in her veins, until her own heart began to throb in sync with it.

   It was then her mysterious white shadow finally showed itself. It was no longer an inconsistency in the wood's edge, but a very real falcon that followed her closer and closer as it grew bolder. Even this Ivy did not notice until she had to, and when the snowy-white falcon came close enough to her to nearly claim her shoulder as its perch, and that more than once, she turned on it.

   The pulsing had made her short-tempered, even with her father, and this bird was only another annoyance to her. In fact, the pulse seemed to become even more unbearable the closer it came, until she drove it away with a couple of well-aimed stones. She felt relief then, as the pulse immediately lessened, but she could not stop the inevitable lead in her stomach. Child of the Wildwood as she was, it was the first time she had shown violence towards any creature, living or dead.

   Ivy did not see the falcon again.

   It was dead of night when her eyes snapped open at some more than subtle change. The tower's heartbeat, and hers, had changed. Quickened, still strong, but as the sound and feeling rose and fell, rose and fell within her, neither was unwelcome. This pulsation was almost like a second breathing within her, around her. This pulsation was far from an annoyance. Instead, it egged her little heart on to a passion it had never felt before. It summoned her in a way no words could, and this time she used the door.

   She was drawn unerringly toward the center of the endless rhythm, and that meant the tower. Her longer legs were now more than capable, and even if she had not known the way by heart, the Wood's heart was unmistakable.

   Very soon she was at it, pressing herself against the tower, the heartbeat in physical form. Her heart was pushed as close as possible to this heart. This tower, this heart, had always seemed so to her before, but now it seemed to have taken on some sort of capacity for living, breathing. She could almost feel the rise and fall of the stones as life-giving air entered it, exited.

   And then she could.

   Ivy had not noticed when stone first began to surround her; its embrace had felt so natural. And when the stone softened, thinned, took on just a slight bit of color, she was not surprised to find arms, real arms, there instead of stone. She was not surprised at all.

   When a face bent over hers to place its cold lips on her forehead, she recognized it immediately. It was the lady, the lady who was never real but always there. And now she was. Real.

   She wore a nightgown; Ivy could feel its rough surface on the back of her arms. She wore Geneviene's nightgown. But something was wrong. Ivy backed away out of the motherly embrace in confusion, looked up into the heartless eyes. Something was not right.

   "Ivy."

   It was not Geneviene's voice, but it was Geneviene's word. Her word, her name for her little daughter. No one else used it. No one. The hesitation in Ivy's one-word reply was evident, but for this woman it was a start, and her smile was not kind.

   "Mother?"

   The clearing they stood in was bare of any sign of stone or tower, and in the forest the leaves were falling with the autumn. And it was cold, so cold.