It was becoming a cold and bleak autumn. The farmers were happy—saying a cold winter would mean a good growing season next year—but Ivy was not so sure. The bitter wind seemed to freeze her thinking. The mists, thicker than was usual even for that time of year, seemed to shroud her very being until she felt she had gone blind.

   It was on such days that she returned to the clearing. Her father was nearly inert these days; indeed, he had not touched their garden—his garden, which had once been his pride second only to his family—since the laying of Geneviene in the north corner of it. He did not notice when Ivy left or when she returned. And she left much more than she returned.

   Even more than her father, her mother had become a fast-fading memory. It is true that at first she thought the stone that came alive that day in the forest was none other than her returning mother. It is true that for a week afterwards Ivy corrected anyone who talked about her mother as if she were dead. It is true that the townspeople gave Ivy strange looks when she did this, and that her father would leave the room in silence. They said she was too old to play these childish tricks, too old to not know death when she saw it.

   But the townspeople did not have to talk about it for long, for this new mother figure to Ivy had been carefully sowing seeds to reap a crop of forgetfulness.

   It had almost become a daily ritual for them.

   "Who am I?" she would ask, sitting placidly in the center of the clearing among the wilted red flowers. The smell of their decomposing bodies, sickly sweet, would fill Ivy's head until she felt quite dizzy.

   "Mother?"

   The woman would nod.

   "Good. Go on. What do others call me?"

   "Geneviene?"

   This time, she would shake her head.

   "No, I don't know this Geneviene. You know my name. Now say it."

   "Geneviene. Mother?" Ivy's voice would rise a couple of notes in confusion. The smell was getting stronger.

    "No, no. I don't know this Geneviene, you don't know this Geneviene. Who is this Geneviene?"

    "You a—"

    "Who? I don't know a Geneviene. Do you know a Geneviene?"

    "Yes. I . . ." Ivy would stop, confused. Geneviene, Geneviene? Who was Geneviene? She only knew Mother. She caught a whiff of air laced with garden-smells streaming in through an open window, a serious-eyed woman offering her a couplet of leaves; those same eyes saying Take it, saying Strength. In her vision the window slammed shut, and startled, the green-skinned image was replaced by one of a face bending to kiss her forehead with its cold lips.

   It was then the woman would speak.

   "My name is Vedis. Say it, Ivy."

   "Vedis? Vedis. Mother . . ."

   It was not long before she stopped seeing the vision, ceased hearing the voice that said Take it, said Strength.

   The next day, the ritual must have gone better—or worse—than ever, for as Ivy left for home through the rapidly darkening forest, Vedis followed.

   No matter how skillfully she had sown, the crop had not been to Vedis' liking. Something was holding Ivy back; something was keeping Ivy from being utterly hers. And Vedis thought she knew what it was.

   Even as Ivy reached the door of her little house she was still unaware of her light-footed follower. But Vedis stopped at the doorstep. She could not follow the child in. Something stopped her, something she did not like at all. At all.

   It didn't take long for Vedis to console herself by stationing herself at the kitchen window, where a slouched figure could be clearly seen weeping into the stained wooden surface of the table. Ivy entered soon after; Vedis employed a touch of her own that would make sure neither daughter nor father saw her during the ensuing scene. A shapely spray of ivy now whispered and tapped against the windowpane from where it clung to the sill. Strong, woody ivy, the ropelike ivy men called Lianas.

   She watched with impassive satisfaction as Ronan rose and turned in anger when Ivy entered, in an attempt to hide the few tears that still squeezed out of the corners of his baggy eyelids with another emotion. She watched as Ivy drew back in bewilderment; read the little lips that formed the words Mother's not dead; watched as he turned to storm out. Watched, then acted.

   He was in the very process of storming out when the sweet, soft voice hailed him from outside the window.

   "Ronan . . ."

   He stopped in disbelief, afraid to look.

   "Ronan . . . come here, quick!"

   Now he did look, and he did not believe what that look apparently told him. The shutters had been flung open, inward, tapping softly against the walls as a breeze passed through. The Lianas had been replaced by a Vedis who still wore the same nightgown: Geneviene's.

   Ronan took one step towards the window, then another. Vedis did not smile. Ivy's bewilderment was now shock; what was Mother doing here? Mother should be in the clearing. Mother should be in the forest.

   It was forever before Ronan was at the window. He reached out to touch that arm, clinging to the sill, as if he still did not believe she was real; as if he believed with every corner of himself that she was and wanted to tell her that he, too, was real. But as Vedis leaned her head closer to him, eyes closed, he changed his mind. Instead, he closed his own eyes, leaned his own head closer—to kiss her.

   The Lianas curled back around Vedis in an instant, now bedecked with thorns. It curled round and round her, up and up, until it spread a spiny tendril right across her lips. Ronan found that out soon enough. He jerked away as he felt the barbed points enter the tender skin of his own lips, as he tasted blood and saw it drip down his chin to land on his discolored tunic, already splotched once, twice, with tears. He backed away, staring at her in horror. Bit. I've been bitten. And then, a memory from so long ago it seemed another life: The tower. The tower bit me. It bit me.

   He ran out with a wild, inhuman energy, nearly knocking Ivy over in the process. When Ivy was able to look towards the window again, Vedis was gone, and the window was shut.