"What is black, white and red all over?" Cory, with the little velvet top hat that my oldest daughter had made for him, asked the girls.

"A newspaper?" Persephone asked, shaking her head because she already knew that Cory was currently obsessed with Deadpool. It was the only movie my crow had ever gone and seen at the theater. I never got to see it, but Cory filled me in on most of the details throughout the centuries that I was trapped in the emerald. I can't say I am sure Deadpool is entirely fictional.

"No. It's Deadpool. He's obsessed with it lately." Penelope told her older sister while rolling her eyes.

"Correct." Cory cawed happily. "He's got two swords and two guns and two girlfriends and two cars and two, uh, whatever those other two things he has are called."

"Sure." Penelope agreed. "Could we discuss this later? I've got homework to do. I'm learning metallurgy."

"I have great questions for you to answer. Far more important than forging keys in your father's workshop." Cory hopped up and down, insisting on having her attention.

"Do you even know what I am doing with these keys? I am making one for Prince Savriel. If he is pleased, he'll see me. Perhaps we can form some kind of friendship, or an alliance." Penelope said with seriousness that didn't seem to match her pouting lips.

This occurred long before my daughter actually met Prince Savriel. Knowing his significance to her, how they bond with each other and eventually rule side by side as a king and queen in a distant future should emphasize her instincts about the importance of making a good impression on him. She was very annoyed that her efforts to get closer to him were being interrupted by Cory's one-crow variety show.

"Prince Savriel is a giant centipede. I ate one of those in the garden this morning." Cory told her. Penelope looked as annoyed as she felt. She sat glaring, with an irritated look in her eyes of purple and gold. She has looks that don't improve when she is angry about something, like some people do, instead she just looks angry and indignant.

"Arthropleura." Persephone corrected him. "We have studied Dad's notes on the Folk of the Shaded Places. We think they are descended from Arthropleura, the way humans are descended from apes."

"Humans are not descended from apes, and Folk of the Shaded Places are not descended from those." Cory said and then started laughing, finding the idea to be hilarious. His laughter sounded like someone had dropped their car keys into a blender. "Where do you girls get these insane fictions? Who would write something so obviously asinine and then pretend it is true? Humans are so funny."

"Sure. Is this conversation over then? I really need to get back to my studies. I'm falling behind." Penelope complained.

"How so? There's no more school." Persephone shoved her sister playfully. "You have to give yourself a grade. Do you give yourself an A or an F?"

"I'm homeschooling myself. I want to learn and know a lot of things the way Dad did." Penelope objected. "I'm smarter than you. I don't want my brains to go to waste. You can just sit and listen to this dumb bird tell stupid jokes all day. I need to be doing something with my life."

Persephone fell silent. She was very sensitive and her sister's opinion of her was very important to her self-esteem. Unlike my daughter, Persephone couldn't just use magic to clear away her doubts. She had to grow up the old-fashioned way, painfully, through trial and error. In her silence, she told her sister how much all those words had hurt. It might even leave a scar, as these sisters never fought each other or hurt each other. Both of them were very nurturing instead. Penelope frowned at herself and then hugged her sister and said quietly into her ear:

"I'm sorry big sister. I feel a little lost without Dad. I had to grow up real fast to deal with the problems we have around here. I need you to stay the same, and I appreciate you. I'm just a little jealous because I want to be a kid still and laugh at our crow's jokes. I hate all this magical-realm politics, insect royalty, curses and that damnable priestess of chaos, Circe." Penelope kissed her sister on the cheek and they both started giggling right away.

"How do you know dolphins don't make mistakes?" Cory was asking.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Why?" Persephone giggled.

"They do everything on porpoise." Cory clicked and tilted his velvet top hat handsomely. "What sort of luggage do vultures take onto airplanes?"

"Carrion." Penelope guessed. Cory didn't skip a beat and went to his next joke:

"In the early days, the big cats of Africa did not know which among them was the fastest. The lion, the leopard and the cheetah all gathered to have a foot race to determine who was the swiftest. They agreed to count down from three and then start running to that tree over there. When they started counting down, the cheetah took off at top speed and finished the race, before the others were ready. They were all like 'hey, you cheetah'd'." Cory hopped around. "Get it?"

"Because he cheated. Right." Penelope nodded. "That it?"

"No, I've got one more." Cory suddenly changed his tone. "She is in the garden, and the baby is under the cabbage leaves. If the forest burns around them, she'd throw the baby into the pond. Her veil is made of woven starlight."

At this Penelope looked at my crow with alarm in her eyes, a disturbed moisture of frightened tears.

"And does she speak a word?" Penelope shuddered. Persephone looked to her sister for strength, feeling creeped out by the joke. Instead, she saw her fearless sister was frightened for some reason.

"Why yes, I believe she does." Cory agreed. "She says: 'without' over and over. Not sure why."

"Is she the veiled lady, is that the answer to your riddle?" Penelope shuddered.

"No, we know the lady wears a veil. She has a name, you know. If you knew her name, you'd know how to escape from her. She will find all of us, eventually." Cory told the girls. It had gotten rather dark, his little sketch. Leave it to my crow to start joking about nightmares, horror and death.

"I don't like this riddle." Persephone complained.

"Why not?" Cory asked, sincerely puzzled why she might not like getting scared by the mention of some kind of mysterious and dangerous creature that her brave sister was worried about.

"I'm scared." Persephone replied.

"But there's really nothing to be afraid of. If you learn her secrets soon, she won't kill anybody. Otherwise, well, death always happens. It's not a big deal." Cory advised the children. Perhaps crows, Stormcrow especially, don't make the best kind of guides for children to learn about death. Crows are rather morbid and spend a lot of time discussing and even joking about death. They find death to be a very honest and relatable topic of discussion. They have no taboos against mentioning it in any conversation.

"I am not afraid." Penelope stated, her eyes wide and dilated and her breathing shallow and frightened. She could sense that the veiled lady was, in fact, near.

The girls then saw the creature, screaming in terror and fleeing the presence of the malevolent entity. Cory took off and lost his velvet hat where he had stood telling his jokes. The veiled lady hovered over it, leaving no footprint, leaving the velvet hat untouched as she passed over it.

Persephone had hidden in the great hall of the manor, while Penelope had led the creature back out of the arbor and into the gardens. There, Gabriel stood and when he saw the girl in flight and the creature pursuing her, his heart felt like a fist in his chest and he collapsed in a painful heart attack. Penelope rushed to him while he seemed to be choking and clutching his ribs.

"Gabriel?" Penelope sobbed, worried he might die of fright. The creature was getting closer and closer, but she was so upset Gabriel might die that she forgot to run from it and stood between it and the fallen groundskeeper.

"Without." The creature said. As the veiled lady neared them, Penelope put up her hands to shield herself, but she did not step aside. When she lowered her hands the veil was right in front of her face. It was pulled aside, revealing the horror beneath.

Penelope's face scrunched up in revulsion and rejection, the terror too severe to absorb. Then she screamed, a defiant, anguished and horrified shriek. She flailed madly at the creature and it swept itself back, avoiding the blows.

The veiled lady swiftly retreated through the gardens, stopping only long enough to disturb a naked infant, covered in dirt, under a rotting cabbage. The baby began crying, and as the veiled lady reached for it with deathly hands. Penelope forgot she was afraid of it and charged at it, throwing clods of earth and yelling at it to go away. Her physical charge did nothing, but the intention of her psychic burst drove the creature back into the dark forests surrounding the manor.

Penelope looked in astonishment at the baby and then without further hesitation she scooped it up and held it in her arms, cradling it. The baby kept crying, little tears streaked across the dirt on its cheeks. She held it close, assuring it with her voice, just making mother-like vocalizations, peaceful sounds without words. The baby stopped crying and clung to her, so serene it might be asleep.

She went to where Gabriel was sitting there. He'd survived another heart attack. In his hands was a bottle of Bayer Aspirin, which he kept on him at all times. He'd chewed three tablets already, getting the bitter medicine into his bloodstream a little faster.

"I need some water." Gabriel said.

Cory flew over and took the order back into the great house. A moment later, already alerted by her daughter's cries of alarm, Dr. Leidenfrost came running out followed by Detective Winters with his firearm and several members of our Choir, all of them brandishing weapons, ready to repel looters with violence.

"The danger is gone." Penelope said to them. She was holding the baby and said: "But this one is here to stay. It's mine."

"A baby?" Dr. Leidenfrost looked at her teenage daughter. It wasn't the baby from the garden that surprised her, but rather her daughter's refusal to hand it over, and her claim that it was hers. Penelope insisted:

"My baby."