"Tis' blight, same as that of the Glade. And those cobwebs are strewn by an ettercap. It is spreading from the old tree with the door. Perhaps we should cut it down." Gabriel, the groundskeeper explained to the lady of the manor, Dr. Leidenfrost.

"That tree was here when my grandparents built Leidenfrost Manor. It was here when this place was settled. It was here when the first people found this land to be peaceful and plentiful. It was here before there were people at all. Sylvia has explained this to us. This tree is a living being, the womb of a Hamadryad, a forest goddess, a nymph." Dr. Leidenfrost said, her voice only becoming light on the word 'nymph'. She couldn't help it, before she married me, my wife was an accomplished nymphomaniac, and to her the word just meant promiscuous.

"You don't want it cut down, even though there is a corruption spreading from it, affecting our crops." Gabriel stated rhetorically.

"We'll find another way. Have you not noticed that my daughter is a finder of ways? Much like her father." Dr. Leidenfrost's gaze grew distant, and she realized she could not remember my voice, my face or my warmth. She felt a chill, in the shadow of magical amnesia. Her resistance to the spell was weak, and she even forgot she had mentioned me. "My daughter will have a look at this, and we'll see what she wants done about it."

"Very well, mistress, I shall consult Penelope about how to do my job as groundskeeper." Gabriel grumbled oddly. His arthritis was bothering him and he didn't mean to sound grouchy.

He waited by the arbor until she came walking out for her morning constitutional in the gardens. She had her baby in a carrier on her back, snugly wrapped and asleep. She greeted the old groundskeeper like a ray of sunshine converted to a single note of a lovely song. Her smile warmed his old bones and he nodded to her and then raised one hand to say something.

"Would you take a look at the old tree? It needs to be dealt with correctly. Your mother has given this task to you, to determine its fate." Gabriel explained and gestured at the old tree.

"That's not a tree, Gabriel." Penelope laughed slightly. "I'll ask her what she wants."

Penelope walked up to the old tree, her eyes bright and sidelong glancing. She smiled shyly at it and placed her palm gently upon its heart and leaned close, whispering to it:

"Are you sick? What can I get for you, my darling?" She asked. She closed her eyes and listened. The gentleness on her face faded and she frowned. "Your beloved sister? If she lives, I shall find her for you. Many of your kind are gone, I am sorry. The world unravels, realms collapse. We live in Dusk. Let me ease your suffering. Tell me her secret so I may find her for you."

Gabriel watched this, his eyes watering. He was easily moved by the tenderness of her voice and her compassion for the magical creatures. "Is there anything I can do?"

Penelope shook her head sadly, "I will have to do this alone."

Cory was circling above this, his silent shadow going unnoticed until he landed on the branch of the old tree. He said:

"Alone with his majesty Stormcrow, yet?" Cory asked in hybridized Corvin.

Penelope held her arm out, calling him to perch. He alighted on her arm from a dive and then hopped up her bicep to her shoulder. The breeze brushed his feathers with her hair, reintroducing the mites they shared.

"I'd never leave my lovely behind." Penelope made a kissing noise to the crow and he cawed happily.

"My Daughter knows the way." Cory said proudly. He was just happy she picked him for her team.

With the dirty baby in the carrier she'd made from Native American design, the speaking crow on her shoulder and the emerald that was her father in her hip pocket she left the grounds and wandered alone into the dark forests surrounding the manor. She had no preparations to make, for like me, she set out on a journey at once, taking nothing, telling no one and not looking back.

Gabriel watched her go, his face creased in worry. Dr. Leidenfrost came outside. She had brought sandwiches for everyone and a fresh bottle of formula for the baby, and when she found the garden was still and silent, she went back inside. She worried less about Penelope than she did when I was gone on my adventures, because she knew her daughter had my abilities and her mother's sensibilities.

Penelope went deeper and deeper into the dark forest, traveling all day and night. She found a day spring and gave water to herself and the baby and Cory drank also. The baby seemed satisfied with just the water, looking at its adopted mother with trust. She sang to her baby, and its hunger subsided, feeding instead on her energy.

"We shall fast, all three of us." Penelope said to her companions. Then they followed the path of shadows, the forest seemed to bend and twist as they went, forming a way where no way was.

When they had crossed the horizon into yesterday, the sunrise began from directly above the ancient ash. It stood in a clearing, the skies all around were night, until the brightness of the second sun made Dawn there before them. Cory hopped to the ground and bowed his head.

Penelope also took a knee, in reverence. She said softly:

"I have come for the youngest goddess. She is to give me a cure, a word that will heal, a new note for my soul's song, a new passage for my story. I will take this to her sister and share it, and perhaps even the Glade will be restored, Goddess willing." Penelope prayed.

"Messenger, thou art unsung. You must have a song for your soul. Never has one come without her own song." The ash spoke in a voice like a hundred old women speaking in unison.

"Is this the beloved sister who rejects me, or have I spoken to a keeper?" Penelope stood in defiance, not accepting the verdict.

"Go, or you will not be allowed to leave. I show mercy this day, for you hold the water of my day in you, your child and your animal. Go before my heart hardens because of your disrespect." The ash said. The talking tree did not impress Penelope and she said:

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"You do not frighten me. If I leave you will soon be alone in this world, and your last sister will perish when you could easily have told me how to help her. What will you do?" Penelope asked.

"Very well, messenger, if you wish to know the secret of how to save her, you must first have the ingredient. There is no point in revealing to you an ancient word, if you cannot pronounce it." The ash decided. "Follow your feet from here to the memory of the end of Dawn. There, where the light fades, the apples, the golden flock, they may be taken by a hand such as yours. Bring one, or as many as you like, and return. Beware you will be charged a terrible price for this. You should be afraid."

Penelope shuddered at the suggestion of dread, but stood chin up, mouth drawn. She nodded and set her feet to the path. It is a talent to follow one's feet into the ways that are not seen or marked. These are the ways I went, and now she went these ways.

The forest was black and cold, and like a tunnel there was a light in the distance, like a candle and then like a bonfire, and then like a sunrise. She emerged from the forest, a creeping jagged darkness being driven back by the light of Dawn. In the golden fields all around were young goddesses attending their flocks of golden wooled sheep.

Thin young trees stood in this field at intervals, casting no shade except a golden color, and on each tree there was a holy apple. Penelope walked among the curious women-shaped creatures. Some of them covered their breasts defensively as the baby eyed them.

Something was in the skies, like a stain on the pale blue, like a mote in the sunlight. It swam, it flew and hissed a song of disobedience to the balanced world. It was the old serpent, Vjuanith, and she had seen the human, the baby and the crow trespassing. A moment of chaos, a disturbance in the balance, it was all that the creature needed.

"That thing is looking at us, my Daughter." Cory looked at the draconian beast. It was covered in prismatic feathers, and its reptilian features were smooth and lovely. Each of Vjuanith's movements was full of grace, and the invention of every dance. Vjuanith told them its name, but it could not do anything to them, it seemed, for they were in a memory of the world, and nothing could be changed.

"Welcome to this final moment, for with your help I shall end Dawn, and bring about a much less stagnant world. It is good, to take this knowledge, for you shall be like the gods, and they shall be like the mortals. Mortals will have knowledge of magic and gods shall know death." Vjuanith swirled, the movements like a snake undulating, or like birds in flight.

"You cannot do anything to us." Penelope said with uncertainty. Then, as the light found her, she became part of that place, part of the memory of the world. Dawn shimmered weakly, the skies darkening and clouding over. Penelope looked around wide-eyed and then started running for the nearest tree.

Vjuanith was spiraling towards her, showing the teeth it had grown for such an occasion. The nymphs of the fields had never seen a creature show its teeth before, for nothing had needed teeth. Vjuanith had chosen to serve the unknown forces beyond, the dance leading it to know chaos, and to love novelty and change. This was the beginning of the corruption, a lack of appreciation for serenity and peace.

"Dryads, do not run, your fear is poisoning this place!" Cory told the young goddesses as they tried to evade the snapping jaws of the massive, winged serpent. All around, as they stopped attending their flocks, dark things rose up in the places where there wasn't light. Folk of the Shaded Places, Fen and the Fell, Umbramancers, Hemoliths and Sons of Araek are how they appeared to me, but at that time such creatures were indistinguishable from one another, and all of them were just darkened perversions of their natural forms, mutating and becoming horrible as they embraced the darkness.

Penelope took an apple and then the mouth of the monster was upon us. She ducked down and the apple tree was destroyed in the bladed jaws. The baby started crying and Cory was on the ground, hopping frantically and checking himself to see if he was still alive.

"Time to go, must go now!" Cory said in Corvin and flew ahead towards the waving clawed branches of the dark forest. All the monstrous things were fleeing the light, their flesh burning and the cries of pain a horrifying sound. We fled with them, towards the safety of the treeline. Behind us came Vjuanith, biting into and swallowing anything too slow to escape.

As soon as we had reached the trees, Penelope stopped and asked me:

"What should I do?" Her eyes were full of fear, as she had narrowly escaped death with the baby on her back crying the whole way. I had no time to instruct her, nor did I have an answer ready. She had already gone where I had never gone, found a path that remained hidden to me. How could I advise my daughter, when she had already surpassed my accomplishments?

Suddenly a huge patch of the twisting trees was torn away and flung wildly by the coils of the powerful serpent. "Now I eat this perfect flesh and absorb such magic!" Vjuanith said to its intended meal.

"The apple, it is poison to this beast, save us!" Cory told Penelope. She looked at the poisoned apple, good only as the ingredient, otherwise fatal to consume. She hesitated and then threw it into the serpent's open bragging mouth while it was speaking.

The creature began gagging and choking, and then its feathers wilted and became as burning cinders. Its flesh became ragged and scaly, and it fell to the ground, thrashing and coiling madly in pain. Its teeth changed into fangs, and it shrank from a giant monster to nothing but a snake on the ground. With the juices of the apple, it tried to bite my daughter, trying to return the poisoning - with its new venom. The serpent writhed as she stepped on its neck and said to it:

"I'll crush thee for thy treachery!"

"Mercy, please show me mercy, and I swear I will become as your slave!"

"You poisonous thing, how could you ever serve me?"

"I will teach you all of the poisons, and how they might be stopped. I promise!"

Penelope let her foot off of the creature and it crawled away in shame and defeat.

Without the apple, we had to leave empty-handed. Dawn had ended, and the fields were as nothing but barren earth. Bones of the sheep lay all around. Only one of the nymphs, young goddesses, remained. She went around sadly collecting the bits of golden wool where it lay, slowly making an armful of it. She was crying as she went through the dead fields, and where her teardrops fell, primeval orchids sprang, each a different color of the sunrise.

We followed our path back home, and when we arrived Penelope went to the midnight kitchen and made a fresh bottle for her baby. She sat in the lower living room on a floor couch and fed Franz. When the baby was done eating, she lay down on the floor beneath it, for she was worried she might sleep on her baby if she was next to it. She passed out and was only awakened when Cory was cawing loudly in alarm.

Penelope sat up and saw a very old, very tired looking snake had crawled into the house and was coiled on the couch next to the baby. The snake sat motionless, watching her reactions.

"Are you Vjuanith?" She asked.

"I was. I am your servant now, my lady. I have retained my honor and come to you in your time of need. I have made my life long, so that I might wake and be here. I do not have long, for I am poisoned, and mortality is the debt of my youthful follies. I was the villain, I did something terrible, but your mercy changed me. I wish to do something good so that you will forgive me, and then there will be justice in thy mercy, when I have earned it."

"Justice is my middle name." Penelope assured the creature that she was accepting its help.

"Good. Let me tell you how to cure the blight of thy mother's gardens, how to make the Glade clean of the cancerous evil that has claimed it, and how to make ettercap sick when they try to eat a fairy. With these new spells, you will find it in your heart to forgive me, and I can rest in peace?"

"Absolutely." Penelope decided. She had no need of her damaged book of shadows to learn new spells, as a true apprentice, but old habits are sometimes good habits, and she chose to write down everything the creature told her. Cory was sent to fetch her damaged book of shadows, and with pen in hand she smiled in the witching hour and said: "Let us begin."