Wordless humming, a song without meaning, yet somehow every syllable conveyed the ancient message of a mother's love. The baby slept soundly in her arms, waking calmly to feed on a bottle that was always ready. The new mother was very attentive and very tired.

"What are you naming it?" Persephone asked her younger sister, who held her baby, her eyes dark with sleepless devotion.

"Franz." Penelope had decided. The girls nodded, deciding Franz would be its name. "Franz Briar-Leidenfrost. My baby."

Cory flew into the nursery with a message for the girls. "Lunch is served."

"I'll bring some food for you." Persephone promised her little sister. "Gotta keep the teenage mother fed. You need your strength."

"I'm immaculate." Penelope said, slightly delirious from sleep deprivation. Her sister just nodded and left the nursery, relieved to be doing anything else.

While she was alone with Franz, Penelope placed the baby in the crib and then lay down on the floor next to it and immediately fell asleep. Mother and child slept soundly in the cool and quiet nursey. Only a slight creak from a door in the hallway made any sound.

She did not see the hovering creature emerge from a closet in the hall, floating through the shadows and into the nursery. The veiled lady approached the side of the crib opposite where the young mother slept.

Penelope's eyes shot open and she sat up with a start. She sensed the presence of an evil danger. She looked around, slightly disoriented and alarmed.

Then she saw the veiled lady had her baby and was floating out of the nursery with it. She sprang to her feet and ran after them, only to find they had vanished outside the door of the nursery in the hallway. She looked around and spotted them moving through sunlight, and then vanishing again in the shadows.

"My baby! Help! It has my baby! Mom!" Penelope screamed for help.

Everyone in the manor was soon running around, trying to find the creature that was kidnapping Franz. Penelope was very distraught, but then she remembered the emerald. I was waiting, when she asked me for the first time:

"Who is the veiled lady? What is its name? How can I stop it? It has Franz, Father, tell me!" Penelope was panicked and needed me to answer her right away.

"You should let Franz go." I advised her. "You cannot win against this creature. You are not ready."

"I don't care what you say, I'm not letting my baby go. I'm going to save it. Now tell me the truth, Father, you know who the veiled lady is, say you do!" Penelope demanded.

"I do know, but if I help you, you will be in too much danger. Let Franz go, you cannot keep the baby." I insisted.

Penelope shook her head and I saw something in her eyes that frightened me and wounded me. She was glaring at me like she hated me. She put away the emerald and went to another who might help her, instead. As she climbed the staircase my dread grew with each step.

From dealing with one dangerous witch, my daughter would go to bargain with another. There was nothing I could do. If I had helped her, she'd have followed the veiled lady to save Franz, and it was a trap.

"Apprentice, you grace me. Your absence in my little classroom is noted. I'd scold you for your truancy, but I don't mind. I was much the same when I was a little younger." Circe spoke saucily and emphasized the words 'a little younger' as some kind of joke. We all know how ancient she is. There isn't anyone who could look upon Circe and not behold a reflection of their own lusts, for her beauty was enchanted, yet she was actually a hag, a monstrous old creature, warped and hideous, but only on the inside.

"I need your help, Grandmother." Penelope knelt with obedience. I was proud of her diplomacy skills, but worried she might actually get help from Circe because of it.

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"What can I do for you?" Circe sounded indulgent. I didn't like it.

"Tell me who the veiled lady is and how to defeat it. It has taken Franz, my baby." Penelope explained.

"You have a baby? Who is the father? Oh nevermind, teenage mothers don't have to explain why there's no father. Goes with the territory. Is it a boy or a girl?" Circe sounded oddly amused, and I was always worried when Circe was in a good mood. It meant things were going badly for us.

"The baby?" Penelope hesitated. "Franz doesn't have boy or girl parts yet. They get those later, right?"

"Seriously?" Circe raised one eyebrow. "You really think that? How did they educate you and miss that one?"

"I thought they become a boy or girl after like a few days or whatever." Penelope sounded like she had actually thought about this logically - she sounded confused that she had it wrong.

"This is no baby. Franz and the veiled lady are the same creature. I bet your father knows who it is. Why don't you ask him for help? If you identify this creature, you can repel it. It has only a liminal form, it exists only in the mystery of its existence. If you call it by name, it cannot be. It is the awful thing in the door that should not exist. Ask your little daddy, he'll tell you." Circe fell silent and watched Penelope's reaction without blinking.

"All I need is its name?" Penelope stood up, shedding her fear and looking defiant, hurt and angry. She stormed out of the room and past the search parties throughout the manor.

"There's no sign of it. I will go out to the forest and see if I can pick up the trail." Clide Brown reported. Penelope looked at him and nodded. From the top of the staircase she followed him, but Clide Brown easily reached the bottom of the stairs with his agile feet.

As Penelope toed the edges of the stairs in a rapid and graceful descent, she held up one arm, fist out and the crow flew and landed on her raised elbow as a perch. She said to Cory: "Find the veiled lady and tell it to stop. I have something for it."

The bird flew ahead of her and she followed its path. At the edge of the estate grounds, atop the iron peacocks of the front gate, Cory landed and cawed in contempt.

Cory had intercepted the veiled lady and spoke to it saying:

"Halt right there, your prize is in pursuit. Let this end here and now!"

The creature revealed itself from the shade, its veil of starlight shimmering. Franz was in its bony hands of death.

"Give me my baby!" Penelope shouted at it as she approached.

Behind her, others of our village were gathering, even the fairy.

The creature stood its ground, trapped. Except it was not, it was waiting in ambush. Terror gripped Penelope and she was speechless as the creature showed her the memory of the fire, the whole forest burning around the mother. As burning animals fled past her and birds fell smoking from the skies and bushes burst into flames from the hot wind, she threw her crying baby into the pond. Then she was engulfed in flames and collapsed into the boiling mud.

Penelope fell the same way, remembering the painful experience. She looked back up, her face streaked in tears, forming a rivulet around the tiny star-shaped scar on her cheek. Her eyes glared in defiance, getting back on her feet and advancing on the kidnapper.

The creature tried another psychic attack, forcing her to find herself holding a drowned child in some distant ancestral memory. The villagers behind her were coming for her. She had taken the child and drowned it, a woman afflicted with insanity. "No, no, no!"

Penelope somehow climbed back from that one too, got back on her feet and continued towards the creature. It was weakening her, trying to make her give into the painful thoughts. It needed her to lower her guard, for she was its true target. The veiled lady was here to claim her, to possess her.

The creature was whispering:

"Without."

If she knew its name, it would have its chance - but if it failed, she could exorcise the haunt, simply by denying its existence. It was too dangerous, to battle wills with a creature made purely of evil willpower. But if she kept letting it strike her as she approached, she would soon succumb to something it would show her. Something would break.

While she still had the strength to resist it, she must know its name, so I told her:

"Aureus." I told her. I gave in and told her, hoping the word would give her an edge. She ignored me, she had her own plan.

"Franz!" Penelope called the creature. It shrank from the naming, recognizing the word given as a bond of everlasting acceptance, a mother's love. All people have names for this reason, for all people have a mother. "Franz, I love you. I will care for you. You are my baby!"

The creature was not prepared for her selfless defense. It tried to hide the baby, but Penelope could sense where it was and reached into the shadow and extracted her baby from the black hole. The veiled lady withered at her touch, fading against the wall of the estate like a murder stain.

I sighed in relief. Aureus wasn't called into our reality, no battle of willpower happened where my daughter would be mind-shattered. Instead, the human darkness was defeated again, this time by giving it a name and a mother's love.

Penelope sat down on the lawn with a plop, holding Franz. "You're mine, and I will always love you. No monsters can ever take you from me. I will follow you into the darkness, and I will save you from it."

She kissed her baby and handed it to her own mother. Penelope looked at Dr. Leidenfrost and yawned in exhaustion:

"I'm just gonna take a little nap."