Greenbriar Manor

Returns and Recognition

Fern's mom woke up and realized she had been sleeping for a lot longer than she intended. Lorna felt like she had been in a long dream. She had been thinking about Bridgette and Vera. It had been too long since she had been away from her work and her home. Things here were not the same. Fern had been continuing on the linen mending and working with Daniel and Fran but she just was not ready to fully take over. She wondered if Martha would let her stay again at the tiny Grey estate she had lived in as a child. She thought about her mother. She remembered her blonde hair and her pressed blue apron. It had been ages and yet she still sometimes dreamed about that night long ago in the library. Some things could not be rectified with pretty words and patient hands. Daniel was different so was Chessie. She missed her best friend and teller of stories. She unfolded the extra tea towel and saw on the edge another sentence of a long story. This read more like an omen than a lullaby. "When the moon is full and times are dark remember the iron lark. The heart is true the chapter is new. Soon the old will be right and all your fears will wake to light. The last dance will all be done and the key will unlock the final song. Freedom comes once the guard is gone." She remembered helping wash laundry in the stream as a child before they had amenities to do things now. She remembered how even the laundry soap would burn. She would listen for a single red bird to sit in the tree house limbs and sing a song and when dusk would come she would climb the steps to Vera's old treehouse and hold the lark and practice whistling the song that her mother sang her as a little girl until the night turned into day. She would sometimes notice how Daniel would stand at the gate and wait holding a lantern or walk by the stream with Brooklyn after all the adults had gone to bed. One night she had followed them and saw a rare red fern winding around the willow tree closest to the stream. The fronds were tightly closed in like a tiny hand. They too were delicate but beautiful. She pulled on the plant and her hands came away red like ink or blood. She brought Chessie to the place in the daylight and the ferns were obscured by the underbrush. Chessie pulled one out of the ground and pressed it against the paper of her special writing book. It made a pretty design. She felt as if that fern meant something secret and secure. She wondered why Brooklyn went to the tree every night. One day she asked Daniel. He told her a story of a man who left too soon and a boy who only wanted to be a jockey. A boy who's dream ran away with him so much that he never could quite win. She wondered if that fern they found helped him too somehow. She remembered how the dusk light would refract against it like rubies. How things seemed to shimmer and shift before her eyes. As a child she thought it was magic. As an adult she no longer believed in fairy tales. Greene's protect Grey's because of red stained hands and old promises. Fern had found out something surely. She wanted to go back tonight for dinner and to see Daniel. She had seen her mother in the dream and she was sure that the fern frond she had woven into her daughter's name and legacy had begun to stain her too with duty and a love for Daniel that would not soon let go. No one but her knew that Fern loved Daniel for the same reason Brooklyn loved that old stable hand. But she could not remember him as had been their way for ages. Lorna had made it so. Always staying away for a time so no one would notice that as her daughter aged the resemblance would grow more and more alike everyday. It was not from pain that they had shared the night in the treehouse but because for so many years they had shared the same red hands. Daniel had a good kind heart and it was the rose that bloomed through the Briar's of that place right into her own heart. Without Daniel there would be no home to return too. The seasons were changing...Chessie had come home to transform the ending of this broken chapter at last. She thought of her coughing fits and how they had returned since she left the Manor. She wondered why Martha had not come calling or even Fran. It was as if everyone but Daniel had forgotten she existed at all. 

In a room in Bear Glen the stable hand was eating his last omelette breakfast. The nurse had made her rounds. His time here was over. Martha had not returned to collect his things. It had been Fran who called collect the night before rambling about the horse and the state of things with the children. Something about the stable boy racing the horse alone at night. He knew immediately he must return. No one else need be hurt. If the horse was in canter strength especially in night conditioning he would be ready to race come the first Sunday in spring. Jake was already taking bets on him winning. Ingrim had become obsessed with his technique and his uniform and even the way that Brooklyn and the stallion seemed to have a nonverbal understanding. Almost as if somewhere long ago they were a team. That of course was impossible. Brooklyn was the same age he was afterall. They would win. He just knew they would. The man waited for his cab and when it did not come he was directed to take the bus. As he rode home he thought back to years ago when his own son would greet him at the barn. They had so many summers together. Thad and him before the accident. Before he left for good. Or so he thought. Martha had brought him back home and the horse had now again. He clearly had a purpose here.  As he rode the bus to the manor he felt sleepy. A tiredness unlike anything he had ever known. When the bus pulled to stop at the end of the driveway he noticed a red haired girl leave the gate carrying a bag of linens. She looked alot like a woman that he knew as a younger man. He smiled and waved at her. She had not noticed him. Standing at the gate was a boy with a baseball hat. His dark eyes rimmed by long dark hair. The stable boy had lost much weight. His white shirt was dingy with red clay. Clearly he had been working hard. Brooklyn had been waiting for this moment for what felt like ages but as he saw the man he worked with step off the bus all he could think about was how if Ingrim did not win that everything would start over again. Jake would make the man leave. Daniel too would soon be gone again to his comfortable place away. He did not usually stay this long for a visit. Instead preferring to run everything like a well oiled machine from afar. What would happen the first day of Spring? He felt an unseasonable chill run down his spine. Something was coming or someone he was not sure. 

Fern stood in the library carefully cataloging pictures. She had felt odd since coming across the picture of her mother. She knew that it had been her decision to leave again after the dinner had put several of them in the hospital. She did not trust the environment completely. She pulled another well loved book down from the shelf. Another photo fell out of the cover. This one was not so carefully preserved. A strange red smear was across the bottom. She turned it over. A young girl in a hat sat next to Daniel in a carriage pulled by a liver chestnut mare. The photo was black and white but she could tell that the girl was laughing. She smiled. It was good to know that once Daniel had a companion and was not always alone. She wondered why he had never married and had a family of his own. Maybe it was this duty or this place. Out of focus in the photo was a tiny dog and to its right a woman wearing an apron. The face was blurry as if overexposed. A stain on the perfect lapel even in a black and white photo. Smiling at the girl in the carriage. Who was she? What did she want ? Would she dare pry into Daniel's past to ask about this women? She closed the book and placed it back in its place. She remembered Chessie and her stories. She walked to the attic steps and crept to the linen closet inside it was a bound up group of pristine white towels. All stained. She read the first line: a frond of faith unfurls a withering heart though pierced it is subdued. The duty rests and passes the test when the winsome man is through". What did that mean? Such cryptic riddles. She pushed the linens back inside the safe place and pulled the strange bird cage in front of the closet. No one else needed to find what she had uncovered. Little did she know that Mabel already had the bird and was getting closer to discovering what her power was here. One that none before her had ever been given. She had within her the key to entire legacy buried in an old treehouse wall. 

Meanwhile, Mabel held the iron bird in her left hand. She had come to claim it for herself. But she still did not know how she was going to smuggle it back to Vermont. Her mother was growing tired here and everyday she spent more and more time in the treehouse. Apartments did not have them. She wondered what Brittany was doing half way around the world with Vee. For a moment she was jealous of any vacation that actually yielded more than trinkets and strange stories. Her cousin's home was nothing like she had expected it to be in an almost boring way. Not even the bird was keeping her full attention. She was half way home. She missed Vermont though she hated to admit it. She whispered into the little bird a wish. She opened her eyes and went out into the dusk light ready for whatever happened next. 

Mack stood looking out the piano room as the man returned and embraced Brooklyn. something about his friend was not right and he was concerned. Yet everyone else seemed to let him be. He was happy for Ingrim that they would get to try again. He wondered what it might be like to hear ones dad cheer them on. He remembered long ago his dad had cheered him on while racing a toy car along the sidewalk. But he had put it in his pocket and not returned the toy. Then he and his truck left them in a flurry of tail lights and I'm sorries. He wanted something to work for them--for them all. 

Brittany waited for her dad to come. She placed the tissue in the window every night and the woman left her alone for the most part. She was more interested in who she would become than the tired little girl she was teaching to be a dancer. Brittany remembered the first step to being narwhal hearted is never forget your place in the foodchain. She read her narwhal book as she thought over the decision to let See See leave her here. She hoped by Spring to be in school somewhere better. She missed Mabel and wondered what she ws doing as well. She wrapped up in the shawl and waited out the flurry of onlookers. What were they here for anyway? Wasn't this someone's home afterall? She hoped that if See See was somewhere cold and unclear that she could see her. She did not understand that a few blocks away a man and wife had said goodmorning to the mate and that loving routine. She hoped it would continue. She waited for cover of darkness to try again with her luna moth and her flashlight. somebody had to see her. She curled up in bed and finished her project. The reflective wax coating was now on her window sill so if anyone comes calling they will know it is her. Right now as everything seemed cold swirling around her she pulled her comforter to her chin and cried silent tears. She wanted nothing but to be kind to this place and her See See's friend. She hoped she had done that she sure hoped so. She needed to get out of here and back home. But the problems is when too many things get shuffled and blaim is one of them you have to figure out where to plan your battles. This one would be Salem's. The tissue paper glimmered but over and over they ignored it. Brittany wondered where father had been and why See See had not come back to see her dance or prepare to go to school. As the day faded into night she waited and hoped she would be taken back to the apartment. She had something else left to do as well. Her See See had left directions in the back of her beloved book of stories and it would soon be time to use them.