The first white willow bloomed on the anniversary of the grandmother's death.
Julian stood beneath its skeletal branches, watching as Sabrina pressed her palm to its bark. The tree had grown too fast—its trunk already thick as a man's waist, its roots snaking across the graveyard like grasping fingers.
"Can you hear them?" Sabrina asked, her voice distant.
Julian didn't need to ask who. The wind carried them already—whispers that weren't quite words, sighs that weren't quite breath. The townspeople called it "the sighing grove" now, though they smiled as they said it. They didn't notice how the willows leaned toward Sabrina when she passed, or how the earth shivered beneath her bare feet.
A cold droplet hit Julian's wrist.
Sap.
Thick and gold as honey—but when he raised it to the light, the substance swirled with flecks of crimson.
Above them, a branch cracked.
Not from wind.
From weight.
Julian's dagger was in his hand before he looked up.
The branches were empty.
But the bark where something had perched glistened wetly, the grooves of claw marks still sinking into the wood like melting wax.
THE STRANGER AT THE GATE
The man arrived at dusk, his coat stained with road dust, his eyes the same storm-gray as Julian's.
"You look like her," was all he said.
Julian's hand froze on the door. His father's voice. But the man standing before him couldn't be—this face was unlined, his hair dark as a raven's wing. Only the eyes were right—old eyes, ancient eyes, eyes that had seen too much.
Behind Julian, Sabrina made a soft, wounded sound.
"Elias?"
The man—the thing—smiled. A crack split his lower lip, oozing black sap.
"The roots remember," he said. "And they're hungry."
From the grove came a sound like knuckles popping, like green wood bending.
The first white petals of the season began to fall.
They landed in Sabrina's hair like snowflakes.
Like a crown.
THE THORN
Sabrina found it at midnight—a single black thorn embedded in her pillow, its tip glistening with something that wasn't dew.
When she pulled it free, the shadows breathed.
"Mine," whispered the voice that wasn't hers.
Downstairs, a glass shattered.
Not from falling.
From squeezing.
Julian stood in the kitchen, his hand bleeding around the shards, his eyes fixed on the window.
Outside, the willows swayed in a wind that didn't blow.
And beneath them, a child's footprints pressed into the damp earth—
—leading right to their door.
FINAL LINE:
The grove was singing again.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
ECHOES OF THE SHADOWED GROVE VOLUME 2