A Family Grows

[Treadwell]

Last night, the morning of the second of October, a most peculiar note arrived at the Treadwell mansion, just outside of Myrken Wood. It is written in a slow, deliberate, gorgeously readable woman's script that shows dignity, seriousness, and, perhaps, wealth.

It is addressed to, in full, one Bartholomew Orin Roland Edward Drivel the Third, and it is found on a table in the front room of the mansion early, early this morning.

= = = = =

Bartholomew,

The last I saw of you was the end of April. You said you had business to manage in coming to this Myrken Wood. I believe it was something about finding missing family. But, to date, you haven't even bothered to write!

So I left the house under care of my brother, Lucas. He's the skinny one that you never did like too much. I thus packed up some of my baggage and came across the sea--the sea, Bartholomew! It was terrible, what with my never having been on the water and staying sick half the trip! But yes, I came across the sea, with my cousin Bethena here for support and kindness, and the rest of the journey once we were on land was quite well except for one little, ordinary concern.

HOODLUMS.

We are an hour out of your Myrken Town, in some horrid little collection of huts and homes that I've not had the nerve to learn the name of, and everything--my carriage, our clothes, our belongings, everything!--was taken from us in the night! It seems the man we were using for a driver was MOST unfaithful and horrid, and now he's gone, and we shall never see him or our things again!

THUS, Bartholomew, you must come at once! Bethena just informed me, in reading this over my shoulder, the little snoop, that the town is some little hamlet named Bovier. Whether you come alone or not is of little consequence, but you simply must come, Love!

Your dearest wife, Alice

Alison Olivia Drivel

P. S. Don't bother waiting to pay the message boy. He has explicit instructions to see this letter to wherever it is you're living, then to hurry straight home. His father's the nervous type, a right shrewd man with a pointed nose that wiggles too much as he talks on and on just the same.
= = = = =

Now, this noon, Treadwell's distinctive coach returns to Myrken Wood, curtains drawn over the windows to block the heat of the sun. After it stops in the carriage house behind the mansion estate, out wobbles first, in a powder-blue dress with elaborate ruffles and lace, with a matching bonnet, an immensely stout woman, older than her husband by some years, sour and grave in expression. There she stands on unfamiliar land, but, as she blinks and looks around in the sunlight, she accepts a simple fact. This land is, for now, going to be home.