The mouse hung from a thorn among the brambles. Its body shredded and picked apart by the little bird watching me now from a low branch of my prized pear tree.

My hand which had reached so quickly for a fallen pear nested neatly among the briars, reeled back at the sight and my hand snagged on a thorn. My old, papery skin tore at the mere prick, spilling blood into the new spring grass. I could feel the blood pouring out, feel it drip and stain the skirt of my dressing gown and yet I did not look away from that small bird. The shrike.

The little grey bird with its blush of black across its eyes tilted its head from side to side and shrieked at me before flying away in a flurry of wing torn leaves. A cry of my own echoed his and I nearly fell. Thankfully my nurse, Cait, caught me with gentle hands.

"Steady Mrs. Weston." she said softly, righting me on my feet. She kept a hand on my arm, ready to catch me again should I stumble. Her brow was furrowed with concern, her eyes already searching my features for signs of pain. She spotted the blood beading on my fingertip. "You're hurt." She gasped, clutching my injured hand.

"I am quite all right, Cait. The bird startled me. That is all. Wretched thing." I waived away her concern like so much acrid smoke as I pushed away memories of another shrike from my youth down into the depths of my mind. "It is just a little thorn prick." I allowed Cait to guide me to the little table where I had been enjoying my lunch in the garden. Even when I was sitting comfortably in my chair, Cait still wore that pinched expression. Her hand slipped into the pocket of her crisp white apron and lingered there, the fingers grasping something within. "Whatever is the matter, woman? Your job is safe." I giggled, kissing away the little droplet of blood from my torn finger. "I do not intend to complain to my son about my injury. If he asks of it, I'll simply tell him it was a bird that did it."

Cait shook her head, her eyes stuck on the grass at her feet. "It isn't that Mrs. Weston." She said in her heavy Irish accent. "A letter came...from Mr. Weston while you were having lunch." Slowly, she withdrew the letter from her apron and held it out to me with that shivering hand.

I stared at it for a moment, studying Charles's rushed and sloppy handwriting. My perfectionist son did not write that way unless he was either troubled or drunk. My heart sank into my belly as understanding washed over me like an icy bath. "Who has died?" I asked, feeling as if I were reliving the same moment in time all over again. Charles' wife, Annabeth, had died not even a year past. Charles's writing had looked much the same on that letter as well.

She unfolded the letter and read it to me. Each word fell against me like heavy stones, striking hard enough to maim. No one had died, but Charles's only child, my only surviving grandchild, Marie, was missing. The entire grounds of the Weston estate had been searched and were still being searched, but there was no sign of her at all. It was as if she had vanished into thin air, leaving not a trace. Charles had the audacity to close his letter of horror with a command that I stay put in his country home until Marie was found. I would be sure to swat him when I saw him for that.

I struck my cane against the earth, glaring out at the birds that rushed from the trees at the sound of wood striking stone. "Pack my things, Cait. I am going back to Weston House to help them search."

"But Mrs. Weston, Mr. Weston told you to stay here." Cait began a feeble protest.

I struck the earth once more. "If my memory serves me well, it was I that gave birth to him. He cannot command me to do anything." My son was as stupid as his father if he believed I would sit here in the country cottage while he scoured the earth for Marie. I would go to him, and I would help him get Marie back because I was perhaps the only person on earth who knew where to look.

Weston House was older than the Weston name itself. It was a sprawling Tudor mansion that sat atop a tall hill. The peaks of its roof mimicked the tops of the trees, blending in with them against the gloom of late evening as mist rolled in. Its well-kept lawns and newly pruned hedges abruptly gave way to thick, wild woods just past the large pond at the hill's base.

The carriage had barely stilled before my son, Charles, came storming out of the Weston ancestral home. He cursed at my driver and wrenched open the carriage door with such force that Miss Cait jumped in her seat like a startled cat. "I told you to stay at the cottage." He growled through a scowl, his eyes red-rimmed and raw. "You need to go home. I've enough to worry about. I will send word as soon as she is found." I could smell the alcohol on his breath from where I sat.

"And if you don't find her?" I asked, stepping down onto the familiar earth of my first marital home. "Will you leave me to wonder and dread?" I scowled at my son. He was made in his father's image. Broad and square-jawed with grey eyes and gold-ish hair. It was more silver than gold now and his face was creased with lines brought about by age and grief. While he looked more like his father, he took after me in temperament with more stubbornness than sense. I reached out and laid my hand on his shoulder. His expression relaxed beneath my touch, the child within him finding some comfort in simply having his mother with him. "You would have had to chain me to my bed to keep me away. You know that." I hugged him then and, as stoic as Charles liked to make himself seem, he relaxed in my embrace. I heard him let out a teary breath as I held him. "Charles, let me help you look. I got lost in those woods too when I first came here." I said as we pulled apart. I glanced past him down the path towards the pond and the woods beyond it. "Have you searched the pond?" I asked, swallowing an ache that radiated from my throat through my entire chest. It was there my husband-to-be had found me, washed up at the edge of the pond. I'd been gone for half a year.

"Yes, they've been dredging it all morning." He visibly winced. "They haven't found anything yet." It was then I noticed the little boats filled with men floating across the pond's still surface. They dragged nets and poked at the bottom of the pond with wooden poles. They were looking for a body. I shivered. The thought of Marie's lifeless body popping up to the surface instantly filled my veins with ice.

"And the woods, you are sure you've searched it in its entirety?" I asked as he began to walk me into the house.

"We've searched it from corner to corner of our property. The authorities are searching beyond that." He rubbed his face tiredly. "I'm beginning to fear that some stranger has taken her or... hurt her...that she's..." He swallowed hard and would not allow himself to finish those words. To speak them aloud would give them too much power.

I too had begun to have such fears. In truth, I was almost certain of it. I too had vanished just like Marie when I came to this house as a young bride. There had been no blood or signs of struggle. I had simply wandered off and eventually wandered back with far too many memories from my time in the woods. "Let me look." I implored him. "I need to help in any way that I can." They would not find her without my help. He would make sure of it.

"Mother, don't be daft. At your age you'd be more of a hindrance than anything. The woods are thick and the ground boggy in places. It is far too dangerous." He continued on, listing all the reasons it would be foolish to allow me to go looking for my granddaughter, but I ceased listening.

I would go looking for her whether he liked it or not. I had to. I was the only one who truly knew where to look and the only person alive who could maybe persuade the monster that took her to give her back. This was a trap... one set for me...a mean-spirited punishment for my escape fifty years ago and if it was me, he wished to lure back to his nest, then I would give myself back to him in exchange for her. Let him trap me. Let him cage me. Let him devour me. Marie was mine and I would save her no matter what happened to me. Everything was all I could do.