AI The gate into Richmond Park groaned open and swung back behind her, chain clinking once like a bell that refused to ring again. Frost glazed the grass, and the sky hung low, not quite clouded, not quite clear, a bruise that refused to heal . She walked with her hands in her coat pockets and her breath tucked close. The paper someone had slipped under her door rode in one pocket, folded to the size of a coin. The Heartstone rode against her sternum, warm through cotton and wool as if she had pressed a living ember there.
“All right, Rory. You made it,” she told the dark, a comfort thrown into a well.
She cut from the path into bracken and shadow, counted paces, turned by the ruined fence post, ducked under a branch that wore a crown of old plastic streamers. The city fell away in strips. Sirens thinned to nothing. Traffic turned to a faint sea and then to a hollow in her ears. Her phone torch cast a cone that picked out white mushrooms clustered like coins and the braces of deer tracks spidering across mud. Somewhere back toward the ponds, a night bird scraped iron over iron.
“If you’re a prank, you’re expensive,” she told the pendant . “And I’m not in the mood to tip.”
The Grove opened without fanfare. One pace she was under trees, the next in a ring that felt steeped in breath the way a room felt after a fight. Ancient oaks rose in a circle, their boles swollen and fissured, their bark scarred with old lightning and older carvings that fit no alphabet she had learned. Not chalk or stone but wood had set the boundary here, trunks so broad they were pillars. In the grass, wildflowers pushed up thick and defiant. Poppies bled against frost. Daisies lifted bright faces. Bluebells held tiny throats too delicate for the season.
She stopped in the mouth of it and let a hand rest on her ribs to feel the pendant answer. A pulse . Another. Like a second heartbeat clearing its throat.
“Okay,” to the dark line of trees beyond the Grove. “You wanted me in Richmond. You wrote ‘come alone, wear the stone.’ You forgot ‘bring snacks.’”
She dug her phone from her jeans. The lock screen came up, smudged with fingerprints. Midnight flickered to 00:08, then 23:59, then a blank row of dashes as if time had become shy.
“You want a voice memo? You get a voice memo.”
She thumbed the recorder and held the phone close.
“Entry one. Aurora Carter in Richmond Park, what I think is Isolde’s Grove. I found the ring. Ancient oaks — actual oaks — as standing stones. Whoever laid this out did it with a sense of humour. There are wildflowers blooming in frost. The Heartstone is warm. It… it’s pulsing. If this is a prank, it’s elaborate. If it isn’t, then—”
A rustle, not of wind—no wind—and not of an animal. The sound had weight but no source. It came from behind her left shoulder, then from her right knee, then from somewhere under the flowers. She lifted the phone and the torch beam tracked across trunks and shadows and found nothing that explained why petals moved without being touched.
“You could clap if you want me to keep going.”
Her voice sounded too bright, like glass shouted against stone. She swallowed and tried humour again because it worked on tables full of men three pints past polite and it had worked on Evan until it hadn’t.
“If you’re local, point me at the right door. I’m not here to shred the lawn.”
The phone screen went to 01:12 and then 21:04. In the torch light, mist formed a ribbon, tasting of pennies. She tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and pushed her coat aside. The chain caught the light. The Heartstone hung like a drop of blood on snow. She set the gem on her palm. Heat crept into the thin skin at the base of her fingers.
“You like this, don’t you,” to the Grove . “I bring you a match and you want me to strike it.”
The letters on the folded note in her pocket made a rectangle through the fabric. She pulled it out. The paper had creases like an old map. Whoever had written it had used black ink that bled through: Bring the Heartstone. Midnight. Stand in the Grove. Wait at the boundary. Don’t step out once you step in. The handwriting leaned left, curt, spare. No signature. She held it up and took a breath.
“Fine.”
She stepped across the line where grass changed shape and shadow changed pitch, and something cold licked at her as if she had walked through spider silk stretched between trunks. Her stomach made a fist. She stopped and counted to three because that always put breathing back in order. By the time she hit two, the Grove had grown quieter, which felt like a trick of grammar . Quieter than quiet. The kind of quiet that buried noise in peat.
“Anyone home,” to the gap between two oaks, and then to another gap as if the answer might be directional. “You gave very clear instructions for a species that loves riddles.”
The pendant warmed in a pulse that lined up not at all with her own heart.
“You’re not my heart, you’re a little parasite. We made no promises.”
From far out in the park, hooves struck wood. Not the trained clip of Mounted Police, not the panicked pound of a stag, but measured, slow as tax . She lifted the phone and listened. The sound did not approach. It circled, far to near to far, without closing.
“Fine. Games. I can do games.”
She crouched and set her torch on the grass so it cast an underlight that made the low leaves look carnivorous. With her free hand she drew the edge of her sleeve over her palm and reached for one of the carved trunks. She pressed her fingertips to the furrowed bark. Heat jumped into her skin like something under the wood had pressed back, but not at the point of contact, slightly to the left, as if the oak wore the memory of a hand laid down an inch off.
“You’re not where you look . Good for you.”
She eased back and stood and rolled her shoulders.
“All right. I’m here because someone asked. I’m not patient. Who are you?” She lifted the pendant and let it swing. “What is this? Why me?”
The Grove answered with breath. Of course the Grove didn’t breathe, but the air moved in and then out in a way lungs moved, a draft that had weight and shape. The wildflowers bowed. Her hair lifted and fell. The torch beam picked out a thousand motes, each one rising, each one curving and falling like plankton on a tide.
“Please try not to do the theatre thing,” brisk now because brisk meant not panicked. “If you want a conversation, use sentences. I can do Gaelic if we’re feeling traditional. I can do Cantonese if you want a takeaway.”
No laughter. No crickets. The scrape of iron on iron moved in the trees to her right and then to her left.
Her phone lit her jaw. She looked at the memo’s length and frowned. Nine minutes. She had been here maybe three. The clock rolled back to twelve and then forward to two-oh-two. She locked it, stuffed it back in her pocket, and drew the chain over her head. The silver went cool under her nails. The Heartstone filled her palm and threw a dull crimson in her skin. Heat built and held and then pulsed again with the patience of a long-distance runner.
“You’re a compass,” she told it. “All right, show me north.”
She held it out and turned in a slow circle. The heat did nothing. She turned again, smaller. There — when her hand passed a gap between two specific oaks, the stone throbbed and a low hum settled in her teeth.
“Got you.”
She walked toward that gap, then stopped with her toes a hair shy of it because the note had said not to step out once she stepped in. Boundary games. Always boundary games.
“You want me to wait at the boundary. I’m at the boundary.” She raised her voice. “I can stand here all night. I have better shoes than sense.”
In the dark, something sighed. Not leaves. The shape of it pressed past her ears in the way a peal of bells shaped air. A new sound threaded it: the chitter of voices just out of hearing. She caught words, then lost them. Names. Places. A woman laughed in a way that drew tears rather than joy and then folded back into hush. Another voice joined — her mother, clear as a line left on an old voicemail, lilting with chalk dust and bedtime and the taste of stew.
Aurora, love, you keep your clever hands out of doors that don’t belong to you.
She straightened, jaw tight.
“You get no votes,” to the oak that had worn the voice.
The laugh Michael used outside the lecture hall rolled through another tree. Evan’s breath, a hitch, a promise bent into a threat, came from the ground where the flowers grew thickest. She ground her teeth and swallowed a curse.
“You don’t get votes either.”
The chitter shifted. Another voice bled through, a child’s, high and old at once, not a voice she knew. It repeated her words, accents in wrong places, weight falling on the syllables she never stressed.
You don’t get votes either.
“Echoes.”
Her head lifted. That wasn’t an echo . It came back too fast and without the small human mistakes she made. It brushed close to her ear and then to the other. She took a single step back and her heel found the line of the boundary. Her shoulder blades pulled together. She didn’t retreat.
“I’m not moving.”
The Heartstone burned now in her palm, measured , relentless. She thought of helplines and exit signs. She thought of fingers tapping a court table while a witness fidgeted. She thought of Silas calling up the stairs to ask if she wanted an omelette at two in the morning and of how real that could feel .
“I’ll tell you why I’m here,” to the dark where the hum in her molars grew at last to a thin tone she could hear. “You’ve been leaning on me since the alley behind Golden Empress. You dropped this into my lap with no paperwork. You use me to carry something you can’t touch. You can hand me a note but not your name. That makes you a coward, or it makes you bound. Either way, talk.”
Her phone buzzed. The sound made her flinch and close her fingers around the pendant so the edge cut into her palm. She hauled the phone out and thumbed the screen. EVA glowed across it. The call had not come in. The phone had slid to VOICE MEMO, and the waveform ran high like a storm.
“Perfect timing,” dry because dry tasted like courage . She hit speaker.
“Eva, you’re not going to guess where I am,” to the phone and the Grove both. “If I drop off, call the Parks police and tell them I’m a tourist who can’t read, maybe they’ll be gentle.”
Her own voice answered from the speaker, a replay from moments ago.
All right, show me north.
She looked down. The waveform kept rolling. No red record line. She hit stop and the phone went black and skittered a string of symbols and threw up a calendar reminder for last March. She locked it and slid it back.
“Bad form.”
The ground bulged under the wildflowers as if a fox had nosed up from a den, then settled. She looked hard into the dark between the two oaks where the pendant had burned hottest. There, the night had a seam, a dark inside a dark, a fold of air too neat to be nature. Not a door, not a hole. A place that wanted a name and had none.
“You want me to open that.”
A rustle up in the branches answered like a shrug.
“I don’t open anything that wants me to open it for free,” curt, like her mother when she caught out a student copying. “What do I get?”
Silence bent nearer, a lean figure no eye could catch, pressed against the idea of her. She set her jaw and held the stone up and let it hang in the heat. Her hand shook now, not because fear ran her system but because the line between what was asked and what was owed made her body argue with itself.
“I will not step out of your ring,” to the ear that pressed at her nape. “I will not put this inside your seam without terms. You want a bargain, you make a bargain. The last time I took a thing that hummed in my teeth, I ended up with a scar. Do you want me to show you?”
A gust that was not wind rolled around her knees and up her hips as if hands had pressed there and then vanished. Wildflowers nodded. The chittering ceased as if slit off with a knife. For the first time since she entered the Grove, there was clear, clean quiet.
“Better,” to the stillness . “Now we speak.”
In the quiet, the sound of hooves came again, long and far and steady. She stared into the seam. Her own breath started to hurry and she reined it in with the old trick—name three things you can touch. Bark. Cold chain. Wool cuff. Name three you can smell. Moss. Distant smoke. Her own skin. Name three you can hear. Hooves. Her pulse . A tone that made her teeth grit.
“Deal terms,” through her teeth. “I give you proximity to this—this Heartstone. In exchange, you quit using my voice like a toy. You quit reaching through my messages and calling me to parks at midnight. You quit pushing on my past like a bruise. You offer me one useful answer. Something I can carry out of here and use.”
Silence held like a throat that refused to swallow.
A voice moved up from the seam, raw and clean, no age on it, no sex, no warmth or cold, like a note struck on glass.
Your name.
She snorted.
“Very funny. You know that.”
Your name, again, firmer, not louder, not closer, firmer the way stone was firmer than bread.
“What about it.”
Borrowed, it said without inflection.
She squared her shoulders.
“I borrowed nothing.”
Not yours, Laila.
The name slid under her skin the way a fish ran under ice. Her mouth opened, and a sound started and did not finish. She shut her teeth on it because the Grove did not get her shock as a treat.
“You don’t get to call me that.”
Return it, the voice-not-voice in the seam said, and the tone had not changed but the world had taken a step to the left .
“You—no. We are not playing I’m Rubber You’re Glue with my birth certificate.”
Return it. Wear the right one. Open the right door.
She set the Heartstone against her palm until it hurt again, her head full of white. Her throat felt raw as if she had run full tilt without warming up.
“Listen,” sharp, tight. “If you want me to do anything, you stop with the— with the performance. I am Aurora Carter. I’m not whatever you’re dragging out of the river. I have a job that pays in tips and bruised knuckles and sometimes soup. I do not return names like library books.”
The stone built heat and built more until her fingers felt blistered and she didn’t let go. She lifted it, ready to toss it, to throw it at the roots, to force something to break, and then she lowered it again because she didn’t throw away leverage. She drew a long breath and spoke softer but sharper, like a blade honed on glass.
“Try again. Another answer. You have a hundred riddles. Pick one with teeth. Who sent the note?”
From the seam, her own voice answered, not the recording, this time with her breath pattern, her little rush at the end of a phrase, her Cardiff edges sanded by London.
You did.
She laughed, one harsh bark that scared no one. Her coat hung open, her chest cold, her palm a furnace.
“Right. Of course. We love a paradox.”
On the left, the furrowed bark of one oak shifted not at all but her eye convinced itself it had, the way a painting’s eyes followed you down a hall. Something laced between two trunks, thin as hair, taut as a violin string. Dew gathered on it, trembled , fell, and the droplet fell too slow and then too fast and then not at all before it hit the grass. Her stomach rolled. Her hand tightened on the chain.
“Okay. Enough science experiments. You want me to open your neat little fold? You give me something I can live with.”
Time, the seam breathed. Then the trees answered as if it had thrown its voice. Then the wildflowers answered, as if the sound could live in veins.
You will live with time.
The hooves stopped. The quiet did not. Her phone climbed into chirp and then clunk and went dead. Through the ring of oaks, farther than the ring and right up against her ear, the scream of a distant fox tore once and stitched itself back into silence as if no animal had made it. She licked her teeth. Copper. The chain cut a new groove into her neck.
“I live with time now,” between clenched teeth. “That’s the trick of it.”
The seam made no answer. The heat in the Heartstone rose and fell, rose and fell, refusing to set a rhythm she could catch. She pulled the chain once like a bell rope as if the Grove might ring.
“All right,” and her voice went level as a bench. “We bargain by increments then. One step. You stop with the voices of people who don’t belong to you. You stop with my own. You use yours. You have one. I heard it. Clean. Like glass. Use that. You do that, I take one step. Not out. Up to your line. I offer the stone—near, not through. We see what shifts.”
The seam held like a breath kept too long.
A small voice, not child, not adult, not human by any measure her brain could grab, sang a single half-note that tugged at a muscle under her eye.
Near, it sang, and the word did not carry language so much as intention.
She let the chain slip and brought the Heartstone up to the edge of that wrongness until the skin across her palm felt like the top of a kettle and the fine hairs on her wrist lay down. Her feet stayed planted in the grass. Her heels dug in. She stared into what was not a hole and dared it to blink.
“Near,” under her breath.
The flowers bent toward the seam as if sun rose there. The carvings in the oak caught the torch’s glance and reorganised into something that meant something for a heartbeat and then meant nothing again. The ground under her heels pushed up once as if breathing . The hooves had not started again, but she felt in her bones the rider had turned his head.
A beetle as long as her thumb clicked out from between two roots, walked in a line as neat as a soldier’s, then disappeared under a bell of blue flowers that did not bruise under its weight .
“If you’re going to do this,” she told the seam, “do it without eating me. I’m short on spare parts.”
The quiet held. The stone burned. The hum striped her teeth and sank into her jaw. The seam quivered as if light moved through it in a medium she could not name, like fat cooling, like glass slumping in heat.
On the very edge of her vision, something tall and misplaced leaned out from behind one of the oaks and then leaned back as if it had checked a box and lost interest. She refused it the interest of a glance. The world would not unhook itself from its axis because she declined to look . She brought the Heartstone closer, half the span of a coin. Heat doubled down. The cut edges of the gem bit her skin. A scent like rain on tarmac after a lorry braked hard rolled over the flowers.
“All right,” through teeth, through heat, through the ache climbing the tendons in her hand. “We’re near.”