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Harrow House has stood atop its high hill, behind shuttered gates and up the long walk bordered by wilted weeds, longer than anyone can remember. It was here before the Maidens first built upon this ground; before they laid down the tentative foundations, in the valley below the House’s high, overlooking hill, of what the Maidens came to call Marrowmont. Though the House looked different then.
Its present shape and state it must attribute to its current occupant. When its last inhabitant died, the Maidens had desired nothing to do with it; the House had reached out, offering aid and solace, but their undeath was incompatible with the House’s … hunger.
And so, the House had been abandoned long indeed by the time the Mother first stumbled into its gravelled grounds, its once-beautiful gardens already dying; this strange, new, towering figure having come in a storm, the distant Abbey’s bell peeling long and hard for aid in her wake. The Mother freshly furious at being denied a prize the House still doesn’t fully understand – the thing that beats, deep in the earth: the heart of the city, figuratively if not geographically, that the Maidens built.
The House spoke soothingly to the tender fly that had wandered into its web. The sheer power it felt bleeding from every pore of this strange potential occupant a boon too beautiful to ignore. It whispered honeyed words: promised shelter and strength.
Only to find the Mother not bound by what the House wove around her. This newcomer listening keenly instead to every rumble and creak of the House’s walls, to the faint creak of the roots it had already dug deep into the earth beneath Marrowmont in the long centuries before this place was called so. This towering, terrifying woman standing strong against rain and wind looked up and into the House’s windows and saw past its light and its finery and its slow, genteel dilapidations to its hidden heart. And the House shuddered to be looked upon so. To be so seen.
But with that fear came a thrill, echoed in the Mother’s smile.
Because at last, it had found a kindred spirit; another eater of the lost. And one whose delicious fury shone as bright as a second sun.
But it has been so long since the Mother spoke to her in soothing tones; since they feasted together. Now the Mother only feeds herself. And the House grows restless. And it watches, waiting, spinning fresh webs as its occupants grow in number, all while the Mother gluts and the House goes hungry. As the House grows resentful.
And so it watches, as the night fades and its other occupants – the coven – talk in quiet whispers not meant for the ears of the House’s Mistress…
