This prose poem was first published in HumanKind Literary Journal. Years later, Stella’s voice resonates in Through the Yew Hedge, distilling the fog of adoption into a single image.

Haibun
Mirrors of Loss

I can talk about how my mother surrendered me. Although a newborn, I knew. It mattered. She held me for nine months and in her arms for a brief hello. When I learned Sarah was not my first mother, I asked, “Will you leave me, too?” I worried, “Who will take care of me?” I dreaded a final separation. Ultimate loss: loss of self. I must have caused this pain of separation. Unwanted. Unworthy. With no one person to see in the mirror — no likeness. When I found my birth mother, I felt the wow of reunion, recovery, and self-realization. My fears abated in the knowing; maybe her fears did, too. Lessened, never lost.

Haiku
A sheer scrim ripples
over a girl’s image —
waking to now.

© Mary Ellen Gambutti

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The Silverton Foundations

The green valleys, rolling hills, and silvery morning haze reminded travelers of their beloved homeland glens. On this rich landscape in their adopted new land, they built a pretty village and set it like a Celtic knot in a deep curve of the northern bank of a fork in the Primrose River. In time, English ivy would clamber over the white stucco walls of their timber-framed houses, and horse hooves and wagon wheels would smooth the meandering cobblestone streets.

Elizabeth Silverton was born in 1832 to the daughter of a German publisher and a British industrialist. After a Fine Arts and Botany education in Britain, she chose academia over marriage and emigrated from England to North America. In 1867, her dream to create a botanical sanctuary became possible, and she purchased a partially deforested property on the Primrose River in New England. In partnership with her brother, she founded Silverton University, and they incorporated the Village of Silverton.

At The Silverton Estate, recent history overlaid ancient traditions, as exemplified in the School of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Medieval Studies. Across the red arched footbridge from the campus, the conservation-minded and creative visionary, Elizabeth, merged botanical science and a deep study of European medieval monasteries. She brought to bear her fine arts education, extensive travel in Celtic regions, and a penchant for landscape and garden design in consultation with artisan builders and professional landscape gardeners. The sprawling Tudor-style Manor House, medieval-style monastery garden, the cottages, expansive lawns, ponds, waterways, and remaining cedars would thrive. In turn, the Estate would come under the protection and care of the Department of Medieval Studies.

Sarah

Sarah Caldwell’s Bachelor of Science in Botany and Master’s in Medieval Studies from Silverton University shaped her distinctive scholarly approach. Her PhD dissertation, “Healing and Holiness: The Medicinal Codex of Medieval Monastery Gardens,” investigated how medieval healers embedded comprehensive medical knowledge within garden layouts, using systems that unified body and spirit.

Across the front of the property on Cedar Lane, a brick wall ended up in piers that supported a heavy Iron Gate, with a hanging plaque that read, “Please Keep Closed.”

On the icy mid-winter morning that Dr. Sarah J. Caldwell approached The Silverton Estate for an eleven o’clock appointment, her scholarly aspirations intertwined with enchantment. The gate latch stuck, and a thorny whip of a rebellious rose clambering over the brick piers lashed out, snagging her jacket.

Undeterred, Sarah shouldered into the gate. Its hinges groaned, and it gave way. As Sarah entered the threshold, the rose, though dormant, bloomed black.

James

“Careful of the thorns,” James Hawthorn, who stood on the shoveled path, warned her a bit late, but, on time for their meeting, he extended his wool-clad hand to Sarah.

“Great to meet you, James,” Sarah said, accepting his handshake. The Estate’s Archivist was dressed in corduroy slacks, a down parka, and sturdy snow boots. At thirty, he was five years younger than Sarah.

“I see you’re prepared for the tour,” James said, noting her knee-high footwear. “You’ll get a look at The Garden’s bones, if not their blooms. I think the designers call it ‘structure.’”

Sarah smiled, replying, “Indeed!”

James was not a designer, nor a horticulturist, but he was somewhat familiar with The Garden’s layout and features, having grown up on the Estate, the son of the groundskeeper. “I understand you’re in the thick of your book research. I’m at your service,” James said with a slight bow.

Early in her academic career, Sarah had held the Elizabeth Silverton Fellowship, and continued research into The Medicinal Codex of Gardens: A Medieval Monastic Pharmacopeia.

Sarah replied, “Thank you, James. I’ve studied the drawings, and I’m familiar with the garden’s evolution.”

The giant Yew Hedge had first obscured her view, but as they walked, and she squinted against the glare down toward the glistening silver herbs, she discerned the Monastery Garden’s geometry: tightly pruned and low, the evergreen boxwood hedge formed crisp, frost-glazed quadrants bisected by an earth-toned, sandstone walkway.

Amidst the wide winter landscape, Sarah visualizes the herbary in a colorful season, with all its shapes and textures. Purple and lavender spikes in contrast to the full, green leaves of lemon balm, the tall stalks of echinacea, and its cones of violet purple and vibrant pink against the bushy foliage.

The beds are dedicated to types of herbs and flowers; each of their healing properties is marked with miniature wooden signs, all meticulously organized. In one quadrant, a germander border contains rollicking herbs — more texture, structure, and purpose in Elizabeth Silverton’s Garden...

“What is that aura, or aroma — like pine — like rosemary?”

“Oh! You’ve picked up the scent of the ancient Cedars at the far reaches of The Estate,” said James, “remnants of the storied, primeval forest that emerged after the Ice Age. We’ve done our best to protect the fragment that Elizabeth Silverton willed to the University. Much wilderness was lost to speculators before she acquired and preserved the meadows, ponds, creeks, and trees, and built the Tudor Mansion.”

James continued to speak as they walked, “The University contracts with a small squad of conservationists. ‘Old Cedra,’ as she has been called, guides their choices and ways of protection. She’s been here forever in her primitive hut back in one of the Cedar Groves. Elizabeth was a master herbalist, and Cedra was an intellectual protégé of hers, I guess you could say...”

Sarah’s mind wanders to a melodic murmur, like whispered secrets across snowy tranquility, a gentle buzzing and whirring of wings, both near and echoed. She visualizes ancient healing powers of apothecary herbs, the concentrically circular beds, from the outermost layer of rosemary to the medicinal herbs, and at its heart, the Inner Sanctum.

Along the parterre paths, she encounters a bare-stemmed Black Rose in bloom, protected by the stone wall on which it climbs. She lifts a blossom to her face, the heady perfume of its deeply hued, reflective petals...

Sarah strolled like it was summer back to the Cedar Gate, where James stood swinging his arms and shuffling to keep warm. She said dreamily, “This is the perfect place for me to work on my book.”

As they crossed the Cedar Gate threshold under the Yew Hedge, James said, “The Estate has quite a history. But you’re familiar...”

Her somewhat detached reply was, “I see that the herbal Fairy Ring is thriving!”

James smiled at Sarah’s enthusiasm. “Elizabeth prized roses as symbols of love and devotion. A stone wall encloses her Rose Garden, with over a hundred varieties. It’s way at the back of the property, next to what was once Elizabeth’s private cottage, now in disrepair. No funding for its upkeep. My father, Charles, does keep the roses pruned, though. He’s the groundskeeper.”

Sarah again escapes the frozen landscape to revel in early alpine spring bulbs: crocuses, fritillaria, tiny species tulips, and jonquilla hybrids. As they pass the wide double borders, it’s summer, and the long, wide, Gertrude Jekyll-style borders are in bloom, tangled with old-fashioned hollyhocks, delphiniums, and foxgloves, edged in lady’s mantle, dianthus, and aquilegia...

“It’s wonderful that The Estate keeps up these traditional plantings. Tell me all you know, James.”

James continued, “Dad has a small crew to help with weeding and deadheading in the perennial borders, and with upkeep around The Estate. There’s plenty to explore when the weather warms.”

Charles

Wearing a green flannel jacket and brown overalls with thickly padded knees, he emerged with an aluminum snow shovel from behind the sprawling bare twigs of a bridal wreath spirea. A fringe of snow sprouted from the back edge of his plaid wool cap, and his frame was a bit bent.

James’s father introduced himself: “I’m Charles Hawthorn, and you’re a medievalist.”

Not a question... Sarah accepted his bare handshake, rough with age and from tending to the earth. “Hello, yes, I’m Sarah Caldwell. Pleased to meet you, Charles.”

“The Garden’s been waiting for you,” he said by way of welcome.

Sarah raised an eyebrow as the Groundskeeper continued, “We’re in the Keeper’s Cottage. Margaret and I have been here all our married lives. And you’ve met James, so you know he works for the University, too. You’re always welcome to stop by our home if you need anything. You do know the Manor House is empty...”

Again, not a question... Somewhat bemused, Sarah answered, “I’ve heard that.”

“The administration wants it to be occupied,” Charles said. “This old Estate needs a resident curator again.”

Although her interest was piqued, Sarah preferred nonchalance in response to Charles’s amiable but forward approach.

James piped up, “Most residents have been scholars, and many were connected to the Silverton family, though Miss Silverton... well, you must know...”

Sensing Sarah’s unease, James redirected, “Well, thank you for coming, Sarah. We’ll speak again soon.”

“Thanks for the lovely tour, James. And thank you, Charles.”

Charles saluted his reply.

“Well, I’m looking forward to making a start,” Sarah said privately to James, as he assisted her in clearing the gate and its unruly Black Rose.

“Bye!” She smiled as she pivoted right, toward the red arched footbridge over the Primrose to the campus. Born and raised in Silverton, Sarah had lived in a Village apartment for the past four years.

That afternoon, she would stop at her childhood home, several blocks from the campus, to visit her mother, Helen Caldwell. She wanted to weigh the benefits against the difficulties of living in a grand old Tudor-style home. She thought she heard The Estate call to her.

“Residency would enhance my position as curator. Living amidst the gardens and history of The Silverton Estate while I’m on sabbatical to write my book, I’d have access to the Silverton Archives.”

Sarah was captivated by the cultural symbols in the Medieval Monastic Gardens, the early texts, and mystical and pragmatic medieval botany.

Another project of hers was “Translating and Annotating a 13th-Century Herbal Manuscript.” The Silverton gardens would be a living laboratory for Sarah.

“Indeed, what a great opportunity!” Helen supported her daughter’s decision. The two were at a turning point. Helen’s husband, Robert Caldwell, a local architect, had passed away a year earlier. She and Sarah grappled with grief. Sarah, too, was faced with both decisions about her career advancement and her mother’s well-being. Helen was thinking about selling their family home, possibly renting an apartment near the campus. Suddenly, Sarah’s career path was clearer, and she could be persuasive.

“Mom, would you consider moving to the Manor with me? I’d apply to the realtor who handles The Estate, and maybe we can move in March. We both could find healing there.” The Estate on Cedar Lane presented the possibility of mutual renewal. “When Professor Winters suggested me for the Curator position, I didn’t realize the house was unoccupied. It feels like the ideal arrangement for both of us.”

Helen agreed with Sarah that she’d been spending too much time alone in their 1930s white colonial home behind the picket fence, and was excited for an enlivening adventure.

The Move

The inconvenience of packing and boxing was overshadowed by the excitement of moving across the Primrose River into the Silverton Manor.

“What great timing!” Helen said, arranging her folkloric research volumes. “My house sold three weeks after you were offered the curatorship.”

Charles Hawthorn voiced his approval of their move to The Estate: “The house has a special draw for artists and scholars. Elizabeth had certain stones shipped from a Welsh quarry to build one of the walls,” he told Helen, who, as a folklorist, was keenly interested.

Charmed by the Tudors’ quirky blend of elegance and eccentricity, Helen and Sarah planned to gently edge the grand main floor rooms of the spinster’s residence into an eclectic modern style by adding their furnishings to Elizabeth’s remaining Victoriana.

As Sarah planned, they were in at the start of spring and took to the rhythms of The Estate. Even the house seemed to unfold around them, its spaces inviting new purposes.

One morning, Sarah paused in the doorway of an upstairs room that had a long view out toward the gardens. “I considered placing our reference books here, but...” She trailed off, and Helen, observing her daughter’s dreamy expression, asked, “What do you think it should be used for?”

Sarah surprised herself with the words: “Maybe a child’s room.”

Over breakfast, Sarah’s thoughts crystallized. “The local adoption agency has a waiting list for foster parents,” she said, admitting she’d inquired. “I could be eligible to care for a child aged six to nine. Fostering an older child or two, I could continue researching and writing. They’d thrive in open spaces, learning about plants and gardens. And you’d have a ready audience for your stories, Mom.”

Possibilities flew back and forth across the breakfast table. Helen said, “You’ve always enjoyed taking on challenges.” She easily embraced the idea of a child in her life again. Sarah replied, “I think I’m ready.”

She contacted the agency, taking the first steps in the process of becoming a foster parent. There were forms and hard questions for the single, middle-aged female as a prospective parent. She was clear and earnest about her desire to provide a loving and caring home for a child. She was added to the waiting list.

Sarah’s new routine balanced her plant curator duties with her research into Elizabeth Silverton’s garden design and practical uses.

Years ago, as Elizabeth had stipulated, the University transferred what remained of Elizabeth’s archives back to The Estate. As its current archivist, James handled materials a few others had: her Herbarium, garden plans in watercolor and ink, personal correspondence, receipts, and architectural drawings. Now he welcomed Sarah’s botanical knowledge and Helen’s expertise. While Sarah traced The Garden’s evolution into the present, Helen pursued folkloric parallels, and James stitched their findings to The Estate’s historical record.

“Elizabeth’s bequest required that her papers stay with The Gardens,” James said, unlocking and opening a wood-and-glass case on a conference room wall. He lifted out a framed letter. “Here it is, the document establishing The Estate as University property, and Elizabeth’s intentions for The Gardens. Her vision.”

Sarah leaned closer and began to read aloud:

Bequest of Elizabeth Silverton

Spring Equinox, 1892

To the Board of Trustees, Silverton University, Department of Medieval Studies

It is with careful thought that I bequeath my Estate and Gardens to Silverton University, with the charge that they be maintained as a faithful recreation of Medieval Monastery Gardens. I intend these grounds to be a place of peace and contemplation, as the monks of old designed them, while preserving the rare botanical specimens I have gathered throughout my life.

The Garden’s design follows historical precedent in its quadrant structure, drawing from manuscripts of European Monastic Gardens. I ask that its integrity be preserved in perpetuity: the Concentric Herb Beds arranged according to apothecary principle, propagating the collection of uncommon plants.

I hope that The Gardens continue to serve both scholarship and solace, as a living document for students of history and botany, and a contemplative refuge for future generations.

I further request that all plans, drawings, and catalogues remain housed in the Manor’s Archives, for proximity to The Gardens, so that future curators may have recourse to the original records.

The accompanying endowment shall provide for the ongoing care, study, and preservation of this rare work.

With scholarly devotion,

Elizabeth Silverton

Sarah’s voice faded to a whisper, and James, respecting the moment’s stillness, said softly, “The Silverton Legacy. Sarah, with your background in Medieval Botany and Garden Design, you were well placed to continue Elizabeth’s work as Curator.”

“It’s an honor to be part of this Garden family,” Sarah replied, acknowledging her weighty commission.

Summer Walk

On a hot, bright afternoon, Sarah and Helen meandered down the brick pathway that bordered the perennial beds. “I’ve been looking over Elizabeth’s notes on medicinal properties,” Sarah explained. “I want to bring some of her approaches into my own methodology. Previous curators respected most of Elizabeth’s original plantings. I want to do more; to restore her botanical legacy.”

The towering ancient Yew Hedge marked the boundary between formal and informal spaces. Its topmost feathery foliage, where pruning shears seldom ventured, captured the midsummer sparkle. Helen ran her hand along the hedge’s tightly sheared profile, stopping at the rough-sawn cedar board gate with a high arch set snugly within the hedge.

At the start of his career as a groundskeeper, Charles had replicated Elizabeth’s Celtic gate, replacing the original at the request of the University. It was kept safe in the Archive’s storeroom with the aviary, also long out of commission.

“Perfectly maintained,” said Helen of The Yew Hedge, “yet Charles said it requires minimal trimming, as if...”

“As if it maintains itself?” Sarah completed her mother’s thought with a hint of skepticism. Yet, Sarah admitted she’d observed a few botanical oddities, “... Plants blooming out of season, unusual growth patterns...”

Helen smiled at her daughter’s cautious phrasing. “It seems that Elizabeth had an unconventional approach to horticulture. In her private social gatherings in the Manor House, she was quoted (off the record) that The Garden responded to more than soil chemistry and light conditions.”

Through the portal and onto the terrace, both women felt a shift in ambient temperature. The hedge, the brick wall on three sides, the warm sandstone paving, and the murmur of cooling water made a pleasant microclimate. The sheltered, cloister-style raised beds in quadrants that held precisely planted herbs were a highly structured yet aesthetically satisfying botanical display. It contrasted with the naturalistic perennial borders, wide meadow, marshes, ponds, streams, and forest. At The Garden’s central axis, the three-tiered Iron Fountain heightened the afternoon’s dazzle with its arched spray, and reflecting pool ripples and rainbows.

Helen and Sarah were relaxed, steeped in the magic of the afternoon, and pleased with their decision to accept The Estate’s challenges and enjoy its comforts. Heading back toward the House, Sarah mused, “Tomorrow I’ll revisit Elizabeth’s planting schemes and cycles, the living rhythms of The Garden, what stirs beneath the soil. To explore, even embrace her intentions and her purposes — beyond her official documentation.” Helen smiled in reply.

The last of the boxes could wait; Elizabeth Silverton’s Garden legacy had taken precedence.

By the end of their first summer on The Estate, Helen and Sarah were well settled. Sarah was immersed in research and discovery in The Garden. Helen enjoyed walks in green and paved spaces. She thought about her husband, Robert, who had some acquaintance with Silverton history, though not a medievalist. Helen felt sure he would have been pleased that his wife and daughter were living in an aesthetic environment surrounded by herbaceous plants and rare architecture. They had their choice of reading and recreational rooms with tall windows and comfortable seating.

Helen had taken up baking bread and cooking in the once forbidding AGA cooker, at first enlisting the aid of affable Margaret Hawthorn to demonstrate the fundamentals of the imposing combination gas-and-wood oven.

Their new way of life afforded new purposes, restfulness, and renewed companionship.

The Estate’s Arteries

Autumn’s cooling breath carried wet weather from the woodlands through The Yew Hedge and up to the Keeper’s Cottage and Manor House, and hearths were soon lit against the dampness.

The first heavy rains revealed aspects of Elizabeth’s design not apparent in the summer, so Sarah, James, and Helen donned ponchos and wellies, ventured onto the sodden lawns and gardens to witness The Estate’s water workings; the irrigation network extending from the Primrose River underground and out through the property.

At the windy northwest corner of the Medieval Garden, a series of carved stone gargoyles, the size of five-gallon jugs, had come to life, spouting rainwater from garish open mouths into a communal trough, draining discreetly into an intricate system of rills.

“This is a unified water management system,” Sarah explained, leaning where the stone channel disappeared under the greenhouse.

James produced a sketch of the original blueprints from his pocket to show Sarah and Helen. The trio eyed the damp paper; their umbrellas joined against the drizzle.

“According to these plans, seven main waterways run beneath the Medieval Garden, with thirty-two secondary veins branching off through the quadrants and perennial beds.”

Sarah’s blonde bangs clung damply to her forehead, and she separated the fringe, saying, “Perfect moisture balance, mostly gravity-fed.”

Helen examined the stone edge of the rill that trickled liquid life into the perennials. She traced the smooth, carved symbols: spirals, knots, and stylized eyes with her index finger. “They are similar to those in monastic water systems throughout medieval Europe in Celtic regions. Water, a threshold element, connects the visible and invisible worlds.”

Sarah noted, “Elizabeth documented certain plant species thriving regardless of conditions. She classified plants not only by sunlight and soil preferences, but by their relationship to the water flow here, some, marked as threshold, positioned where water emerges or disappears.”

The three colleagues followed the main rill to the central fountain, where water burbled through stone basins before flowing outward along four channels aligned with the cardinal directions. The fountain featured carved Celtic knots intertwined with Elizabeth’s Herbarium motifs.

Sarah noted that the fountain water level stayed even despite rainfall accumulation. “It’s a regulating system. Overflow is channeled and redirected to drought-sensitive areas or out to the lawns.”

From the lip of the bottom basin, excess water spilled over and into four channels. Helen said they represent the four rivers of paradise.

“Remarkable precision,” Sarah’s voice held a trace of awe, “when you observe Iris and water mint arranging themselves in the channels, adjusting their growth patterns to seasonal water flow.”

As the rain intensified, James said, “Dad mentioned his predecessor instructed him against tampering with the water channels, even if they seemed to malfunction. ‘The Garden corrects itself.’”

“I’d dismiss such a statement, except for what I’ve seen,” Sarah said. “Elizabeth seems to have designed a responsive arterial system where The Garden’s structure reacts to subtle changes in the environment with organic intelligence.” She murmured, Water as a medium between worlds.

Helen replied, “Elizabeth surely knew that the monks made use of water as the life of their gardens, and that if properly channeled, it is more than hydration for plants. It is communication.”

Sarah’s journal entry that evening was a nod to her new awareness:

The water system functions with remarkable efficiency during heavy rainfall. Plant response continues to defy conventional explanations.

Notable: Morning glories appear at junctures where water emerges from underground channels. Helen’s interpretation of symbolic carvings suggests deliberate integration of water as a threshold element. Consider: Elizabeth’s water system may serve functions beyond irrigation — possibly creating conditions for what she termed in her notes “permeability between states.”

Sarah’s botanical expertise could not have prepared her for events three months later at mid-winter.

end of introduction.

To read the full novella:

Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic

By Islay Corwin

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©Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

Welcome to Through the Yew Hedge, a lyrical work of magical realism infused with gothic atmosphere, botanical lore, and the disquiet of hidden histories.

About the Story

At the Silverton Estate, a secluded world of cedar groves, hidden libraries, medieval gardens, and forgotten archives, her adoptive mother, Sarah, a botanist and curator, has spent years documenting these “anomalies” without explanation.

Guided by three ancient guardians and drawn ever deeper into the Estate’s concealed histories, Stella must confront the fracture at the center of her life. To survive, she must reclaim the selves adoption divided: Ruth Ann and Stella, science and enchantment, loss and love.

Blending magical realism with the emerging shadows of gothic dark academia, Through the Yew Hedge explores identity, legal erasure, inherited memory, and the systems that shape belonging.

Thank you!

Books 1 and 2 of the Silverton Estate Duology
can be read as standalones. Now widely available in e-book format.

The Silverton Estate Duology

Through the Yew Hedge

Through the Iron Gate

©Mary Ellen Gambutti 2025-2026

PROLOGUE

The Foretelling

Under the stark flicker of fluorescent lights, white moths flutter cryptic scripts: What does Virgo portend? The prophecy of place and time, the raison d’être? She, the child of changing seasons, was pushed into the Autumn Equinox, delivered in sorrow on the first day of fall under a sapphire sky, on the cusp of Libra, the Just.

The bus ticket vibrates in Ellen’s coat pocket, her choice like the weight of lead: an escape, a remedy, but not a salvation. She trembles as she sets the baby basket behind the farthest bench, out of the cold gusts of wind that rush across the concrete platform.

She pins her plea, penned in loss and stained by tears, to the Mercy Shelter baby blanket: Protect Ruth Ann, Sweeten her life. She places a memory, a kiss like honey and salt on the infant’s forehead.

The Taking

Three elvish figures, wearing sparkling silver and green, emerge through the ticket-booth surveillance mirror, luminous and clear in their purpose.

Ellen shudders at their chiming voices. Familiar and foreboding, they stand full height around her baby. She knows them from shiny surfaces, reflections, in the shelter where they cajoled her until, distraught, she acquiesces to their coaxing in the twilight.

Your baby will be safe, she’ll be found, assures Eleris. In the ancient garden, she’ll come into her heritage, predicts Cedra. Under the human’s care, under our vigilance, she shall blossom. She’ll bridge worlds, promises Selwyn.

Accepting she is flawed and cannot be a proper mother, Ellen turns to board the waiting bus.

Hurry! Harmful fumes! They shriek, they shape shift, they shrink. They lift the baby in her basket, disappear into the reflective portal, and float on the Winter Solstice breeze to the Garden where blue morning glories bloom in the snow.

The complete story is available as an ebook:
https://books2read.com/ThroughtheYewHedge

Hello, Readers, Friends ~ I hope this note from Beyond the Hedge finds you well.

In my March 30th post Where Worlds Meet, I wrote about my foray into “the in-between” from an adoptee’s standpoint, in my novella, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic. Somewhere in that crossing from memoir to fiction, I began to understand something about integration, from the Fae, from Ruth Ann-Stella-Questa, and from how we are restored and find ourselves.

The Yew Hedge is the mysterious threshold where origins blur, and ancestral memories live just beyond reach. For adoptee Stella, the Medieval Garden, where cultivated quadrants meet wild cedar groves, is her place of integration. Two landscapes exist in relation to each other: the rational, ordered rows of herbs representing her adoptive life, and the Cedar Forest Fae, her otherworldly guardians, who carry her origins.

Wholeness is not choosing one over the other. It is becoming the gardener who walks between them.

Three things a healer must hold: the root that is hidden, the water that remembers, and the wound that does not speak. For not all illness declares itself, and not all cures are without cost.

In the tradition of the Welsh 13th-century Physicians of Myddfai, healing was a relational act between the visible and the invisible. Helen’s observation in the novel that “water is a threshold element” mirrors the adoptee’s unique position — at the border between the “Otherworld” of their origins and the empirical reality of their upbringing.

For an adoptee, the “empirical” is the life that can be seen and accounted for: their legal name, their adoptive family, their cultural environment. The “mythic intuition” reflects the more spectral connection to biological origins and ancestral inheritance; present, but not fully accessible. Just as the Myddfai physicians merged herbal knowledge with unseen understanding, the adoptee is asked to hold both lived experience and what precedes it, allowing something coherent to emerge over time.

As the estate’s arteries suggest, wholeness is not a static destination. It is the permeability between worlds, the courage to let the water of one’s history flow through the stone of one’s present. As with our heroine, the work is complex.

Ruth Ann. Stella. Questa.

The adoptee must bridge disparate worlds to achieve wholeness; to integrate their lived experience with the “Otherworld” of their pre-adoption history to form a cohesive identity. Her oral tradition is fractured, so she takes up the act of telling, writing the story in her own language. Finding metaphors to make it live in the present.

What appears ornamental, a certain tilt of the head, a specific affinity for the garden, a recurring dream, is rarely a mask. Like Elizabeth’s hidden irrigation network, these are the connections between what has been divided.

Integration is the recognition that we are the medium through which these stories flow. We are in the garden corner, where the archivist’s facts and the folklorist’s myths finally meet, carrying a heritage that, though it cannot be held in one place alone, sustains the entire estate of the self.

Sanatio is the Latin word for healing and restoration. The Physicians of Myddfai understood healing through three interwoven ways of knowing:

Revelation — knowledge received rather than discovered, carried across unseen thresholds. Stella, the half-fae adoptee.

Observation — the natural world studied with care, patterns learned through attention and time. Sarah, the scientist.

Virtue — the ethics of the healer, and the participation of the patient, shaping what knowledge can become. Helen, the keeper of the story, understands that how knowledge is held matters as much as what is known.

Thank you for reading! If you’re familiar with Through the Yew Hedge or following the journey, what role do gardens play in your life? What does “sanatio” mean to you? What systems have you discovered moving beneath the visible ones in your own life? If you are an adopted person, are there stories or myths that resonate or hold importance to you? We welcome you to drop us a note.

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© Copyright Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

Writing a story about fae and the adoption system, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic, I found that magical realism and Celtic traditions offered fertile ground for the myths around identity and belonging, Stella’s story. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

My father was one of five sons of Irish immigrants to New York City. He shared recordings of traditional music with me. My mother surrounded me with British and European fairy tales, folklore, and fables. I learned to read inside those worlds. I still do.

Many years later, a DNA test revealed my ancestry is rooted in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. My full-length memoir explores what it means, as an adopted person, to learn and live in both my native and acquired heritage, and whether it is possible to accept both as gifts.

As a retired landscape gardener, I have long felt the deep connection between humans, wild, and cultivated spaces. We ignore that relationship at our peril. The Silverton Estate imagines a world where such liminal spaces are honored. Elizabeth Silverton’s work as a botanist, herbalist, garden designer, and medieval historian draws from British horticultural traditions and medieval monastic gardens. Sarah Caldwell follows in her footsteps, making the Estate her home and living laboratory. Sarah’s scientific approach and Cedra’s Magic are part of Stella’s life, not in opposition, but somewhat in dialogue.

In the worldview and practice of the eminent 13th-century Myddfai Physicians of Wales, Rhiwallon the Physician and his sons, healing takes place when ways of knowing are aligned with the empirical and the intuitive, the botanical and the spiritual, the rational and the mystical. Although boundaries between the supernatural and human world exist, they are permeable, with various consequences. The Myddfai Physicians were descended from the Lady of the Lake, according to the legend.

I am not a folklorist like Helen, nor an herbalist. I approach these traditions with respect, while also trying to tell a truthful story about adoption from an adoptee’s perspective; about the systems that act on human lives.

Stella’s gifts are real. Her half-fae heritage is linked to the Tuatha Dé Danann, a mythic people of Ireland with the skills of demi-gods, artistry, and druidic magic. After a final battle, they retreat into the Otherworld, where they are transformed into the Irish fairy folk. Their legacy is chronicled in The Invasions, set down by Medieval Catholic clerics, offering the Irish a sense of origin, identity, and belonging.

In the novella, the Fae Council: Cedra, Selwyn, and Eleris are complex, capricious, and unreliable. Cedra’s training method is bizarre, but Stella needs her guidance, like she needs Sarah’s observations and notes. They both seem to have a benevolent aim: to see Stella as a whole person.

Celtic tradition recognizes the power of naming, and of holding more than one truth at once. Either-or thinking can fracture identity. We are complex, nuanced. Imperfect. Can’t be fixed. Ruth Ann, Stella, Questa. Three names, dual nature, one life.

Thank you for reading,

I’d love to hear from you. What resonated? What did I leave out? How do we honor traditional stories while also shaping new ones?

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Please allow me ~
In this Tale of Identity Magic, the main character is Stella, an half-fae adoptee whose journey is marked by her changing names.

Names are thresholds, marking stages, or based on family or tradition. For Stella, it is her adoption that is honored by the star symbol. Her birth name is erased. She is briefly called Seeker, a hint of her third name: Questa.

In our Garden’s magic, you’ll have seen that what is foretold may not have been spoken aloud. And what is spoken aloud is not always fully claimed.

Like many adopted persons, Ruth Ann’s story is complex. The Returning of Stella to her full, integrated self begins now.

Boundaries blur, like the best hybrids, in the Silverton Estate’s Medieval Monastery Garden. In this liminal space, growth needs both structure and wildness. Roots connect the past to the present.

I offer this fantasy as an exploration of identity fracture, the myth and ethics around adoption, the right to one’s true story, and the tension between scientific observation and magical thinking.

Through cedar groves that serve as anchors, black roses that mark thresholds, and morning glories that bloom between worlds, I’ve penned a fairy story in botanical language to enrich its emotional landscape and shift like the Cedar Dryad character between narrative clarity and poetic lyricism, between ancient cedar forest and the manicured medieval monastery garden. Between literary fiction and magical realism.

Stella, whose half-fae nature is revealed at age thirteen, narrates from an omniscient-transcendent perspective, allowing young adult readers access to themes of self-discovery and identity formation. As Stella’s metaphysical abilities emerge, so does her longing and confusion about her place within her extended family and community. Her need to integrate her dual heritage rather than choose between worlds appeals to the fantasy of possible, unlocked potential.

© Mary Ellen Gambutti
All Rights Reserved

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