Chapter One
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Madeleine Elliot's father's last and somewhat
strange request had brought her here, back to Harcles Hill Farm, to the
cramped, web-filled, dust-strewn garret high in the rafters. She had searched
the attic for hours until she'd found the tiny trinket her father had made her
promise to find, wrapped in an antique chemise.
She frowned, inhaling deeply as she studied the
gold chain with its delicate gold crowned heart dangling between her fingers,
and pondered the name that had so consumed her father in the final days of his
life. Did the gold chain belong to the woman, Sarah, who had haunted his mind?
And if it did, who was Sarah and where on earth was she supposed to start
looking for Sarah?
At first, Maddie had thought her father had been
confused, mistaking her mother's name with that of another, then she had caught
the look in his eyes—in his clear olive-green gaze. He had been sane and lucid,
without a hint of the disease that was invading his brain, torturing his
speech, and contorting his thoughts. For one brief moment, she’d glimpsed the
strong, vital man her father had once been.
Faint molecules of an ethereal scent suddenly punctuated
the heavy, dank odor of the attic. It touched her senses with vague familiarity
and planted seeds of impossible memories in her brain—the soft lilt of music,
the lively sliver of swishing skirts, the sound of laughter amidst a maelstrom
of shapeless faces. Happy times, although Maddie had no idea how she could have
known it.
"Well, it feels like happy times," she murmured aloud in
self-correction, then realized in sudden amazement she couldn't possibly have
knowledge of that either. Still, somehow her spirits were lifted by the
thought, and her heart overwhelmed by that singular emotion.
Her fingers caressed the delicate gold crowned
heart swinging to and fro on its gold chain. It had been a while since she had
been happy...felt happy.
The shadows about her unexpectedly softened to a
gentle shade of blue, and Maddie snapped her gaze left to the bewitching aura
of moonlight filtering through the attic's small casement window.
She rose from the dust-covered floor and, slipping
the delicate chain into the pocket of her sundress, moved to the window. She
gazed out onto the inky black sky, absent of stars. All was deserted save for
the clear full moon that hung above her father's precious hillside walled
garden. It was the second full moon of that month. A phenomenon that wouldn’t
come around again for some time.
Her father had known it.
He’d made her promise to return to Harcles Hill
Farm on this night of the so-called Blue Moon. You too are a child of the moon,
he’d said.
Maddie didn’t know what her father had meant by
that. The intelligibility had once again gone from his eyes and she’d simply
thought he’d reverted to the ramblings of an old, sick man, but even as a
faraway look crept into his tired eyes and he fell once again exhausted against
the pillows he’d held her gaze, almost, it seemed, as if he was trying to will
her to understand.
Maddie wiped away the tear rolling down her face
as she remembered her father’s dying words.
"The garden is an enchanted place under the
Blue Moon," he’d said. "You don't remember, Maddie, but magic
happens. Walk in the light of the Blue Moon, and you'll see. Midnight,
Maddie," he'd said, his voice feeble with death. "Always midnight. Just
believe."
Maddie sighed. Right now, she wanted to believe
more than anything. She closed her eyes and tried her hardest to remember. She
wanted to remember.
As a child, she’d believed her father's
stories...Stories that had once felt so tangible, so real. She opened her eyes
and gazed down into the walled garden below. It was real. Everything. She knew it. She could feel it, yet, why
couldn't she remember it?
"Because I am no longer a child," she
murmured sadly. "Peter Pan didn't want to grow up for the very reason I
can't remember."
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