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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