I have had either the luck or the misfortune to come across a magical place at the ripe young age of twelve. I was living at the time with my great-aunt Matilda, a woman who held a firm belief in the merits of strictness with one’s children. I had no friends, no playmates, no pets. Thankfully, I loved to be alone, but life without the company of anyone but a great-aunt who scolds you if you dirty your stockings or tear your apron or lose your hair-ribbon or talk too loud is rather difficult to bear. Especially when you are kept in for the whole morning doing chores and learning lessons and cooking and playing on the piano without a second’s break.

But my afternoons were free. Every day, as soon as I was released from our grim old gloomy gray house that seemed to delight in my imprisonment, I would dash through the fields of the neighbors and come to a stop before the Fernrose Well, the one place where the memory of my mother’s agonized face as pneumonia stole her life became infused not with pain, but with the beauty of memory.

It seemed to me that the only good thing about our small village was its name. Fernrose. The very sound of the word called to mind a wild, enchanted place, teaming with flowers and ferns and fairies alike, where I could spend my whole life without Great-Aunt Matilda’s sharp cry of, “Elizabeth! Come here at once! There is work to be done!” I put myself to sleep with these delightful dreams combined with sweet memories of happy times at the Fernrose Well.

Mr. Edward Fernrose, the founder of our small town, had built his homestead on the outskirts of the village, at the very end of the road. There, the well had been dug near the house - but after Mr. Fernrose died with no family, the house gradually grew into disrepair. After fifty years of neglect, the famous storm of 1868 finally brought it down. In the thirty-four years since then, the place had gradually become a tangle of wild plants and trees which all scorned - except for me.

I always had a love for wild places. Back when I lived with Mother, nothing delighted me more than a journey to the small pond behind our house that shone clear in the sun. Every day after school, I used to dash into the snug cottage we shared, kiss Mother, collect a doughnut, cookie, or some other toothsome morsel, and, bearing my schoolbooks, go straight to the pond. I would sit by the side while I completed my homework, and then, once I was done with that, I would amuse myself in my own fashion. I read, drew, wrote, hummed, fished, swam, built miniature fortresses, or just sat there, drinking in the wild beauty for hours on end.

Now, of course, I had no pond, but the well was the next best thing. It was partially covered in flowered vines and rimmed by a circle of trees. Wildflowers surrounded the area, and chipmunks and squirrels were my constant companions. The well was the only place where I felt like myself. The only place where I could be free.

The day that I first encountered magic, it took me longer than usual to get to the well, and not for a very pretty reason. That morning, I had accidentally broken one of our best teacups, the ones that my great-grandmother had brought from England when she married my great-grandfather. Great-Aunt Matilda was furious, especially because the minister and his mother had come for tea. White- faced with anger, she’d dragged me up to the attic, where I slept, and snapped that she’d “deal with me later.” I lay on my bed, seething. Just that week, Great-Aunt Matilda herself had broken the best china plate that she’d bought for twenty dollars, and she’d only sighed and made me clean it up. Why was my breaking a teacup so different from her breaking a plate?

I heard a chorus of cordial farewells, and a thrill of foreboding pierced my heart, for I knew that nothing good could be waiting for me. Sure enough, when Great-Aunt Matilda entered my room, she stalked straight to my bed and yanked me up by my hair. Without thinking, I shoved her hands away.

This was a mistake.

Great-Aunt Matilda gasped and then immediately slapped my face. I staggered back. The thought that a relative of mine would willingly strike me was worse than any punishment. Tears streaked down my cheeks, cooling the spot where she had hit me. I rushed from the room, sprinting for the door. I had to get out.

When I got to the well, I was still crying. I fell to my knees and knelt over the water. My reflection shone back at me - my long, thick brown curls, my pale face,

now disfigured by a swollen bruise over my cheek, my uncommonly deep blue eyes, framed with long, dark lashes. Tears dripped from my eyes and landed in the well water. I drew a shivery breath. Panic began to set in. I knew that Great-Aunt Matilda would come looking for me at any moment. I had to hide, I had to move! Casting away all logic and thought and jumping to my feet, I dashed for the wild, overgrown wood that surrounded the well. But my foot caught on one of the flowered vines that grew from the well’s crumbling stone.

I gasped, lurched, and tried desperately to reclaim my balance. But I was falling - falling . . .

Tripping backwards, my head struck the stone on one side of the well. Frantically, I tried to roll off of the stone. I succeeded . . . too well.

My legs slipped down, and I fell down, down, down . . . finally slipping beneath the cool water and sinking like a stone. My hand gripped the side of the well, but to no avail. There was no way out.

I had entered Fernrose Well.

To be continued