Fernrose

Chapter 1 - Down Fernrose Well

There are very few magical places on this planet Earth - very few indeed. Certainly, there are pretty places. There may even be a few lovely places, or delightful places. I will even concede that there could possibly be just one or two beautiful places. But a truly magical place, with nothing left to be desired, that draws you in and refuses to let you go - it is nearly impossible to find one of those.

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 the 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

Chapter 2 - The Wellwood

“Is she all right? She knocked her head on the side, I can tell.”

“Don’t be stupid, she’ll be fine. We all were.”

“But she’s bleeding!”

“So were you, when you fell down. She’s fine, Anna.”

I opened my eyes slowly. My head hurt. My eyes burned. My wrist was twisted to the side. “M-Mother?”

“Your mother isn’t here,” said a soft voice. I blinked and the face of a girl, framed with dark curls, looked down upon me. “You don’t need her any longer. You’re with us now.”

“B-but - Great Aunt Matilda - the teacup - I -” Suddenly the events of the day came rushing back onto me. “I fell! In the - the well! How - how am I -”

“You’re all right.” The girl’s voice was soothing. My pulse slowed. “Where am I?”

“You,” said the girl, “are in the Wellwood. With us. You don’t need to go back.”

“I - no!” I scrambled up. A wave of nausea enveloped me, and I crumpled back to the ground.

“They’re always like this at first.” A boy’s voice, this time. Scornful.

“Edward, honestly.” This was a girl. Suddenly, there were two more faces in front of me - the boy, all blond curls and blue eyes, and the other girl - Anna -, with her brown hair woven into two short braids and her brown eyes big as she looked down at me.

Suddenly I heard footsteps, and another girl came running up. She had dark skin and hair looped into two plaits with ribbons. “Is there another?”

The boy named Edward nodded. The girl bent down in front of me.

“I - I want - I want -” I couldn’t get the word mother to leave my lips. “Please, I -” I started to cry.

The girl with the hair ribbons knelt beside me. “It’s all right. You’re safe here.”

“B-but I want to - I want to go home!” I pushed her outstretched hands away. “I want my family back!”

The girl’s eyes searched mine. “Do you?” she asked gently. “Do you really?”

I gasped, and then began to cry. The truth was, I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to climb out of the well and walk through the doors of Great-Aunt Matilda’s big gray house with blood spoiling my dress and apron, with both of my hair-ribbons (I was certain) gone, and with the criminal offense of smashing the best teacup hanging over me like a thick cloud of pain and wrongdoing. I just wanted somebody to love me. That was the chief desire of my tender childish heart - somebody to adore me beyond words, to worry if I was gone longer than I was wont instead of scolding me for this, to hug me and kiss me and bake me cakes and let me invite my schoolmates to my house. But that couldn’t happen. Not with Great-Aunt Matilda.

The children watched me.

I took a shuddery breath. “But - how can I stay here? I can’t live in a well! How will I eat? How will I stay warm? Where will I live?”

“Don’t worry,” said Edward. “We’ll find a place for you. And we’ve got plenty of food in the Wellwood.”

“The Wellwood?”

“Yes, that’s where you are. The Fernrose Wellwood. Of course, for every abandoned well there’s a Wellwood, and you’ve just landed yourself in the nicest one of all.”

“Oh, Edward, honestly! How do you expect her to understand anything if you explain it like that?” This was the girl with the dark curls. “Come on, let’s take her to the tea table and we’ll have a talk. Can you stand?” she asked, addressing me.

I nodded and gingerly got to my feet.

“Oh, wonderful. All right, follow me.” She started forward, and I stumbled after her. I remember thinking that I was, at last, having an adventure, and that I ought to be happy about it, but somehow I couldn’t manage to be glad about the puzzling predicament I’d landed myself in. Oh, if only Mother was still alive!

“Here we are.” Anna’s voice brought me back to Earth - if this was Earth. I blinked. We were standing in front of a large, moss-covered rock. Small mounds of grassy soil were positioned around it. On the rock was laid a perfectly elaborate little tea, made of flowered saucers and cups with golden rims. They all seemed to be chipped, and one saucer had an enormous piece missing, but there was a teapot with hot tea inside it, and a plate of sugar biscuits, and toast and butter, and even apple scones - my favorites. My stomach rumbled. I had only eaten a small bowl of porridge and a chocolate doughnut today, thus far, and I suddenly realized that I was starving.

Meanwhile, Anna bustled about the table, placing scones and toast and jam and clotted cream on each plate and pouring tea into the chipped cups. The girl with dark curls and the soft voice led me to one of the mounds. I sank onto it and looked with wide eyes at my current surroundings.

This area seemed to be a little clearing in a forest made of firs and birches and maples, all of which were of a vibrant green hue at this time of year. The ground was grass, lavishly populated with sprinklings of wildflowers, a bouquet of which was arranged in the center of the “table.” Birds chirruped and squirrels scampered and I caught sight of a baby doe shyly gazing at me out of the woods.

“Well!” I heard, and I turned to see the girl with the hair ribbons beaming at me. “Now perhaps we can begin. First things first, what is your name?”

A slightly hysterical laugh rose in my throat. “First things first? I don’t think so. Where am I? How is this possible?”

“Of course it’s not possible,” said the girl patiently. “It’s quite impossible, in fact. But nevertheless, it is, and that is all you ought to be concerned about. Now, you must see that we can’t proceed any further without introducing ourselves. I shall do the honors for the inhabitants of the Fernrose Wellwood. I am Lily Ford, and that boy is Edward, and the other girls are named Anna and Sarah. Who are you, then?”

“Oh, very well,” I said wearily. “I’m Elizabeth.”

“Lovely. Now for your questions.”

“W-well, how is this all here? What is this place?”

“Well, this ‘place’ is the Fernrose Wellwood. Every abandoned well has a Wellwood. A Wellwood is essentially a bit of the outside world, but with something more.”

“What do you mean, more?”

“Well, you know. Unicorns and fairies and pixies and dragons and things. How do you think fairy stories started? They all began from people who’d fallen into the Wellwoods and gotten back out.”

“Gotten back out? How can you?”

“Oh, dear.” Lily sighed. “Now, you mustn’t concern yourself over that. Getting out of the Wellwood is nearly impossible.”

“But how? How does it happen?”

“Never mind that.”

“But I want to know.”

“Why? It can’t help you. Oh, dear, you must be exhausted. Don’t you want to go to bed?”

“But - my questions! You said you’d answer them!”

“The morning would be a better time for that, don’t you think? Now, tomorrow we must see about getting you an arranged mother, but that isn’t strictly necessary now, I suppose. Go on, go to bed.”

“An arranged mother?”

“Elizabeth, you really ought to sleep.”

“Now? Here?”

“Well, what better place is there?”

I looked around. There was none, and the soil mound was rather comfortable. “Do you promise to answer my questions in the morning?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“You can’t die in the Wellwood, but yes.”

“Well . . .” I struggled with myself. “I suppose I could do with a little nap . . .”

“Lovely. We’ll see you in the morning, Elizabeth.” The four children started off, leaving me on the grassy mound with a hurricane of questions swirling through my head, and not one single answer.