The Secret Book of Flora Lea

by Patti Callahan Henry

The anger was a shield to keep her from begging him to touch her one more time. Meanwhile,

The repeated rituals made the children feel safe.

Hazel tried not to notice that the muscles in his arms were bigger than they were even a month ago. It was like a man within was pushing out of the boy he was.

He grinned with that look that made Hazel wish he’d only look at her and never anyone else.

The path to the riven tree and the cavernous space of Whisperwood was well worn. She reached the grove and slipped inside, nudging to the edge of the dark space so the inside of the tree rested against her back, as it had done so many times.

Harry reached over and touched her cheek so gently it could have been the wind; she closed her eyes. She was falling, sinking, falling… and it was like she’d wished for. His arms were around her, pulling her close. She rested her head on his shoulder, and it fit as if made for her. He felt like home. He ran his fingers through her tangles and the sheer joy of the tingles in her scalp calmed her. She lifted her face for whatever came next. He placed his forehead against hers; she smelled morning tea. He kissed her, and the rest of her roaring thoughts faded away. The kiss was gentle at first, then their arms and legs tangled, and the ache of longing transformed into something she had less control over: desire.

She answered Wren as best she could with the disconnected feel of someone suspecting they might be dreaming. “Aesop’s are beast tales,” she told him. “And Gulliver is a traveler’s tale and another one… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a dream tale.”

“What a fairy tale is meant to do,” she said, “if it’s meant to do anything at all, Tolkien says, is give us new perspective in our world, the consolation of a happy ending. A recovery of sorts. Like we leave that world to see ours anew. Does that make sense?”

She passed the low-slung thatch-roofed schoolhouse, past the American nurse riding her bike with wild Queen’s Anne lace filling her basket, waving in the wind with their clusters of white.

This was not a magical tale; this was her sister. This was real life.

without Flora beside her, that darkness would cover this land. Flora had never been alone at dark, always curled tightly to Hazel’s side.

The running, the fear, the knowledge that this was all her fault swamped Hazel with dizziness. Haloes of sunlight flickered around all the faces at the well, the glistening water at the edge of the dark rock like diamonds of the treacle—it all swam before her, melting. She was the one in the river, drowning, gasping for breath, going under.

“We’ll take Charing Cross to Victoria and board the sleeping car. They have catering onboard. When the train arrives in Dover, it uncouples from the tracks and the entire car drives onto the ship. We’ll wake in Paris!”

If she kept running backward, she would never quite be able to run forward.

Even if a miracle had occurred and Flora had survived to tell the story and carry it across the sea, even then, six-year-old Flora was still gone. Even if Hazel found her sister, she would not find the sister she lost.

Above Hazel in the train stood a woman with an owl brooch on her blue suit jacket. “Oh, pardon me,” she said, moving sideways to make room for Hazel. An owl.

Her stories of Whisperwood were neatly piled, one on top of the other, right next to a pile of Harry’s drawings. She lifted the pages she’d written, staring by moonlight at the words, the story that had taken Flora from Hazel.

Hazel prayed the same had not happened to Flora, but if it had, the stories must go with her. When the pages were gone, she trudged through the night, a growing hollowness within, widening, spinning outward. The world without Flora was impossible.

This was the unraveling Hazel had felt in her gut when Mum held the note of evacuation in the backyard in Bloomsbury. It hadn’t been the war that threatened her life; it was Flora’s disappearance. Somehow she had known that something terrible would happen, and that it would be her fault. A thread had been pulled; it was her undoing. The only thing to do was to find Flora. And Hazel would. No matter how long it took, or what she lost along the way.

“When I do get up, I will find her.” She pulled her thin blanket around herself. “I know you will hate me until I do.” “No!” Mum cried out so loudly the nurse came, then quietly closed the curtain that separated them from a woman unconscious in the next bed. Mum took Hazel in her arms. “It is not your fault. Don’t you dare carry that with you. Promise me.” “I promise nothing,” Hazel said, “only that I will find her. And I will never see Harry or Bridie Aberdeen again.”

Hazel felt this loss as severe as an amputated limb, her left hand gone, her heart, which she thought could feel no more pain, collapsed.

The dreams never stopped: the panic and scrabbling for something lost, the sickening drop of dread when she remembered. She made her way through the days carrying the memory like a boulder she refused to put down.

By May 7 of 1945, Hazel had graduated, and she was in London working at Hogan’s as the church bells rang in September, announcing the end of the war. And yet she still kept her eyes peeled for a girl with blond curls, laughing in the woodlands of her imagination.

“I would know her the second I saw her. If she’s mine.” Hazel felt a trill of love. Mum might have married and loved and had another child, but she would know her own daughter in less than a breath. Loss lived alongside them both, yet somehow Mum had loved again.

It could be. It was possible. The upturned nose, the tiny frame, the brown eyes a bit more golden. And yet something essential was missing. Something… Flora.

“I’ve had to watch my daughter wander astray looking for her sister, grieving, and blaming herself. It’s been dreadful. It has defined our life. If there is anything you can tell us. Anything at all.”

And she’d do more than that if it was required. For she now understood that whatever her life purpose had been before Flora seemed to walk through the door of an invisible world and disappear, her purpose was now only this: Fix her mistake, find Flora, and bring the world to rights.

This was it; this was where Hazel had been headed all along: telling the truth to bring Flora home. The truth was all that had been required in the end.

Hazel felt the tremble of worlds colliding: real and imagined, seen and unseen, desired and denied. She reached for the possibility, the absolute and sheer against-the-odds chance. Anything is possible now, Hazel thought. Anything at all.

“Not very long ago and not very far away, there once was and still is an invisible place right here with us.” Dot blinked into the sun, then locked gazes with Hazel. “And if you are born knowing…” She trailed off. “What is this?” “And if you are born knowing,” Hazel continued, her voice stronger with each word, “and to be honest we all are, you will find your way through the woodlands to the shimmering doors that lead to the land made just and exactly for you.”

Hazel watched Dot Bellamy. Is this where hope met despair? Where the past rushed to the present? Where joy ...

All this time Hazel had looked for Flora in the faces of the expected, and yet here she was in the unexpected journa...

Hazel took Dot’s hand, ran her thumb softly over the birthmark. Hazel felt her recoil, yet Dot did not pull away. “You are the child you are searching for. You are the River Child.”

Hazel watched Dot’s face. Hope, my God, it was such a strange word, so much larger than a wish. Hope had become life itself, for to discover the truth about Flora had been Hazel’s life’s wish and now that hope was flickering in the tentative eyes of a woman who had no idea who Hazel was.

“I know about Flora Lea Linden. I know all of her childhood story; I have been obsessed with her. And I know you. How is this possible?” “You never stopped looking for yourself and I never stopped looking for you,” Hazel said.

A splashing river between two flat emerald fields. A stone house with a soot-stained brick hearth in the kitchen. A bonfire, sparks like stars on a cold night. A well where magic might happen.

“I am Flora. I am the River Child.” Dot swayed beneath the knowing. She felt light as a feather, floating in the wind. Dot looked toward the willow tree. “I think I see a shimmering door right there.” Dot’s voice changed now, softer, childlike, simple in its belief.

They faced each other, fourteen and five years old again, leaving London by train and then carried away by the river, eventually returning to each other in Binsey again. Dot knew now: She was the River Child, the girl she’d been looking for all this time.

you became who they told you to become. Your life may have been hidden from you, but it was always here, waiting. I was always here looking for and waiting for

Hazel would be patient, for Flora Lea Linden was hidden inside Dot’s memories, reaching slowly above the surface.

ordering more. “That’s a hell of a barmy story,” Dot said with a shaky laugh, lifting her glass of wine for another sip. “You know, my aunt warned me to stay away from these stories of the lost children.” “Your aunt?” “Yes, my aunt Imogene.”

Peggy had been consumed with all of it, with Wren’s touch, with how very much of the world she’d missed in the little yellow house on the spit of sand.

“It’s absolutely lovely,” Mother said. The unexpected comment was a grace Peggy had wanted for so long—approval for what Peggy wanted instead of what Mother wanted.

You kept alive a story and a lost sister was found.”

This was her familiar and lovely life. In so many ways, she wanted to keep

shaky. “I don’t want to be scared anymore, but I also don’t want to do things because they are safe.”

Hazel felt six-year-old Flora cowering beneath Imogene’s lies so that Dot wouldn’t know or become who she once was.

“I don’t know what to believe. I had a good life, Hazel. A very good life. I can’t bear if it was all a lie.”

Dot Bellamy listened and watched as these people she was supposed to know spoke to one another with such joy about her return. She gazed at a stone cottage; a green pasture, a red barn, and a broken-down mower rusted on the lawn. She saw the ash tree and common gorse bush bursting with small yellow flowers at the edge of the flagstone path. There stood Hazel with the brown curls pulled back into a low bun, and golden brown eyes that at some level Dot recognized. Bridie was there with her warm smile and soft voice. And yes, she knew Harry; she felt it the minute he’d jumped out of the battered van with his bounce and his grin. What did that mean?

Never had Dot imagined that the one secret thing Imogene had saved had been her. That she, Dot Bellamy, was the saved thing that kept Imogene from true insanity.