The Moon Garden and Other Cosy Stories

By Camilla Kelly

A man creates a moon garden for the woman he loves. A new homeowner is haunted by a friendly ghost. A niece finds the ideal gift for a beloved aunt in a shop of unique items.

 

Love stories, feel-good tales, and the magical in daily life – a collection of 19 coffee-break reads that will leave you with a warm glow.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Camilla Kelly
• Release date: Dec 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393364184

Book preview

The Moon Garden

and other cosy stories

––––––––

Camilla Kelly

Copyright © 2020 Camilla Kelly

All rights reserved.

water sprite

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Lynne had only had her new fishpond for a few weeks before a water sprite moved in. She’d made it as inviting as possible: the goldfish were as gold as she could find; the weed as lushly green. She dropped fool’s gold to the bottom, as her grandmother’s book told her. Apparently, sprites liked the colours.

‘Look, Ginny.’ She held her baby close to the glinting water, and Ginny made non-words and pointed to the skimming ripples where the sprite was sleeping beneath. Lynne imagined its snores fanning the surface.

‘Isn’t it pretty? It’s going to be the answer to all our problems.’

There was a picture of a water sprite in Grandma Marmalade’s book. Lynne showed it to Ginny when they went inside for breakfast. She hummed while she cleaned up; she smiled at the postman when he brought the bills she filed, unopened, behind the bread bin. There was a hairy moment when the washing machine gave a squeal and a shudder mid-cycle, but she bumped it with her hip and it rattled on again.

‘See? That’s our first bit of good luck already.’

After work at the florists, where Lynne made up bouquets while Ginny sat in a carry cot, getting spoilt by the scent of cut flowers, they hurried home and straight back to the garden.

Nothing had changed. The sprite must still be sleeping.

She fed Ginny and put her to bed and went outside again, impatient for her new life to start. The little enclosed garden was shadowed and rustling. A hedgehog ran up the path when the light from the kitchen spilled out of the back door. Lynne, tiptoeing in her slippers, peered into the pond.

Her attention was caught by her own reflection. Blond hair, green eyes. A little tired-looking. Hoping hard.

A fish skimmed its tail along the surface, disrupting the image. A curvaceous white fish, small and quick, like a shooting star.

Funny. Lynne didn’t remember buying any white fish.

Two days passed and Lynne still hadn’t seen the sprite. But she knew it was there.

For a start, when she got up on Friday morning the entire surface of the pond was covered in black sludge, like an oil slick, with flakes of uneaten fish food floating in it. A check of the pump told her there wasn’t a technical fault.

Inside, she re-read Grandma Marmalade’s book, but there was no mention of this as a possibility. In fact, it was completely lacking any information beyond how to attract the sprite in the first place.

She began to worry that the sprite was poorly. Maybe there was a disease affecting the whole pond.

On the third day the problem seemed to have spread to the rest of the garden. Lynne opened the back door and immediately Ginny, who was in her arms, screwed up her face and sneezed twice.

‘What on earth is that awful smell?’ Lynne muttered.

She went to the pond and, keeping a tight grip on Ginny, knelt down. It was still filmed in black, but the sun was bright that day and she found that if she disturbed the water with a stick she could see inside.

The pond seemed much deeper than it should. The light hardly penetrated. Lynne, holding her hair back with her free hand as she leaned forward, found herself almost mesmerised by the swirling shapes under the water.

Where were the goldfish? The fool’s gold? The green plants seemed suffocated by the dark goo, and the goo smelled rotten.

It actually let out a belch! She shuddered. She couldn’t hang out the laundry in this stench!

Ginny was snuffling, about to cry. Lynne got up. As she did, she noticed a line of slugs around her vegetable patch, fat as potatoes, glistening trails of slime all over her plants. Even the flowers were wilting, their colours fading. It was all part of the contamination.

‘We’ll have to get rid of it,’ Lynne said, kissing Ginny reassuringly. ‘It was a mistake. Don’t worry, we’ll get rid of it.’

She’d spent almost all of her money on the pond. Now, with the little she had left, limbs heavy with disappointment, she went back to the aquatic department of the garden centre. After the miracle of the sprite’s arrival: this.

What had she been expecting? Wishes. Riches. Fairy tale stuff.

Something had clearly gone wrong. She didn’t want this mischief in her garden any more.

‘I need a toad,’ she said to the man in the garden centre.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Welcome back. How’s your pond?’

‘Terrible. Something horrible’s moved in and I need the fattest toad with the biggest mouth you’ve got.’

He looked at her, his eyebrows making question marks. But she didn’t mind what he thought of her as long as he helped.

Eventually he said, ‘I know just the place. I’ll take you.’

She had to wait ten minutes until his break time, and then, as promised, he met her outside the shop with a net and bucket. Ginny waved at him from her pram and he waved back.

‘Ready to go?’ he asked.

Lynne followed him to the woods behind the store grounds and the boggy stream there, where he introduced her to the toad he’d named Hercules - a laconic creature the size of a dinner plate and the colour of overcooked vegetables.

Lynne carried Hercules home in the bucket, not having had to spend a penny. Holding her breath, she let Hercules loose in her pond with only a slight troubling of her conscience. By now half her flowers had been eaten by slugs and the stench was so potent the air was becoming foggy.

She scampered back indoors and watched from the window. Not that she expected anything to happen straight away.

But it did.

There was a ripple along the water. Lynne pressed closer to the window. Her attention was so focussed there that she almost didn’t notice the shape advancing in the sky until its shadow fell on the garden. Then she looked up just in time to see a huge stork swoop down and fly off with the toad in its beak.

Poor Hercules.

Canny water sprite. The little blighter.

‘Right.’

Clearly a toad was no match for it. But Lynne was determined she would be. All her dashed hopes and disappointment made her brave.

She held her breath and stepped back into the garden. It had always been Ginny’s favourite place, but she’d started to cry every time the back door was opened now, so Lynne did her best not to let any foul air into the house.

She knelt beside the pond. The dark water was impossible to see through. Maybe she should simply drain it? The pump must be jammed after all – the water was so still and flat it was almost a mirror. It reflected back a monochrome world, strangely unnerving, and made Lynne look ten – no, twenty – no, thirty years older.

Was that really her face? She touched her cheek and leaned closer. As she did, a lock of hair fell forward. It trailed in the water, a ribbon of hair the thickness of her thumb.

She sprang back, but too late. Her hair was wet. She lifted it, relieved it wasn’t coated in black... but it was no longer blond either. From its ends to its roots, it had turned white.

She fell back in dismay and frantically checked the rest of her hair, drawing it forward to where she could see. The only streak of white was where her hair had touched the water.

She glared at the pond. It was still and placid again.

Experimentally, she picked a pansy from the flowerbed – one of the few uneaten by the slugs. She tossed it into the pond. It floated, its velvety purple petals like a shadow on a shadow.

She picked a marigold. The slugs had mainly left them alone, which was unlike them.

The marigold landed on the water. It rotated in a slow circle. Its petals turned white, as if all the ink was draining out of them. Then it disappeared under the surface, like a seal taken down by a shark, and where it had been, came up a big, round sludgy bubble, which popped with a belch.

‘I need some help,’ she said in a low voice to the man in the garden centre.

‘The toad didn’t work?’

She’d pinned her white streak under the rest of her hair but she still caught him glancing at it.

‘You seemed pretty good with the net the other day. I wondered if you’d mind helping me catch something else?’

Again, he gave her a long look. Under those expressive eyebrows, his eyes were curious and kind.

‘It would be my pleasure.’

He pulled up to her gate after work in a green van with the garden centre logo on its doors. He went into the back of the van to collect his net and some sturdy gloves before coming to join her on the front step.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what kind of thing is it that’s causing all this trouble?’

‘Um...let me show you the garden first. Then I’ll explain...’

Going into the back garden was like stepping into a swamp. He wafted the boggy air away from his face and then paused on the path when something squelched under his shoe.

‘Slug,’ Lynne said.

He gazed around the garden, taking it in. Then he turned to her, his eyes wide.

‘This might sound like a crazy question, but have you got a water sprite?’

This was best discussed over a cup of tea. In the kitchen the