The Forgotten Garden

Ella had not returned to the garden for just gone 20 years, not since her parents had gone as she had never felt the urge to visit the home and garden she grew up in, where all the memories were of her family and playing in the big garden. The house was derelict and the garden was overgrown with ivy, brambles and nettles growing and covering paths, walls, trees and anything that got in their way.

She would come here to the garden every day after school. Ella remembered running home from school and excitedly throwing her bag in the hall, grabbing a snack from the bowl in the kitchen and running straight outside and down to the bottom of the garden. She could not remember much about what happened, there were big gaps in her memory from the garden. At school, in the house, her parents, all had lots of memories but not of being in the garden. This had weighed heavy on her mind recently as to why she could not remember what must surely have been good times in the garden.

The garden and house had always been well maintained by her parents, the paths were weed free, borders were full and colourful, the hedges were immaculate, the old wall that ran long the bottom of the garden was always covered with trellis that held up roses, sweet peas and many different types of bean. As time passed, the garden had been taken back by nature, the wall was just a climbing frame for the ivy to move along and further its hold on the garden.

Ella pressed her hand into the ivy and and felt the cold, damp wall behind it, a smile grew on her face but she couldn't think why as this was just a wall that had no part in her memories. A rush of feelings flooded her memory, bits of memories from looking across a beautiful lake with colourful birds flying low, to a large, hairy animal that looked like a giant Guinea Pig jumping through long grass, bright blue skies followed by a coldness and a sudden darkness, that brought a chill to the back of her neck that ran down her body. She pulled her hand back from within the ivy and realised she was breathing fast and sweat was dripping from her forehead. Taking a few long, deep breaths, Ella looked around for clues to the missing memories and also to what she had just seen in her vision.

The nettles stung her arms and the brambles scratched through her clothes as she slowly worked her way along the ivy covered wall, pressing into the wall for anything that seemed different but without actually touching the wall. She wasn't ready for what ever just happened to appear again in her mind. She continued to trample down the nettles and worked her way along the wall slowly pressing her hand in until she could feel the hardness of the stone wall and pulled back. The next time was different though, Ella put her hand in and there was no wall, no coldness, no vision. she pulled her hand out and took a deep breath before before putting her hand in further and it was greeted with a warm breeze from within the ivy.

Ella put her hand back through the the ivy where the wall was and touched the stone with her fingertips and a rush of emotions flooded her mind, a large, grass park filled with a giant red and white striped tent with lots of people and animals walking about. A smile grew on her face until a screech from behind made her turn, the darkness filled the air again, this time it was briefly lit up by lightning flashes and small fires that were strewn across the land, that lit up flying, and what Ella could only imagine were, dragons, swooping down and breathing fire on everything below. Ella gasped for breath and pulled her hand out.

She stepped back from the wall and ran her hands over her face and through her hair,

" if only i could remember" she thought, " what is in there and what happened to it"

Closing her eyes, she paused for a minute and then opened them and stared at the ivy.

"There is only one way to find out where my memories have gone"

She pulled back a several clumps of ivy and started to push her way through the thick stems as there was nothing to see in front of her but more ivy. After a minute of fighting with the overgrowth, a warm breeze brushed across her face and a small ray of light glinted through from somewhere beyond.

Thank you for reading this story and I do hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed writing it and will continue to create as long as I can wield a pen. To support me and my writing you can help boost my moral and buy me a much needed journal or a nice coffee, this would be very much appreciated to encourage me to keep on writing new stories.

Photo by Ryan Fyfe