“Her name’s Clair de Lune,” the woman declared. “Clair de Lune Summerland, I vow.”
The shaggy-haired coal miner turned and squinted at his wife. “Go on with you, Rachel! There ain’t no such person.”
“There is now!” she stated emphatically. “We always wanted a daughter, Lonnie. This girl ain’t from around here. My guess is she’s a moon child come to us to answer our prayers. So I’m claiming her for my own.”
“Look! She’s coming around, Rachel. I reckon now we’ll find out who she really is and how come she walked up to our cabin steps and collapsed.”
“Where am I?” the silver-haired girl asked in a groggy voice. “What happened?”
She stared up at the pair hovering over her. The woman looked thin and frail, aged by hard work and a hard life. The man, tall and muscular, had permanent dark lines etched in his face so that his worried expression was accentuated by the embedded coal dust from years spent in the mines.
“Don’t you remember your own name, child?” Rachel Summerland asked, hoping against hope she’d receive a negative answer.
“It’s gone. Everything’s gone. I have no name.”
“Why, of course you have a name,” Rachel answered, beaming. “You’re Clair de Lune Summerland. I’m your ma and this here’s your pa. You remember us, don’t you, child?”
Relief flowed through the weary young woman. She stared into the faces of two strangers, but they were kind faces. The woman’s eyes were watery-blue, her smile sweet and motherly. The man wasn’t smiling, but his warm brown eyes were filled with concern. She wanted them to be her parents.
“What happened to me?” she asked.
A flicker of something wiped the smile from the woman’s face for an instant, but then it returned, broader than ever. “Why, you just took a fall, darlin’. You hit your head and knocked yourself senseless. I reckon that’s why you can’t remember nothing. But you’ll be all right. You just lie easy and rest a spell.”
“My arm hurts.”
The woman took her hand and frowned at the ugly burn.
“Don’t you worry, honey. I’ll put some salve on that and bind it up real good.” The woman fabricated a tale as she tended the girl. “I reckon you must have been carrying the lantern when you fell. But it’ll be all right in a day or so. There now, all done! Me and Lonnie will leave you be for a time so you can rest.”
When the two people who claimed to be her parents left the room, Clair de Lune Summerland closed her eyes. For a long time she heard the murmur of their voices coming from the next room of the cabin. Her parents seemed to be arguing about something, but she couldn’t hear their words distinctly. Finally, the drone of muffled sounds lulled her to sleep.
She was home at last. The nightmare was over.
Clair de Lune Summerland never recalled that her name had been anything else, that she had ever lived in any other time, or that she had crossed the moonbow on that cold and terrible night, leaving behind the dark and handsome man she loved.
Some nights, though, as she gazed up at the full moon, a powerful lonely longing ached deep in her heart.
The next ten years passed swiftly for the “moon child,” as folks in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky called the Summerlands’ foundling daughter. However, they never called Clair de Lune Summerland that to her face. As far as Cluney knew, she’d had a lick on her head at age sixteen and simply forgotten her past—a past that remained as mysterious as the day she showed up at the coal miner’s cabin on Baldy Rock Mountain.
Once she was well enough, her parents sent her to school down in the valley. “Smart as a whip!” her teachers said she was, although it did seem peculiar to them that she was so amazed and fascinated by such everyday inventions as radios, television sets, computers, and even telephones. But she soon adjusted to her new world and took these things for granted.
Rachel and Lonnie Summerland lived to see their daughter graduate from high school at the top of her class. They saw her accept a full scholarship to Whitley College down there in the valley. They knew some day she’d make a fine teacher.
After a few years, the Summerlands stopped worrying that someone might come to claim their “daughter.” She was a Summerland through and through and no doubt about it. They even had witnesses. Old Miss Redbird from up on the mountain and Wooter Crenshaw, the coffin-maker, both swore before a judge that they’d been there the day that Rachel gave birth to Clair de Lune. Redbird and Wooter were friends, good friends; it was the least they could do for the grieving couple, who’d lost their only son in a mine accident. And so the “moon child” became a legal Summerland, with a twentieth-century birthdate, a birth certificate, and a Social Security number.
As for her old life, all that remained were the occasional nightmares, a few vague memories, and that lovely moonstone necklace.
But on nights of the full moon when a moonbow spanned Cumberland Falls, Cluney Summerland got a strong yearning to leave the mountain and travel somewhere far away.
However, it wasn’t until March 1, 1992 that her longing became an obsession. That was the day she found Major Hunter Breckinridge’s Civil War diary—the very same day she received word that Jeff Layton was dead.
Chapter Four
Kentucky
1863
“Major Breckinridge, don’t you reckon we better head back to the lodge now, sir? Don’t look like there’ll be no moonbow tonight—not with them clouds all boiling like stew in a witch’s pot.”
The persuasive voice, as deep and powerful as the water pulsing below them in the Cumberland River gorge, came from a man as black as the Kentucky night—Private George Washington Abraham Lincoln Freeman.
That was his new name, the one the former slave “Jimbo” had chosen for himself when his Tennessee master had reluctantly read the Emancipation Proclamation to his people a few months back. As soon as Jimbo—or “Free,” as he now called himself—was able, he’d hotfooted it over into Kentucky and joined up with the first Federal regiment he bumped into, the Cave Hill Cavalry, commanded by Major Hunter Breckinridge.
Private Freeman had been in uniform only two weeks before the Cave Hillers ran smack-dab into Morgan’s Raiders at the Campbellsville bridge. Although Morgan had been forced to retreat, leaving behind seventy-one bodies, the Rebel troops had done their fair share of damage before giving a final war whoop and hightailing it out of there.
Major Breckinridge wasn’t dead from the skirmish, but with five Reb bullet holes in him, Free reckoned he was as close to expired as a human could get without actually passing over.
The private had managed to get his commander to the lodge at the edge of the Cumberland River where he’d heard tell a preacher and his wife took in soldiers and nursed them back to health. But Free wasn’t sure Parson Renfro’s missus would be able to do anything for Major Breckinridge.
Free couldn’t rightly figure just what was keeping the major alive, except, maybe, that he had his heart set on glimpsing the moonbow over Cumberland Falls one last time. Then, too, he pined away night and day to see his pretty bride who’d somehow got lost in the war. There was one more thing, too, that seemed to give Major Breckinridge an almost superhuman strength. He had a bitterness in his heart and a craving for revenge.
“Major?” Free tried again to draw the man’s attention away from the dark, roaring falls.
“You go on back, Free, if you want. I’ll stay a spell longer. Looks to me like the clouds are thinning. Could be the full moon’ll break through yet.”
Free neither left nor said another word. He wasn’t about to remind this man he admired so much that his injuries would keep him from returning unless a strong arm was lent to help him back up the hill. The private stood steadfastly beside his commanding officer tonight just as he had all during that fateful battle.
“You hear me, Free? Go on now. I’ll be fine.” The major turned and glanced up, saw Private Freeman still there, and shook his hea
d. “Do what you want, then.”
Hunter Breckinridge was a big man—hard as the coal that came out of these Eastern Kentucky mountains—but his thready voice bespoke the war’s toll on his strength. Had Free not known better, hearing that old voice, he might have taken the major for a man nearing eighty rather than someone fifty years younger. It was a crying shame, he reckoned, what this war was doing to Kentucky’s finest.
“I ain’t in no hurry, Major. I’ll just bide here with you awhile longer. I’d like to see me one of them moonbows. I hear tell they got magic in ’em.” He reached out to make sure the blanket was still around his commander’s shoulders. “You warm enough, sir? There’s a mite of a nip to the air tonight. Winter’ll be coming on soon.”
“Winter,” Breckinridge echoed dully. Winter was already here for him—a black coldness that chilled his body, his heart, his very soul. As for the season itself, he doubted he’d live to see it. A man knew when he didn’t have much longer; he could feel his blood slowing, his heart straining, and old memories seemed far back in the past like you were gazing at them through the wrong end of a telescope.
By next full moon, next chance to see the moonbow, there’d be an end to it, he figured. Things would be decided one way or the other for Hunter Breckinridge. But maybe that wasn’t so terrible. If Larissa was truly gone—gone for good—what did he care about going on? No, he’d rather not stick around. Maybe on the other side it would be warm and sunlit. And for certain there’d be no more war, no more pain.
“No more Larissa,” he muttered to himself.
“What’s that you say, sir?”
Hunter hadn’t realized he’d spoken his wife’s name aloud until Free questioned him. He cleared his throat, trying to get past the lump, before he could speak again.
“Nothing, Free. I was just thinking about my wife. Wondering where she could be. It’s hard not knowing what happened to her. I ache with wondering, nights like this.”
“I reckon I can sympathize with that, Major.” Free nodded his dark head solemnly. “My woman got sold off, sent here to Kentucky, so I heard. I ain’t seen her in over two years.”
Free could feel the major’s eyes on him even though he couldn’t see the man’s face in the dark.
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“I ain’t exactly, sir,” Free said, pain edging the words. “We jumped the broomstick, slave-fashion. We planned to make it legal with a parson and all once we was free. But before we could do it, Belle got sold off like I said. That’s why I come to Kentucky—to look for her. Hell, once this war’s over, I’ll search this whole damn state, if I have to, but I mean to have her back.”
A long silence stretched between the two men. They were both thinking of the women they loved and had lost.
“I hope you find her, Free,” the major said at length. “There’s no pain in the world like losing the woman you love—the only one you’ll ever love. There’s a loneliness, like a wound that won’t heal. But there’s a worse pain, too. The pain of not knowing.”
“’Scuse my asking, sir, but what you reckon happened to your wife?”
Another long silence followed Free’s question. Major Breckinridge wished he’d never brought up the subject. It was like digging at a fresh wound, just thinking about Larissa.
Finally, he said, “I wish I knew. We were wed right before I left to join my troop. One of those whirlwind courtships, you might call it. We’d known each other all our lives, but I never thought she’d consent to marry me. I always figured she had her sights set on my twin brother. But then the war broke out. I proposed and—Glory be!—she said yes. Seemed like it couldn’t have been more perfect—big, fancy wedding, then afterward the two of us together at Bluefield. Only two days later I had to leave her.”
He paused and let out a long sigh. When he spoke again, his voice dropped to a husky whisper. “But it wasn’t perfect and now it never will be. I hadn’t figured on this damn war lasting so long. When I left, I thought I’d go help whup the Rebs and be home in a few weeks. It was six long months before I got back to Bluefield on leave. When I finally did get there, my wife was gone—not a trace as to where.”
“Didn’t no one know what happened, sir?”
“Oh, there were tales—lots of them. One of my neighbors said Larissa got real restless once I was gone and started riding out alone. I figured when I got to Bluefield and she wasn’t there that maybe she just took off to Lexington to stay with her folks for a while. But she wasn’t with them..”
Major Breckinridge paused. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Free the tale that seemed most likely the truth—that Larissa had grown weary of waiting and left to find Jordan. Hunter had tried a million times to tell himself that his wife and his brother wouldn’t do that to him. But the longer he waited and searched, the more he believed that Larissa simply had no intentions of being found. It was like she’d dropped off the face of the earth.
Ever since they were boys, Hunter and Jordan had vied for Larissa’s favors, performing breakneck stunts on horseback to dazzle her and doing any other tom-fool thing they could think of to win her praise. She had teased and flirted and played one against the other until she nearly drove them wild. While still in their teens, they had even fought a duel over her. Thank God, they’d both had sense enough to aim high, so the fight turned out bloodless. Larissa had been delighted that they both survived, and afterward she’d continued to give them equal attention. For a time, it looked as if her heart would never find a home. Hunter wondered even now if that wasn’t the case. She’d made her choice at last. But it looked like Hunter had finally won her only to lose out in the end to Jordan. Hunter couldn’t stop thinking about Larissa’s rendezvous with his brother shortly before their wedding.
“What you reckon become of her, sir?” Free’s question interrupted Hunter’s grim thoughts.
“Lord knows,” the major answered, shaking his bandaged head. “It scares me to think. One tale I know to be true. A Confederate raiding party came through one night and stole a dozen or so horses. Thoroughbreds, the best in my stable. The servants were all scared out of their wits and hid till after the Rebs torched the barns and left. They told me, though, that they didn’t think my wife was there that night—that she’d ridden off somewhere to go visiting. But she could have come back while those scavangers were there. If she did, she would have tried to keep them from stealing the stock, and …”
“Oh, Lord God! Don’t even think about that, sir,” Free moaned.
“Hard not to, I’m afraid.”
Hunter was lying and he knew it. If any Confederate soldier had come for Larissa, he figured the bastard’s name was Breckinridge. It would be just like Jordan to lead a raid against Bluefield out of pure spite. And he wouldn’t put it past his brother to kidnap Larissa in the bargain. But deep in his heart, Hunter truly believed that it was much more likely Larissa had left with Jordan of her own free will. And considering the way he had treated her on their wedding night, he figured it served him right.
He kept waiting and hoping for some sign, something that would let him know that Larissa—wherever she was—was still well and still his. But he figured death would catch up with him before he caught up with his wandering wife. And why shouldn’t she wander? He had all but sent her away before he left for the war.
The two men fell silent. Only the roar and hiss of the falls and the crisp rattle of dry leaves overhead disturbed the quiet.
Hunter felt the cold creeping into his bones, making his head ache and his eyes smart. He stared up at the purple-black clouds. They seemed to have changed slightly, taking on a tinge of silver. As he watched, a thin sliver of the full moon slid into the open, casting a glow down on the falls and turning the dark clouds gilt-edged. Behind him, he heard Free catch his breath.
“It’s coming, Free,” he whispered. “The moon’s found a crack to slide through.”
Even as he spoke, the big luminous moon—its
face seeming to smile down on them—shouldered the clouds aside, chasing away the darkness. All around them an eerie light stole through the gloomy woods. The skirt of the falls glowed as frothy white as a bride’s petticoat. The mist rising into the air looked like silver smoke.
“Magic!” Free breathed. “It pure-tee is!”
But Hunter didn’t hear the private’s exclamations. He sat entranced, the ache of his bullet-riddled body forgotten as he watched a shining halo spread itself over the falls. The moonbow gleamed like a new silver dollar. Then colors glowed faintly, giving the rushing water an aura all its own. A heartbeat later, as the moonbow pulsed and gleamed its brightest, Hunter saw something—something he had never expected to see in this place, in the dead of night.
“Free! Free, look there!” he yelled. “Do you see?”
“Yessir, I see it! And ain’t it a lovely sight, that moonbow?”
“I don’t mean the moonbow, man. Can’t you see, there atop the falls?”
Just then, a fat, greedy cloud gobbled up the moon. The magic faded, but not Hunter’s excitement.
“Help me up the hill, Free.”
The major was trying to struggle to his feet. He was so eager to get back to the lodge and record in his journal what he’d witnessed that he failed to realize he needed Free’s help.
Long into the wee hours of the morning, the lamp in the major’s room glowed as he tried and tried again to write in his diary a description of what he had seen. Finally, bone-deep weary and aching with something far different from pain, he gave up the impossible task and penned the final entry in the journal he had kept for so many years. It was short and simple, but it would suffice, he decided.
“I went to the falls tonight. I saw the moonbow and now I know, Larissa, that love is the greatest power on earth or in heaven. I know, too, what is to come; I have seen the future. And I saw an end to all manner of suffering. I am ready to surrender to Fate.”
Once Upon Forever Page 6
