Chapter 17
The woods outside of Hazel’s small cabin rippled with anticipation.
Even the wind felt the rising excitement in the air, whistling as it shot by the leaves and brushed through the fraying branches.
Autumn was steadily approaching, and it brought a delicate chill to the gentle breeze.
The colors turned burnt and fiery the further Maggie and Peter went into the woods, resembling the growing racing of Maggie’s heart.
Maggie didn’t dare waste any time in seeing Hazel after discovering her forgotten memory.
She had only discovered it the night before, and perhaps anyone else would have taken more time to come to terms with something as startling as finding one’s long lost mother, but Maggie could hardly take another second of not knowing.
She spent the entire night tossing and turning in bed, trying to understand what happened in her memory.
There was nothing that Hazel could have done to stop the storm from happening, to stop the current from rising and forcing them to drift worlds apart.
But what if Hazel took the storm as more of a blessing than a curse?
In one evening, she was rid of a daughter that would’ve grown to disappoint her.
Perhaps Maggie’s life would have been different if she had remained alongside Hazel, but there was one thing that would always remain.
Maggie had no loved ones growing up. She had no one to turn to in the human lands.
There wasn’t even a person she could consider to be a friend, unless Sunny was being included in the conversation.
In fact, she would have to say that the stray feline was the only good thing to come out of her time in the human lands, and she'd only known him for a few years.
Perhaps the truth was in front of Maggie all along.
No one wanted to be around her long enough to really love her.
It was her who pushed people away, who made others decide to stay as far away from her as possible.
She was a bad luck charm, a pain in someone’s side.
Maybe Hazel got rid of her biggest burden that night, but needed some time to realize it.
When the truth arrived on Hazel’s doorstep, she might turn away without batting an eye.
She might beg Maggie to forget everything she saw.
“Why have you stopped?”
Maggie looked up. She hadn’t even realized she stopped in her tracks, only a few yards away from Hazel’s small home.
Peter lingered up ahead, his expression full of concern.
He stepped back toward her quickly, already reaching for her hands.
They both dressed in thicker sweaters as the island grew chillier around Hazel’s cabin.
The trees around them seemed to cave inwards, as if the leaves and branches and thousands of insects upon them wished to hear what it was that she had to say.
“How do we know that this is the right thing to do?” she asked.
Peter gave her a small smile. “You already know the answer to that question, Magpie.”
“But I don’t.”
“If you didn’t,” he raised her hand to his lips, pressing a small kiss to her knuckles, “then we wouldn’t have even left the treehouse this morning.
” Peter pulled her arm to be curled around his own, already guiding them back on the path to Hazel’s home.
“What’s going on, Maggie? You seemed ready to get to her cabin a few hours ago. ”
Maggie sighed as she found herself unable to fight his pull, following the path as though she had been taking it all her life.
The truth behind her nerves rested on the tip of her tongue, but she could hardly say it aloud.
Anything that read as any sort of complaint felt oddly ungrateful, as though Maggie couldn’t dare to question the gift she had just been presented.
But she felt as though she was bursting at the seams, and the only person she found herself leaning on was Peter and Peter alone.
“Maybe Hazel lost me when we were in that storm,” Maggie began in a quiet voice, as though the trees might overhear, “but who says that she would ever want to change that?”
Peter frowned. “I’m not following.”
“How can we be so sure that she will love me?” The words tumbled out, and suddenly there was no way for Maggie to try and stop them.
“How do we know that she would even want me anymore? All this time Hazel has thrived on her own! She practices her magic in freedom, goes where she wants, does what she wants. Won’t a daughter throw a wrench in her carefree life?
” Maggie frowned and shook her head. “Not to mention an over forty year old daughter.”
“I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about a woman you hardly even know,” he replied.
Maggie opened her mouth to argue but quickly shut it.
It was the truth behind his words that stung her, how well he already could understand her, despite only growing closer recently.
Though she very much enjoyed being understood by someone she planned on eventually spending the rest of her life with, Maggie couldn’t help but feel her stubbornness grow.
“Maggie,” Peter said as the cabin could be seen through the trees. “Why do you think Hazel lives out here, in the middle of nowhere? Literally miles and miles away from Cricket Hollow?”
She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Well, I suppose I never really thought about it.”
“You have every right to wonder about how Hazel will react to you,” he continued.
“If you acted any differently, I might’ve been more worried.
But I don’t think you should hold her in such a regard, Maggie.
Hazel built this cabin all the way out here for a reason, even if it is difficult for us to understand why. ”
Maggie raised a brow. “You don’t know?”
“I have my own assumptions,” he murmured with a wink. “But I think your mother should be the one to do the talking, don’t you?” Peter motioned to the cabin.
As Maggie pulled away from Peter’s arm, she stepped out of the line of woods, and onto the cabin’s front yard.
In the same second, the front door to the yellow cabin snapped open, revealing a short and narrow figure.
Hazel stepped into the growing afternoon light, her brown eyes as wide as the sun above their heads.
Maggie inched forward but hesitated, her hands nervously fidgeting at the base of her stomach.
Across the way, Hazel left the cabin’s threshold, her shoulders falling as the breeze drove by. And though there was a front yard in between them, the words that slipped out of Hazel’s mouth somehow managed to reach Maggie.
“You know.”
Hazel ran across the yard and Maggie met her in the middle.
They collided like a pair of galaxies, a burst of emotions and fears surging into the air around them.
Hazel’s thin, wiry arms collapsed around Maggie with the force of the waves she experienced the night before.
She grasped onto the back of her head, Hazel’s fingers twirling throughout Maggie’s thick curls.
Though Maggie hesitated before, she only fell into her mother’s embrace.
No matter what came next, no matter what Hazel said, Maggie would not let the moment go to waste.
She hugged to make up for every moment lost, to heal every wound that went unbandaged, to fix every tear that was left broken and hurt.
Perhaps none of it could ever be erased, but Maggie did not want it to.
The scars that riddled her heart and soul built her into the woman she was then, into the woman her mother could finally see, into the woman her mother had saved all those years ago.
Hazel pulled out of the embrace, her palms pressed against Maggie’s damp cheeks. “After all the years I spent looking for you,” she breathed, “it was you who was always meant to find me.”
“You…” Maggie felt her heart become full again. “You were looking for me?”
Hazel’s lower lip quivered. “My dear daughter, I have been searching for you every second of every day. There wasn’t a single moment that wasn’t devoted to finding you.
” Tears streamed down her face rapidly. “There wasn’t a single moment where I didn’t love you.
And now, if it is at all possible, I am only bound to love you even more. ”
Maggie’s knees trembled, almost bringing her rushing down to the floor.
After all the time she spent living alone, there was always someone looking for her.
Every day was another painstaking moment alone.
No one dared claim her as family, not with her lingering magic and unknown abilities.
The foster homes that housed her as a child were quick to move her on to the next, the very moment they had the chance to.
Maggie never once complained, never once ran away, never once let her despair and need for love grow into something dark and hateful.
People she believed to be her friends turned away from her the first chance they got.
Suddenly, on the mythical island of Neverland, Maggie was given everything that had been kept away from her.
A love to call her own. Friends that would never leave her side.
A family that went far deeper than blood.
And someone who wanted her as their own, who wanted her as their blood, who wanted to belong to her.
After believing that her parents were long gone, Maggie had found her mother.
And her mother had wanted her all along.
She had not been given up by her mother after all. She had been lost.
Hazel rested her forehead against Maggie’s. “I love you more than life itself, Marigold Broomlin. And now, you are finally home.”
Peter came up behind them as Maggie cried. “Care to let a straggler in on all the love?”
“Come here, you King.” Hazel grappled at Peter’s hand before jerking him into the group hug.