Legend of the Three Moons. Patricia Bernard

      BLURB

      Five children held captive in an ever-changing forest, trapped by their own memory loss, face the battle of their lives to overcome evil and reclaim their birthright.

      Why do they only have some memories for one day?

      What is the purpose of the Three Moons' Song?

      Which of their magical gifts will allow the children to conquer the riddles of the imprisoned mermaid, the chained eagle and the frozen dragon?

      Adventure and danger abound as Lyla, Celeste, Lem, Chad and Swift face enchanters, murderers, shape thieves, monsters and slave traders to save all that is precious to them.

      1

      The Moon Dial

      Lightning flashed over Lem's head illuminating the clearing as bright as day. The leaves around the moon dial sparked and sizzled and the smell of burning filled the night air. Lem clung to the rocking pedestal.

      Lyla stuck her head out of the cave and shouted over the rumble of thunder, `Come inside! It's dangerous!'

      Lem shook his head and the grit-filled wind blew his long fair hair across his face, blinding him. It was just like Lyla to tell him what to do. But he wasn't going to do it. This time he would do what he wanted to do. `I don't care! I want to see it properly this time!'

      She sprinted across the clearing and tried to pry him loose but he twisted his legs around the pedestal to stop her. Beside them a tree split in half and a whirlwind of sparks scorched her bare feet and burnt her fur leggings. She brushed the sparks away and yelled into his stubborn face. `What difference does it make? You won't remember it tomorrow! None of us will!'

      Lem knew she was right but he didn't care.

      She tried to move him again but when he chose to be, he could be as stubborn as the wild donkeys they'd chased around the meadow that morning. Not only that, but of late, for no reason Lyla could understand, Lem had started questioning her leadership. Which was stupid because she was the eldest.

      She tried one last time to get him to change his mind, but when a vicious gust of wind blew ice into her face, she gave up and ran back to the cave. As she crawled under its ox hide curtain, Swift blocked her way.

      `Why can't Chad and I go outside to see the eclipse?'

      `Because the storm could kill you,' she snapped.

      Swift was Lem and Lyla's younger brother. Or so they thought because he looked so much like them. In fact, apart from their different hair colour, the three of them looked like peas in a spiral-pea pod. And everything Lyla or Lem did, Swift tried to do. Although this wasn't always possible as he was small for his age, which, they'd all guessed to be about twelve summers.

      Blonde-headed Celeste was about fifteen summers old, the same as Lyla, but they looked nothing alike. Lem was about fourteen summers; and Chad, who looked so like Celeste that he had to be her brother, was about thirteen.

      But with only a twenty-four-hour memory for so many things in their lives, it was impossible for the five children to know anything for sure.

      At first they hadn't realised they forgot things every night. Why would they? They woke each morning to all their familiar things, like their boxes of books and furniture, their clothes, weapons and the five small named paintings of themselves. They loved to talk about all the things they had learnt from their books and the fabulous stories they contained. They knew which books to use to perfect new sword, spear or bow skills; or what foods that they could eat or not eat.

      But each day on leaving their cave, they rediscovered their world anew - from the clearing and its moon dial, to the Forest and river beyond, as if for the first time.

      They fell asleep every night with the fabulous tales from their books mingling with their own adventures, only to wake again with no memory of anything they had done away from their cave.

      It was only after Celeste discovered the diary amongst the stacks of books and decided to write in it every evening, that they realised they had no recall of what they had done the day before.

      Her diary was how they knew that although Swift was the smallest but that didn't stop him being daring and bold. They knew before they ventured out for the day that he would climb the highest trees, jump off the highest cliffs or swim across the river three times just to prove he could do anything they could do.

      Celeste's diary and her neatly-drawn maps revealed other startling facts, such as how some things didn't always stay where they should. A peach orchard one day was a field of daisies the next; or a swimming hole became a small grassy hill.

      Without Celeste's diary they wouldn't have known whether, if they brought home a meadow pony or a long-haired lemur, they would know on waking why there was a pony or lemur tied to the moon dial outside their cave. After they tried it once and had no idea why a pony was tethered in the clearing, until they read Celeste's dairy, they made sure they always spent every night in the cave.

      Celeste had written:

       Everything changes except our cave, the clearing, the moon dial, the river and the three moon eclipses.

      From then on they swam in the pools and picked the fruit on the day they discovered them in case they never found them again.

      Her diary told them the eclipses happened three times a year. And that with each eclipse came a horrific storm that battered and thrashed the trees, stripped the fields, caused the river to flood and the wolves that lived outside the Forest to howl like demented spirits.

      Eclipses were when the Forest animals shivered in their burrows and the children huddled together in their cave, singing songs that Lem made up or listening to stories Celeste made up, while outside the lightning slashed at the sky, the thunder crashed and smashed overhead and enormous boulders fell from mountains that they hadn't remembered were there.

      But not tonight! Tonight Lem wanted to sit on the moon dial and watch the eclipse while the screeching storm threw broken branches and hailstones at him.

      Lyla pushed a bowl of water out into the clearing so they could watch the merging of the three moons from the safety of the cave. Mirrored on the bowl's surface the large golden-rimmed moon slipped behind the silver-circled moon and the silver-circled moon slid behind the smaller pink moon forming a large three-coloured disc that shone down on Lem turning him into a silver statue.

      `Look!' gasped Celeste. `There's a blood mark on the pink moon. Bad things are going to happen!'

      `Bad things are already happening!' shouted Swift as a large branch slapped against the ox skin curtain tearing a hole in it.

      Swift peeked through the hole and saw a jagged line of lightning rip open the sky and light up Lem like a giant glimmering glow-worm. Then the moons slid apart and the storm was over.

      Lyla yanked the ox-hide aside and ran to her brother. `Lem. Speak. What did you see? What happened?'

      Lem pushed his hail-covered hair out of his startled eyes. `The three moons spoke to me Lyla, and then they sang me a moon song.'

      2

      The Three Moons' Song

      Huddled around the cave's fire the four listened while Lem told them everything the moons had told him.

      `They said that the Sender of Storms, who is also called the High Enchanter, is our enemy. He is the reason why we have to live in this Forest with only a 24-hour memory.'

      Chad looked surpised.`We have an enemy?'