Chapter One

The box arrived as usual. A large brown van pulled into the driveway and tooted its horn. Then the driver jumped out and placed the box in the wagon on the drawbridge. A moment later, the wagon rolled toward the castle. The thick, double wooden doors swung open and a voice announced, “Package for Ryan Madison.”

Though Uncle Horace changed the mail conveyer to a medieval-style wagon to please the younger children in the household, elfenchaun Dorinda took as much delight in the process as her grade-school-aged niece and nephew.

“Maybe it’s an early Christmas present!” Dori’s delicate green wings fluttered in excitement as she placed the box on the dining room table in front of Ryan. “It’s from ‘L. Levereaux’. Who’s that?”

“Name doesn’t ring any Christmas bells for me.” However, Ryan was so focused on his upcoming marriage to Dori, not much else entered his mind. For years he bided his time, wanting to be sure Dori loved him and wasn’t simply enthralled by this modern world where she had been transported from 1849 famine-plagued Ireland in Uncle Horace’s time machine.

After a number of years, Dori’s eyes still glowed at the abundance here in the twenty-first century. Christmas, in particular, triggered her delight—from the colored lights outlining rooftops in town to the human-sized, automated nutcrackers that marched back and forth between the decorated watch towers of this castle where Ryan had lived with his family since he was a child.

When excited, Dori tended to transform from a woman into an elfenchaun, a magical being who was part elf, part leprechaun. Her wonder sparked a matching appreciation in Ryan, and he felt a renewed gratitude for everyday conveniences as well as the extra gifts of the holidays. Though this year was particularly special, as their wedding was to be held on Christmas Day.

As Dori watched in hushed anticipation, Ryan cut the tape on the box and opened the cardboard flaps with a flourish.

“Oh, no. It’s broken.” Dori transformed back into a woman, her bow-shaped mouth turned down slightly in a frown. “Maybe the company can replace it.”

Ryan stared at the silver pieces of metal in the box, while a memory in his head trembled to be set free. He dug out a hand-printed note that read, “I’m sorry. I hope your uncle can put this back together.”

Then his mind tumbled back, back, back, as if he was riding in the time machine Uncle Horace had built. He landed with an emotional bump in the first grade. His dad had died and his mom was so wracked with grief, she mentally retreated to the 1950s. Aunt Maddie and Uncle Horace took them all in—Ryan and his twin sister as well as their mom.

Though they had no children of their own, Aunt Maddie and Uncle Horace set about making life an adventure. They built this home shaped like a castle and Uncle Horace turned his inventive mind to creating toys to please and delight two six-year-olds. Walking and barking mechanical dogs were one of the first of these treasures.

He and Rissa proudly took their dogs to Show and Tell. Other kids had real puppies, but they were the only ones in first grade to have mechanical dogs. Rissa treated her dog like a real one and didn’t let anyone else even touch it without close supervision.

Ryan made the mistake of letting a cute little blonde take his dog.

“I want to show it to my friends!” Laycee squealed as she rushed off with it.

However, the next day the biggest bully at school brought just the dog’s ear and shoved it in Ryan’s face. “Stay away from my girl or there will only be pieces left of you too.”

Laycee refused to talk to Ryan after that and he never saw his mechanical dog again.

She broke my dog just like she broke my six-year-old heart, Ryan thought.

“Ryan?” Dori’s look of concern finally registered in his brain. “Does this mean something to you?”

Ryan stared at the box of metal pieces a moment longer. “It’s nothing important.”

He threw the box in the garbage as he walked out of the room.

~ * ~

For a few surprised moments, Dori stared at the discarded box. Then she gingerly lifted it out of the can, careful not to spill the pieces. Fortunately, the automatic garbage dispenser had crushed and bagged earlier remains so there was no slimy stuff clinging to the box.

Then she also read the hand-printed note. “I’m sorry. I hope your uncle can put this back together.”

Definitely more to the story of these broken pieces that Ryan wasn’t sharing.

Cradling the box under one arm, Dori descended the stairs into the basement workshop where Uncle Horace tinkered with the many fascinating inventions that made the modern-day castle where they lived even more interesting, such as the automated mail wagon that delivered this package.

Long plank tables crisscrossed the cavernous room, covered with metal tubing, engines, wire, and lights. A bespectacled man with silvery hair standing in startled spikes around a balding pate sat at a table surrounded by shelves stacked with high-tech inventions and mechanical gadgets in various stages of development.

Dori always felt as if she was treading on sacred ground when she entered Uncle Horace’s workshop. Subconsciously, she morphed into her elfenchaun self, feeling more at home in this magical place as her faerie-like alter-ego.

She fluttered near the table, a wispy three feet tall from her tiny feet to the tips of her iridescent wings tinted a delicate green. “What are you working on, Uncle Horace?”

The older man looked up at Dori and smiled. “Just testing the drone controls of the flying car. Perhaps my Maddie won’t have so many crumpled vehicles if she doesn’t have to worry about driving. What do you have in the box, child?”

Dori gently set the box on the workbench. One at a time, Uncle Horace removed the silvery pieces and laid them out in front of him.

“It’s a dog!” Dori exclaimed.

Uncle Horace nodded. “I made two of them—one for Ryan and one for Rissa—when they were six years old. Rissa carried hers around and treated it like a real dog—feeding it, wrapping it in a blanket and tucking it into bed beside her. We repurposed Rissa’s into an exhaust tracking dog, but Ryan’s disappeared when he took it to school for Show and Tell. He wouldn’t tell us what happened to it. Where did you find this?”

Dori told Uncle Horace how the box had come for Ryan and how he frowned and grew quiet after opening it. Then he threw the box in the garbage and left the room.

“Can you fix it?” Dori hovered near Uncle Horace’s shoulder.

He picked up one of the pieces and examined it carefully. “It may take some time, but it can be fixed. Perhaps in time for Christmas.”

Relief flooded through Dori. She wasn’t sure why, but this dog was important to Ryan, though he denied it.

~ * ~

Back in her human form, Dori walked slowly up the stairs from Uncle Horace’s workshop. With only a few weeks until Christmas and her wedding to Ryan, his twin sister Rissa was home with her military husband to help.

Not that anyone had to do much with Rissa’s mother-in-law organizing the event. Linda had been a military wife for decades. A wedding was easy compared to packing up an entire household in a couple days, then setting it up again in a strange town or country within the same timeframe.

After her husband died, Linda moved into Maddie and Horace’s household to bring some order to the eccentric family. She soon became indispensable, even nudging Ryan’s mother out of the 1950’s time warp where she had comfortably settled in denial.

With wedding plans moving forward on schedule, the women had time to talk while they decorated the twelve-foot tall Christmas tree in the chapel room of the castle. Dori switched back into an elfenchaun to string lights at the top of the tree, circling downward in a spiral to hand them to Aunt Madelaine, the tallest of the other women at six feet in her red and green Christmas stockings.

“This is much easier than dragging out a ladder,” Maddie said as she handed the string of lights around the tree to Rissa, who looped them on another part of the tree before handing them to her mother.

“I’m glad you and Ian will be closer to home next year,” Daphne said. Once Rissa and Ryan’s mother traded her saddle shoes for a pair of stilettos, she married a younger man with two elementary school children, started a career, and grappled with her regrets about emotionally abandoning Rissa and Ryan in their childhood. “Maybe I should use Horace’s time machine to go back and be a real mom while you and Ryan were growing up.”

“We’ve had this discussion.” Rissa started hanging ornaments on the tree. “Changing history might mean I wouldn’t have married Ian or any number of the good things that have happened over the past twenty years. It’s best if we move forward.”

“It’s tough to deal with the guilt sometimes.”

“We’ve had some wonderful misadventures with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Horace.”

“Like the mechanical dogs Uncle Horace built?” Dori asked.

“How do you know about those?” Rissa paused with an ornament in her hand to look at Dori.

As Dori hung ornaments around the top part of the tree, she explained how a box of broken pieces arrived for Ryan earlier that day with a note from someone named “L. Levereaux.”

“So Ryan’s dog has come home. It disappeared one day when we were in first grade and he never told us what happened to it.” A frown flitted across Rissa’s brow. “The name ‘L. Levereaux’ isn’t familiar. Wonder who’s had it all these years?”

“I’m surprised one of you didn’t drop those dogs out of the convertible when we were chasing rainbows with the top down,” Aunt Maddie said.

Rissa laughed. “That’s why we named them Rainbow 1 and Rainbow 2—because of those rides we went on.”

Sadness drifted over Daphne’s face as she stared at a shiny ornament. “Children should have a real puppy.”

“You can get a puppy for J-J and Jonathan.” Rissa took the ornament from her mother and hung it on a branch.

“I missed most of your childhood because I was mentally lost in a 1950’s time warp. What if I screw up my stepchildren’s lives too?”

“What if you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to them?” Rissa challenged her mother gently as she hung another ornament on the tree.

“Horace and I didn’t have birth kids, so you all were a blessing.” Aunt Maddie looped tinsel on the branches. “We would have missed out on so much of life without you and we probably wouldn’t have built this castle—which has been an adventure in itself.”

“And probably the coolest place for a couple of kids to grow up.” Rissa stepped back to admire the tree.

“I retreated to be a bobby-soxer when I should have been going to meetings with your teachers. I wasn’t even born during the fifties. Why didn’t I go back to a time I actually knew?”

“You know the counselor said you were looking for innocence after Daddy died, and that seemed like an innocent time.”

Daphne’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Sometimes I still miss Charlie so much, and I feel disloyal because now I love Brenner, then I feel disloyal to Brenner because I miss Charlie, then I wonder if Charlie would still be alive if he hadn’t married me, but if we hadn’t been married, then I wouldn’t have you and Ryan, and even if I wasn’t a good mother, you’re still the best things to happen in my life—except for Brenner and J-J and Jonathan, and of course my sister, Maddie, and Horace has been so gently strong through all this, but he has his inventions, even if they don’t always work—well, eventually he works out the bugs, but…”

As Daphne ran out of breath, Aunt Maddie spoke up before she could resume her meandering dialogue again. “Maybe we just live as best we can with the people we love and enjoy the beauty we make together, like this wonderful Christmas tree.”