EXCERPT. © 2011 Reprinted by Permission. All Rights Reserved.From: The Secret Garden"Welcome to the secret garden, My Lady."An extremely old cemetery lay neglected before me, but it was tranquil. The gate was frail and rusted, and the ivy vines that twisted around it also stretched out and wrapped themselves around the stone wall. Marcus reached into the backseat to retrieve his violin. In an esoteric way, the violin case slightly resembled a coffin.He carried his violin and walked with me into the cemetery. The headstones were weathered and unreadable, and flowers, or what may have been flowers, dead. A cool wind blew through the trees. He rested his violin against a stone and before I knew it, he swept me off my feet and tossed me over his shoulder.I squealed. "Marcus Marble, put me down now!" He just laughed and twirled me around and carried me over to the stone wall and sat me atop."Be right back."I glanced around the cemetery and could've sworn I saw or felt someone watching me. Someone other than Marcus. But Marcus returned before I had time to analyze it any further and he noticed my expression had shifted."What's wrong?" He looked concerned."I'm cold," I lied. He quickly removed his coat and tossed it up to me. It was extremely warm and the scent was intoxicating--like sleeping on a bed of flowers on the first night of Spring.I felt safe with Marcus, but there was also an intensity about it--an excitement from being near him, and often times it would even linger when he wasn't around, and make me want to be with him more. The feeling was becoming more and more addicting and I wasn't sure I could live without it.Marcus raised his violin into position, looked up into my eyes and then...a bewitching tune melded onto the airwaves and spread over me like the afternoon sunset that flared through the trees and sank into the graves of the dead, never to be seen again.Even with his coat on, I felt chills. The tune he played was sad at first. And then it flirted with a tune that sounded like love. Those two frequencies made a bittersweet melody that burst into a cry of pain, a wailing of war. Finally, the heartache subsided and silently imploded onto a string of notes that were unsettling. The sound that ended the melody was a sound that was unsure of itself. It was equivalent to reading a book and coming across a page that abruptly stopped in the middle of a paragraph and did not continue on. This sound was definitely not the ending of his tune. It wasn't happy nor sad. It was just unwritten.I realized tears trickled from my eyes. I quickly wiped them away. The sun faded and night began to descend. The sky was a deep navy blue. Marcus sat his violin aside and dropped to one knee, as though he were about to propose. His eyes flickered with seriousness. He took my hand into his. "Ellie, would you frolic in the land of forever with me?""What's the land of forever?"