Belladonna

Chapter Twenty-one

Merrill didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to feel as she watched those…people…escort Brighid to the wrought-iron gate that served as the visitors’ entrance to Lighthaven. Brighid, who had been the heart of this sanctuary of Light and never should have left the White Isle to tend those demon-spawn children. Brighid, who was coming back to them maimed in body and spirit by her time in the outside world.

When Shaela had told her someone was coming up the road in a hired carriage, she had rushed outside and locked the gate, unable—and unwilling—to hear Shaela’s objections over the pounding of her own heart. She had known on some level who was coming, and locking the gate was the only way to protect what she loved best. Not the people, despite her affection for the Sisters who nurtured the Light. No, it was the place itself she truly loved. Because it was the only safe thing to love.

Anger clogged her throat, clogged her lungs, thickened the blood trying to pump through her heart. The carriage had stopped some distance away, but she could tell who crawled out of it as though it were some pus-filled womb. Not just the demon-spawn children of Brighid’s sister coming to foul a Place of Light, but the sorceress called Belladonna was with them, along with a dark-haired man.

Belladonna. How had that creature managed to reach Lighthaven?

Hadn’t she done everything in her power to cast the Dark out of Lighthaven? Since the day Belladonna appeared on the White Isle, hadn’t she stood in the gardens for hours, focusing her heart and will on the effort of casting out the Dark? Hadn’t she spent hours in the prayer room cleansing her own heart of any feelings that didn’t belong to the Light? Hadn’t she spent just as much time praying that the hearts of all her Sisters would be equally purified?

It had worked. Almost. She had not been strong enough to cast out the shadows lodged in Shaela’s heart, and she had not been strong enough to cast out a friend who had served the Light for so many years. But those shadows must have provided the crack through which sorcery could reach the Light.

She couldn’t let the crack widen, couldn’t let the contamination spread.

She watched Brighid approach the visitors’ gate, leaning on the brown-haired man she assumed was Caitlin’s brother Michael, while Caitlin Marie kept pace with them. Belladonna and her companion were trailing far behind the others. Good. She had no desire to shame Brighid, but she was Lighthaven’s leader and had a duty to this place, so the words had to be said.

She took a deep breath and let her authority and conviction ring in her voice. “It is with joy that we look upon our lost Sister and welcome her back to the place where her heart truly dwells. But the rest of you are not welcome here. I will not allow the darkness that crawls within your hearts to poison the Light. Brighid may come back to us—if she turns away from you, who are unclean.”

A few man-lengths away from the carriage, Glorianna tripped, caught herself, then looked back to see what had snagged her foot.

“What’s wrong?” Lee asked softly, stopping with her.

“Nothing,” she said just as softly as she studied the ground. “Everything.”

It wasn’t visible to the eye, but if she let her mind and heart drift in the currents of Light and Dark that flowed through the White Isle, she could almost see it as a physical reality: the border that separated two landscapes.

“Brighid said she could tell the moment she took the first step on ground that belonged to Lighthaven,” Lee said. “And she’s right. Between one step and the next, everything does feel a little different. We must have crossed a border.”

Glorianna kept studying the ground as the currents of power flowed around her, and through her.

From the moment her feet had touched the White Isle, she had felt that same odd dissonance she’d felt when she’d taken the island out of reach of the Eater of the World. Since Michael tended to describe things in terms of music, she guessed he would say the island was playing two different songs and, because the notes were tangled together, both sounded slightly out of tune.

But they were untangling now, becoming clearer, more distinct. And…

“It was a border,” she said, not quite believing what she was sensing, “but it’s becoming a boundary.”

“Boundaries require bridges,” Lee said sharply. “And these people don’t know about boundaries and borders and bridges, so this doesn’t usually occur.”

That’s right. It didn’t. Maybe Elandar and this island weren’t as seamless as people thought, but it was still a whole, unbroken piece of the world.

But that didn’t answer the question of why Ephemera was altering a border to become a boundary that would make the separation of places apparent. Was it because she and Caitlin were on the island together? Or was something else spurring this change in the world?

The currents swelled suddenly, washing through her. She spun around and looked at the people standing on opposite sides of a gate.

Three women—Brighid, Merrill, and Caitlin Marie. Three heart wishes in conflict with each other. And yet…the same heart wish.

“Guardians and Guides.” She staggered as the ground suddenly dipped and swayed beneath her, as the world itself cried out for help.

“Hey!” Lee grabbed her. “Don’t you faint on me again. Don’t you do that, Glorianna.”

She gave him a shove that had him stumbling back a step and uttering a shocked curse. “We have to stop them before…” No time to explain. The bedrock of a Landscaper’s heart wasn’t established well enough here, so Ephemera was gathering itself to manifest those heart wishes without guidance.

She ran for the gate, aware that an argument was taking place, aware that the Dark currents in this place had been extinguished to the point where they couldn’t absorb the bad feelings now swelling in a Place of Light, aware that the ground had become soft and the air heavy, that every heartbeat was a distant clap of thunder, a warning peal of the storm about to break.

She couldn’t move fast enough. She would never reach them in time to tell them to stop, to wait, to think. So she did the only thing she could since she had a connection to the White Isle and Ephemera trusted her to guide it through the most ever-changing landscape of all—the human heart.

Ephemera, hear me. Give those hearts what they desire. But manifest those heart wishes through me. Through ME.

As she felt the world gather itself to obey her command, she heard two voices, raised in anger, say at the same moment, “I don’t want you.”

Thunder. Avalanches. The crash of the sea. The scream of the wind when it was filled with wild insanity.

The roar of a world tearing itself apart.

Everything snapped back into focus. Her last step had her knocking into Caitlin before she put her hands out to catch herself as she fetched up against the stone wall beside the gate. She leaned against it, rested her cheek against it as she closed her eyes.

Good stone. Solid stone. Not the stone of anger, but the stone of strength.

All the tangled currents were no longer tangled. Her resonance formed the bedrock for Lighthaven, but what lay beyond the boundaries of this landscape…

“I thought shattering the world had been difficult, but it wasn’t,” she said as strong hands settled on her shoulders. “The difficult part is keeping the pieces in harmony enough to stay together.”

For a moment, she thought it was Lee standing behind her. Then she realized the shape of the hands wasn’t quite right. And the warmth of those hands, the way they touched her…No, those weren’t her brother’s hands.

“Darling, I’m hearing the words, but they have no meaning,” Michael said as he drew her away from the wall and back against him. “And if you’re going to be scaring me on a regular basis, I’m telling you now I want kisses. The kind that make a man’s head swim and will kick his heart back out of his stomach.”

“Isn’t there a saying about the connection between men’s hearts and stomachs?” Foolish to be flirting, but she felt oddly light and happy, as if she’d taken in that first breath of spring after a hard winter.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” Michael said, laughter in his voice.

Then Lee said in a strained voice, “Fog is a good way to describe it,” and the breath of spring vanished as she eased away from Michael and looked back toward the place where she had tripped.

Dark currents flowed through Lighthaven again, but they were slender threads that resonated with her. That fog, however…

She brushed her fingers over Michael’s arm. “Go with Lee. See if you can find out the source of that fog.”

He gave her a questioning look, then nodded. Good. Since they both knew he didn’t have the training to figure out the reason for the fog, he was assuming she just didn’t want her brother going alone to investigate. Which was true.

The other part of the truth was she wanted the men out of hearing before she let her anger flow.

She waited until Lee and Michael were halfway between the gate and the fog before she turned to look at the women. Shock and fear on Merrill’s face. Fear and confusion on Caitlin’s. Confusion…and an awakening…in Brighid’s eyes. And a recognition: I know you.

Merrill first.

“Open the gate,” Glorianna said coldly. “You got what you wanted. More than you wanted. Now you have to live in the landscape your heart helped shape.”

“I don’t…,” Merrill stammered.

“Open the gate.”

Pebbles popped out of the ground all around the gate.

“Sorceress,” Merrill whispered.

“Landscaper,” Glorianna replied.

This time, the stones that popped out of the ground in response to her anger were fist-sized and had sharp edges.

Shaela stepped up to the gate and nudged Merrill to one side. Her hands shook as she unlocked the gate, but she pulled it all the way open.

Satisfied with that step, Glorianna glanced toward the spot where Lee and Michael were standing, thankfully still visible. Since the men didn’t need her, she turned her attention—and her temper—on Caitlin Marie.

“Did you learn nothing in the past few days?” she asked, making her voice as sharp and hard as stone. “You have seen what happens to the world when you become careless. You have seen, Caitlin Marie. You no longer have the excuse of ignorance for what you do or the harm you cause.”

The girl took a step back, shocked by the deliberately aimed emotional blow.

“I didn’t do anything,” Caitlin said, now looking sick and scared.

“You’re a Landscaper,” Glorianna snapped. “You can’t lie with words when your heart knows the truth. Feel the difference. This place has changed.” For the better, she added silently, but she still had one more of them to deal with before she acknowledged that.

“It wasn’t just me,” Caitlin cried. “It wasn’t. Why aren’t you yelling at her?” She flung out an arm to point dramatically at Merrill. “She started it by saying I don’t belong here. She—”

“—is right.”

Silence. Shock and pain. And in that silence, when the hearts of those women had no defenses, Glorianna, as Landscaper and Guide, heard all their secrets. Especially the ones they had kept hidden from themselves.

Now she could gentle her own heart. Because now she understood the tangles between herself and Caitlin.

“You don’t belong here, Caitlin Marie,” Glorianna said quietly. “You never did. If you had come when you had first learned of Lighthaven, if you had been welcomed when the dream of it was still a fluid dream, I think you could have walked here in harmony with this Place of Light. But always as a visitor. Now you resent the place and feel bitterness toward the people who live here. Now you are a dissonance. You are not the bedrock of Lighthaven.” She turned to look at Merrill. “I am.”

Merrill’s eyes widened. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. Then her hand slowly lowered as she stared at Glorianna in wonder. “I know. I feel you in the Light in a way I couldn’t before.”

“I am the bedrock. And you are the anchor.” She looked at Brighid. “Just as you were once the anchor.” She saw wariness in Brighid’s eyes. It must have been hard for the woman to hide her true nature, even from the people she loved.

She took a step toward Brighid, then tipped her head toward Merrill and Shaela. But her eyes stayed locked with Brighid’s. “They are Sisters of the Light, but you are a Guardian. A true Guardian, descended from the first ones who were shaped by Ephemera in response to a cry from the human heart. What we came from was not human, and even now, generations later, we are not completely human. But it’s time to stop hiding, Brighid. The Eater of the World is loose in the world again, and people need to know they do not stand alone.”

Brighid studied her, hope now battling wariness. “My family line has been a secret kept for generations. A secret entrusted only to the daughters destined for Lighthaven. Even Maureen didn’t know because she wasn’t…like me. You’re not a Guardian. How do you know about these things? Why do you talk as if we’re the same? We’re not. I know we’re not.”

“Two branches from the same tree,” Glorianna replied. “You came from a line of Guardians, the ones who remained apart from the world in order to nurture the Light. I came from the line who walked in the world in order to know the human heart. I’m a Guide.”

Four women sucked in their breaths as they understood the significance of that word.

“You’re a Heart Seer?” Brighid asked.

Glorianna nodded.

“But I’m not,” Caitlin said, looking heart-bruised.

“No, you’re not,” Glorianna replied gently. “But you are a very strong Landscaper, Caitlin, and it’s time for you to knowingly take care of your pieces of the world.”

“I don’t know how.”

“My mother and I can teach you.”

Caitlin looked at her with eyes drenched in unshed tears. “I don’t know where I belong.”

Glorianna stepped close enough to brush her fingers over the girl’s short hair. “That’s all right,” she said, smiling. “I do.”

Then she looked past Caitlin and saw the men coming back to the gate. Michael’s face was pale as ice, and Lee’s…She had never seen her brother look so grim—or so scared.

She looked at Brighid, then at Merrill. “I think the rest of this conversation should be more private.”

“And I think this conversation would be best held in a well-stocked pub,” Michael said. “But we’re not likely to be finding one here, so…” He raked his fingers through his hair.

“We do have some brandy,” Shaela said. “For medicinal purposes.”

Lee brushed a foot from side to side to create a narrow path that was clear of the pebbles and fist-sized stones made from Glorianna’s anger. He worked his way up to the gate and past the gate. Once he was inside the walls that surrounded Lighthaven, he turned and looked at all of them. “Then I suggest we all have a large glass of medicine before we talk about this. We’re going to need it.”

Michael cradled the glass of brandy and stared at the dark liquid, waiting for someone else to ask the question, voice a concern, do something. But Lee and Glorianna, who were the only ones in the room who might have the answers, seemed content to drink brandy, stare at nothing, and brood.

“All right,” he said. “What happened out there?”

Glorianna and Lee looked at him. Then Lee said, “In response to some powerful heart wishes, the White Isle shattered into two landscapes, separating Lighthaven from the rest of the island. Right now, that’s all we know.” He turned to his sister. “Isn’t it?”

Glorianna nodded. “And we know Lighthaven is one of my landscapes, and I’m almost certain the rest of the White Isle is one landscape that is in Caitlin Marie’s keeping.”

He waited, but they didn’t say anything more. “What happened to the horse and driver when things…changed?”

“That mist-covered lake might not look so big from the other shore,” Lee replied. “Not likely to be a puddle-jump, but—”

“Did a man die when this happened?” Michael’s voice sharpened. “Is that what the two of you are trying not to say? That because people had an argument and some harsh words were said, the world changed and a man died because of it?”

Shocked gasps. One of the women—maybe Caitlin—whimpered.

“We don’t know,” Glorianna said, giving him the courtesy of looking him in the eyes. “I don’t think a chunk of the road suddenly disappeared out from under the carriage, dropping man and horse to the bottom of the lake. I think it’s more likely the landscapes altered, and Ephemera created a moat, of sorts, around Lighthaven.”

Suddenly Michael realized what she wasn’t quite saying: The lake was that unnatural dark patch in the sea, the place where Glorianna had fainted in his arms. Somehow, Ephemera had plopped Lighthaven in the middle of that dark patch, which Lee and Glorianna were now calling a lake. And since that made no sense to him, he focused on something he hoped wasn’t quite so slippery to grasp.

“So the driver might be standing in the same spot, wondering why the road is suddenly leading right into a lake?”

“He could be.” Glorianna took a healthy swallow of brandy. “Or he could have stared at it for a minute or two and then driven back to Atwater as fast as he could.”

“To tell them what?” Brighid asked.

Michael studied his aunt. She looked pale, and she had to be hurting still from the injuries caused in the fire. It would have eased his own nerves a bit if she’d gone off to rest. But he hadn’t known, and she had never said, that she had been more than a Lady of Light, that she had been their leader.

She belonged here. He could see it. Even in pain, even in distress over the things that had happened, there was an ease in the way she held herself, as if the land itself nourished something inside her—something that had starved during the years she had lived in Raven’s Hill.

He’d had no idea what she had given up in order to answer the plea of a young boy who had been desperate to avoid being put in the orphan’s home and just as desperate not to lose his little sister, the only family he had left.

Brighid caught him looking—and returned the look.

Power in her eyes. The kind of power that had been kept hidden all the years she had lived outside these walls. Maybe—he glanced at Merrill, making a quick judgment of the way she was watching Brighid—had been kept hidden all the years she had lived here as well.

“We won’t know that—or what’s on the other side of the boundary—until one of us is standing in the other landscape and looking at the lake from that side,” Glorianna said in response to Brighid’s question. “The problem is, we don’t know if the rest of the White Isle is the landscape on the other side of the lake. And Caitlin hasn’t had the training to know how to take the step between here and there to reach one of her landscapes or her garden, so—”

“She’s not going back to Raven’s Hill,” Michael said fiercely. “Especially not alone.”

“Her garden isn’t rooted in Raven’s Hill,” Glorianna said. “It never was. Our immediate problem is how to get across a lake of undetermined size with neither boat nor oars—and no idea of what now resides in that lake since it’s still a dark landscape.”

Michael shuddered. The weeds that floated just beneath the surface had looked similar to the seaweed that had marked that patch of dark water, but Lee had felt reasonably certain the water was fresh, not salt. Different…and yet the same.

So Michael took a long swallow of brandy and wished there wasn’t a reason to wonder…and worry…about what might be waiting for any fool who tried to cross that lake.

Lee dug in his jacket pocket. “I’ve got a solution to that particular problem. Kenneday gave me this.” He held out a compass and grinned at his sister.

Glorianna looked at the compass and started hooting with laughter while everyone else just looked puzzled.

“I asked him for something small that I could carry and use if I needed a way back to the ship. So he gave me this.”

Glorianna almost got herself under control—and then got the hiccups.

“One shot—hic—bridge?” she asked.

Lee nodded. “It should put me on the deck of the ship. If I leave now, I shouldn’t be too far behind the driver and whatever story he’ll be telling. Might even get there ahead of him. I’ll reassure Kenneday that we’re all in one piece, then have him help me get a wagon and maybe a rowboat. We couldn’t see the other shore because of the fog, but a person should be able to cross that distance.”

“Depends on the heart, doesn’t it?” Glorianna said cryptically. She set her glass aside and scrubbed her hands over her face. “All right. If you’re feeling up to it, it would be better to get ahead of the wildest stories. We’ll figure out what should be connected and how once we know what we’re looking at.”

“Done.” Lee stood up and headed out of the room.

“If I’m not here when you get back, don’t worry,” Glorianna said as he opened the door.

He shut the door with a control that was worse than a slam. “And where will you be, Glorianna Belladonna?” Lee asked, turning back to face her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. He just stared back. Michael admired the backbone it took for a man to do that.

Glorianna looked at Merrill. “Do you have riding horses here?”

“Y-yes,” Merrill stammered. “They’re not fancy, but we have some.”

She turned those eyes back on her brother. “The Magician and I are going to ride the perimeter of this landscape and find out what it has and what it lacks.”

He was so surprised by her plans for him that he inhaled the fumes of the last swallow of brandy and coughed until he thought his eyeballs would bounce right out of his head. Of course, then he got a double whack on the back, which helped neither cough nor eyeballs.

“If you’re done with killing me, then get me some water,” he wheezed. He heard someone scrambling. Not either of the two who had been whacking him, but someone with a kinder heart.

Then Caitlin was kneeling in front of him holding a glass of water.

“Drink it down now. There’s a lad,” she said.

I’m not seven, he thought, feeling surly enough to think it but still having enough sense not to say it.

He took the water and drank it down—and got his breath back.

“It’s settled then,” Glorianna said.

“Now that you’ve settled things to your satisfaction, kindly satisfy the curiosity of the rest of us,” Brighid said.

Michael, hearing her voice edge toward the cold side of discipline, winced. Glorianna, however, just watched his aunt, as if looking for something no one else could see.

“I won’t know precisely until I ride the perimeter, which, I suspect, will take no more than a day,” Glorianna said. “I’m guessing Lighthaven is now an island within an island. The connection between this Place of Light and the rest of the island was already fragile.” She nodded at Merrill. “That, I think, was your doing. Your heart fears the world beyond these walls. You wanted Lighthaven to be unreachable, untouchable.”

“And you wonder why?” Merrill asked. She waved a hand toward Brighid and Shaela. “Look what the outside world does.”

“I didn’t say you were wrong, Merrill,” Glorianna replied. “I’m simply explaining.” She waited, then she closed her eyes, as if she needed to shut them all out in order to make a decision. When she opened them, she looked at Brighid. Only Brighid. “The White Isle has been split into two separate landscapes. Maybe more. Until a Bridge comes in and establishes bridges that can connect those landscapes to other places, they stand apart from the rest of the world and each other. In Ephemera’s attempt to balance the heart wishes that altered the White Isle, the Dark currents that had been cast out of Lighthaven have now formed a lake that keeps the Light from being touched by the outside world.”

“That isn’t right,” Brighid said quietly. “The Light should not be hidden away.”

“It should be protected!” Merrill protested.

“A beacon of hope must be seen, Merrill, or it cannot shine in the dark and warm the hearts that need it most.” She focused her attention on Glorianna. “What must we do to touch the world again?”

“Glorianna?” Lee asked softly.

She waved a hand in his direction. “Go. Travel lightly.”

She waited until Lee was gone before leaning back in her chair and looking up at the ceiling, as if she needed a moment to mentally step away from all of them.

Michael watched her. There were fine lines at the corners of her eyes. Had they been there before now, or had the strain of this journey cut those lines into her skin? Was he partly responsible for those lines? Was Caitlin, with her childish tantrums that created consequences not easily fixed—if they could be fixed at all?

“Is that how it is then?” he asked no one in particular. “People do foolish things, or say things in anger that they would regret in a clearheaded moment, and the world changes?”

“Opportunities and choices, Magician,” Glorianna said, sitting forward. “Every day, every person makes a hundred small choices. Most of them are not so clear-cut as choosing between Light and Dark. There is so much room in the gray spaces of the world. But when weighed at the end of the day, that heart leans a little more toward the Light or the Dark—and then resonates a little closer with the Light or the Dark. Make enough choices, one way or the other, and the day comes when you have grown beyond who you were and it’s time to take the next step in your life’s journey.”

“To cross over to another landscape, you mean?” Michael asked.

“The world doesn’t care if you call it crossing over to another landscape or if you believe a spirit will remove a key from your heart and tell you to choose the lock that will open the door to the next stage of your life. What matters is that where you end up will match the resonance of your heart, good or bad, Light or Dark.” She rested her forearms on her knees and clasped her hands loosely in front of her. Then she looked at each of them in turn. “Life journeys. On the way, you are influenced by others, helped by others, harmed by others. Some things happen because you have earned them. And some things happen because cruelty flickers through the Dark currents and rises up without warning, causing harm, causing pain, causing tragedies that can devastate one person or an entire village. What I feel in this room is a conflict of hopes and dreams and desires. No one who stood at that gate is innocent of shattering the White Isle. And no one is more to blame than the others. So many choices were made to bring you to this moment. Now that you know what your choices can do, make the next ones with care.”

She pushed up and went to the door.

“What about you, Glorianna Belladonna?” Brighid asked. “Are you accepting responsibility for the choices you made?”

Oh, the look in Glorianna’s eyes when she said, “I always accept responsibility for my choices.” Then she slipped out of the room and quietly closed the door.