Belladonna

Chapter Seven

Caitlin dug her pitchfork into the compost heap that was tucked away in one corner of her secret garden. Pull out the weeds that choke the flowers and form a messy tangle around the bushes, let them simmer in a corner where sun, water, and air turned them into a rotting stew, and gradually they become a rich loam that fed the same flowers and bushes they had tried to usurp.

If only her own life could be that simple. If only the rotting stew of her emotions could be changed into rich loam.

She worked until her muscles ached. Not because the compost heap needed that much work but because she didn’t want to touch the rest of the garden while bitter anger churned inside her. When thirst became a torment, she gave the compost heap one last turn, then leaned the pitchfork against the garden wall and walked over to the little pool of water shaded by a willow tree. The ground around one side of the pool rose up chest high and was a tumble of stones and pieces of slate that created a series of small waterfalls. The spring that fed the pool had to start somewhere among the stones since there was no sign of it on the other side of the garden wall, but she had never found the source.

Taking the tin cup she kept tucked among the stones, she filled it under one of the little waterfalls and drank it dry once, twice. When she filled the cup a third time, she settled beside the pool, one hand moving idly through the water as she sipped from the cup and looked around the garden that had provided her with an odd kind of companionship most of her life.

The pool had been her first exhilarating—and later, frightening—example of her power over the physical world.

She’d been six years old when she’d found the garden hidden on the hill behind her family’s cottage. Michael had just left for the first time to take up the wandering life, and she’d run off, heartbroken that her only friend and playmate had abandoned her. She’d run and run and run. Aunt Brighid had told her she would make friends when she started school, but it hadn’t happened. The other girls teased her and said cruel things, and she knew the teacher heard the girls and did nothing, encouraging them by keeping silent. So there were no friends, and without Michael to help her, school was hard. And Aunt Brighid hadn’t wanted to admit that the same…something…that lived inside Michael and had driven him away from Raven’s Hill lived inside her, too.

Her aunt would defend her against anyone—including the women who had been Brighid’s Sisters on the White Isle—but privately, Brighid hadn’t been able to hide the flinch, or the anger, whenever she saw evidence of Caitlin’s and Michael’s “gift.”

So all Caitlin had known that day was that the difference that lived inside her and Michael was the reason Michael had gone away, and she ran, wishing with all her young heart that she could find someone, anyone, who would be her friend.

She’d tripped and ended up sprawled on the path. When she looked up, there was a stone wall in front of her and a rusted, broken gate.

She had found Darling’s Garden.

Tangled and overgrown, desperately needing care, the garden tugged at her, and as she walked around it, her heartache eased. Here was something that needed her, wanted her, welcomed her.

Spotting something small that looked pretty but was almost buried under weeds, she pulled up a weed to get a better look. Then pulled up another. And another. When she finally cleaned out a circle of ground around the little plant, she still didn’t know what it was, but it made her feel a little less lost and alone.

Years later, she learned the plant’s name. Heart’s hope.

She kept going back to the garden, escaping from school as soon she could to run up the hill to the secret place. Aunt Brighid’s scolding and obvious worry about where a child that age was disappearing to for hours at a time couldn’t eclipse the lure of a place where the light seemed to sparkle with happiness every time she slipped through the gate.

Then a girl at school invited all the other girls to see the expensive fountain her father had installed in the family’s garden. All the girls except one.

Not you, the girl had said. I don’t want you and your evil eye to look at our fountain.

Caitlin had stood outside the school, blinking back tears of shame as anger filled her.

“I wish your fountain looked as rotten as your heart,” she whispered.

All the way up to the secret garden, she thought about a fountain and how lovely it would be to have one.

When she got to the garden, there it was—not the kind of fountain appropriate for a formal garden, but a tumble of stones forming a series of waterfalls into a knee-deep pool that was guarded by a young willow tree.

It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—but it hadn’t been there the day before. That was when she realized she could make things happen just because she wanted them to. She was excited, delighted, sure it was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

A week later, her aunt hauled her into their cottage, sat her down in a chair, and said, “Whatever it is you did, Caitlin Marie, I want you to undo it. There’s enough talk about evil eyes without you causing trouble.”

She didn’t understand until Aunt Brighid told her about an expensive fountain that had turned foul. The water plants rotted overnight. The golden fish that had been bought from a merchant in Kendall and brought to Raven’s Hill at great expense kept dying. And the water stank like a stagnant marsh no matter how often the groundskeeper cleaned the fountain and replaced the water. There was fear of sickness running through the village because of that foulness.

She’d cried and sworn she hadn’t done anything bad, even though she suspected she was the one who had caused the change in the fountain, and she cried even more when Aunt Brighid yelled, “Where will we go if we’re driven out of this cottage? This is all we have, and we have this much because it was your father’s legacy, the only tangible asset he left his children. If we don’t have this, we have nothing, Caitlin. Nothing.”

Then Aunt Brighid started to cry.

She’d seen Aunt Brighid cry happy tears and the “little sadness” tears that came over the older woman from time to time, but not this heart-tearing sorrow.

So that night she wished as hard as she could that the fountain in her classmate’s garden would be wonderful and clean and make everyone happy.

It didn’t happen. Oh, the next time that fountain was cleaned, it didn’t turn foul, but the plants and fish never flourished, and the water never quite smelled clean. Finally, it was drained for the last time and had stood empty ever since.

After that, she kept her wishes contained to the garden and never wished something bad on anyone. Which was hard for a young girl who had no friends, who the teachers looked at with distrust, who knew she was an outsider because of a difference in which she had no choice.

She had kept the garden her secret until Michael came home the first time. He, at least, was like her. He would understand that special place.

But he hadn’t understood it. Oh, he’d admired it, had praised the work she had done all by herself to clean it up, but he hadn’t felt anything for it.

And yet, he’d done the one thing Aunt Brighid couldn’t do: He had accepted her strange communion with the world. It worried him, and it wasn’t until years later that she realized he was worried for himself as well as for her. Magicians, the luck-bringers and ill-wishers who could change a person’s life by doing nothing more than wishing for something to happen, had been driven out of towns when things turned sour. Some had been injured; some even killed. And in those places…Well, it wasn’t safe for anyone to live in those places anymore.

When she was ten years old, her secret was discovered by two boys who followed her after school one day. She didn’t know if they had intended to do more than follow her; she had heard nothing while she had worked in the garden. It wasn’t until she had slipped out through the gate that she heard the screams for help and found the boys. One had a leg pinned under a fall of boulders. The other was sinking in a patch of bog.

Fortunately, it had happened during one of Michael’s visits home, and he’d been walking up the hill to find her—or shout for her, since even he couldn’t find Darling’s Garden unless Caitlin was with him, but, oddly enough, his voice carried over the garden walls when nothing else did.

So while she had stood there, horrified that she might have done something that had caused the hill to create boulders and bog, Michael had come up the path.

A sudden crack, and a tree limb fell across the bog hole, just missing the boy and providing him with something to cling to—and providing Michael with a safe way to pull the boy out. That same branch became a lever for freeing the other boy from the boulders.

The boys recovered from their misadventure, but no one in Raven’s Hill forgot the story that Caitlin had been seen entering Darling’s Garden. Darling, who, it was said, had been a mostly benevolent sorceress who could command the world to do her bidding. There had been rumors that women in her father’s family had found the garden a few times, but no one had known for sure that the garden still existed until Caitlin Marie had stumbled across it.

After the incident with the boys, Aunt Brighid began talking about the White Isle and Lighthaven, a place of peace, of Light. Maybe a place for a second chance, a new beginning—and, for Brighid, a return to the life for which she was best suited. For Caitlin, the stories about the White Isle were the seed that began a dream of friends and acceptance, of being part of a community.

Until the Sisters of Light, at Aunt Brighid’s request, came to test her to see if she could be one of them.

She was not. Could never be. Wasn’t welcome on their little piece of the world.

That she had failed the Light’s test had been noticed by the villagers and had sealed her fate, branding her a sorceress.

And now…

Setting the tin cup back in its place among the stones, Caitlin moved to the bed in the garden that usually gave her the most comfort. Sinking to her knees, she studied the heart’s hope.

The plant hadn’t bloomed for the past three years—not since she had failed the Light’s test. Oh, it continued to survive even though it didn’t thrive, and it produced buds each year. But nothing came of those buds, of those small promises of hope. Even now, when it was well into the harvest season and most other plants had spent themselves, it was full of buds, as if it were waiting for some signal to bloom that never came.

Like me, Caitlin thought. I can have my choice of professions in Raven’s Hill—village sorceress or village whore. Take me out for a moonlight walk, tell me how lovely I am now that I’m all grown up, tell me my hair is so lush—like a courtesan in a story. Courtesan! Just because I didn’t spend much time in school doesn’t mean I haven’t read the books Michael brought home from his travels, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t know a fancy word for whore.

The pain of a lifetime of small hurts and snubs swelled up inside her until there was nothing left. There were plenty of people who were willing to use her in one way or another, but nobody really wanted her.

Swallowing down a sob as she remembered that young man standing in the moonlight, looking so romantic and saying things that ripped her heart open, she took the little folding knife out of her skirt pocket, opened it, and lifted it up to eye level. As she studied the blade, the breeze in the garden died, and it was as if the earth held its breath and waited to see what she would do.

“A whore needs to be lovely,” Caitlin said. “A sorceress does not.” Lifting the knife, she held the blade just above her cheek.

Imagining Aunt Brighid’s horror and sorrowful acceptance upon seeing Caitlin’s maimed face gave the girl a feeling of jagged pleasure. Imagining Michael’s grief—and worse, the guilt that would live in his eyes ever after because he’d had to leave them in order to provide for them—made her lower the hand that held the knife.

“I can’t stand this anymore,” she said, staring at the heart’s hope. “I can’t stand being here, living here. If I wasn’t around, Aunt Brighid could go back to the White Isle where she belongs. Then Michael wouldn’t have to support anyone but himself and could have a better life than the one he has now. He deserves a better life.” Tears filled her eyes. Her breath hitched. “And so do I. Why can’t I go someplace where I can have friends, where I’m accepted for what I am? Why can’t there be a place like that? I’m so alone. It hurts to be so alone. Isn’t there anyone out there in the world who would be my friend?”

As she curled her body over her legs, her waist-length hair swung over one shoulder. Grief flashed back to anger, which deepened to a cold, dark feeling.

Sitting up, she grabbed the hair just below the blue ribbon that kept it tidy. Then she laid the knife’s blade just above the ribbon and sawed through the hair. Tossing the length of ribbon-bound hair in front of the heart’s hope, she continued to grab chunks of the shortened hair and cut it even shorter, feeling a terrible satisfaction at this act of self-violation.

Then she sliced her thumb, and the pain broke the cold, dark mood.

Folding the blade into the handle, she tucked the knife in her pocket, then went to the waterfall to wash the wound. Not so deep it would need stitching, but it was painful and—she sighed as she wrapped her handkerchief around her thumb—it signaled an end to working in the garden that day.

She looked at the tufts of hair that littered the ground around where she had been sitting. She looked at the tail of beautiful hair that used to make her feel pretty and no longer gave her pleasure.

Then she ran out of the garden, ran all the way home.

“Caitlin Marie!”

She found no satisfaction in her aunt’s dismay at her appearance, but she lifted her chin in defiance. “That hair was only suitable for a whore. I won’t be anyone’s whore.”

Aunt Brighid started to speak, then changed her mind about whatever she was going to say. Instead, she pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit down. I’ll get my shears and see if I can tidy up what is left of your hair.”

While Aunt Brighid trimmed the hair, Caitlin kept her eyes closed. There was a freedom to having hair so outrageously short. It would be seen as unfeminine, undesirable. Tomorrow she would look through the trunks stored in the attic. There might be a few things left that Michael had outgrown. With masculine hair and masculine clothes…Maybe she would learn to smoke a pipe. And she would make it known that any man who showed interest in her did so because he had no real interest in women. No man in Raven’s Hill would want to be accused of taking a moonlight walk with another man. Maybe, if she were mistaken for a young, somewhat effeminate man, she could even go traveling with Michael, get away from Raven’s Hill altogether and see a bit of the world. Maybe even find people who could accept this strange gift inside her and would want to be her friends.

No longer feeling quite so bleak, she helped Aunt Brighid sweep up the hair trimmings, then prepare the evening meal. Later, as they both worked on the mending, she thought about the hairs she had wound around the heart’s hope and belladonna plants she had given to Merrill.

When she’d gone up to get the plants, she hadn’t paid attention to anything but the plants. Now, picturing that corner bed in the garden, she realized the stone that had come from the White Isle had been tucked behind the plants.

After Aunt Brighid began talking about Lighthaven, she had given Caitlin the stone that had come from the White Isle as a sort of talisman, and Caitlin had brought it up to the garden to be part of the flower bed she had made to honor the Place of Light. The bed never flourished. Some lovely little flowers bloomed in the spring, but the rest of the year that ground remained stubbornly bare, no matter what she tried to plant there—or tried to coax Ephemera to produce there. After she failed the test of Light, she stopped tending that flower bed, and even the little spring flowers died out.

She didn’t remember doing it, but she must have moved the stone to that corner. And now that she thought about it without anger clouding the feel of the garden, it seemed a little…odd…that the plants had been with that stone. Remembering the feel of a hand clasping hers when she touched the plants, she realized something else. The plants hadn’t felt quite in tune with the rest of the garden—as if she were singing one song while someone else sang another, and the melodies tangled and blended at the same time, working toward harmony but not there yet.

Not there yet.

Caitlin winced. No. Surely not. It had been a childish gesture, a bit of pretend. The two hairs she had wrapped around the plants’ stems couldn’t change whatever was going to happen when Merrill and the other Ladies performed their ceremony. Could they?

Glorianna fastened the gold bar pin to the plain white blouse, then stepped back to get a full view of herself in the mirror. The dark green skirt and the matching jacket that had flowers embroidered around the neckline and cuffs were probably too formal for this meeting. With her hair pinned up, she looked like she was attending some afternoon society function instead of meeting colleagues to discuss the danger to their world.

But we aren’t colleagues, Glorianna thought as she dabbed a little scent on her pulse points. I was never one of them.

But she had to see the Landscapers who had found their way to Sanctuary, had to talk to them and hope they would be willing to work with her to protect Ephemera from the Eater of the World.

Guardians of the Light, please help them accept me, listen to me. If they can’t, if they won’t, Ephemera will end up more shattered than it is now.

The woman who looked back at her from the mirror had eyes filled with nerves instead of much-needed confidence. The woman in the mirror was tired of being an outsider who couldn’t count on her own kind to stand with her in the battle that was coming. Even though she still believed in her heart that she would have to face the Eater alone, it would be a relief to know her family didn’t have to shoulder the weight of being the only ones supporting her.

Which was why she had chosen these clothes for this meeting—as a reminder that her family did support her. Her mother had given her the blouse as a gift for her thirty-first birthday. Lee had purchased the fine green material, and Lynnea had made the skirt and jacket. Jeb, still a little uncertain of his place in the family beyond being Nadia’s new husband, had given her the bar pin, which had belonged to his mother. Yes, the outfit was lovely, but it was the love and acceptance it represented that she had donned with each piece of clothing, like a shield that would protect her heart from whatever was to come.

As she turned away from the mirror, she was drawn to the water-color that hung on the wall next to her bed. Titled Moonlight Lover, the view was of the break in the trees near Sebastian’s cottage, where a person could stand and see the moon shining over the lake. The dark-haired woman in the painting wore a gown that was as romantic as it was impractical, and looked as substantial as moonbeams. Standing behind her, with his arms wrapped protectively around her, was the lover. His face was shadowed, teasing the imagination to provide the details, but the body suggested a virile man in his prime.

There was something about the way he stood, with the woman leaning against his chest as they watched the moon and water, that made her think he was a man who had journeyed far and now held the treasure he had been searching for.

Sebastian, the romantic among them, had painted it for her. He had captured the yearning for romance that she thought she kept well hidden. But in the same way that the secrets of the heart couldn’t be hidden from a Landscaper, could romantic yearnings be hidden from an incubus?

It worried her sometimes when, in the dark of a lonely night, she conjured the image of a fantasy lover. When that shadowy lover began to feel almost real enough to touch, was she still alone in her fantasy or had an incubus joined her by reaching through the twilight of waking dreams? Or was something else trying to reach her through that yearning? Sometimes it almost felt as if she could extend her hand across countless landscapes, and touch—

Bang, bang, bang. “Glorianna?”

Muffling a shriek that would announce her abrupt return to the present—and give Lee the satisfaction of knowing he’d startled her—Glorianna pressed her hand against her chest to push her jumping heart back into place. There was nothing quite like a brother when it came to shattering a sensual fantasy. She hoped to return the favor someday.

Annoyed with herself for procrastinating and annoyed with him, since he wouldn’t have been banging on her bedroom door if they weren’t already late and that meant he knew she was procrastinating, she hurried across the room and opened the door.

All her annoyance disappeared, because all she could do was stare.

He was wearing his best black trousers and jacket, with a white shirt, a patterned green silk vest, and a black necktie. He’d worn those clothes for the weddings—Sebastian and Lynnea, and then, a week later, their mother and Jeb. Except for those two occasions, she couldn’t remember the last time he had dressed so well.

“My handsome brother,” she said, intending a light compliment. But seeing him standing there, polished up because he was as nervous about this meeting as she, was a sharp reminder that his life would have been so much easier if she hadn’t been his sister.

Or if he had refused to acknowledge her after she had been declared rogue.

So she couldn’t keep her voice light, couldn’t wave aside how much his loyalty had meant to her over the past sixteen years.

“Don’t get maudlin,” Lee said, grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the room.

“I am not getting maudlin,” she said, insulted because she was so close to feeling that way. “I was just trying to be pleasant.”

“Uh-huh.” He kept pulling her along, slowing down when they reached the stairs to give her a chance to lift her skirt so she wouldn’t trip and send both of them tumbling.

“Will you stop pulling at me?” Glorianna snapped when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“No.” He pulled her out of the house and around to the side. “We’ll use my island to reach the rest of Sanctuary. It will take too long to use a boat. You spent so much time primping, we’re late as it is.” He gave her a calculating look. “Or did you get distracted by something else?”

Heat flooded her face, and Lee, being an odious sibling, laughed.

“Sebastian will be pleased that you like his gift,” he said.

“I wasn’t mooning over a painting,” she replied, clenching her teeth.

“Did I say mooning? I never said mooning.” He stopped at the edge of where his island rested over hers, visible since there was no reason to hide it.

Lee’s little island was anchored in Sanctuary. She had originally created it as a private place for herself, but it had resonated with Lee from the moment he’d set foot on it, and the connection was so strong that he could impose the island over any other landscape. Unseen unless he chose otherwise, the island provided safe ground if he found himself in a dangerous landscape.

“So,” he continued, “do you want to sit around with the other Landscapers indulging in sterile, suffocatingly polite talk or just ask Ephemera to conjure up a big mud wallow?”

“What?” She stared at him. “Did you knot that necktie too tight? I don’t think there’s any blood getting to your brain.”

“There’s a custom in one of the landscapes—not one of yours but one I visited with another Bridge a couple of years ago. When two people—usually women since men tend to deal with things in other ways—start hurling insults at each other, and the disturbance starts dragging other people in to take sides, the village leaders have the two women—people—escorted to a wallow at the edge of town that was created just for that purpose. The two…contestants, let’s call them…are assisted into the wallow—”

“Shoved, you mean.”

Lee shrugged. “And they go at it. Every insult is accompanied by a handful of mud that is slung at the other contestant.”

“Mudslinging in the literal sense.”

He nodded. “So they scream and rant and rave and sling mud at each other until they’re too tired to continue.”

“Must be humiliating, to say things meant to be kept private.”

“But they don’t keep it private. They’ve been saying the same things to people behind the other person’s back. This gets it all out in the open, and beyond showing everyone else how petty the argument truly is, it’s also highly entertaining.”

“Does it do any good?”

“Sometimes I think it really does clear things up between people who care about each other but stumbled somewhere along the way.”

Glorianna cocked her head. “Like siblings?”

Lee grinned. “From what I gathered, some of them start a ruckus just to go play in the mud.”

She laughed. “Too bad you didn’t know about this custom when we were younger.”

He laughed with her, then he turned serious. “You’re not like other Landscapers, Glorianna Belladonna. You never were. You’re a heart-walker as well as a Landscaper. Never forget that.”

Tears stung her eyes, and she didn’t resist when he put his arms around her in a comforting hug.

“Do you ever wish that I had been like them?” she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Sometimes,” he replied quietly. “But only because of what it cost you to be different.” He hesitated, then added, “I wouldn’t change anything, Belladonna. I’ve worked with other Landscapers. Had to. And I’ll tell you this, not as your brother but as a Bridge. There is no one else I would want leading this fight against the Eater of the World. There is no one else I would trust enough to follow.”

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. Not that she needed to see the truth; she could feel his heart.

“Let’s go meet with the others.”

With their hands linked, they stepped onto the island. Within moments, Lee had shifted them back to the part of Sanctuary where the island physically existed. A few minutes later, they entered the guesthouse and found the room Yoshani had reserved for this meeting.

The Landscapers and Bridges in the room didn’t look bedraggled, exactly, but there was a dazed expression in all their eyes. They had seen the end of their world as they knew it, and none of them were sure how to take the next step toward healing what had been savaged by the Eater of the World’s attack on the Landscapers’ and Bridges’ schools.

Had the Guides of the Heart looked the same way? Glorianna wondered. When the battle was over and they looked around at their shattered world, had they, too, felt lost and uncertain?

Yoshani smiled when he saw them, but she felt the sadness resonating from his heart, felt the Dark currents of power that flowed through the room, fed by the five Landscapers and three Bridges who sat waiting. She didn’t know any of the Bridges, and she didn’t know the Third Level Landscaper or the three who wore First Level badges. But the oldest Landscaper had been an Instructor at the school during her brief time there.

“Hey-a,” Yoshani said softly.

One of the Bridges looked over and saw them. For a moment, his eyes remained blank. Then anger filled him as he leaped to his feet and pointed. “What are they doing here?”

“They are the ones you have come to see,” Yoshani said.

“Not them,” the oldest Landscaper said. “Not her.”

“There are things you need to know,” Glorianna said, moving farther into the room. “Things you can do to protect your Landscapes if you just—”

“You did this!” the Third Level Landscaper screamed. “The wizards should have destroyed you when they had the chance!”

“Glorianna didn’t release the Eater of the World, and she didn’t destroy the school!” Lee shouted. “She’s never done anything to any of you! The Dark Guides poisoned your minds and hearts against her, but she’s the only one who can help you now.”

“We don’t need her help,” the oldest Landscaper said, her whole body shaking with anger as she got to her feet. “She was declared rogue for a reason, and we’ve finally seen Belladonna’s true face.”

“Do you really see it?” Glorianna asked. “Can you calm your own hearts for just a moment to really see me for who and what I am?” She held out a hand and focused on the oldest Landscaper. “You don’t need the garden at the school to connect with your landscapes. They resonate within you. You can reach them. If the landscapes you came from are secure, you can build another garden to help you protect the places in your keeping. And the Bridges can connect the landscapes the five of you hold. I need your help in fighting the Eater of the World.”

“Our help?” the oldest Landscaper said. She laughed bitterly. “If anyone unleashed these horrors on the landscapes, it is you. You dare to come here to Sanctuary? This is sacred ground, a Place of Light. You sully it with the mere presence of your filthy heart!”

“Enough!” Yoshani shouted.

No, Glorianna thought. It is not enough.

The Dark currents inside her swelled with an anger that was black and undiluted. She stepped away from Lee. But before she said the words that were straining to break free, she sent out a command.

Ephemera, hear me. The anger in this room is nothing more than wind, a storm that cleanses and is gone. This anger manifests nothing, changes nothing.

But it would change everything.

“I am not like you,” Glorianna said, the fierce anger that flowed through her making her voice rough. “I have never been like you, because I am a direct descendant of the Guides of the Heart who walked this world long ago. I am like them, and I am connected to the world in ways you cannot imagine. But I also have the bloodlines of the Dark Guides flowing through my veins, so I command the Light and the Dark. I am not human. Not like you. I am Belladonna. You have never wanted any part of me. Now I want no part of you.” She raised a hand and pointed at the Landscapers and Bridges. “Ephemera, hear me! Know these hearts. Any place that resonates with me is closed to them for all time. They may leave this landscape of their own choosing, but if they do not leave, send them to the landscape that resonates with their hearts. This I command.”

She turned and walked to the door. Then she paused and looked back at them. “The Eater of the World is free among the landscapes. If you don’t hold on to your pieces of the world with all the Light in your hearts, It will destroy you and everything in your care.”

She walked out of the room, walked out of the guesthouse. Then she ran from the pain that threatened to cripple her.

But even as she ran, she knew no one, not even Glorianna Belladonna, could run fast enough or far enough to escape the pain that lived in her own heart.

Yoshani stepped in front of Lee. “It is done,” he said, keeping his voice low so that only Lee would hear. “There is no need to say more. Go away for a few hours. Go see your cousin.”

Lee’s green eyes were filled with icy anger. “My sister needs me.”

“There is too much anger in your heart, my friend. You cannot help her. Let your feelings spill on someone who can drink them in and not be hurt by them. Sometimes anger needs an echo before it can be washed away. Go. I will look after Glorianna.”

Lee glared at the Landscapers and Bridges, but he left the room.

Yoshani closed his eyes and tried to calm the turmoil in his own heart.

Opportunities and choices. It was a saying Glorianna often used to explain how the world worked to fulfill true heart wishes. He had seen the Light side of that saying, but until today, he had never seen the tragic side of it when the choices might cost so much.

He turned to face the eight people in the room.

“I am sorry,” he said, “but you can no longer stay in Sanctuary.”

He gave them a few moments to deny and protest his words, then he raised a hand to command silence. “You cannot stay.”

“But we came here looking for help, looking for answers to what was happening in the landscapes—and what happened at the school,” one of Bridges protested. “You said we might find the answer here.”

“The answer stood before you, and you would not see. You chose to turn away from her, and now she has chosen to turn away from you.”

The oldest Landscaper stared at him in disbelief. “Belladonna? She was the answer? She’s a rogue!”

“And that is all you see,” Yoshani said sadly. “For you, she is nothing more than a word that evil used to shroud your hearts. So now you do not resonate with the currents of power that flow through Sanctuary, and you cannot stay here.”

“But she can?” one of the Bridges shouted.

“Sanctuary is one of Belladonna’s landscapes,” Yoshani replied quietly. “She altered Ephemera in order to bring the Places of Light together so that we might learn from each other, draw strength from each other.”

They just looked at him, too stunned to speak.

The youngest Landscaper wrapped her arms around herself. “The school is gone. We can’t go back to our gardens. How are we supposed to take care of Ephemera if we’re all alone?”

“You are not alone,” Yoshani said, looking at each of them in turn. “You have each other. So you find a place where you can build again, begin again.” And hope the Eater of the World does not find you again. “Come. I will escort you to the bridge that, I believe, will still be able to take you back to your landscapes.”

Glorianna kept her eyes fixed on the koi pond. She wanted to go back to the Island in the Mist and wrap herself in the comfort of solitude. But she sat on the bench and watched the koi while waiting for Lee to find her.

Except it was Yoshani who sat down on the bench and watched the golden fish.

“Where is Lee?” Glorianna asked, her voice husky from the storm of tears that had broken inside her after she’d run from the guesthouse.

“He has gone to spend a little time with Sebastian,” Yoshani replied.

“But…” She pushed down the feeling of disappointment. Lee had to be upset about that meeting. He was entitled to venting in whatever way he chose.

“I suggested he leave for a little while,” Yoshani said. “As close as you are to your brother, I think there are some things that you cannot say to him.”

Glorianna didn’t answer, so they sat together and watched the koi.

“Heart wishes are the most powerful magic that exists in our world,” she finally said. “They can reshape the world, cause a cascade of events.”

“Is it not true that any heart wish, no matter how powerful, can be thwarted by another heart wish that alters or disrupts that cascade of events?” Yoshani asked. When she didn’t respond, he added, “What is it you fear, Glorianna Dark and Wise?”

Fear. Yes, there were things she couldn’t discuss with a brother—or a mother. But here, now…

“I’ve known for sixteen years that I was different,” she said softly. “I’ve known I wasn’t like the other Landscapers, even before I was declared rogue. But I’ve wanted to be one of them. I’ve wanted to belong and have friends and people who would understand the challenges and frustrations of being a caretaker of the world.” She hesitated, then pushed on to the thing that had to be said. “Did I cause this, Yoshani? Did my own yearning to belong ripple through the currents of the world and set all this in motion, freeing the Eater and destroying the school so that the survivors would need to see me as one of them?” Tears welled up, stinging her eyes before they flowed down her cheeks. “Did I do this?”

“Glorianna, I say this with honesty and with the love of a friend.” Yoshani took her hand in both of his and leaned toward her. “You are being a conceited ass.”

She blinked at him, trying to see him clearly through the tears.

“Did you free the Eater of the World?” he asked.

“Maybe I—”

“Did you go to the school and set that evil free?”

“No, but—”

“Did you deliberately, and with malice, use your influence over Ephemera to cause whatever was done to set the Eater free?”

“No.” Using her free hand, she wiped the tears off her face.

“Let me tell you a story about the world.”

“I don’t think there’s time for a story,” Glorianna said, feeling surly. He had called her a conceited ass. What kind of help was that?

“There is time for this one.” Yoshani released her hand, braced a foot on the bench, and wrapped his arms around the upraised knee. “I wasn’t a bad man, more of a youth whose wildness could have led him down a dark road. If there had been a place like the Den of Iniquity in those days, I might have chosen a very different life.”

Glorianna studied him. “Teaser still gets hysterical when your name is mentioned.”

Teaser was an incubus who lived in the Den and was Sebastian’s closest friend. When she had gone to Wizard City to trap the Dark Guides, Yoshani had returned to the Den with Teaser to help that landscape remain balanced. The incubus was still having trouble accepting the fact that a man who lived in a Place of Light had been comfortable—had enjoyed—visiting the Den of Iniquity.

Yoshani smiled. “As I told him many times during my visit, I was not always a holy man.”

“So why did you become a holy man?”

“Because of you.”

Glorianna didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to think, what to feel.

“My wildness was making things difficult for my family. At the core of that wildness was anger. Within my extended family there were several professions I could have chosen, several trades I could have apprenticed in. But none of them touched my heart, and in my own way I fought against being yoked into a life I wasn’t meant to live.

“Finally my grandfather took me aside and told me I had a choice: I could go up the mountain and live in the community that served the Light and remain a member of the family, or I could continue my wild ways alone, shunned by all who had loved me. If at the end of three years I had not found my place or my purpose with the Light, I could come home and take up my old ways with no familial penalty.

“So for three years I worked in the community and studied with the elders and tried to find my purpose in the Light. And every day I prayed that something or someone would show me what, in my heart, I knew I was missing.

“And then you appeared one day, a girl from a strange part of the world, trying to make herself understood. The elders decided that you suffered from a sickness of the heart, a…poisoning. I was twice your age, and most unwilling, but the elders assigned me the task of staying with you as you wandered the land that made up our holy place. So I followed you through our gardens, through the fields and woods. Then you stopped suddenly, lifted your face to the sky, closed your eyes…and drank peace. I watched the Light fill you, felt it rejoice in the vessel, saw you bloom like a plant responds to rain after a dry spell.

“I watched, and I felt something shift in my heart. I understood the kind of work I could do in the world—helping others find that pool of calm, that moment of peace when they can truly hear the wishes of their own hearts and see the paths that are open to them for their life’s journey. Because I was asked to watch over you, I found my place in the Light.”

“If I hadn’t gone to your community that day, the Dark Guides would have succeeded in sealing me in my garden at the school,” Glorianna said. After a silence that seemed to fill the world, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me this story before?”

“Until we became friends and trusted each other enough to talk about delicate matters, I didn’t know how you, as a Landscaper, saw the world around you. After I began to understand how you saw the world, it never felt like the right time to tell you this story. Until today. So now I will ask you, Glorianna Dark and Wise. Were my prayers, my heart wish, the reason Ephemera created a way for you to reach my part of the world? If they were, am I to blame for the sorrows in your life?”

“No, of course not,” Glorianna said. “We make a hundred choices every day, and each of those choices, no matter how trivial, changes the landscapes we live in just a tiny bit. Enough tiny changes can change a person’s resonance and open up another landscape as the next part of their life’s journey.”

“Or close a landscape?” Yoshani asked gently.

She nodded. “Sometimes people cross a bridge and never find the way back to a landscape they had known because they have outgrown that place. They have nothing to offer that landscape, and it has nothing to offer them.”

“And sometimes when they reach that point, they know it is time to leave.” Yoshani took her hand again. “You reached that point today. I think, in your heart, you never truly left the school. I think that by holding on to a landscape that was not yours, you denied your own heart’s attempts to manifest a heart wish.” He gave her hand a little squeeze. “You spoke the truth, Belladonna. You are not like them. You never were. Let them go. They have their own journey. It’s time for you to look for the people who are like you.”

It washed through her, a wave of power, as if a dam had finally broken to free what had been trapped for so long.

A heart wish.

Hers.

“Guardians and Guides,” she gasped.

“What is it? What is wrong?” Yoshani grabbed her shoulders to support her.

“I think it’s called an epiphany—or a heart wish released from its cage.” She felt faint resonances. “Something is already in motion. I couldn’t feel it before.”

But she had felt it—in a stone Ephemera had brought into her garden.

“I need to go back to the Island in the Mist,” she said as she sprang to her feet.

“May I come with you?” Yoshani asked, rising to stand beside her.

She hesitated, almost refused his company, then allowed the ripples still flowing through the currents of power to decide for her.

“Thank you. Your company would be welcome.”

“And since you are so gracious, I will even cook a meal for you,” Yoshani said as they walked away from the koi pond. “Do you have rice?”

“Yes. No. Maybe.” She did cook when she was alone on the island for a few days and wanted to putter in the kitchen, but that wasn’t the same thing as knowing what she had in the pantry at the moment. “Lee eats things.”

Yoshani made a sound that might have been a snicker. “In that case, I suggest we fill a basket from the guesthouse larder. Simpler that way, don’t you think?”

She had no opinions about the simplicity of using the guesthouse larder, but she knew with absolute certainty that her life was about to change—and nothing was going to be simple.

In the hidden part of the world known as Darling’s Garden, air ruffled the water in the pool and murmured among the leaves. Fluttered the blue ribbon that tied a long tail of brown hair.

The garden resonated with New Darling’s heart wish, sending ripples through Ephemera’s currents of power, both Light and Dark: “Isn’t there anyone out there in the world who would be my friend?”

An answering resonance rippled back from many places of Ephemera, but there was one place that had a stronger resonance, a better resonance. Because one heart wish could answer another. In response, Ephemera altered a little piece of the garden to provide an access point to a part of itself that resonated with that other heart wish. But New Darling did not cross over. So it took what New Darling had left for it to play with and brought it to the place that resonated with the other heart wish.

As the long tail of brown hair disappeared from the garden, one bud on the heart’s hope bloomed into a beautiful, delicate flower.