Belladonna

  “Maybe,” she replied, her voice rough from trying to control her own tangle of emotions as she silently acknowledged the difference in those two phrases. “It depends on the test.”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then stepped into the wooden box holding the gravel.

  “Don’t leave this space until I return for you,” she said. Ephemera, hear me. Show me the landscapes of this heart.

  She walked away, ignoring his “Now just a minute here!” protest. She kept moving away until he turned his attention to the sand. Then she doubled back to quietly come up behind him.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, lightly kicking at the gravel. “Play tricks on a stranger just because he doesn’t know much about…Lady’s mercy!”

  Fist-sized stones—many with jagged edges—filled the box that had held sand. A moment later, half the stones sank beneath a foul-smelling bog.

  “Just a trick,” he whispered. “Can’t be real. I can’t be doing this. Land doesn’t change this fast. Not this fast.”

  Yes, it can, Glorianna thought. Under the right—or wrong—circumstances, it can.

  The far corner of the sandbox disappeared under a heavy fog.

  Dark landscapes, she thought, feeling a chill go through her. Was there nothing inside him but dark landscapes?

  “Lady of Light, have mercy on me,” he said, sinking to his knees. Then he cocked his head, as if hearing something. His eyes widened in shock, swiftly replaced by wonder. “The wild child.”

  The words resonated through the currents of power, leaving Glorianna breathless. It wasn’t the way she would have described Ephemera, but it felt exactly right.

  “Come on, now. Come on,” he said, his voice cajoling. “You know me. You listen to me when I play tunes in the pubs, when I’ve given people a reason to sing and laugh and put aside their troubles for a while. And I’ve played tunes for you, when I’m on the road and it’s just the two of us. I’m a long ways from home, and maybe you don’t know me because of it, but…”

  Stone rose out of the bog in front of him. Not fist-sized rocks, but a hefty piece of granite that had veins of quartz glinting in the sunlight.

  “Well,” he said after a brief hesitation, “that’s a good stone.”

  A patch of grass covered the area in front of the stone, and the bog under it turned to earth that smelled like fertile ground after a soft rain.

  He laughed, sounding relieved. “Yes! That’s the way of it.”

  A small heart’s hope plant grew in front of the quartz-veined rock.

  Hold, Glorianna commanded as she moved around the box to where he could see her.

  He stood slowly. She kept her eyes on the box that now reflected some of the landscapes of his heart. She didn’t need to see his eyes to know they held vulnerability and wariness.

  A good heart shadowed by doubts. A hard life when he deserved something better. A balance of Dark and Light.

  But the test didn’t answer one question: What was he?

  “Anger makes stone,” she said quietly, pointing to the fist-sized, jagged-edged stones. Then she pointed to the granite. “And strength makes stone. Doubt and fear are bogs in the heart. Fog can come from many things, but despair makes the deserts—and hope the oases.” Now she looked into his blue-gray eyes. “You don’t understand the meaning of what you see, but you know the world listens to you, that you can make things happen. Don’t you?”

  He looked reluctant to admit to anything, but he nodded.

  “What do they call you?” she asked.

  “My name is Michael.”

  She shook her head slowly. “What do they call you?”

  A stronger reluctance. She watched his throat muscles work as he swallowed. “Luck-bringer. Ill-wisher.” He paused, then added, “Magician.”

  He said the word as if it had been the bane of his life.

  And it has been, she realized. Just as being declared rogue has been the bane of my life.

  She studied him a little longer. Then she smiled. “Welcome to the Island in the Mist, Magician.”

  There was real warmth in her smile, honest welcome in her words. And the music of her heart…Bright notes entwined with dark tones, forming a song that held the promise of everything he had searched for, waited for, wanted with all his heart. Love and happiness and home all held within a body he hoped to be kissing by the end of the day—and to keep on kissing for the rest of his life.

  He’d misunderstood, had gotten things tangled up in his own mind. But…No, that wasn’t right. He’d gotten here because he’d told people he was seeking Belladonna.

  He watched her smile fade and knew it was because he was staring at her, but the music inside her—and its possibilities—held him. Bright notes and dark tones. Could the answer be that simple?

  “Glorianna…Belladonna?”

  Her green eyes chilled as she nodded. “I am Belladonna.”

  Her darkness is my fate. He grinned at her, and got a narrow-eyed stare in return. That was all right. He was here; so was she. They would build a grand life together—once they figured out how to deal with the Well of All Evil.

  “What landscape do you call home?” Glorianna asked.

  “My coun—” He stopped. Why bang his head against the wall of stubbornness these people had for refusing to understand the word country? “My landscape is called Elandar. My family comes from a village called Raven’s Hill.”

  “Do you know the White Isle?” she asked.

  Not knowing why she had tensed in response to his answer, he nodded. “I know of it. My aunt was a Lady of Light there before she came to live with us when my sister and I were children.”

  “Come with me.” She turned toward the enclosure.

  Michael started to follow, then stopped so fast he had to pinwheel his arms to keep his balance. “Wait. What will happen if I step out of this box?”

  “Nothing. Your heart doesn’t dominate here.” Now she looked thoughtful. “But it does resonate here.”

  “Is that going to stay like that?” he asked, waving a hand at the bog, fog, and sand—and that little bit that, in his own mind, represented home and hope.

  “No, it’s just a playground where Ephemera can safely express itself. It will go back to resting sand when you step out of the gravel box.”

  He stepped out of the box and silently counted. Before he reached “ten,” almost everything had changed back to sand.

  “Ephemera,” Glorianna said in a warning voice.

  “Can’t it stay?” Michael asked, feeling a heaviness in his chest at the thought of the heart’s hope going away.

  “When you feel its resonance, what does it mean to you?” He gave her a puzzled look, so she pointed to the rock, grass, and heart’s hope. “What does that represent for you?”

  “My homeland,” he said without hesitation.

  She hesitated, then said, “An access point. All right. It can stay there for the time being. Come with me.”

  He picked up the travel pack.

  She stared at the pack. He didn’t see anything that would distinguish it, but when she looked troubled, he wondered if she recognized it as belonging to Sebastian. Should he say something? Reassure her that Sebastian had loaned it to him? Or should he reassure her that he barely knew the incubus–wizard–Justice Maker who ruled a place called the Den of Iniquity?

  Not sure what to say, he offered no information—and she asked for none as she led him to the gate in the walled enclosure.

  Then he walked into a garden that would change his understanding of the world forever.

  Glorianna fiddled with the gate to give herself a moment to think.

  He was carrying Sebastian’s pack. She recognized it because of the luck piece Lee had given Sebastian—a small, flat stone with a natural hole. It was tied to the pack with a strip of leather and wasn’t something that would draw anyone’s attention. But that stone was one of the two one-shot bridges Lee had created to assure that Sebastian would be able to reach the Den, n
o matter what landscape he might find himself in.

  Which meant this stranger, this Magician, had been to the Den—or to Aurora—and had met Sebastian.

  “How did you get to the River Guardians?” she asked.

  “A man named Yoshani showed me the way to their part of Sanctuary.”

  So Yoshani and Sebastian had met Michael—and they, having ways to send her a message, had made the choice to let the river test him. Why?

  So I would know he is worthy of what he seeks—even if I’m not sure I trust my response to him or his to me.

  “There’s something I’d like you to do while I show you the garden,” she said, turning to face him.

  “Another test?”

  The weariness in his voice tugged at her. “Yes, in a way it’s another test, but not a difficult one. I’d like to know which parts of the garden resonate for you.”

  “You mean which ones I feel in tune with?”

  “Yes.”

  He immediately moved to the first bed on the left side of the garden and crouched in front of the statue of a seated woman. “A bittersweet tune for this one. A mother’s tune.”

  “Why do you say that?” Glorianna asked, intrigued by his choice and the way he described his resonance.

  “I look at this”—Michael waved a hand to indicate the bed—“and I hear the warmth and strength of a woman who loves and knows how to laugh but has also felt the sorrows that come in a life. So…a mother’s tune.”

  Glorianna studied the statue she’d taken from her mother’s garden in order to protect Nadia from the Eater of the World. So. This Magician from Raven’s Hill resonated with Aurora, which was Nadia’s home village.

  “Any others?” she asked.

  With many of the access points to her landscapes, he held out a hand and tilted it back and forth to indicate a so-so response. He wasn’t repelled by those particular places, but they also weren’t landscapes that resonated with his heart.

  Then they reached the part of her garden that held the dark landscapes. Michael immediately pointed to two of the access points. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he pointed to a third.

  “You know the waterhorses,” Glorianna said.

  Michael nodded but gave her a puzzled look. “How did you know?”

  “You pointed to their landscape.”

  That slight blankness in his eyes. He wasn’t a Landscaper in the way she would normally use the term, but he clearly had a strong connection to and power over Ephemera. It scared her to think that he’d been going about his part of the world, influencing Ephemera when he had so little idea of what he was doing.

  “And you know the Merry Makers,” she said, and added silently, And the Den of Iniquity.

  He nodded again.

  “What about these?” Now she moved quickly through the garden, not giving him a chance to tell her about other connections he might have to her landscapes. She stopped in front of the section that held the Places of Light.

  “Oh.” He swayed to a stop, then closed his eyes and smiled. “Oh, this is a grand part of the garden.”

  She could see the truth of it in his face, could feel the air pulse between them as he resonated with those Places of Light. While it hadn’t affected him in the same way, he had resonated just as strongly with the three dark landscapes he had pointed out.

  “Does any one of them appeal to you in particular?” she asked softly.

  He said he was from Elandar, came from the village of Raven’s Hill. She wasn’t sure what to think when he passed over the access point for the White Isle and pointed to the access point that led to the part of Sanctuary that was connected to Aurora.

  Michael turned in a slow circle, but the way she had designed the beds that represented her landscapes made it impossible to see all of the garden from any one place.

  “I wouldn’t want her to face the dangers of the journey,” he said, “but I wish my sister could see this garden. She found an old walled garden on the hill near the family home, and she’s struggled for years to make something of it.”

  She could still hear him talking, but Glorianna was no longer listening to the words. “Your sister has a garden like this?”

  “Oh, nothing so grand, but this place reminds me of her bit of garden.”

  Guardians and Guides, she thought. There are Landscapers out there who don’t know who they are or what they can do when they play with a bit of land. Especially if they come from the old bloodlines and are like me.

  Raven’s Hill. A garden. A resonance that tangled with her own on the White Isle. And a man who had dared the river in order to find her. A dream lover who wasn’t just a dream.

  “Glorianna?” Michael reached for her. She took a step back. “What’s wrong?”

  “You came seeking Belladonna. Why?”

  A blush stained his cheeks. “I’ve seen you in my dreams. Loved you in my dreams.”

  She could feel the warmth of his hands—a memory held within a dream.

  “I came to find the answer to a riddle—and I found you. ‘Heart’s hope lies within belladonna.’” He looked around the garden. “I’m thinking the answer to defeating the Well of All Evil is right here in this garden. Because this garden is your heart, isn’t it, Glorianna Belladonna?”

  She felt breathless. Felt light enough to float with the clouds—and heavy enough to break the earth as she sank into it.

  A test of the river to prove he was worthy of what he sought. A different kind of Landscaper, who might be able to show her an answer she couldn’t see by herself. And maybe—maybe—someone with whom she could share her home and the island. Someone who could accept Belladonna as well as Glorianna.

  “I think I need to hear the whole story of how you ended up here, but I would rather you tell it to the whole family at the same time,” she said. “So we’ll have to go to my mother’s house.”

  “She lives on the island?”

  His hopefulness was so transparent that she had to smile. “No, she lives in Aurora. We’ll have to cross over to that landscape.”

  He paled. “Cross over. Then it’s a ways from here.”

  “Yes, in some ways it is a ways from here,” she replied. “And in others it’s no farther than a heartbeat away.”

  He took the step that brought him close enough to brush a finger along her cheek. “Well, that’s true of a good many things, isn’t it?”

  Who are you, Magician? “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Damn the darkness,” Michael said, bracing his feet as if that would help him regain his mental balance. Glorianna had told him that reaching Aurora and her mother’s house required nothing more than taking a step between here and there, but he’d expected a little more ceremony. He’d expected a little more warning than “hold my hand and take a step forward.” Although why he should keep expecting something more was a puzzlement.

  Face it, my lad. You just don’t want to look this straight in the eyes and admit you’ve never known half of what must have been going on around you.

  “I don’t hear the falls anymore,” he said, turning in a circle to look around. Nice house, but not too grand. Well cared for grounds and…

  He felt his heart skip a beat when he saw the stone walls on the other side of a narrow brook.

  “My mother’s walled garden,” Glorianna said. “Come to the house. By now you’d probably like a bite to eat.”

  “I would, thank you.” He’d been grateful when she’d taken him up to her house on the island to freshen up and put on a clean shirt before making this visit to her mother. And he’d wondered if it had been her own manners or a customary lack of hospitality that had left out an offer of food or drink—until he realized her embarrassed mutter about reaching her mother’s house in time for the midday meal meant she’d checked her larder while he’d been washing up and had found it a bit too bare.

  Which made him wonder if that was due to a lack of attention on her part or a lack of me
ans to keep food on the table. Maybe he could offer to till some ground for a kitchen garden. Of course, after they were married, he could—

  Whoa! Slow down, lad. Just because your heart has settled on the matter doesn’t mean she’s thinking of sharing home and hearth with the likes of you.

  “I don’t think my mother is serving meals out in the garden today,” Glorianna said, sounding amused. “If you want food, we have to go into the kitchen.”

  “What? Oh.” How long had he been staring at that garden while he’d been dreaming up a future that…

  You won’t grow old together, some part of him whispered. Except in your dreams.

  Why not? he asked that shadow self, feeling defiant. No one else has put a ring on her hand. She might settle for the likes of me.

  “Michael?”

  Pulling himself out of the argument going on in his head and heart, he smiled at her without answering the “what’s wrong?” question he’d heard in her voice. They hadn’t gone more than a few steps when he stopped again and studied the trees and the shape of the land. “I think I was near here early this morning.”

  “If Sebastian was your escort to the bridge that led to Sanctuary, you were”—Glorianna turned slightly and pointed—“less than a mile from here in that direction.”

  “That ripe bastard,” Michael muttered.

  Her green eyes chilled, warning him off.

  “You have feelings for him.” Seeing the truth of that scraped at him enough to ignore the warning chill. “When he was whispering to you in the moonlight, did he mention he has a wife?”

  “Well, he was whispering,” she replied with insincere sweetness. “I may not have caught everything he said.”

  Michael clamped his teeth together to keep from saying something that might have her showing him the door before he ever got the chance to know her—or for her to know him. Because he wanted to know her, both for himself and for…

  Ah, Caitlin Marie. Now that you’re lost in a world gone mad, I finally found someone who might understand your heart.

  When they reached the house, Glorianna opened the door just enough to poke her head inside and ask, “Anyone flying about?” He didn’t hear an answer, but she swung the door open, stepped inside the kitchen, and said, “Sebastian, darling, when you were whispering sweet nothings to me in the moonlight, why didn’t you tell me you had a wife?”