Michael took a long swallow of koffee to ease the sudden dryness in his throat. He had found a key of sorts, because he had the feeling that Glorianna would understand his family stories better than he did. But he wasn’t sure he wanted her to know those stories. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to be anything other than the woman he’d seen in the Den last night—vibrant, alive, and smoldering with sexual energy.
If he didn’t give her the stories, he might be able to keep the woman who was Glorianna.
In order to survive, the world would need the warrior called Belladonna.
Michael looked at Glorianna and knew she would never forgive him if he withheld the answers that would help her fight the Destroyer of Light. Even so, he would hide one story for as long as he could. But the other…
He cleared his throat to catch the attention of the people around him. “Before we get on with this journey, I’d like to tell you a story that’s been in my family for a good many years.”
Glorianna stepped off Lee’s island and took a half-dozen steps toward her garden before she spun around and headed for her house instead. They needed to be gone; there were things to do. But she couldn’t guide them to the White Isle while she felt so unsettled.
“I’m sorry it upset you,” Michael said as he caught up to her, “and I won’t pretend to know why it did. It was just a story, Glorianna.”
She stopped and faced him. Conflicts smashed inside her, like a stormy battle between sea and shore, revealing things she hadn’t known she was feeling until Michael had told them that story.
“You don’t know!” she shouted.
“Women have been saying that to men since the beginning of time, so is there something in particular that I should be knowing?”
She heard amusement in his voice, but it was the sadness in his eyes that made her bite her tongue to hold the words back, to hold the feelings back just long enough to shape a command. Ephemera, hear me. Thesewords, these feelings, are just storms passing through the hearts that are present. They change nothing.
Having done that much to protect her island, she flung at Michael all the turmoil inside her. “You tell me a story that’s been handed down in your family, but you have no sense of what it means.”
“That’s right. I don’t know what it means. I don’t have the answer.”
“You are the answer! Luck-bringer. Ill-wisher. Magician. You dress it up as a story with spirits and magic hills—which, considering the lineage of the Guardians and Guides, isn’t dressing things up so much. But you’re the spirit in the story, Michael.” She saw the shock in his eyes and knew she’d hit him with a big enough bit of truth, but she couldn’t stop. “You’re the one who helps people use the key inside themselves to open the Door of Locks—to take the next step in their life journey. To cross over to another landscape.”
“How?” he demanded. “How can I help them cross over to something I didn’t know existed?”
“I don’t know! Your landscapes aren’t broken!” She rammed her fingers into her hair, pushing and pushing as if she intended to shove her fingers through her skull and pull out the thoughts that plagued her now. Especially the one that made her hurt inside so much.
“Your landscapes aren’t broken,” she said again, feeling something squeezing her heart at the same time it was pushing at her ribs so hard she wouldn’t be surprised to feel bone break. “When the Eater of the World attacked the Landscapers’ school and killed all the Landscapers who were there, Mother and I were afraid we were the only ones left. And we could only tend the landscapes that resonated with us, so that left so much of the world unprotected. But we hoped there would be others like us in parts of the world that had been less shattered—and there are. You. Caitlin. There must be others as well, not just in Elandar but in other pieces of the world. But you don’t remember what you are. You don’t remember why you’re needed. And—” A sob broke through her punishing effort to hold it back.
Michael moved closer. “Say it,” he said quietly. “Get the rest of it out.”
“Your world isn’t broken.” The tears fell now, hot and fierce. “The Guides of the Heart shattered the world—broke it and broke it and broke it again until they were able to isolate the Eater of the World in one of those broken pieces and build a cage that would contain It. But they couldn’t leave that place unprotected, not with the Dark Guides hiding somewhere, and the power within them changed, got divided between the men and women somehow. They couldn’t leave that place. They couldn’t go home.” Her voice changed to a harsh whisper. “I have lived on that battleground my whole life. Lee, my mother, all of us here have lived on the s-scars of a war, and we’re reminded every day of what it cost to stop the Eater of the World.”
“And the rest of us only know it as a story,” Michael said.
She fisted her hands in his shirt, desperate to make him understand. “They broke the world, and they broke something in themselves by doing it. But your part of the world is whole and your gift is whole, and I don’t know how your part of Ephemera works. The Eater of the World is out there, Michael. It’s out there with no boundaries to stop It and no one who will recognize the signs of Its presence and It can go where I can’t follow because my world is bound by my landscapes and if I can’t stop It the Eater will change the world into a dark and terrible place and It can go anywhere now and I’m tired of living on a battleground and I’m tired of being alone and I—”
A storm of feelings broke inside her, and all the words were swept away.
There were some kinds of tears a man could accept easily enough, even be amused by in an affectionate way, but when a strong woman broke enough to reveal her pain, those tears were a fearsome thing to behold. And seeing the shock and confusion on Lee’s face was enough confirmation that the woman weeping in his arms rarely broke enough to cry, even in private.
A look at Caitlin was all it took to have the girl linking arms with Lee to draw him away.
“Cry it out, darling,” Michael said as he shifted slightly to settle Glorianna more firmly against him. “Just cry it out. You’ll feel better for it.”
I have lived on that battleground my whole life.
What must it be like to grow up in such a place, where you and everyone you loved was dependent on the caprice of the world? But it wasn’t the world, was it? It was the heart that made things, changed things.
“I’ve got you, darling,” he murmured as one hand moved over her back in comforting circles. “We’ll learn from each other, Glorianna Belladonna, and we’ll find a way to do right by the world.” And you don’t have to be alone now.
He felt her body tighten, felt her pushing against his chest in order to step away, get away, escape from the knowledge that she had shown a man she barely knew emotions she had kept hidden from her family.
“I have to wash my face,” she said, sniffling. “I can’t go to a landscape looking like this.”
He let her go, watched her run to the house. Even with her brother here, she wouldn’t leave without them. He didn’t think she would leave anyone, even kin, alone on this island. Not when that walled garden held the lives of so many.
“I’ve never heard her cry like that,” Lee said, coming up beside him. “I don’t think she has cried like that.”
“She’s cried like that before,” Michael said quietly. “But I’m thinking it’s the first time she’s let anyone witness the tears.”
“Maybe.” Lee stared at Michael, and the bewilderment of dealing with Glorianna’s tears gave way to a steely resolve. “She’s not like the other Landscapers. She’s more, and she was declared rogue because of it. Even now, with the world crashing down around us, the other Landscapers who survived won’t acknowledge her.”
“And you’re saying that if Caitlin and I learn from Glorianna, we’ll be tarred with the same brush?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Michael looked at Caitlin, who was hovering nearby, and thought about a young girl shunned by t
he other children, a young girl who had found something far more wondrous than she knew when she had discovered Darling’s Garden. And he thought about himself and his desire to hear the music in one woman’s heart rather than experience the bodies of many.
“Well, then,” he said. “Since I’ve never enjoyed dealing with fools, it’s lucky for me that I met up with you first.” He hesitated, remembering what Nathan had told him just before that monster rose from the sea. “Lee, if it can be done, I’m thinking it would be better to go to Raven’s Hill first. I’d like to check on my aunt, who was injured in a fire, and see the cottage to find out if anything remains.” Like a box of books that might provide some answers.
“Does your village have a beach?”
“Aye. Nothing grand, mind you, but enough of one for those who want to wade in the sea or look for shells.”
Lee nodded and looked at Caitlin. “Then I think we have a way to get to your village.”
Chapter Nineteen
For the second time in an hour, Glorianna stepped off Lee’s island. But this time she stood on a beach that wasn’t hers in a place that wasn’t anywhere she knew.
Not a comfortable place. Not a landscape that held a companionable resonance like she felt when she visited one of her mother’s landscapes. She couldn’t have reached this village by crossing a bridge. Her heart wouldn’t have recognized this place.
Which made no sense since this was Caitlin’s home landscape, and the girl’s resonance fit in just fine with hers and Nadia’s.
Caitlin doesn’t belong here either, Glorianna thought as the currents of power lapped around her like the waves lapped the beach. She’s a dissonance and…someone else is the bedrock. Someone’s heart anchors Raven’s Hill against the influence of a Landscaper.
She felt Caitlin come up beside her, heard Michael and Lee step off the island, but didn’t turn her head to look at any of them. How did one explain the delicate and courageous act of relinquishing a landscape to someone who hadn’t known there were landscapes until a few days ago? And it would have to be done with care since the Eater of the World already had some hold on this village.
Guardians of the Light and Guides of the Heart, show me the right path for what needs to be done.
The currents of power shifted around her, flowed through her, set things—
Wait!
—in motion.
Glorianna stood frozen, scarcely daring to breathe. She had been offering up that small prayer since she was a little girl. She had never been answered like this. Not like this. She had been thinking about Caitlin, but Ephemera had answered a different meaning to that prayer because here, in this place, it could.
Opportunities and choices. She would help Caitlin find her place in the world. In doing so, she would find the Guardians and Guides who could show her how to defeat the Eater of the World.
All she needed was the courage to follow the path.
“I’m grateful for the loan of the coat,” Caitlin said.
“Should have brought gloves,” Glorianna replied, shoving her hands in her pockets. She felt off balance, so she said nothing more, just turned to watch Lee light the two lanterns he kept on the island.
Caitlin rubbed her own hands briskly. “When the wind comes from the north, it does have a wicked bite.”
“That’s the breath of the ice beast,” Michael said, smiling. “He blows on the sea to create floes of ice so he can float down to the world of men and snatch a pretty maid to take back to his lair to be his wife.”
“Or to be his dinner if the maid doesn’t prove to be an interesting companion,” Caitlin added.
Glorianna shivered. A year ago, their words would have done no harm. Now…“Don’t tell that story to strangers.”
Lee swore softly. He, at least, understood. But Michael shook his head and said, “It’s just a story.”
“A year ago, it was just a story. Now there is something out there that can pluck the image of the ice beast out of a person’s mind and make it real. Change a story into truth. That’s what the Eater of the World does. It takes your fears and makes them real—until all that’s left in the world are the things you fear.”
She watched Caitlin’s and Michael’s expressions change as the import of her words took root. Caitlin looked unnerved, but Michael…For some reason, being reminded that stories could be more than stories had been a blow to his heart.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
“Here,” Lee said, handing a lantern to Michael. “Is it usually dark?”
“We got here ahead of the dawn,” Michael replied, looking at the sky. “Sun’s not up yet.”
“Ah.”
Lee had asked one question; Michael had answered another. This village was teetering on the edge of becoming a dark landscape, slipping over at times but always being pulled back toward the Light.
“But the sun was up when we left Aurora,” Caitlin protested.
“We’re in a different part of the world now,” Glorianna said. She touched Caitlin’s sleeve to get the girl’s attention. “Currents of Light and Dark flow through this place, although the Dark currents are a little stronger. Maybe because of things that have happened here recently.”
“Like boys setting fire to a cottage?” Caitlin muttered.
“Yes.” Glorianna studied Caitlin. What had she been doing by the time she was eighteen? What had she known by that age that this girl didn’t even begin to realize? “Can you feel their resonance? Can you feel the currents of Dark and Light?”
“I don’t know,” Caitlin whispered. “I’m standing next to you, and I feel…something…but I don’t know. I don’t think I’m allowed to do this.”
The girl has been stumbling through her life because there wasn’t anyone who could help her identify the sensations flowing all around her. She could have done so much harm if someone else’s heart hadn’t struggled to keep the village as balanced as it is.
“Take my hand.” She offered her hand to Caitlin. “I’ll show you the way my mother showed me.”
When you were learning to walk, Glorianna, you held my hand to keep your balance. Hold my hand again to learn another way of walking.
Caitlin gasped and tried to pull away.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” Glorianna said quietly, tightening her grip on Caitlin’s hand. “That’s the world you’re feeling. Ephemera flows through the heart, manifests the heart. Your heart. A Landscaper is the bedrock, the sieve through which all other hearts flow. Who she is becomes the resonance of a place.” Usually, she amended silently.
“But I can’t be good all the time. I can’t!”
“No, you can’t. There are shadows in every garden, Caitlin Marie. There is darkness in every heart. Even the Places of Light have slim currents of Dark flowing through them. No heart is purely one thing or another.” She felt a tremor of relief go through the girl at the same time that she thought, There is an answer in those words.
Places of Light needed some Dark, and dark landscapes still needed a thread of Light. Why did the dark landscapes need the Light? That question had teased her when she had stood before the walls of Wizard City and unleashed Heart’s Justice on the Dark Guides. It teased her now.
The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup.
And wasn’t it inconvenient that, having warned Michael against telling stories, she would have to persuade him to tell her the story about the Warrior of Light?
Be patient, a gentle, ageless voice whispered. When the time is right, he will tell you.
“Lee,” Michael said, “since you’ve got one lantern and I’ve got the other, why don’t you give Caitlin Marie a hand up the beach? The path leading up to the village is just a bit of a ways over there.”
Before Glorianna could tell him they could see well enough, Caitlin looked back at her brother. Grinning, she pulled away from Glorianna, linked an arm with Lee, and said, “Come on, then. I’ll show you the path and we’ll let the lollygaggers catch up when they c
an.”
“Lollywhat?” Glorianna said. Then a hand closed over hers. Bigger. Warm. A little work-roughened.
“Something I’ve wondered about Lee,” Michael said, smiling at her. “Is he your older brother?”
“Younger.”
“Younger?” He sounded surprised. “But we’re of an age.”
“Which makes you twenty-eight or-nine. I’m thirty-one.” A couple of years shouldn’t make any difference at this stage of their lives, especially since it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been the one who was older. But she could still remember when those couple of years between her and Lee made a big difference.
“Ah. An older woman.”
The laughter in his voice, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, made her feel foolish—and that made her defensive.
“Yes,” she snapped. “Older. I’ll be gray-haired and wrinkly in a few years.”
“But now you’re a woman ripe with the juice of life.”
Her breath caught, her heart stumbled, and those juices warmed, ready to flow.
“Are you going to be showing me that trick of feeling the currents?” Michael held up their linked hands.
“It’s not your landscape.” Wasn’t Caitlin’s either in the purest sense, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Ah. Well, you could still say you were trying to show me. Or you could tell your brother we’re holding hands because you like the looks of me and you were wondering when I’m going to kiss you again.”
Looking into her eyes, he lifted her hand and kissed her fingers—and an odd little thrill tickled her belly and stirred those juices.
“I have not been wondering about that,” she sputtered, glad the lantern light would hide the blush caused by the lie.
“I have.”
His smile changed. The humor in it faded, replaced by some quality she couldn’t name—or wasn’t sure she wanted to name. Because it was more than lust or desire.