Belladonna

  “That’s what it is,” Brighid replied.

  “You gave it to me as a reminder of what we had meant to each other, what we might have meant if you hadn’t…” She trailed off.

  “I gave it to you as a farewell gift,” Brighid said softly. “I never intended to come back to the White Isle.”

  Merrill dropped the bracelet and turned, knocking into the table as she rushed to the door. Before the sound of the slamming door faded away, she heard the crash of cups and saucers hitting the floor.

  Michael took a seat between Lee and Kenneday, more relieved than he wanted to admit that he was no longer the only man at Lighthaven.

  “Never saw anything like it, in all my years at sea,” Kenneday said. “One minute the deck is clear; the next, this one is standing behind me. And then, when we’re standing on the shore of a lake that hadn’t been there a couple of days ago, he’s calmly transferring all the gear we had packed in the wagon onto this bit of an island only he can see.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Lee said, helping himself to some bread and cheese. “There are times when everyone can see the island.”

  Kenneday just snorted.

  Michael helped himself to some of the food on the table and said nothing. Clearly everyone had had an exciting time over the past couple of days.

  “It was the strangest thing,” Brighid said, responding to Caitlin’s question about the different table. “The leg just gave way. It must have been loose—may have been loose for years—and getting bumped with the weight of a tray on top of it was enough to break that leg.”

  Michael noticed the look exchanged by Glorianna and Lee, then did a quick survey of the room. Where was Merrill? Wouldn’t Lighthaven’s leader want to be here for this meeting? Besides his aunt Brighid, the only Sister in the room was Shaela.

  “So,” Lee said, accepting a cup of tea with a polite smile, “the lake does, in fact, circle Lighthaven. Dark, cold water. Weedy. Foggy. I spotted animal tracks going to and from the water, so I think we can assume the water is drinkable. Might be fish in there that are edible. And we confirmed that you can see Lighthaven from the White Isle shore.”

  “Like a dream it is,” Kenneday said. “Like something that fades away as soon as you reach for it.”

  That got Glorianna’s attention. “It’s doing the same thing that the White Isle did?”

  “We didn’t get in a boat to find out, but my guess is it will do the same thing in that you can see it from a distance, but it will fade away completely before you get close to it,” Lee said. “I’m wondering if that’s the nature of this Place of Light. Maybe it was never meant to be found. Maybe it was meant to be like a dream—you take comfort in knowing it exists, but its allure is even more potent because so few people can reach it.”

  “Being hard to reach isn’t the same as being impossible to reach,” Glorianna said. “And some people will need to find it.”

  “Why?” Shaela asked. “We’re supposed to remain apart from the turmoil of the world.”

  “How many of the Sisters were born here?” Glorianna asked.

  Not many, if any, Michael thought, watching Shaela take in the significance of the question.

  “A resonating bridge would work,” Lee said. “Stationary bridge won’t hold between the two landscapes—I did try to create one—but a resonating bridge isn’t keyed for specific landscapes. Thing is, since people around here don’t know about landscapes and bridges, we’d want something no one would mistake for something else.”

  “Too bad you can’t put a pair of Sentinel Stones in the middle of the lake,” Kenneday said, cutting another hunk of cheese off the wheel. “Be romantic like, taking a boat out with the dawn breaking and the mist on the water, and those great black stones rising up from the middle of the lake, and you watching that shore that looks as wispy as a wish and not knowing if it will fade away completely or become real.” He glanced around at the people now staring at him and cleared his throat. “Just a passing thought.”

  “Tell us about these Sentinel Stones,” Glorianna said.

  When Kenneday just squirmed under her intent stare, Michael jumped in. “You’ve seen them. You’ve got a pair of them as the gate—bridge—between the Merry Makers’ bog and the Den. Walked between them in order to cross over.”

  Now Glorianna and Lee were staring at him.

  “Those are common in this land—in Elandar?” Lee asked.

  “Common enough,” Michael replied warily. “Every third or fourth village has a pair of them in the fields beyond the village proper.”

  “Tell them what the Stones do,” Kenneday said, giving Michael an elbow in the ribs.

  “It depends,” Michael said, not sure if he needed to be more worried about Glorianna or Lee jumping on him. “Sometimes you walk through the Stones and nothing happens. Sometimes you don’t go anywhere…but things change.” Oh, this was starting to sound familiar in an unfamiliar sort of way. “And sometimes a person walks between the Stones and disappears. Sometimes for a few days—and sometimes forever.”

  Glorianna sat back and blew out a deep breath. Lee scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “They’ve got resonating bridges all over this landsc—country, and they don’t know what the things do,” Lee said.

  “In point of fact,” Michael said testily, “we do know what they do. We just never knew why things happened to people when they walked between the Stones.”

  Lee looked at Glorianna. “A pair of those Stones would take care of the problem of people recognizing the bridge.” His eyes shifted to look at Michael and Kenneday. “And if the storytellers were to spread a new ‘legend’ about Lighthaven and why it disappeared, then we’ll have an explanation for everyone.”

  “And who are you expecting to come up with this story?” Michael asked, since he was beginning to feel like a mouse cornered by a pair of black-haired, green-eyed cats.

  Lee cocked a thumb at Kenneday. “He’s already come up with the part about how to find the mystical island of Lighthaven. The least you can do is come up with the reason it disappeared.”

  “So,” Kenneday said, looking thoughtful, “you steer a bit of a boat between the Stones, and if you’re worthy you’ll reach Lighthaven’s shore. And if you’re not, you’ll just keep going until you reach the other side of the lake and never find the island?”

  “It will be a resonating bridge,” Lee said. “So, yes, you might keep going until you reach the other shore. Or you might suddenly find yourself on another lake in another part of Elandar.”

  “Or on a river in some part of the world you’ve never seen before,” Glorianna added.

  “Or you could find yourself sitting in your bit of a boat in the middle of a farmer’s potato field,” Lee said.

  A startled silence. Then Kenneday said, “Well, that would be a crap on the romance of it, now wouldn’t it?”

  Lee leaned forward a little farther to look at Kenneday. “Welcome to our part of the world.”

  Michael slapped his hands on his knees. “This is all well and good, and I’m willing to try my hand at spinning a story, but you’re all forgetting one thing. How are we going to get two of those Stones and how do we plop them in the lake where they need to go?”

  Another silence. Or maybe the room was full of sound that he couldn’t hear. Because now he looked at Glorianna Belladonna, who said softly, “Ephemera, hear me.”

  She didn’t leave the room to see what she had done. Neither did Lee. But he went out, along with Kenneday and Caitlin, and walked down the road that now ended at the shore.

  The Sentinel Stones rose up midway between the shores. Huge, black stones Michael knew hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. Stones that were both guard and doorway to a place that didn’t want to be touched by the world.

  “Lady of Light, have mercy,” Kenneday whispered.

  “I’m thinking when you stand in this place, the person you should be asking for mercy is called Glorianna Belladonna,” Michael
said. Because she can remake the world. He glanced at Caitlin Marie, who looked so young and scared as she stared at the Stones. He put his arm around her. “Come along. Let it go for tonight. I’m thinking tomorrow is going to be another long day.”

  She turned and pressed her face into his shoulder. “I’m scared, Michael.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “So am I, Caitie. So am I.”

  Hearts full of dissonance, unhappiness, yearnings. Glorianna drank the tea, wishing it were koffee, and let the hearts of the two women in the room flow through her. One needed to stay; the other needed to go. But there were other things that needed to be done first, so she gave Lee a pointed look.

  “You’re going to need a bridge,” Lee said. Seeing their blank faces, he clarified, “A connection to another landscape. You’ll need supplies, a way to purchase things you can’t make or grow. And you’re going to need strong backs to help with some of the labor. Even if we could have done it, which we can’t, Atwater wouldn’t have been the best choice. My sense of the place was that the people wouldn’t be open-minded enough right now to being connected to another landscape in that way.”

  Glorianna waited for some response, but neither Brighid nor Shaela disagreed with Lee’s assessment.

  “So,” Lee continued, “is there another village on the White Isle that might be a suitable host for a bridge?”

  There were advantages to talking to people who weren’t familiar with landscapes and bridges, Glorianna thought. Lee had already said he couldn’t create a stationary bridge between Lighthaven and the White Isle, but they needed a starting point to begin searching for Caitlin’s garden, and that meant finding another community of people on the island.

  Brighid and Shaela exchanged a look.

  “There is Darling’s Harbor,” Brighid said reluctantly, “but the people there have always been a bit strange.”

  “And they’ve gotten stranger,” Shaela murmured.

  “How so?” Glorianna asked, trying to remain calm. Darling’s Garden. Darling’s Harbor. Couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “For one thing, during my years here, their young people would show up before the summer or winter solstice and bring a gift, then say they were going to be journeying and would we hold them in the Light,” Brighid said. “They always struck me as a simple people who were supremely confident that they were exactly where they were supposed to be.”

  Glorianna felt Ephemera’s currents of power brush playfully against her own currents. She sat up straighter. There was one explanation for an entire village of people feeling confident that they were where they belonged, and it had nothing to do with them being simple.

  “This village wouldn’t have a pair of Sentinel Stones, would it?” she asked.

  “It does,” Brighid replied.

  Glorianna knew that Lee was watching her, adding up the pieces as fast as she was.

  There was a resonating bridge in the village of Darling’s Harbor, and the people there used it to go journeying. Some of them must have crossed over into landscapes beyond Elandar. Maybe they weren’t simple; maybe they didn’t want to admit they knew more about the world than the people around them.

  “Anything else you can tell us about Darling’s Harbor?” Lee asked.

  “They’ve gotten stranger,” Shaela said, more loudly this time. “Two or three times a year, a pair of them comes to Lighthaven, cap in hand, and asks if we’ve had news about the Seer, did we know when the Seer was coming back. A few years ago, when a bad storm swept over the whole island, they came to say the Seer’s house had been struck by lightning and burned clean to the ground, and should they be waiting to build another. Then this spring they came back to say they had built a new house and it was ready for the Heart Seer and did we have news of when she was coming.”

  Glorianna’s heart beat fast and hard. “When did this start? How many years ago?”

  Shaela shrugged. “A few.”

  “How many?” When both women stared at her uneasily, she set down her cup and struggled for patience. “This started twelve years ago, didn’t it? They started asking about the Seer twelve years ago.”

  Shaela frowned, but it was thoughtful rather than annoyed. Finally she nodded. “Yes, I think it was a dozen years ago that this started.”

  Brighid gasped.

  Glorianna nodded and said, “That’s when Caitlin found Darling’s Garden, wasn’t it?”

  “But Caitlin’s not a Heart Seer,” Brighid protested. “Besides, that garden was hidden somewhere on the hill behind our cottage. According to stories, the women in Devyn’s family had found it a few times in the years since Darling first came to live at Raven’s Hill.”

  “Caitlin isn’t a Heart Seer,” Glorianna agreed, “but she is a Landscaper who is a descendant of the Guide who had shaped that garden. That’s why it appeared for some of the women in that family. It came to them because they were Landscapers who no longer remembered how to go to it.”

  “The garden acts as a separate landscape that can be imposed over another place, like my island?” Lee asked.

  “Yes.” Glorianna looked at Brighid. “That’s why no one else living in Raven’s Hill could find it. It only existed on that hill for Caitlin Marie. The rest of the time it was here, on the White Isle. Where it had been created.”

  “Looks like we’re going to Darling’s Harbor,” Lee said. “I’ll talk to Kenneday when he gets back from staring at the Sentinel Stones, and see if he’s sailed to that village.”

  “We’ll wait until morning.” She wanted a few hours to go back to her own garden and make sure there was no sign that the Eater of the World had found Its way into one of her landscapes. And she needed to talk to Nadia.

  Lee looked disapproving, since he knew her well enough to figure out the reason for the delay, but he didn’t say anything. Not much he could say since she knew he wouldn’t be turning in early either but, instead, would be making notes about the possible landscapes that might be connected to the White Isle or Lighthaven.

  Lee pushed out of his chair, then proceeded to stack cups and dishes on the tray. He lifted the tray and smiled at Shaela. “Could I give you a hand with the clearing up?”

  Not subtle, Glorianna thought as she watched Shaela stumble over the veiled order to leave the room, but not as blunt as he might have been.

  “Your brother has a way about him,” Brighid said when they were alone.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Glorianna replied, smiling.

  Brighid didn’t return the smile. “I don’t know how to say this.”

  “You don’t belong here.”

  Brighid closed her eyes. “I don’t belong here. I should…but I don’t.”

  When Brighid opened her eyes, Glorianna saw confusion, but there was no confusion in the yearnings that came from Brighid’s heart. This heart needed the Light—and more than the Light.

  “Do you need to live in this kind of secluded community?” Glorianna asked.

  Brighid shook her head. “I’ve felt secluded in one way or another all my life. When I went to Raven’s Hill to take care of the children, I had hoped…” Her voice trailed off as sadness filled her face.

  No, Glorianna thought. For a descendent of the first Guardians of the Light, the toil of the world would have been too hard to bear—especially living in that cottage. But there was a way for Brighid to live in the Light and meet the world.

  “Do you feel well enough to travel with us tomorrow?” Glorianna asked.

  “Well enough.”

  “In that case, we’ll go to Darling’s Harbor to search for Caitlin’s garden.” Glorianna smiled. “And then I will show you Sanctuary.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Can you feel it, Caitlin?” Glorianna asked, stepping up beside the shivering girl. “Can you feel all the knots and tangles in the currents of power unraveling the closer we get to the harbor? Can you sense how those Light and Dark currents feel when they flow unobstructed?”

 
“Maybe,” Caitlin said, her voice almost too low to hear. “I don’t know.” Her throat worked, as if she were trying to swallow something unpleasant—or hold something back. “I’m sorry I broke the world. I didn’t know I could do that. Nothing like that has happened before.”

  That you’re aware of, Glorianna thought—and couldn’t quite hide the shiver that went through her. How had the world survived the combination of ignorance and power? How many landscapes had disappeared because an untrained Landscaper’s heart had rung with a pure note of anger?

  “Are you nervous too?” Caitlin asked.

  “Yes.” But not for myself. “I’m going aft to talk to Captain Kenneday. Do you want to come?” When Caitlin shook her head, Glorianna went back to the wheel, where Kenneday was guiding his ship to the docks and Michael and Lee were standing nearby.

  “Looks like someone knew we were coming,” Michael said, raising his chin to indicate the people they could see gathering at the docks.

  “Nah,” Kenneday replied. “Someone spots sails on the horizon and the word goes out. By the time a ship docks, the whole damn village is waiting to greet it. It’s happened every time I’ve put into port here. It’s like they’re all waiting for something.”

  “Or someone,” Glorianna said quietly. “If these people have known about Guides of the Heart and their connection to the world…”

  “How many generations has it been since a Landscaper lived among them, tending her garden?” Lee asked, picking up the thought. “How many years have they been coming down to meet the ships, hoping that a descendant of their darling has come home?”

  Home. Even though this wasn’t her landscape, she felt the resonance of the word, the rightness of it. Heart wishes and yearnings were coming together for that moment of opportunity and choice.

  She glanced at Michael—then thought of Brighid, who was belowdecks, resting—and recognized the two stumbling blocks that could end something before it began.

  Grabbing Michael’s arm, she pulled him away from the others. Judging by his smile, they had very different reasons for wanting a semiprivate moment.