Belladonna (10 page)

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 guest house.

"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 Landscapes 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 guest house larder.

Simpler that way, don't you think?"

She had no opinions about the simplicity of using the guest house 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 he 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.

Chapter eight

H
urry, hurry, hurry,
Merrill thought as the ship closed the distance to Atwater's harbor. But not fast enough, despite having full sails. Something followed them. She could feel Its presence, feel the lure of It every time she looked at the water.

Would they have time to get back to Light-haven and do ... What? Shaela kept asking that very question, but Merrill had no answer. If that
was
the Destroyer — the Well of All Evil from the ancient tales — moving through the water in pursuit of their ship, how could two plants or a prayer circle stop It?

"It still follows," Shaela said when she joined Merrill at the bow. "It makes no attempt to catch up to us, but It follows."

"It doesn't need to catch us," Merrill replied. "All It needs to do is surround the White Isle, and we'll be trapped. Then It will consume the people living in the island's villages, just as It did in the old stories, until Lighthaven and our Sisters are all that is left

— tiny candles in the dark. Candles that, in their turn, will be snuffed out one by one."

"Don't talk that way," Shaela said, her voice sharp, "You are the leader at Lighthaven. If
you
believe the White Isle is lost, our Sisters will believe it too. And then it
will
be lost. Our belief in the Light is the ship that brings the Light to all the people who live on the White Isle as well as our countrymen in Elandar. That's why we live apart — to maintain the innocence needed to nurture that belief."

"Your life wasn't sheltered," Merrill said.

"No, it wasn't. Which is why I cling to my belief in the Light. It is my raft, made from the planks of a broken life." Shaela rubbed her fingers against her forehead. "What will we do when we reach home, Merrill? There will be no time to sit and debate.

We need to decide before we reach Atwater, since whatever we do must be done swiftly."

"I know, I know." But what could they do?

Merrill curled her hands around the railing, then dosed her eyes and tried to picture a ceremony they could perform that would save the White Isle — and more importantly, Lighthaven — from the Destroyer.

And could picture nothing.

"We're heading into harbor," the captain called.

"This is what we'll do," Shaela said, shifting closer to Merrill. "We'll form a prayer circle made up of seven Sisters. We'll place the plants in the center of the circle. Four Sisters will chant the words that were heard in the dream. The other three will chant an affirmation as a refrain."

Merrill stared at her friend. "But that's — That's
sorcery.
You're talking about casting a spell, not participating in a prayer circle."

"It's all about belief, isn't it?" Shaela demanded. "Sorcery or prayer. What difference does it make what we call it? If we stand in front of our Sisters and say seven is a number of the Light, not a tool of magic, who will doubt us? Who will doubt you, our leader? If you say it is so, it will be so."

Suspicion too primitive to be shaped into words suddenly filled Merrill. She felt her body draw itself up, flinch away from the other woman. A broken life, Shaela had called the past that had brought her to the White Isle. A broken life — and not an innocent one.