Belladonna (41 page)

"That was her name?" Caitlin asked, startled.

"Sure it was her name," Peg said. "Darling by name, darling by nature. She was the Seer who first made the garden in order to tend her little bits of the world. Then she fell in love, but her man wasn't easy living here, so she went with him to live in his home village and added the place to the bits she tended. But she never quite came home again, even though we knew she still looked out for us. Her daughters and their line never quite came home either. Until now."

Kayne stepped up to be properly introduced, and Caitlin heard Glorianna make the rest of the introductions. Heard Peg invite Brighid to ride with her in the pony cart. But those were just sounds rippling over the surface. There was a bell tolling in her head, and the sound rang out as "Raven's Hill, Raven's Hill, Raven's Hill."

As the others got sorted out, she tugged on Glorianna's arm, and a look from Glorianna Belladonna was all it took for everyone else to give them some private space.

"Raven's Hill is in the garden?" Caitlin asked, keeping her voice low.

Sadness filled Glorianna's eyes, and the weight or that sadness dragged on Caitlin's heart.

"It's there," Glorianna said reluctantly.

She waited, and then realized Glorianna wasn't going to say anything else unless asked. "Where?"

Glorianna hesitated. "Under the compost heap."

She thought about how Raven's Hill had felt these past few years — and blinked away the tears suddenly stinging her eyes.

"Can I fix it?"

"No."

Some things can't be mended, Caitlin Marie.

"Why did you choose that spot to dump the debris from the rest of the garden?" Glorianna asked.

"It felt... bad," Caitlin said. "Trashy. Weedy. And... the other parts of the garden were weedy and overgrown, but I could still see some of what they had been. That spot..."

"Not your fault then, Caitlin," Glorianna said. "It's only a guess, but if too much of the nature of Landscapers had been forgotten by Darling's descendants, then one of them didn't resonate with Raven's Hill and should have let it go. Dumping garbage over the part of the garden that provided the access to the village was a cruel thing to do because it fed the Dark currents and never allowed Raven's Hill to be the place it was meant to be." She sighed and brushed her hair away from her face. "Maybe a need that had no other way of expressing itself acted through you. Whatever the reason, and even though it wasn't done prudently, you did what should have been done a long time ago; you severed your family's connection to Raven's Hill and the villages connection to your garden."

"But it won't have a Landscaper anymore," Caitlin said. "So won't more bad things happen?"

"It doesn't have a Landscaper at the moment," Glorianna said. Then she smiled and added softly,

"But it does have an anchor. Another will has been pushing against yours all these years, resisting the village's slow change into a dark landscape."

A whistle made them look over to the spot where Michael, Lee, and Kayne waited. Lee cocked his head and raised a hand in an
are you coming?
gesture.

"Enough," Glorianna said, lifting a hand to acknowledge that they were coming. "For now, let's find out what is here.

We'll deal with what was on another day."

Kayne wasn't much of a guide, Michael thought as they followed the lane that led to a house on a rise. For one thing, the man didn't know how to pace himself to a woman's walking speed. He'd push on ahead, leaving Caitlin and Glorianna trailing behind, and outside of tossing information any fool could figure out for himself by reading the shop signs, hadn't said anything useful about the village. When Michael started lagging behind again to give the women time to catch up, Kayne looked back and sighed.

"So," Kayne said. "Should we dance around this or take the straight road?"

"Meaning what?" Michael asked. But Lee chuckled, indicating that
he
understood the question.

"Michael is Caitlin's brother," Lee said. "I'm Glorianna's brother. I'm not courting Caitlin."

"I'm noticing there's a step missing," Kayne said with a gleeful sparkle in his eyes.

"That's because Glorianna and the Magician here
are
dancing around the question," Lee replied.

"Ah," Kayne said, looking back at the women. But it was clear — to Michael, anyway — that Kayne wasn't looking at Glorianna.

"Caitlin Marie is only eighteen," Michael said darkly.

"A blooming age for a women," Kayne replied, smiling.

"Could be worse," Lee said in a singsong voice, "Could be Teaser."

Wondering why he had ever wanted friends, Michael stopped walking and stubbornly waited for Glorianna and Caitlin to catch up while Lee and Kayne went on ahead.

"Problem?" Glorianna asked.

"Men are a pain in the ass," he grumbled.

She smiled and patted his cheek. "Women have known that forever, but we love you anyway."

Caitlin sputtered and laughed. "Why don't I—" She shook her head and took off. She was laughing too much to run well, but she caught up to Lee and Kayne.

"He's practically licking his lips over her," Michael complained. "She can't be living here on her own when the first man who meets her gets that look in his eyes."

"And what look might that be?" Glorianna asked sweetly.

"You know the one. And if Aunt Brighid is going to be going her way and I'm going ..." Deciding that was best left unsaid since he didn't know where he was going, he added, "You know what I'm saying."

Glorianna pursed her lips. A bad sign. "You're saying Caitlin is going to have all this unsupervised time, and despite being a grown, albeit young, woman living in a community that not only understands her connection to the land but also values it, she will become a flirtatious, blithering idiot just because a man with a nice smile and muscles has shown a little interest in her. Is that what you're saying?"

"Maybe." He was pretty sure that
wasn't
what he was saying, but right now he wasn't going to make a definite statement about anything.

"And you're saying that my mother isn't an adequate chaperone, and that I'm not an adequate chaperone, since we'll both be coming here to give Caitlin lessons. And Caitlin will also need to come to Aurora for lessons."

Too
close to the Den!
Michael thought, hearing Lee's singsong,
Could be worse, could be Teaser.
"Ah ..." Nadia as chaperone?

That would be sufficiently intimidating. But Glorianna was too young to be strict enough when it came to a little sister's ...

flirtations. Which was something he couldn't say without digging a hole for himself that he'd need a ladder to climb out of.

So he focused on the house to buy himself a little time — and stopped in his tracks. It was stone and, for the most part, one story. A house built to weather the moods of the sea. A house built to be a home that would hear the sounds of children playing, hear the laughter and tears of a life well lived. He could hear its music — and its music was good.

"Oh," Caitlin said. "What a darling!"

Wondering what Kayne had done to earn
that
tone of voice — and why Lee, the ripe bastard, hadn't stopped the man from doing it — Michael hurried forward to put a stop to whatever it was.

Except Caitlin wasn't paying any attention to Kayne. She was crouched down with a hand extended toward a small brown-and-white dog that probably would be a darling once he'd had a bath and a good brushing. The dog came forward, wary and ready to run, clearly wanting Caitlin and just as clearly
not
wanting the rest of them.

"First spotted him near the Sentinel Stones about a month ago," Kayne said as the dog finally got close enough to sniff Caitlin's fingers and then did his best to make friends. "A young animal. Spaniel of some kind, judging by the look of him, but no one here could name the breed. Anyways, we figured he'd come over from somewhere else, but short of catching him, chucking him back through the Stones, and hoping he would end up where he'd come from, there wasn't much to be done about him. It was Moira who pointed out that he seemed to think he belonged here at the house. He would come down to the village once a day to beg for scraps — and with those eyes staring at you, he didn't need to beg hard to get a good feeding — but most of the time he's been up here.

There was a radiance to his little sister that Michael had never seen before.
She's home,
he thought, feeling his heart break just a little because, in a way he couldn't quite explain but was beginning to understand, he knew he
wasn't
home, would never feel truly at home in this village, despite the music of the house. Because of that, and because he realized Glorianna was right and he could undermine Caitlin's confidence enough to have her turning away from the very thing her heart needed, he had to find a way to be an idiot she could defy.

"Up here all by yourself?" Caitlin crooned to the dog as she stroked the long, once-silky ears and was rewarded with lavish lick-kisses. "Poor baby. But you're not by yourself anymore, are you, Andrew?"

"Andrew?" Michael said, putting his hands on his hips. "What kind of name is that for a dog?"

Kayne frowned at him. Lee gave him an odd look and said, "What do you care? They both seem fine with it, and you don't have to answer to it."

"But...
Andrew?
He doesn't look like an Andrew. He looks like a Timothy."

Now everyone turned to stare at him. Including the dog. "His name," Caitlin said, dropping each word like a stone, "is Andrew."

Michael raised his hands in surrender and took a step back when Andrew growled at him. "Fine. His name is Andrew. And you shouldn't be thinking of bringing him into the house until he's had a bath, Caitlin Marie."

"I know that," Caitlin snapped. "I'm not six, Michael."

Kayne, Michael noticed with satisfaction, winced. Good. Let the man realize the girl wasn't always sweet and cooey.

"Maybe we could start the mud-slinging tradition here" Lee said to no one in particular."

"Don't encourage them," Glorianna replied, looking back toward the village. "Here come Peg Moira, and Brighid.

Discussion of Andrew's bath can wait. For now, let's take a look at the house — and the garden."

The house was spare on furnishings, Michael thought as he walked through it, but the people weren't filling it with their cast-off furniture, so he understood the sense of not beggaring the village to furnish a house no one lived in. Still, there was enough to start with. A couple of times his eye caught Brighid's, and he was sure there was the same blend of worry and relief in his eyes as he saw in hers.

And he saw the undisguised relief on Peg's, Moira's, and Kayne's faces when Glorianna Belladonna gave her approval of the house.

Warrior of Light, Peg had called her.

Images. Stories. Truths. Choices.

This is the second time someone has called her the Warrior of Light,
Michael thought.
She knows it's not a coincidence, so she
won't dismiss it forever. The day will come when she'll ask you for the story. If you lie to protect what your own heart desires, what
harm will you do to the world?

"We've done some repairs on the walls," Kayne said, now sounding nervous as they walked to the walled garden behind the house. "On the outside. We would have fixed the gate — put on a new one — but we weren't sure if that would be intruding too much."

Michael watched Caitlin hesitate at the gate, then turn and look at Glorianna. And saw, in that moment, the transition from girl to woman, from child to adult.

"She'll be all right, won't she?" he said softly as Caitlin and Glorianna slipped into the garden.

"In all ways," Lee replied. "Come and help me pick out a couple of locations for a stationary bridge."

"I thought you said you couldn't build one."

"I can't build one between the White Isle and Lighthaven. But between here and Aurora? Shouldn't be a problem. Caitlin's resonance is in harmony with Nadia's and Glorianna's — and yours, by the way." Lee gave him a long look. "Every bridge I build now adds to the risk of the Eater of the World finding a way into Glorianna's landscapes and, therefore, finding the Places of Light.

Caitlin's landscapes aren't isolated from the rest of the world; neither are yours. But if it will help you rest at night, I can build a bridge between one of your landscapes and Darling's Harbor to make it easier to visit."

"That offer is being made from one brother to another, yes?" Michael asked. Lee tipped his head in agreement. "What would the Bridge say?"

"He wouldn't be making a bridge between here and anywhere. But Caitlin needs what Nadia, and especially Glorianna, can teach her. So I will make a bridge."

"And pray to the Light that the Eater doesn't find this place?"

"Yes," Lee said. "That's exactly what I'll do."

Michael took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he studied the walls of a garden he'd last seen on a hill in another part of his country. "All right then. I'll think on your offer. For now, let's see about this bridge you've already decided to make."

M
ichael sat on the bench and watched the fish flash gold among the water plants in the koi pond. His mind was carefully blank, but the absence of busy thought wasn't restful. Not like it should have been. Because he was busy not thinking about the woman who wasn't there.