Anne Bishop - Bridge of Dreams

“Guardians and Guides,” Lee exploded. “What are you doing?”

Startled, Michael almost tipped over. He gave them a sour look as he stood up and carefully stepped out of the box. “It’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll get it cleared up. Eventually.”

Lee stared as another pocket watch poked out of the sand like a shiny gold clam. “You’re teaching the world to steal things?”

“No,” Michael said, looking flustered as he pulled off his hat.

“Then what is that?” Lee pointed to the playground.

“A misunderstanding.” Now Michael’s voice carried a hint of temper.

“You taught Ephemera to be a thief,” Lee said. Then he gave Sebastian a hard look. “I guess the two of you are more suited to each other than I thought.”

“Have a care,” Michael warned.

Lee swore under his breath. He shouldn’t have needed a reminder that Ephemera shaped itself by manifesting the resonances of the human heart. And on Glorianna’s island, the world was more responsive to people’s emotions than anywhere else.

Moments later, all three men clamped hands over their noses and backed away from each other.

“Daylight, Magician!” Sebastian said. “Did you just fart?”

Michael huffed and pointed to the sand in the playground. “Stinkweed. The wild child has started making it in response to swear words. And if you’re wondering who influenced Ephemera so that it creates a weed that smells like farts every time someone swears, all I can tell you is it wasn’t me.” Turning, he pointed at the stinkweed plant. “But Lee wasn’t standing in the box to play with you, so you shouldn’t be listening to him so closely that you turn his words into plants.”

The stinkweed sank into the sand. Since the smell didn’t disappear as fast, the men walked away from the playground.

“So,” Sebastian said, wheezing a little. “ Did you teach the world to steal?”

“No,” Michael said firmly. Then he faltered. “At least, I don’t think I did. I just said…” Taking a couple more steps away from the playground, he lowered his voice. “I just said I’d like to steal a little time so that Glorianna wouldn’t feel she has to take up her work as a Landscaper so soon and could rest a while longer.”

“And Ephemera has been bringing you timepieces since then?” Sebastian laughed long and loud.

“It’s amusing as long as you’re not the one trying to explain why you have a basket of broken pocket watches,” Michael grumbled.

“All broken? So the world isn’t sneaking into people’s houses and—”

“Don’t even be thinking that,” Michael said. “No, I’m fairly sure it’s been finding these things in the dumping grounds of various landscapes. At least, I’m hoping that’s what the wild child has been doing.”

“I could talk to Dalton and ask if anyone in Aurora is missing a pocket watch or mantel clock,” Sebastian said. “As a law enforcer, he’d have heard about a mysterious thief.”

“Oh, sure,” Michael said agreeably. “And with a handful of diamonds and a couple of emeralds the size of sparrows’ eggs, I’ll be able to pay for whatever the wild child took without permission.”

Things popped out of the ground with enough force and speed to zip past their faces. Sebastian caught one. He opened his hand, stared at the emerald, then handed it to Michael. Without saying a word, he hunted in the grass and found the diamonds and the other emerald.

He gave the emerald and most of the diamonds to Michael, then dropped one diamond in his shirt pocket. “Finder’s fee,” he said with a grin.

“You’re welcome to it,” Michael sighed. “If I’d known I could have gems for the asking, I could have been a wealthy man.”

“You wouldn’t have asked for more than you need,” Sebastian said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Truth is, the wild child didn’t start giving me such things until I made my bit of a garden inside Glorianna’s.”

Having heard all he could stomach, Lee walked away from them and went to the gate in the two-acre walled garden. Slipping through the gate, he followed the paths to the beds that represented Sanctuary, the landscapes that nurtured and protected Ephemera’s currents of Light. Each of those places had been alone once, isolated by distance and the nature of the world. Then Glorianna brought them together, connecting them to give the Guardians of Light access to each other. Most of those places still kept themselves apart from the hurry and scurry of people’s lives, but the landscape most people thought of as Sanctuary was an open place where anyone could come to rest and renew the spirit.

Anyone whose heart resonated with Sanctuary, that is.

Did Glorianna still resonate with the Places of Light? If she walked across the stationary bridge that connected her island to Sanctuary, would she end up in the right place? Or would Ephemera send her somewhere else?

If she found herself in a different place, would she take the step between here and there and return to her garden? Or would she disappear into a landscape that appealed to Belladonna?

All their lives, Lee had been her working partner and her closest friend as well as her brother. He’d had few friends outside the family because he’d needed to be so careful of what he said, whom he trusted.

He’d had plenty of acquaintances once he left the school and began traveling to check on the stationary and resonating bridges that allowed people to cross over from one part of Ephemera to another. And he hadn’t lacked for casual lovers. But there had been no one he could share his life with, no one he had dared trust with his family’s secrets—and bringing anyone in close enough to know his family meant letting them get close enough to learn at least some of the secrets.

Lee sighed and rubbed his forearm. It wasn’t just a bone Michael had broken. The Magician had also broken the friendship that had been forming between them, had broken the trust. The feeling of betrayal had hurt as much as the broken arm.

What hurt even more was that Michael had asked for Sebastian’s help to find a way into a landscape that no one should have been able to reach. Michael had asked Sebastian, the cousin, and didn’t mention the plan to the Bridge, the brother, the one who had put aside his own life to support Glorianna.

And the Magician and the incubus-wizard had done it—they had created a bridge out of memories, heart, and music that was strong enough to draw Belladonna back to the Island in the Mist and the part of her that belonged to the Light. The part of her that was Glorianna.

Rubbing a hand over his chest, as if that would ease the ache in his heart, Lee turned away from the access points that led to the Light and headed for the part of the garden where he knew his sister would be.

She spent hours sitting on a small bench she’d placed in front of the beds that were the access points to her dark landscapes. She didn’t even weed the other parts of her garden unless someone was with her, but the beds for the dark landscapes she tended with meticulous care.

He approached her, his footsteps loud on the gravel path. At least, it sounded loud to him, but she didn’t turn her head to see who was coming.

“Want some company?” he called.

Now she turned her head and he saw Belladonna, the woman who had cast out the Light in her own heart to become the monster Evil feared. In that moment, he saw cruelty in her eyes, a dark, rich desire to send him into a landscape where suffering was a man’s only lover.

Then the look faded, and Glorianna smiled at him and said, “Sure.”

She shifted on the bench, making room for him.

He hesitated before sitting so close to her—and hated himself for it.