Anne Bishop - Belladonna

“Until we became friends and trusted each other enough to talk about delicate matters, I didn’t know how you, as a Landscaper, 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 guesthouse larder. Simpler that way, don’t you think?”

She had no opinions about the simplicity of using the guesthouse 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 be 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.

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 Lighthaven 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 closed 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.

“What were you before you came to the White Isle?” Merrill whispered.

“After all the years we’ve worked together and lived together…and now you ask me.” Shaela smiled bitterly. “What do you believe I was?”