Anne Bishop - Belladonna

“Aye, Captain.”

Pretending he hadn’t heard that exchange, Michael climbed the stairs. A cold fist squeezed his belly when he got close enough to see the worry—and regret—in Nathan’s eyes.

“Ah, Michael,” Nathan said. “It’s bad. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but it’s bad.”

“What happened?” Michael asked. A nudge from behind had him shifting to make room for Kenneday.

“Well, a couple of boys got into some mischief and—” Nathan stopped, swore softly, then shook his head. “No. I won’t whitewash it like others want to do. The fact is we have conflicting stories and some things just plain aren’t right, but the nub of it is Coyle and Roy—and we suspect Owen was with them but he hasn’t been found yet—started their mischief by throwing rocks at the windows of your aunt’s cottage and ended it by burning the place down. We tried, Michael. The men rallied when the smoke was spotted, and they got the water wagons and pumps out there as fast as they could, but the fire had taken hold and…It was like that fire didn’t want to be put out. And after Jamie disappeared right in front of us…” He raised his hands palm up to indicate helplessness. “I’d just come down to the harbor to see if there might be a ship that could take a message when sails coming up from the south were spotted. Your aunt said you would be coming, so I hoped…”

Kenneday’s hand on his shoulder was a warm comfort, but it didn’t ease the cold fist that still squeezed his belly. “Aunt Brighid? Caitlin?”

Nathan looked away. “Don’t know why your auntie stayed inside so long. Fear, I’m guessing.”

A shudder went through him, jangling the pots attached to his pack. “How bad?”

“She has some cuts on her back and arms. Most likely got them from the glass when the windows were broken. And her lungs sound a bit charry from the heat and the smoke, but the doctor figures she’ll mend just fine with some care.”

He couldn’t breathe. He could feel his lungs fill and empty, but he still couldn’t breathe. “Caitlin?”

Nathan rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “She disappeared. We thought your aunt meant she had run away—Caitlin was acting touched in the head, Michael; she’d gone and cut off her hair just because some boy had asked to go out walking in the moonlight. So at first, when Brighid said the sand had taken Caitlin, we thought she was just babbling because of the pain. But when Jamie disappeared right in front of our eyes…”

“What sand?”

“Something…evil,” Nathan whispered. “A rusty color, like dried blood. Stretching out from the base of the hill right up to one side of the cottage. Brighid said Caitlin tried to jump it in order to reach her, but the ground just changed under the girl—and she disappeared.”

Something thrummed under Michael’s feet.

“Where’s the aunt now?” Kenneday asked.

“At the doctor’s house,” Nathan replied. “She’ll be looked after until she mends.”

Thrumming. A harsh buzzing that vibrated up from the soles of his feet. Clashing chords. Grating notes that sliced at harmony.

He had brushed against this sound before in Foggy Downs and Kendall—and in a terrible stretch of water where the voices of dead men drifted on the fog.

He’d entertained the notion that it was another Magician trying to drive him out of the villages where he felt easy. But it wasn’t another Magician that had touched those places and changed their songs. It was something more. Something out of myth.

“Listen,” Michael said. “Do you feel it?”

Kenneday looked puzzled, but everything about Nathan sharpened.

“Can you still hear the feel of a place?” Nathan asked.

Michael nodded. It was all clashes and grating noise—but it was in tune with pieces of Raven’s Hill, and that scared him more than anything.

Almost more than anything. Because when he looked at the land just beyond the harbor’s southern spur, he saw a shadow flow over the earth and stone before it disappeared into the sea. And its song chilled him to the bone.

“Lady of Light, have mercy,” Michael whispered. “It’s here. The Destroyer is here .” He spun around, looked at the crewman waiting in the dinghy, and shouted, “Get off the water! Up here, man! Up here!”

“Michael!” Kenneday said. “What’s got into you?”

“The thing that destroyed the fishing boats. It’s out there in the harbor. Right now. I can feel it.” He looked at Nathan. “Give me your word that you’ll give my aunt what help she needs once she’s on the mend. And you, Captain, promise you’ll give her passage to wherever she wants to go if she chooses to leave Raven’s Hill.”

“You have my word on it,” Kenneday said. “But, Michael, where are you going?”

Dread shivered through him, but he pushed it aside. “Somehow, that thing took my sister. I’m going to get her back.”

Michael pulled on the shoulder straps of his pack to resettle the weight. Probably smarter to leave it, since a part of him believed he wasn’t going anywhere except the bottom of the harbor, but all that was left of what he could call his own was in that pack, including his whistle, and he wasn’t leaving it behind.

“Michael,” Kenneday said sharply. “Where are you going?”

Certainty flowed through him, swift and strong, replacing the cold feeling with a lovely heat as he filled his mind with the image of his dream lover.

He looked at the two men he considered friends and felt as if he’d finally removed a mask he’d hidden behind all his life. “I’m going to see what happens to evil when a Magician does some ill-wishing.” Turning away from Nathan and Kenneday, he walked to the edge of the spur.

Light surrounded by a net of Dark currents. It knew the resonance of this heart, had felt the bedrock of it in the foggy village and the seaport. This was the resonance that was connected to the Landscaper in this village.

Smash it! Destroy it! Once this heart was gone, there would be no bedrock. There would be nothing to protect the people who lived in this place. It would snuff out the Light in each heart, and this place would change, would fester, and the people would curse and wail at a world turned harsh and bitter and dark, never admitting that their own hearts had shaped the world they had to live in.

But first, It would drag this male down into one of Its watery landscapes. And there It would feast.

As It rose toward the surface, It changed into the monster men of the sea most feared.

Michael felt his heart stop beating for a moment as tentacles rose out of the sea. This was the nightmare that destroyed ships and left dead men to haunt the sea.

He could feel the song of its darkness, could almost find the rhythm that matched the seductive lure of it.

No! He didn’t want to find the rhythm of it. This thing had taken his sister, had used bad-hearted boys to hurt his aunt. This thing was going to dance to his tune.

And what tune do you know that is dark enough? a mocking voice whispered to his heart.

He didn’t have an answer, and he faltered.

The tentacles, which were flailing around him like whips lashing the air, came closer.

No, Michael thought. No! But he suddenly realized the question hadn’t been idle. The Destroyer knew something he didn’t know, and his survival depended on that something. Which was why the thing was certain it would win.

The ground beneath his feet became soft, fluid. A wind that didn’t touch his skin blew through him. The harbor faded, the sounds of men shouting or crying out in fear faded.

And what tune do you know that is dark enough?