Anne Bishop - Sebastian

You’re the answer to a wish, Mam said as she got down from the wagon. What’s your name, child?

Lynnea. I picked flowers for Mama, but she’s lost.

I’m going to be your mama now.

Mam picked her up and put her in the wagon. Not on the seat, but on the floor. Then Mam climbed into the wagon and slapped at the horse to make it run very fast.

Lynnea used her sleeve to wipe away the tears. She didn’t know if that was a true memory or just wishful thinking that changed Mam’s story so it didn’t hurt so much. Just as she didn’t know if she really remembered a man and woman calling her name, over and over, as if they were searching for her.

Didn’t matter now which story was true. It had all happened a long time ago. Sixteen years, in fact. She knew that because not long after she’d come to live with Mam, Ewan had his sixth birthday and Mam had baked a cake as a special treat. That evening, when she was getting ready for bed, she’d told Mam her birthday so Mam, who was her new mama now, would know what day to bake the cake.

But she didn’t get a cake for her birthday. Not that year, not any year. Because cakes took time and money to make. Cakes were for real children, not someone like her.

She no longer remembered when her birthday was. Didn’t want to remember. And she couldn’t remember how old she had been the day Mam found her by the road. But she knew it had been sixteen years ago because Ewan had turned twenty-two last week—and Mam had baked him a cake.

I wish I lived in a different place. I wish someone could love me.

Foolish wishes. Just like every other wish she’d ever made.

Wiping her eyes one last time, Lynnea began collecting the eggs.

Muttering to herself, Glorianna tromped down the lane toward Sebastian’s cottage. She’d seen him and Teaser zipping down the main street on a demon cycle, heading for the other end of the Den, but there hadn’t been time to call out. Sebastian had a pack, so he must be planning to cross over to another landscape for a visit.

Opportunities and choices. She’d missed the chance to talk to Sebastian, so another pattern of events would take shape. That was the way of the world. That was the way of life.

She had known from the moment she’d looked into the green eyes of a wary boy and felt his heart’s strong desire to belong in the nice house with the kind woman and the children who weren’t being cruel that her connection with Sebastian was different from her connection with Nadia and Lee. She had known, in a child’s instinctive way, that she and Sebastian would have a powerful influence on each other’s lives. She hadn’t known then that loving her cousin and wanting to help him would break the pattern of her life so completely, but…

Opportunities and choices. She had made the choice because of Sebastian, but it had been her choice. And even though she’d never been able to put the pattern of her own life back together in a way that made it whole, she didn’t regret her choice. Had never regretted her choice. Because it had saved him.

“Sebastian,” she said—and smiled.

A swell in the currents of power washed through her, leaving her breathless. She stopped walking, just stood in the middle of the lane while she absorbed the feeling that had touched her.

Heart wish. A powerful one. The kind that would send ripples through the currents of the world.

“Sebastian?” she whispered—and felt the heart wish wash through her again.

So. The heart wish had come from him. Maybe that was the reason for his urge to visit another landscape.

Despite what she’d seen in the alley—and her suspicions of how that particular landscape had been inserted into her own—she felt her heart lift. There had been so much possibility of Light in Sebastian’s heart wish. He’d had opportunities to leave the Den and cross over to another landscape, but he’d been blind to them because, despite wanting a change, he hadn’t been ready to change his life. Maybe this time he would follow his heart.

The Den wouldn’t be the same if he left, but the Den, too, had been changing over these last few years, so this might be the time for the man and the landscape to go their separate ways. A bad time, to be sure, but a Landscaper had no right to interfere with a person’s life journey, no matter the cost.

She started walking again, anxious to reach the cottage. Sebastian wouldn’t mind her bedding down on his couch for a few hours. She needed some time to rest. She needed the peace of solitude so she could think.

But when she got close to the cottage, another swell in the currents of power washed through her. This one was fainter, as if it were a ripple of something that had begun a long way away, but no less powerful.

Another heart wish. And something more.

Glorianna reached under her hair and rubbed the back of her neck to get rid of the prickly feeling.

For good or ill, a catalyst was moving toward the Den—a person whose resonance would bring change. And that change seemed to center on the cottage.

She went inside and hoped Sebastian hadn’t rearranged the furniture since her last visit. Feeling her way in the dark, she reached the couch without tripping over anything, dropped her pack beside it, then slumped in one corner, knowing that if she stretched out she would never make the effort to get up and rummage for something to eat.

Nothing to be done about the heart wishes or the catalyst. Things were in motion, but a hundred possibilities could change the pattern that might bring those heart wishes and the catalyst together. Right now she needed to think about the alley and a landscape that had been taken out of the world long ago and shouldn’t be able to touch the rest of Ephemera. And she needed to think about a possibility she didn’t want to consider.

Sighing, Glorianna rubbed her hands over her face.

Only one way to find out. After she got some rest, she would go to the Landscapers’ School and look at the forbidden garden, just to reassure herself that the Eater of the World was still contained behind a stone wall.

“Hoo-whee! You lucky I came along,” William Farmer said.

“Yeah,” Sebastian muttered. “Lucky.”

“Don’t usually pick up strangers this close to a bridge. Can’t never tell what might be crossing over from another place. But you look like a regular fella.”

The farmer spent a minute making various noises at the two horses pulling the wagon, which didn’t seem to have any effect on the animals. It certainly didn’t increase their speed.

Travel lightly . Sebastian closed his eyes and tried to feel grateful that the farmer had offered him a ride. Even if he’d followed the cart path that had led from the bridge, he could have spent days trying to reach Wizard City, getting detained one way or another over and over again. His reluctance to get anywhere near the wizards was at odds with the knowledge that it was what he needed to do. But Ephemera responded to the heart, not the head, so the landscape would have provided obstacles to keep him from reaching the city, turning the journey into a battle of wills—his against Ephemera. He still would have reached the city eventually, but the people he’d left behind in the Den didn’t have time for eventually.

So when he’d reached the spot where the cart path joined the main road at the same moment the wagon was passing by, he’d accepted William Farmer’s offer of a ride for what it was—a sign that the journey would go smoothly if he didn’t turn away from the gifts that were offered.

No one ever said gifts like this came without a price.

But, he thought with a sour glance at the farmer, if he had to listen to the man hoo-whee all the way to Wizard City, the price of this particular gift was a bit steep.