Belladonna by Anne Bishop

She shook her head. “Possible, but just as likely It took the form of a death roller and did the hunting. Just like It would have assumed a form that made It the best predator for killing that woman.”

  “And the lamplighter,” Michael said. “I forgot about the lamplighter. Killed the same night. Some of his bones were crushed and there were other…odd…things about the way he died. Or so I was told.”

  “When Lynnea and I were escaping from the Landscapers’ School, we saw creatures that could have crushed bone,” Sebastian said.

  Michael shuddered. Then his eyes filled with a mixture of anger and shock as he pointed at her. “No. I’ll not have it. You will not take this on your shoulders, Glorianna Belladonna. If a man bolts the door against a beast trying to attack his family, do you blame him for protecting his own? And if the beast turns away from his door to attack another’s that is less well defended, is that his fault because he didn’t step aside and let it attack what he loved? You bolted your own door, but you didn’t aim that beast at a neighbor.”

  What was he hearing in her “music” that revealed so much of what she was thinking—and feeling? She wasn’t to blame for where the Eater chose to hide after she had altered the landscapes and closed Wizard City away from the rest of the world, but she didn’t like feeling this exposed and wasn’t used to someone who wasn’t family reading her so clearly.

  “If the borders in this part of Ephemera are as fluid as they seem, the Eater could have gotten here from Wizard City before I broke that bridge,” Lee said. “Might have avoided your landscapes altogether.”

  “Maybe.” If Michael and Caitlin hadn’t stumbled into her life, she wouldn’t have known where the Eater had gone, would have had no hope of finding It. Or stopping It.

  “This is it then,” Michael said, lifting a hand to indicate the bridge. “Either the road leading into Dunberry starts when we cross the bridge, or we’ll be standing on the other side of the stream waving at your brother and cousin. Coming back across the bridge in the other direction should show us the road leading to Kendall. There’s a posting house about halfway, where coaches change horses and such. The road that turns off the main one leads to Foggy Downs.”

  No matter what she found on the other side of the bridge, taking that step between here and there was all she needed to do in order to go home. No matter what they found when they crossed over, she could get them to a safe landscape in a heartbeat.

  But the prospect of crossing over to a landscape that wasn’t hers was exciting and scary—and made her feel adventurous and foolishly young. Had Michael’s mother felt like this the first time she had begun a journey with his father? Had she felt this excitement for the adventure—and for the man? And look how that had ended. Maybe…

  She took a step back. Shook her head violently.

  “Glorianna!”

  Whose voice? She couldn’t tell, didn’t know. All three of them were around her. Then she felt his hands on her shoulders, felt the warmth of him. Heard the music in him.

  She’d never thought of people as songs before she met him. Still didn’t for most. Lee and Sebastian were a resonance. Michael was different. Michael was unlike anyone she had known before.

  “It’s sly,” she said, pushing back her hair as she concentrated on taking steady breaths.

  “It’s here?”

  She paused a moment, thinking something was wrong with her hearing. Then she realized all three of them had asked the same question.

  “No.” She paused again. “My head hurts.”

  She felt Michael’s lips against her ear. Felt those lips curve into a smile.

  “Then stop pulling on your hair,” he whispered.

  She put her hands down—and looked at two pairs of green eyes that were sharp with worry.

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  “You’re going back to the Den,” Sebastian said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Leave the woman be,” Michael said. “The land is sour here, and I’m thinking the badness that changed Dunberry spilled over a bit.”

  “This has happened before,” Glorianna said, knowing by the way Lee sucked in a breath that he wouldn’t keep that bit of information to himself and that she could look forward to one of Nadia’s rare, full-tempered scolds when she got home. “The Eater tried to turn me away when I altered the pond to shut off the death rollers’ access to this landscape. Now Its resonance in the Dark currents around the bridge brushed against me, tried to turn me away from crossing the bridge with you.” She looked over her shoulder at Michael.

  “Will crossing that bridge put you in danger?” Michael asked.

  She gave the question serious consideration before shaking her head. She slipped out of their protective circle and retrieved her pack. Clothes, toiletries, some gold and silver coins, since those were acceptable tender in any landscape. Pencils and some folded sheets of paper to make notes of what she saw and how landscapes connected. A canteen clipped to the outside. Michael carried a bit of food, along with all his belongings—enough to get them through a lean meal or two if Dunberry turned elusive.

  She had traveled farther with less fuss simply by crossing over to one of her distant landscapes. Wasn’t the same.

  She hugged Lee, an awkward business since the pack got in the way.

  “We’ll be back in a few days,” she whispered in her brother’s ear.

  He kissed her cheek and whispered back, “Travel lightly.”

  Sebastian next, and just as hard to say good-bye. Harder in some ways.

  Don’t get maudlin, she thought. Don’t feed the Dark currents. You could get back to the Den faster than they can.

  “Travel lightly,” Sebastian said, looking at Michael.

  “And you,” Michael replied softly. Then he held out his hand to her, linked his fingers with hers.

  Together, they walked across the bridge.

  A familiar road. Familiar land in terms of the looks of it. But a terrible, sour music that ripped at the heart. When he’d last been in Dunberry, he hadn’t known what had caused the change in the village. Now his stomach churned with the knowledge of what had come to this place and what the Eater of the World had done to these people.

  “Do you feel it?” Glorianna asked, looking around.

  “Darling, the only good thing I’m feeling is your hand in mine,” he replied.

  “There’s an access point nearby.” She moved toward the stream’s bank, tugging him with her.

  He’d known the world had done one of its little shifts—no, that they had crossed over to another landscape—the moment his foot had touched the road, but he still looked across the stream to confirm Lee and Sebastian weren’t there.

  “This is the spot,” she said, crouching down.

  Since he wasn’t about to let go of her hand, he crouched with her. “I don’t see anything.”

  “What do you hear?”

  A dark song, but faint and scratchy. What he heard clearly was her—the light tones as well as the dark.

  “It can’t touch me,” he said, staring at her as the wonder of that truth filled him. “When I fought It, I was being pulled into darkness—and I chose what darkness would be my fate. So I can hear what It has done to Dunberry, but Its song is nothing more than a scratchy annoyance.

  “Then what do you hear?”

  “You.” He watched her eyes widen. “‘Her darkness is my fate.’ That was the choice I made. And that choice has made me tone-deaf to the Eater.” He waited a beat, then tipped his head to indicate the stream. “So what is it you’re feeling here, Glorianna Belladonna?”

  “This is the Eater’s point of entry when It comes to this landscape,” she said.

  “Like those bits you have in your garden?” He waited for her nod. “So It’s made a garden?”

  The arrested, thoughtful look on her face kept him silent.

  “It turned the school into Its garden,” she finally said. “The school is now full of Its creatures, so that wo
uld be the safest place to maintain Its own dark landscapes.”

  “Is that what Dunberry has become? One of Its dark landscapes?”

  “A lot of Dark currents here, more than is natural for this place. But despite those currents, I don’t think it’s changed into one of the Eater’s landscapes. Not yet.” Glorianna rose to her feet and stepped away from the bank, her hand still linked with his. “Landscapes, like people, can change, Magician. This place didn’t start out this way. It doesn’t have to stay this way.”

  “What about that?” He used their linked hands to point toward the stream.

  She smiled. “Ask the wild child.”

  He studied her a moment and decided she wasn’t teasing. Ask the wild child. Ask Ephemera. Lady’s mercy, hadn’t he seen what she could do by asking the world to make—or remake—itself?

  “This feels foolish.”

  “Then foolishness is all that will come of it,” Glorianna replied. “You are still the bedrock here. The connection hasn’t been completely severed. Ephemera will give you what your heart tells it to give you. If you believe you will fail, then that is what you will do—because that is your truth in this moment. That you want to fail. Maybe even need to fail because you’re not ready for the next stage of your journey.”

  He couldn’t deny the truth of her words, even if he didn’t like the sound of them. “Would you mind standing over there, then? This is a private conversation.”

  She looked at their linked hands, then up at him—and he realized he’d been the one holding on, reluctant to let go. He released her hand and watched her walk a couple of man-lengths away, the polite distance someone would give people who needed a moment of privacy. It felt too far. Much too far. Because he knew if she were standing no farther away from him than she was now but was in a different landscape, he wouldn’t be able to see her, or even know she was there.

  Shaking his head to dislodge that thought, he went back to the stream and crouched on the bank.

  “Wild child,” he called softly. “Can you hear me?”

  He waited, almost called again. Then he felt it—that same sensation he had in the pubs sometimes, of a child hiding in a corner, listening to the music. But now the sensation was more like a child hiding behind him in order to escape being seen by something that frightened it.

  “This access point,” he said, pointing toward the stream and wishing he’d asked Glorianna to show him the exact spot. “It’s a bad thing.”

  No disagreement about that.

  “Can you get rid of it?”

  Hesitation. Confusion. Even a little fear? Well, the enemy was called the Eater of the World.

  Still crouched, he pivoted on the balls of his feet until he could see Glorianna. “What happens if we don’t remove the access point, just try to change Dunberry?”

  She walked back to him. “Depending on how often the Eater checks the daylight landscapes It is changing into dark landscapes, It will sense a dissonance and come back to restore the balance in Its favor.”

  Meaning anything he did wouldn’t help the people in the village.

  “Removing the access point removes Its shortcut to this place,” Glorianna said. “It could still return, but It would have to travel overland to reach the village.”

  “It would know someone got rid of Its shortcut?”

  She nodded. “It would know the Landscaper who held this village had reclaimed the landscape. That may make It reluctant to return—especially if It wants to avoid you.” She crouched beside him. “The core of your gift is the same as other Landscapers’, I think—to be the bedrock through which Ephemera interacts with human hearts—but how that gift manifested is different. I wonder if that’s true in other parts of the world.”

  “Like a story, you mean?” She didn’t understand him, but she was listening, learning the language of how he saw the world. “Stories change from place to place. The bones of them stay the same, but they’re clothed a little differently, and that reflects how the people dress them up to fit themselves.”

  “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes. Guardians. Guides. All the survivors went into hiding in one way or another after Ephemera shattered and the Eater was caged. They called themselves by other names, and those names took on different meanings. But the core of what they were meant to be and meant to do didn’t change.”

  “The perception of the people around them did,” Michael said.

  “Yes.” She gave him a look that made him nervous. “It’s time to change that perception again, Magician, for your sake and the sake of the people who need you and the others like you to keep the currents of Light and Dark balanced in the landscapes that resonate with your heart.”

  Michael took a deep breath, then puffed out his cheeks as he blew the air out. “All right, then. Let’s start with this. How do we get rid of it?”

  Glorianna pursed her lips. “The stream was already here and is part of this land, so we can’t tell Ephemera the stream doesn’t belong here, because it does. So it would be easier to change where the access point leads to.”

  No point telling her she had switched to that way of speaking where the words had no meaning. At least, for him. “What happens when we move it?”

  She made a circle out of her arms, fingertips touching fingertips. “You’ll have a piece of stream about this big plopped into a different landscape.”

  “Into the sea?” he asked, thinking of that mist-filled, haunted piece of water.

  “Stone is stone. It won’t float. So this access point would settle at the bottom of the sea. It would still be a circle of fresh water running over those stones just as it is now.”

  “Well, that would be a bite in the ass, now wouldn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Her dry tone had him grinning. Then he held out a hand. “Show me how to mend the world.”

  Her hand slipped into his. “Ephemera, hear me.”

  He felt the currents of power, felt the world changing around him. Not as music this time, which he found interesting. No, this was more like a tuning fork being struck, and he was using himself to tune the world to match that resonance. He knew the moment it was done, the moment that resonance was tuned just the right way so that it no longer belonged in a piece of the world that could hear his music.

  “Now what?” He felt his knees pop as he stood up—a reminder that a dozen years on the road could make parts of a man feel older than his years. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tend a garden like Caitlin did, but he wondered if there wasn’t a compromise that would let him look after his places without being on the road so much. Because, truth to tell, he’d lost the taste for traveling. Wouldn’t have lost it if he hadn’t been thrown beyond the world he knew. He couldn’t see himself settling down in any of his “ports of call,” as Kenneday put it, but he could see himself making a life and a home in Aurora—or on the Island in the Mist. Could see himself spending time with Jeb and Lee and, Lady of Light have mercy on him, even Sebastian.

  He wondered if any of them would have anything to do with him when all was said and done.

  “What would you usually do when a village was out of tune?” Glorianna asked.

  “Play some music to help folks get back in tune. But we can’t go down into the village. I’m not ashamed to say I snuck out the back way last time I was here, and I don’t fancy going down there now.” Especially if it might put you in danger.

  “Where does the landscape begin for you?”

  “Here. The land always has a slightly different feel as soon as I cross the bridge.”

  “Then we don’t need to go into the village. You’re playing for the wild child now, to help balance the currents. If you help the Light shine a little, a heart will warm and shine a little in response.”

  “Like candles. Light one and more can be lit from it.”

  She smiled at him. “Yes. Like candles.” She shrugged out of her pack and sat by the side of the road.

  He shrugged out of his
pack and opened the flap just enough to pull out the whistle. He stood for a moment, with his feet planted for balance and the sun warm on his face, aware of the woman as much as the land.

  He wouldn’t be playing just for the wild child.

  The notes flowed through the air, bright threads of sound. Hope. Happiness. The contented fatigue of a good day’s work. Laughter. Romance. The pleasure of a satisfying meal. The warmth of friends.

  He didn’t know how long he had played, with the music flowing through him, before he became aware of the sound of hand against leg, of her setting a rhythm using her body as a drum.

  Did she play an instrument? She hadn’t mentioned it; he hadn’t asked. Or was she simply responding the way folks in a pub would, beating out the rhythm of a tune? Would she like the sound of an Elandar drum?

  His mind wasn’t on the land or the music anymore, so he finished up the tune, letting the last note linger.

  “That’s it, then,” he said, tucking the whistle back in the pack and unhooking the canteen for a long drink.

  “We’ve got company,” Glorianna said quietly, getting to her feet.

  “I see it. If need be, you take that step back to your own ground.”

  She gave him a long look that didn’t tell him anything, so he concentrated on the horse and cart coming toward them—and the man driving.

  He opened the canteen and took a drink, all the while watching the man, whose hands tightened on the reins when he realized who was standing by the road.

  “Whoa.” The man glanced at Glorianna, then looked away. “Good day to you, Michael.”

  “And to you, Torry,” Grief-dulled eyes. Troubled heart. “What brings you out this way?”

  “Needed to get away for a few days. Just…away. Borrowed the rig, figured I’d go up to Kendall.”

  A man who looked that broken and empty, walking down the wrong streets, could find himself beaten and robbed, if not dead.

  Which is why he’s going.

  “You didn’t kill her,” Glorianna said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Anger darkened Torry’s face as he twisted in the seat. “And what would you be knowing about it?” He twisted around back to Michael. “Have you started bringing your whore with you, Magician?”