Her aunt would defend her against anyone—including the women who had been Brighid’s Sisters on the White Isle—but privately, Brighid hadn’t been able to hide the flinch, or the anger, whenever she saw evidence of Caitlin’s and Michael’s “gift.”
So all Caitlin had known that day was that the difference that lived inside her and Michael was the reason Michael had gone away, and she ran, wishing with all her young heart that she could find someone, anyone, who would be her friend.
She’d tripped and ended up sprawled on the path. When she looked up, there was a stone wall in front of her and a rusted, broken gate.
She had found Darling’s Garden.
Tangled and overgrown, desperately needing care, the garden tugged at her, and as she walked around it, her heartache eased. Here was something that needed her, wanted her, welcomed her.
Spotting something small that looked pretty but was almost buried under weeds, she pulled up a weed to get a better look. Then pulled up another. And another. When she finally cleaned out a circle of ground around the little plant, she still didn’t know what it was, but it made her feel a little less lost and alone.
Years later, she learned the plant’s name. Heart’s hope.
She kept going back to the garden, escaping from school as soon she could to run up the hill to the secret place. Aunt Brighid’s scolding and obvious worry about where a child that age was disappearing to for hours at a time couldn’t eclipse the lure of a place where the light seemed to sparkle with happiness every time she slipped through the gate.
Then a girl at school invited all the other girls to see the expensive fountain her father had installed in the family’s garden. All the girls except one.
Not you, the girl had said. I don’t want you and your evil eye to look at our fountain.
Caitlin had stood outside the school, blinking back tears of shame as anger filled her.
“I wish your fountain looked as rotten as your heart,” she whispered.
All the way up to the secret garden, she thought about a fountain and how lovely it would be to have one.
When she got to the garden, there it was—not the kind of fountain appropriate for a formal garden, but a tumble of stones forming a series of waterfalls into a knee-deep pool that was guarded by a young willow tree.
It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—but it hadn’t been there the day before. That was when she realized she could make things happen just because she wanted them to. She was excited, delighted, sure it was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
A week later, her aunt hauled her into their cottage, sat her down in a chair, and said, “Whatever it is you did, Caitlin Marie, I want you to undo it. There’s enough talk about evil eyes without you causing trouble.”
She didn’t understand until Aunt Brighid told her about an expensive fountain that had turned foul. The water plants rotted overnight. The golden fish that had been bought from a merchant in Kendall and brought to Raven’s Hill at great expense kept dying. And the water stank like a stagnant marsh no matter how often the groundskeeper cleaned the fountain and replaced the water. There was fear of sickness running through the village because of that foulness.
She’d cried and sworn she hadn’t done anything bad, even though she suspected she was the one who had caused the change in the fountain, and she cried even more when Aunt Brighid yelled, “Where will we go if we’re driven out of this cottage? This is all we have, and we have this much because it was your father’s legacy, the only tangible asset he left his children. If we don’t have this, we have nothing, Caitlin. Nothing.”
Then Aunt Brighid started to cry.
She’d seen Aunt Brighid cry happy tears and the “little sadness” tears that came over the older woman from time to time, but not this heart-tearing sorrow.
So that night she wished as hard as she could that the fountain in her classmate’s garden would be wonderful and clean and make everyone happy.
It didn’t happen. Oh, the next time that fountain was cleaned, it didn’t turn foul, but the plants and fish never flourished, and the water never quite smelled clean. Finally, it was drained for the last time and had stood empty ever since.
After that, she kept her wishes contained to the garden and never wished something bad on anyone. Which was hard for a young girl who had no friends, who the teachers looked at with distrust, who knew she was an outsider because of a difference in which she had no choice.
She had kept the garden her secret until Michael came home the first time. He, at least, was like her. He would understand that special place.
But he hadn’t understood it. Oh, he’d admired it, had praised the work she had done all by herself to clean it up, but he hadn’t felt anything for it.
And yet, he’d done the one thing Aunt Brighid couldn’t do: He had accepted her strange communion with the world. It worried him, and it wasn’t until years later that she realized he was worried for himself as well as for her. Magicians, the luck-bringers and ill-wishers who could change a person’s life by doing nothing more than wishing for something to happen, had been driven out of towns when things turned sour. Some had been injured; some even killed. And in those places…Well, it wasn’t safe for anyone to live in those places anymore.
When she was ten years old, her secret was discovered by two boys who followed her after school one day. She didn’t know if they had intended to do more than follow her; she had heard nothing while she had worked in the garden. It wasn’t until she had slipped out through the gate that she heard the screams for help and found the boys. One had a leg pinned under a fall of boulders. The other was sinking in a patch of bog.
Fortunately, it had happened during one of Michael’s visits home, and he’d been walking up the hill to find her—or shout for her, since even he couldn’t find Darling’s Garden unless Caitlin was with him, but, oddly enough, his voice carried over the garden walls when nothing else did.
So while she had stood there, horrified that she might have done something that had caused the hill to create boulders and bog, Michael had come up the path.
A sudden crack, and a tree limb fell across the bog hole, just missing the boy and providing him with something to cling to—and providing Michael with a safe way to pull the boy out. That same branch became a lever for freeing the other boy from the boulders.
The boys recovered from their misadventure, but no one in Raven’s Hill forgot the story that Caitlin had been seen entering Darling’s Garden. Darling, who, it was said, had been a mostly benevolent sorceress who could command the world to do her bidding. There had been rumors that women in her father’s family had found the garden a few times, but no one had known for sure that the garden still existed until Caitlin Marie had stumbled across it.
After the incident with the boys, Aunt Brighid began talking about the White Isle and Lighthaven, a place of peace, of Light. Maybe a place for a second chance, a new beginning—and, for Brighid, a return to the life for which she was best suited. For Caitlin, the stories about the White Isle were the seed that began a dream of friends and acceptance, of being part of a community.
Until the Sisters of Light, at Aunt Brighid’s request, came to test her to see if she could be one of them.