And, oh, wasn’t this delicious? These foolish humans looked on the Landscaper with distrust, not realizing she was their protector, that her presence spared them from the stains within their own hearts.
Sorceress? Yes, It whispered. Yes, she is a servant of evil. She covets what youhave, wants to destroy what you hold dear. Nothing good has come from that family. Nothing ever will.
Hearts wavered. Were seduced. Fed the Dark currents. One heart blazed with the Light and one heart was too anchored in the currents of Light to be completely swayed, but even in those hearts It found shadows of doubt.
It flowed along the base of the hillside until It reached the path that led upward. Like other animals, humans had game trails they followed. The Landscaper traveled this one often. It could feel her resonance in the earth.
It could feel something else too—a tangle of currents so bloated with the Dark and resonating so strongly with It that Ephemera gave up that piece of itself with no resistance.
And part of the meadow behind the cottage near the hill changed to rust-colored sand.
Satisfied, the Eater of the World rested—and waited.
Michael tucked the tin whistle inside his pack, secured the pack’s flap, then set it aside where it would be out of the men’s way but within easy reach when they finally dropped anchor at Raven’s Hill.
He was glad his presence and his music had eased the hearts of Captain Kenneday’s crew, but he hoped by all that was holy that he wouldn’t be ready to leave when Kenneday sailed back this way, hoped he could find a reason—or an excuse—for taking the roads to head back to the villages that made up his circuit. Because he didn’t want to sail through that stretch of water again, even knowing that it would be hard for Kenneday and his men to make that part of the journey without him.
What was out there was no story told by the surviving fishermen in order to explain a tragedy. Kenneday’s ship had had a clear sky, a good wind, and no hint of anything unnatural. Then they sailed into fog.
He’d heard the voices of the dead men. A chill had gone through him, as if he’d stepped out of the sun into deep shadow. So he’d picked up his whistle, and he’d played. At first the tunes were laced with sorrow and were a salute to the dead and the families who mourned the lost men. Then he eased into tunes that threaded hope into the melody. The fog thinned, the voices of the dead faded, a hazy sun shown overhead, and he imagined he could see a faint glow around each man as, one by one, they shed their despair and believed they would reach clean water again.
When they finally sailed clear of that terrible stretch of water, Kenneday looked at his pocket watch—and discovered they had been lost in the fog for three hours.
No, he didn’t want to sail through that stretch of water again, but as he had played, a thought had danced with his tunes. Maybe his brain had gotten addled in the fog, but if not, the feeling people had of a journey being shorter or longer than usual might not be just a feeling after all.
Leaving his pack, Michael made his way to the stern, where Kenneday was manning the wheel.
Kenneday smiled as Michael came up to stand beside him. “We’ll have you home in time for tea, Michael. That we will.” Then he looked away. “I’m grateful for your help. If you hadn’t been on board…Well, we might still be sailing in that fog, becoming more of the lost men, if it hadn’t been for you.”
Michael gave the captain a sharp, assessing look and decided Kenneday believed what he said.
And it is true, Michael thought. If this isn’t more than fevered imaginings, a ship might never leave that stretch of water if the men on board start believing they’ll never get free of that haunted place.
“I think there’s a way to avoid the fog,” Michael said.
“What? Sailing clear around Elandar every time I have a supply run between ports in the north and south? That would put days on every trip.”
“You don’t have to avoid this part of Elandar, just that stretch of water.” When Kenneday made a dismissive sound, Michael clamped one hand on the captain’s forearm. “Listen to me. The bad water is where those five fishing boats were destroyed. Talk to the men who were in the other boats. You can be sure they know how far out they were when that monster rose from the sea. Damn the darkness, man, you and the other captains can figure out the position of a safe channel that will keep ships from sailing into that water. You mark other dangers; why not this one?”
“Because this one is different.”
Kenneday might be arguing, but Michael heard the underlying hope in the man’s voice.
“This one has boundaries, same as any other piece of dangerous water,” Michael said. “I don’t know how I know that, but I know it. And I’m thinking the area inside those boundaries is never any smaller than the area where those fishing boats were destroyed, but it can expand to be as big as a person believes it to be.”
“That’s crazy talk.”
“Is it? Then how do you explain us being in that fog for three hours?”
Kenneday hesitated, then shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You said yourself there’s something strange about this world. I’m thinking it’s gotten stranger. So maybe there’s someone out there who knows what is happening and what to do about it.”
His dream lover’s face filled his mind. Would she understand Ephemera’s strangeness? Did she know the answer to the riddle his aunt had sent him?
Maybe you’ve been alone too long.
Where had that thought come from?
“Michael?”
The sharpness in Kenneday’s voice brought him back—and he realized he was now holding the man’s arm in a painful grip.
“Sorry. My mind wandered.” He took a step back and tucked both hands in his pockets.
“I’ll talk to the other captains about marking a channel.” Kenneday tried to smile, but worry filled his eyes. “After all, we can’t always have a luck-bringer on board with us.”
The truth of it, and the unasked question under it, caused an awkward silence between them.
“I’d best pull my gear together,” Michael said. Since Kenneday would have seen him checking his pack, it was a poor lie, but it served its purpose.
Michael paused near his pack, then didn’t even pretend to check his gear. He went to the rail and looked toward the shore. He wanted to go home, needed to go home.
But as he looked at the shore, he suddenly had the feeling “home” was a place he hadn’t seen yet.
“What are you playing at now?” Caitlin muttered. “If I don’t get back in time to help Aunt Brighid put tea on the table, there will be nothing but cold silence this evening.”
When there was no response to her words, she rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead as if that might scrub away the day’s frustrations. How many times over the years had she used the old hoe to work the soil in that part of the garden? There shouldn’t have been any stones there, let alone a big stone buried under the soil just deep enough and just at the wrong angle.
Giving the broken hoe handle a sour look, she used the jagged end to poke at what should have been the path leading down the hill to the cottage.
It should have been a simple day of weeding and tending the garden, but everything had been harder to do. The ground held on to weeds with a perverse tenacity. For the first time since it appeared in her garden, the knee-deep pool of water at the base of the little waterfall held no more than a finger length of silty water at the bottom, so she’d had to let the bucket fill by leaving it under the falls—and yet the surrounding beds weren’t saturated.
“Maybe I’ve found where the water drained,” Caitlin said, lifting the now-muddy end of the hoe. The path, which had been dry when she walked up it that morning, was now ankle-deep mud for several man-lengths. And now that part of the path was bordered by thorny, impenetrable bushes that had sprung up in the few hours she’d spent in her garden.