The hand lifted from her mouth. The other still rested on her shoulder, but now lightly enough to feel like offered comfort rather than a restraint.
She didn’t move except to turn her head enough to look at the man kneeling beside her. About her brother Michael’s age, give or take a year. A good face. Handsome even, with the black hair and those green eyes framed by lashes that were unfairly lush. And the beginnings of those crinkle lines at the corners of the eyes that gave a man’s face character and made women just look old.
When she shifted to push herself up, his hand moved from her shoulder to her arm, pulling her up to a sitting position.
She looked beyond her circle and clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle the scream. The sand all around them swarmed with bonelovers, and not too far beyond her circle…
“They found something,” the man said. “Might not be human. If there’s only a border between two landscapes, animals can cross over easily enough. Most instinctively avoid landscapes that are dangerous, but if they’re scared and running, they could end up in a landscape like this and then not be able to get back out.” He stood, then offered her a hand to help her up. “Let’s go while they’re occupied.”
Go where? Caitlin wondered, since she didn’t see horses or a buggy or any other way to outrun the bonelovers. Then again, he had gotten here. Somehow.
As she raised her hand to clasp his, she remembered the heart’s hope. She twisted around on her knees and began scooping a channel in the sand around the tiny plant. Couldn’t have many roots. Not a plant this size. And certainly not deep.
“What are you doing?” the man demanded. “That’s probably the only thing holding this access point intact.”
She looked over her shoulder and glared at him. “I’m not leaving it in this place.” She didn’t know how much time had passed between when she’d created the circle of sand and when the stranger found her, and she wasn’t sure she could explain to this man how often she’d awakened during those hours and felt like the presence of the heart’s hope was a sip of courage. “I’m not leaving it.”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Wait. Don’t pull it out of the ground. Don’t move. Just wait.”
He moved to the edge of the circle, studied the bonelovers mounded over the unknown prey. Then he took a step and disappeared.
“No.” The word came out as a whimper. Caitlin just stared. He’d left her. She hadn’t been willing to leave the plant behind, so he left her.
Then he was back, reappearing inside her circle as suddenly as he had disappeared.
“Here,” he said, handing her a sturdy bowl. “It’s been cleansed, so it doesn’t resonate with any earth that’s been put it in before.”
She understood the individual words, but the way he was stringing them together, the meaning escaped her. And his accent said plain as plain that he wasn’t from a part of the world she knew. But she wasn’t about to start asking questions that might have him thinking he’d be better off leaving her behind.
She worked her fingers under the tiny heart’s hope. Yes, just as she thought. Not much root. She scooped up the plant and the sand, but there was too little of it for the size of the bowl.
“Just hold it at the right depth,” the man said. He scooped up sand and poured it into the bowl while she held the plant in place. When he scooped up a shell, he looked at it, then at her. “Beach?”
Caitlin nodded. “I’m thinking it’s the one near the village’s harbor, but I can’t be sure.”
He set the shell aside and scooped up more sand. “And where would that be?”
“Are you asking the name of my village or my country?”
Now he looked puzzled. “Both.”
“I live in Raven’s Hill, and my country is called Elandar.”
There was less warmth and more wariness in his green eyes.
“That should do it,” she said, trying to sound cheerful as she pressed the sand down around the plant. On impulse, she set the shell next to the heart’s hope.
He brushed off his hands, then reached into his jacket pocket. “Is this yours?”
She looked at the coil of braided hair tied with blue ribbon that he pulled out of his pocket—and shivered. “Where did you find that? I left it…” She wasn’t about to tell him where she left it.
“It appeared near my mother’s house,” he said, looking and sounding more wary. Then he looked beyond the circle and stuffed the braid back into his pocket. “Let’s finish this discussion in a safer place.”
A bonelover was right at the edge of the circle, staring at them.
“It can see us!” Caitlin said.
“No, it can’t,” the man said with an oddly heavy emphasis. “But I think the boundaries have thinned to the point that it can hear us and it knows there’s prey close by, so we need to leave here now.” He helped her to her feet, then took a step closer to the bonelover and picked up her broken hoe handle. Stepping back, he wrapped a hand around her upper arm and led her to the spot where he had disappeared.
“This will be easier for you if you close your eyes,” he said.
What would be easier? But she closed her eyes. He moved away from her, but not so far that he released his hold on her arm.
“Imagine stepping over a log,” he said. “Lift one foot up and over.”
“We’re too close to the edge,” Caitlin protested. “If I take a step, I’ll be out of the circle.”
“You’ll be all right,” he said. “Take the step.”
Wasn’t much choice, so she took the step.
Her breath caught. Not sand beneath that foot. Firmer ground. Where…?
“Now the other foot,” the man said. “Now is not the time to daydream or dally.”
“Where did you hear that saying?” Caitlin muttered as she obeyed him. For a younger man, he suddenly sounded like a querulous uncle. Or how she’d imagined a querulous uncle would sound.
“From my mother. I heard it often at one point in my life.”
She smiled—and had the strange feeling that she’d almost fallen but had recovered her balance.
“Open your eyes. Give me the bowl.”
She opened her eyes, but she hugged the bowl to her chest as she looked around. Trees and dappled sunlight. The cool air of autumn. But to her left was the circle of sand from the Raven’s Hill beach and beyond that the rust-colored sand that belonged to a nightmare. “How…?”
“We’ll discuss it later. Right now…” He pulled the bowl out of her hands, then gave her the hoe handle. “Undo this access point to the beach before the bonelovers find a way to cross over. If they manage to get through to your beach, they’ll have access to everything it connects to, including your village.”
“How do I do this? I don’t know how to do this!”
He stared at her. “You really don’t know what you’ve done, do you? You don’t know what you are.”
Sorceress.
“Ask Ephemera to take your beach back where it came from. Tell Ephemera to leave nothing connected to the Eater’s landscape—not so much as a shell or grain of sand.”
She hesitated.
The man lifted the bowl. “The sand and shell are enough to create an anchor point. You can get back home.”
If I knew how this worked. “I can’t be talking to the world while you’re watching.”
“I’ll go up the path a ways. But we need to get away from this landscape as soon as you’re done.” He touched her arm lightly. “Don’t step off the island.”
As if she needed the warning.
The moment he was out of sight, she wished she could still see him. Pretending to be brave was easier when she wasn’t alone.
Just get it done, she thought as she knelt at the edge of the island. He sounds like he sees this sort of thing all the time. Why would he see this sort of thing all the time?
She shook her head and put her mind to the task. He was right; there was no time for anything except getting away from this place.