“When Caitlin had a first birthday, he sent a present and a packet of money by way of a ship heading north. A few weeks later, he sent another packet of money and a letter by way of another ship. A few weeks after that, there was just a packet of money. We never heard from him again. But the cottage belonged to Caitlin Marie, since she was a daughter of his lineage, so we still had a place to live.
“During that time, after Devyn went back to the road without her, Maureen began sending letters to her sister Brighid, who lived on the White Isle. I don’t know how many letters she sent. She got a few in return, but whatever was said never eased her heart.”
His throat closed with the pain of remembering.
“Finish it,” Glorianna said gently.
“When Caitlin turned two, Maureen tried to bake a cake as a special treat. Didn’t turn out right. Don’t know why it didn’t, but it wasn’t edible—and it was all she had to give. She wept and raged and smashed things.” His eyes filled with tears as he thought about that day, with him holding on to Caitlin to protect her from the shards of dishes and glass while his mother screamed out the pain of a broken life. “She walked out of the cottage—just left us there in the debris. And that night, she walked into the sea.”
“Guardians of the Light and Guides of the Heart,” Glorianna whispered.
Michael wiped the tears away. “You understand my mother, don’t you, Glorianna Belladonna? You know why she hurt, and what she should have done to ease the pain. Don’t you?”
“It wasn’t your fault, Michael. It wasn’t Caitlin’s fault—or Devyn’s. She was a Landscaper who needed to connect with the places that resonated with her heart. The world was always calling, and she was always searching for something she couldn’t name but knew she needed. There were places that resonated for your father where she was comfortable, but they were his places, not hers. And there were some places where she became a dissonance because she didn’t fit at all. She never found the place her heart recognized as ‘home,’ and the pain of it eventually broke her.”
“Will that happen to Caitlin Marie?” Michael asked.
“I think the White Isle holds some of the answers Caitlin has been looking for,” Glorianna replied. Then she turned away. “I’d better see how Lee is coming with that bridge.”
He held out a hand to stop her. “I’m not sure what I’m asking, so if I’m out of line I need you to tell me so.”
She looked at him and waited.
“I need to know what I do when I’m in one of my…landscapes. After things are settled with Caitlin, could you come with me to visit one of them?”
For a moment, while they looked into each other’s eyes, he could have sworn the world itself held its breath waiting for her answer.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”
He stepped away to let her pass just as the ship sailed under that one bit of cloudy sky.
Kenneday raised a hand, hailing him. He hesitated, wondering what excuse he could give. And then there was no reason to hesitate, no need for an excuse—because no one would be able to distinguish the clouds’ tears from his own.
Chapter Twenty-one
Merrill didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to feel as she watched those…people…escort Brighid to the wrought-iron gate that served as the visitors’ entrance to Lighthaven. Brighid, who had been the heart of this sanctuary of Light and never should have left the White Isle to tend those demon-spawn children. Brighid, who was coming back to them maimed in body and spirit by her time in the outside world.
When Shaela had told her someone was coming up the road in a hired carriage, she had rushed outside and locked the gate, unable—and unwilling—to hear Shaela’s objections over the pounding of her own heart. She had known on some level who was coming, and locking the gate was the only way to protect what she loved best. Not the people, despite her affection for the Sisters who nurtured the Light. No, it was the place itself she truly loved. Because it was the only safe thing to love.
Anger clogged her throat, clogged her lungs, thickened the blood trying to pump through her heart. The carriage had stopped some distance away, but she could tell who crawled out of it as though it were some pus-filled womb. Not just the demon-spawn children of Brighid’s sister coming to foul a Place of Light, but the sorceress called Belladonna was with them, along with a dark-haired man.
Belladonna. How had that creature managed to reach Lighthaven?
Hadn’t she done everything in her power to cast the Dark out of Lighthaven? Since the day Belladonna appeared on the White Isle, hadn’t she stood in the gardens for hours, focusing her heart and will on the effort of casting out the Dark? Hadn’t she spent hours in the prayer room cleansing her own heart of any feelings that didn’t belong to the Light? Hadn’t she spent just as much time praying that the hearts of all her Sisters would be equally purified?
It had worked. Almost. She had not been strong enough to cast out the shadows lodged in Shaela’s heart, and she had not been strong enough to cast out a friend who had served the Light for so many years. But those shadows must have provided the crack through which sorcery could reach the Light.
She couldn’t let the crack widen, couldn’t let the contamination spread.
She watched Brighid approach the visitors’ gate, leaning on the brown-haired man she assumed was Caitlin’s brother Michael, while Caitlin Marie kept pace with them. Belladonna and her companion were trailing far behind the others. Good. She had no desire to shame Brighid, but she was Lighthaven’s leader and had a duty to this place, so the words had to be said.
She took a deep breath and let her authority and conviction ring in her voice. “It is with joy that we look upon our lost Sister and welcome her back to the place where her heart truly dwells. But the rest of you are not welcome here. I will not allow the darkness that crawls within your hearts to poison the Light. Brighid may come back to us—if she turns away from you, who are unclean.”
A few man-lengths away from the carriage, Glorianna tripped, caught herself, then looked back to see what had snagged her foot.
“What’s wrong?” Lee asked softly, stopping with her.
“Nothing,” she said just as softly as she studied the ground. “Everything.”
It wasn’t visible to the eye, but if she let her mind and heart drift in the currents of Light and Dark that flowed through the White Isle, she could almost see it as a physical reality: the border that separated two landscapes.
“Brighid said she could tell the moment she took the first step on ground that belonged to Lighthaven,” Lee said. “And she’s right. Between one step and the next, everything does feel a little different. We must have crossed a border.”
Glorianna kept studying the ground as the currents of power flowed around her, and through her.
From the moment her feet had touched the White Isle, she had felt that same odd dissonance she’d felt when she’d taken the island out of reach of the Eater of the World. Since Michael tended to describe things in terms of music, she guessed he would say the island was playing two different songs and, because the notes were tangled together, both sounded slightly out of tune.
But they were untangling now, becoming clearer, more distinct. And…
“It was a border,” she said, not quite believing what she was sensing, “but it’s becoming a boundary.”
“Boundaries require bridges,” Lee said sharply. “And these people don’t know about boundaries and borders and bridges, so this doesn’t usually occur.”