Brighid shook her head. “Leaving here wasn’t a completely selfless act. Yes, the children needed me, but I also needed to go, and that letter gave me a reason to leave.”
“What was out there that you couldn’t find here?” Merrill cried.
“I don’t know!” Brighid’s voice rang with frustration. “Life. Love. Maybe something as simple as lust. I don’t know. I never found it.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. “I never found it. Just like Maureen never found whatever her heart needed. She loved Devyn. I know she did. But it wasn’t enough. And Caitlin…”
“Doesn’t belong here,” Merrill snapped, feeling the sting of rejection all over again. They were back to where they were sixteen years ago. Despite what Brighid said about things changing, nothing had changed. Nothing. “Even the other sorceress said so.”
“Guide of the Heart,” Brighid murmured. “I never thought I would stand face-to-face with a true Guide of the Heart.”
Everything should have been wonderful, but it was all breaking apart.
Merrill looked down at the cuff bracelet she had worn for so many years, thinking it had meant…
She pulled it off and held it out. “You gave me this. When you left. A family heirloom, isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s what it is,” Brighid replied.
“You gave it to me as a reminder of what we had meant to each other, what we might have meant if you hadn’t…” She trailed off.
“I gave it to you as a farewell gift,” Brighid said softly. “I never intended to come back to the White Isle.”
Merrill dropped the bracelet and turned, knocking into the table as she rushed to the door. Before the sound of the slamming door faded away, she heard the crash of cups and saucers hitting the floor.
Michael took a seat between Lee and Kenneday, more relieved than he wanted to admit that he was no longer the only man at Lighthaven.
“Never saw anything like it, in all my years at sea,” Kenneday said. “One minute the deck is clear; the next, this one is standing behind me. And then, when we’re standing on the shore of a lake that hadn’t been there a couple of days ago, he’s calmly transferring all the gear we had packed in the wagon onto this bit of an island only he can see.”
“That’s not quite true,” Lee said, helping himself to some bread and cheese. “There are times when everyone can see the island.”
Kenneday just snorted.
Michael helped himself to some of the food on the table and said nothing. Clearly everyone had had an exciting time over the past couple of days.
“It was the strangest thing,” Brighid said, responding to Caitlin’s question about the different table. “The leg just gave way. It must have been loose—may have been loose for years—and getting bumped with the weight of a tray on top of it was enough to break that leg.”
Michael noticed the look exchanged by Glorianna and Lee, then did a quick survey of the room. Where was Merrill? Wouldn’t Lighthaven’s leader want to be here for this meeting? Besides his aunt Brighid, the only Sister in the room was Shaela.
“So,” Lee said, accepting a cup of tea with a polite smile, “the lake does, in fact, circle Lighthaven. Dark, cold water. Weedy. Foggy. I spotted animal tracks going to and from the water, so I think we can assume the water is drinkable. Might be fish in there that are edible. And we confirmed that you can see Lighthaven from the White Isle shore.”
“Like a dream it is,” Kenneday said. “Like something that fades away as soon as you reach for it.”
That got Glorianna’s attention. “It’s doing the same thing that the White Isle did?”
“We didn’t get in a boat to find out, but my guess is it will do the same thing in that you can see it from a distance, but it will fade away completely before you get close to it,” Lee said. “I’m wondering if that’s the nature of this Place of Light. Maybe it was never meant to be found. Maybe it was meant to be like a dream—you take comfort in knowing it exists, but its allure is even more potent because so few people can reach it.”
“Being hard to reach isn’t the same as being impossible to reach,” Glorianna said. “And some people will need to find it.”
“Why?” Shaela asked. “We’re supposed to remain apart from the turmoil of the world.”
“How many of the Sisters were born here?” Glorianna asked.
Not many, if any, Michael thought, watching Shaela take in the significance of the question.
“A resonating bridge would work,” Lee said. “Stationary bridge won’t hold between the two landscapes—I did try to create one—but a resonating bridge isn’t keyed for specific landscapes. Thing is, since people around here don’t know about landscapes and bridges, we’d want something no one would mistake for something else.”
“Too bad you can’t put a pair of Sentinel Stones in the middle of the lake,” Kenneday said, cutting another hunk of cheese off the wheel. “Be romantic like, taking a boat out with the dawn breaking and the mist on the water, and those great black stones rising up from the middle of the lake, and you watching that shore that looks as wispy as a wish and not knowing if it will fade away completely or become real.” He glanced around at the people now staring at him and cleared his throat. “Just a passing thought.”
“Tell us about these Sentinel Stones,” Glorianna said.
When Kenneday just squirmed under her intent stare, Michael jumped in. “You’ve seen them. You’ve got a pair of them as the gate—bridge—between the Merry Makers’ bog and the Den. Walked between them in order to cross over.”
Now Glorianna and Lee were staring at him.
“Those are common in this land—in Elandar?” Lee asked.
“Common enough,” Michael replied warily. “Every third or fourth village has a pair of them in the fields beyond the village proper.”
“Tell them what the Stones do,” Kenneday said, giving Michael an elbow in the ribs.
“It depends,” Michael said, not sure if he needed to be more worried about Glorianna or Lee jumping on him. “Sometimes you walk through the Stones and nothing happens. Sometimes you don’t go anywhere…but things change.” Oh, this was starting to sound familiar in an unfamiliar sort of way. “And sometimes a person walks between the Stones and disappears. Sometimes for a few days—and sometimes forever.”
Glorianna sat back and blew out a deep breath. Lee scrubbed his hands over his face.
“They’ve got resonating bridges all over this landsc—country, and they don’t know what the things do,” Lee said.
“In point of fact,” Michael said testily, “we do know what they do. We just never knew why things happened to people when they walked between the Stones.”
Lee looked at Glorianna. “A pair of those Stones would take care of the problem of people recognizing the bridge.” His eyes shifted to look at Michael and Kenneday. “And if the storytellers were to spread a new ‘legend’ about Lighthaven and why it disappeared, then we’ll have an explanation for everyone.”
“And who are you expecting to come up with this story?” Michael asked, since he was beginning to feel like a mouse cornered by a pair of black-haired, green-eyed cats.
Lee cocked a thumb at Kenneday. “He’s already come up with the part about how to find the mystical island of Lighthaven. The least you can do is come up with the reason it disappeared.”
“So,” Kenneday said, looking thoughtful, “you steer a bit of a boat between the Stones, and if you’re worthy you’ll reach Lighthaven’s shore. And if you’re not, you’ll just keep going until you reach the other side of the lake and never find the island?”
“It will be a resonating bridge,” Lee said. “So, yes, you might keep going until you reach the other shore. Or you might suddenly find yourself on another lake in another part of Elandar.”
“Or on a river in some part of the world you’ve never seen before,” Glorianna added.
“Or you could find yourself sitting in your bit of a boat in the middle of a farmer’s potato field,” Lee said.