Belladonna

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 ifshe 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 lisle, 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."
    That's right. It didn't. Maybe Elandar and this island weren't as seamless as people thought, but it was still a whole, unbroken piece of the world.
    But that didn't answer the question of why Ephemera was altering a border to become boundary that would make the separation of places apparent. Was it because she and Caitlin were on the island together? Or was something else spurring this change in the world?
    The currents swelled suddenly, washing through her. She spun around and looked at the people standing on opposite sides of a gate.
    Three women — Brighid, Merrill, and Caitlin Marie. Three heart wishes in conflict with each other, And yet ... the same heart wish.
    "Guardians and Guides." She staggered as the ground suddenly dipped and swayed beneath her, as the world itself cried out for help.
    "Hey!" Lee grabbed her. "Don't you faint on me again. Don't you do that, Glorianna."
    She gave him a shove that had him stumbling bad a step and uttering a shocked curse. "We have to stop them before ..." No time to explain. The bedrock of Landscaper's heart wasn't established well enough here, so Ephemera was gathering itself to manifest those heart wishes without guidance.
    She ran for the gate, aware that an argument was taking place, aware that the Dark currents in this place had been extinguished to the point where they couldn't absorb the bad feelings now swelling in a Place of Light, aware that the ground had become soft and the air heavy, that every heartbeat was a distant clap of thunder, a warning peal of the storm about to break.
    She couldn't move fast enough. She would never reach them in time to tell them to stop, to wait, to think. So she did the only thing she could since she had a connection to the White Isle and Ephemera trusted her to guide it through the most ever-changing landscape of all — the human heart.
    Ephemera, hear me. Give those hearts what they desire. But manifest those heart wishes through me. Through ME.
    As she felt the world gather itself to obey her command, she heard two voices, raised in anger, say at the same moment, "I don't want you."
    Thunder. Avalanches. The crash of the sea. The scream of the wind when it was filled with wild insanity.
    The roar of a world tearing itself apart.
    Everything snapped back into focus. Her last step had her knocking into Caitlin before she put her hands out to catch herself as she fetched up against the stone wall beside the gate. She leaned against it, rested her cheek against it as she closed her eyes.
    Good stone. Solid stone. Not