Belladonna

sorry I broke the world. I didn't know I could do that. Nothing like that has happened before."
    That you're aware of Glorianna thought — and couldn't quite hide the shiver that went through her. How had the world survived the combination of ignorance and power? How many landscapes had disappeared because an untrained Landscaper's heart had rung with a pure note of anger?
    "Are you nervous too?" Caitlin asked.
    "Yes." But not for myself. "I'm going aft to talk to Captain Kenneday. Do you want to come?" When Caitlin shook her head, Glorianna went back to the wheel, where Kenneday was guiding his ship to the docks and Michael and Lee were standing nearby.
    "Looks like someone knew we were coming," Michael said, raising his chin to indicate the people they could see gathering at the docks.
    "Nah," Kenneday replied. "Someone spots sails on the horizon and the word goes out. By the time a ship docks, the whole damn village is waiting to greet it. It's happened every time I've put into port here. It's like they're all waiting for something."
    "Or someone," Glorianna said quietly. "If these people have known about Guides of the Heart and their connection to the world ..."
    "How many generations has it been since a Landscaper lived among them, tending her garden?" Lee asked, picking up the thought. "How many years have they been coming down to meet the ships, hoping that a descendant of their darling has come home?"
    Home. Even though this wasn't her landscape, she felt the resonance of the word, the rightness of it. Heart wishes and yearnings were coming together for that moment of opportunity and choice.
    She glanced at Michael — then thought of Brighid, who was belowdecks, resting — and recognized the two stumbling blocks that could end something before it began.
    Grabbing Michael's arm, she pulled him away from the others. Judging by his smile, they had very different reasons for wanting a semiprivate moment.
    "Listen, Magician," she said, giving her voice enough punch to wipe the smile off his face. "No matter what you or Brighid think about this, you must keep your thoughts and concerns to yourself. This is Caitlin's life, not yours. This has to be her choice, not what you want for her."
    "What are you —"
    "Your mother walked into the sea because she never had this moment to stand in the place where her heart was rooted.
    Sometimes we're given opportunities over and over again to make the choice that will lead to what the heart yearns for. And sometimes that opportunity, that moment when everything is right, only comes once."
    Anger hardened his face, reminding her that he, too, had Dark currents flowing through him that connected with the world.
    That he was, in his own way, a Guide.
    "Do you think so little of me that you believe I'd hurt my sister?" he asked.

    "No, you wouldn't hurt her intentionally. But your doubts could influence her enough to have her making a choice that is not in her own best interest."
    "She's eighteen," Michael snapped. "And not an old eighteen, if you take my meaning."
    "Then it's time she grew up. She's not a child, remember?"
    "Don't be turning this around on me, Glorianna. Don't be using my own words against me."
    "Then remember that you left home at sixteen, that if the Landscapers in your ... country ... had received formal training the way they do in my part of the world, you both would have left home to attend school at the age of fifteen." She wasn't getting through to him. She could see that by the look in his eyes. But she was getting a good measure of the depth and breadth of his stubborn streak.
    "Consider this, Michael," she said softly. "How would you feel if you never again heard music except for the sound that drifted through a locked door? When you pressed your ear against the wood, you could hear enough to crave the sound, to know something inside you needed it, but you could never open that door and hear the full richness or intricacy of the song." She watched him pale. "I'm asking you to think carefully before you speak. Don't become the locked door that stands between Caitlin and her heart."
    He walked away from her— and for the first time in memory, she wasn't able to read someone's heart.
    Michael curled his hands around the railing and squeezed until his bones hurt. He wanted to yell at her, rage at her, call her names, and say things that could never be taken back.
    Not because she had the nerve to tell him not to be a stone around his little sister's