Belladonna

fingers. And rain, tasting like bitter tears, poured down on the rest of Wizard City.
    She walked beneath the merciless sun, walked along the banks of that simmering river, walked through the fog and the bitter rain. Her heart poured out Dark purity, and Ephemera manifested everything that came from that heart.
    And all the dark things that had once wanted nothing more than to chew up the Light and spit it out now huddled in their mounds, in their caves, in their houses — and shivered in fear.

    *
"They went home," Michael muttered as he made his way down to the sandbox. "They all went home. Lady of Light, my thanks for small favors." And it was a small favor, since they were all coming back tomorrow to finish the work.
    He stepped into the part of the box that held the gravel, set a little clutch of violets on the sand, then sat down on the bench.
    Those women were ferocious when they set their minds to a task. It scared him a little to see how well Caitlin Marie fit in with Nadia and Lynnea. And Aunt Brighid, whom he'd always thought of as a formidable woman, didn't seem intimidating at all compared with those two.
    "They mean well. It's a small comfort to my aching body, but they mean well." He took out his whistle and sighed. "Just you and me tonight, wild child. Sebastian is done in, so I sent him on home." And part of that decision was the growing doubt that their efforts were making any difference. "If you could take that little clutch of flowers to the same place you took the basket, I'll play a little while and then we'll all get some rest."
    He waited. Felt nothing.
    "Wild child?"
    Ephemera finally answered his call, but the world wasn't happy. He couldn't prove it, but he suspected that the Dark currents in all parts of the world were a little swollen, and little bits of unhappiness were occurring to a lot of people — a lost brooch, a broken dish, a missing toy. Each thing wasn't more than an extra drop of unhappiness, but all those extra drops eventually could change the tone of a family or a village.
    "You can do this, wild child. I know you can."
    Gone. A flurry of notes that sounded in his mind like a child blaming him for some unhappiness, and Ephemera was gone.
    He could think of one reason why the world would be unhappy with him. "Did something happen when you took the basket?"
    No response. He couldn't even do that much.
    The violets looked sad in the waning light. A lover's token, rejected before it was received.

    Since he was playing for no one but himself, he played the music he called "Glorianna's Light." Then he played the music of love. The music that remembered the touch of her hand, the feel of her lips, the wonder of being inside her.
    Tears slipped down his face, and his heart ached with the remembering, but he kept playing.
    And never noticed when the little clutch of violets disappeared.

    *
She picked up the little clutch of violets and felt the resonances that had names, faces, memories. Pretty little flowers with savage hooks that dug in and dug in until she wept from the pain of remembering those names, those faces. Screamed out the agony of wanting to touch those names, those faces.
    Don't belong there. Not anymore.
    But the hooks dug in, dug in, dug in. And from the thin threads that were anchored in another landscape, Light flowed.
    World? It whispered. World? Is there Light?

Chapter Thirty-six
    W orld? It whispered. World? Is there Light?

    *
Ephemera flowed through the currents of the Island in the Mist. It did not listen to the Eater of the World. Would not listen. But the question, flowing from the currents in the forbidden part of itself, brought it back to the sandbox where the Music played with it every day.
    A heart wish had flowed out of the forbidden place. Her heart wish. But the Music did not answer, did not ask the world to send the proper answer. The Music was still learning to be Guide. Maybe the Music did not know?
    She had been the last one at the school who had talked to it, had played with it and helped it shape itself. Who had understood how to be Guide to the World. Unlike the others before her, when the Dark Ones had come, she had listened to it when it tried to save her. It had found Light, and she had followed.
    It had found Light. And she had followed.

    *
A break in the trees where a person could stand and see the moon shining over the lake. And there was the resonance called Sebastian painting a dark-haired woman who wore a gown that looked as