Belladonna

knew she was an outsider because of a difference in which she had no choice.
    She had kept the garden her secret until Michael came home the first time. He, at least, was like her. He would understand that special place.
    But he hadn't understood it. Oh, he'd admired it, had praised the work she had done all by herself to clean it up, but he hadn't felt anything for it.
    And yet, he'd done the one thing Aunt Brighid couldn't do: He had accepted her strange communion with the world. It worried him, and it wasn't until years later that she realized he was worried for himself as well as for her. Magicians, the luck-bringers and ill-wishers who could change a person's life by doing nothing more than wishing for something to happen, had been driven out of towns when things turned sour. Some had been injured; some even killed. And in those places ... Well, it wasn't safe for anyone to live in those places anymore.
    When she was ten years old, her secret was discovered by two boys who followed her after school one day. She didn't know if they had intended to do more than follow her; she had heard nothing while she had worked in the garden. It wasn't until she had slipped out through the gate that she heard the screams for help and found the boys. One had a leg pinned under a fall of boulders.
    The other was sinking in a patch of bog.
    Fortunately, it had happened during one of Michael's visits home, and he'd been walking up the hill to find her — or shout for her, since even he couldn't find Darling's Garden unless Caitlin was with him, but, oddly enough, his voice carried over the garden walls when nothing else did.
    So while she had stood there, horrified that she might have done something that had caused the hill to create boulders and bog, Michael had come up the path.
    A sudden crack, and a tree limb fell across the bog hole, just missing the boy and providing him with something to cling to —
    and providing Michael with a safe way to pull the boy out. That same branch became a lever for freeing the other boy from the boulders.
    The boys recovered from their misadventure, but no one in Raven's Hill forgot the story that Caitlin had been seen entering Darling's Garden. Darling, who, it was said, had been a mostly benevolent sorceress who could command the world to do her bidding. There had been rumors that women in her father's family had found the garden a few times, but no one had known for sure that the garden still existed until Caitlin Marie had stumbled across it.
    After the incident with the boys, Aunt Brighid began talking about the White Isle and Lighthaven, a place of peace, of Light.
    Maybe a place for a second chance, a new beginning — and, for Brighid, a return to the life for which she was best suited. For Caitlin, the stories about the White Isle were the seed that began a dream of friends and acceptance, of being part of a community.
    Until the Sisters of Light, at Aunt Brighid's request, came to test her to see if she could be one of them.
    She was not. Could never be. Wasn't welcome on their little piece of the world.
    That she had failed the Light's test had been noticed by the villagers and had sealed her fate, branding her a sorceress.
    And now ...
    Setting the tin cup back in its place among the stones, Caitlin moved to the bed in the garden that usually gave her the most comfort. Sinking to her knees, she studied the heart's hope.
    The plant hadn't bloomed for the past three years — not since she had failed the Light's test. Oh, it continued to survive even though it didn't thrive, and it produced buds each year. But nothing came of those buds, of those small promises of hope. Even now, when it was well into the harvest season and most other plants had spent themselves, it was full of buds, as if it were waiting for some signal to bloom that never came.
    Like me, Caitlin thought. I can have my choice of professions in Raven's Hill — village sorceress or village whore. Take me out for a moonlight walk, tell me how lovely I am now that I'm all grown up, tell me my hair is so lush — like a courtesan in a story.
    Courtesan! just because I didn't spend much time in school doesn't mean I haven't read the books Michael brought borne from his travels, doesn't mean I wouldn't know a fancy word for whore.
    The pain of a lifetime of small hurts and snubs swelled up inside her until there was nothing left. There were plenty of people who were willing to use her in one way or another, but nobody