Belladonna

step beside him.
    "Does Ephemera usually bring you tokens like that?" Sebastian asked.
    "No. So there's no point in the incubi asking me to send lovelocks to whoever they're currently entertaining as dream lovers."
    Lee glanced at his cousin and decided that whatever Sebastian was chewing over probably didn't concern the incubi. "Anything else you want to know?'
    "Yeah," Sebastian said after a moment. "What does 'don't be a collie' mean?"
    Lee just grinned.
    Glorianna opened the kitchen door of Nadia's house enough to poke her head inside. "Anyone flying around in here?"
    "No," Nadia replied. "The birds are all in their room." Glorianna pushed the door open and entered the kitchen. "Yoshani came with me. Something happened that..."
    Nerves. Tension. Eyes full of questions as her entire family turned away from whatever was on the kitchen table and looked at her. And something else in the room — a resonance that made her breath catch.
    As Yoshani came in behind her, his greeting silenced before it began, she looked at Lee. He hesitated, then shifted to one side, giving her a look at the table.
    Guardians and Guides. She could feel the air around her as she took the few steps that brought her to the kitchen table, could feel the currents of power that made Ephemera an ever-changing world. For a few heartbeats, the entire world consisted of a tail of light brown hair lying on a towel spread over the table. "Where did you get that?"
    "Found it near the boulder where the path branches," Lee replied.
    Glorianna set her hands on the towel, her fingers not quite touching the hair. The same resonance as the hair that had been wrapped around the two plants. This came from the sorceress who lived in Raven's Hill. But ... how?
    She heard voices murmuring around her, asking questions or, in Sebastian's case, demanding answers. Heard Yoshani answering. But it was all sound, like the rustle of leaves or rock hitting rock. Right now, the only messages she could hear came from a distant heart.
    So much pain in that heart, so much longing, so much need. And anger in the hands that had sawed through the hair. But there was also strength in that heart.
    How did this get here? Those women on the island didn't come from this part of Ephemera. So what does this girl want so badly that her need caused Ephemera to bring shorn hair from wherever it had been dropped to a place where it would be found by someone in my family?
    "Do any of you know where Elandar is, or where to find a village called Raven's Hill?" she asked, finally looking up at the people around her.
    Head shakes from everyone.
    "I can ask around the Den," Sebastian said.
    "One of Mother's landscapes is a village on the coast," Lee said. "I could go there, ask around."
    As he spoke, Glorianna could have sworn a shadow fell across the table even though no one had moved.
    "No," she said, taking a step back from the table. "We need to stay close right now — and we need to find this Raven's Hill."
    "When I return to my part of Sanctuary, I will ask the scholars if they have any knowledge of Elandar or the White Isle,"
    Yoshani said. "They may even have a map that would show its location."
    Glorianna nodded, although she wasn't sure what use a map would be — unless she discovered that she or Nadia already had a landscape in that part of the world. Even then, it wasn't as if they would have to travel to get there. Any place that resonated with their hearts was no farther away than the step between here and there.
    Lynnea touched the edge of the towel. "Do we really need to find the place?" She squirmed when they all looked at her, but her blue eyes met Glorianna's green ones. "It just seems this is really about finding the person."
    "Agreed," Glorianna said. And about finding her before the Eater of the World does.
    "So this is about a heart wish, isn't it?" Lynnea glanced at Nadia, who tipped her head in a way that indicated she wasn't ready to comment yet. "I read a story last week about a girl who doesn't know who she really is, and the people in the village where she lives don't like her because she's different. Her journey is full of hardships, but in the end, s-she finds her own people. She f-finds the place where she belongs."
    Glorianna's heart felt a tender tug and ache as she watched Sebastian wrap his arms around Lynnea, loving and protective.
    "You shouldn't read stories that upset you," he said, kissing Lynnea's forehead.
    "No, it was a lovely story." Sheltered in