Belladonna

time, so is there something in particular that I should be knowing?"
    She heard amusement in his voice, but it was the sadness in his eyes that made her bite her tongue to hold the words back, to hold the feelings back just long enough to shape a command. Ephemera, hear me. These words, these feelings, are just storms passing through the hearts that are present. They change nothing.
    Having done that much to protect her island, she flung at Michael all the turmoil inside her. "You tell me a story that's been handed down in your family, but you have no sense of what it means."
    "That's right. I don't know what it means. I don't have the answer."
    "You are the answer! Luck-bringer. Ill-wisher. Magician. You dress it up as a story with spirits and magic hills — which, considering the lineage of the Guardians and Guides, isn't dressing things up so much. But you're the spirit in the story, Michael."
    She saw the shock in his eyes and knew she'd hit him with a big enough bit of truth, but she couldn't stop. "You're the one who helps people use the key inside themselves to open the Door of Locks — to take the next step in their life journey. To cross over to another landscape."
    "How?" he demanded. "How can I help them cross over to something I didn't know existed?"
    "I don't know! Your landscapes aren't broken!" She rammed her fingers into her hair, pushing and pushing as if she intended to shove her fingers through her skull and pull out the thoughts that plagued her now. Especially the one that made her hurt inside so much.
    "Your landscapes aren't broken," she said again, feeling something squeezing her heart at the same time it was pushing at her ribs so hard she wouldn't be surprised to feel bone break. "When the Eater of the World attacked the Landscapers' school arid killed all the Landscapers who were there, Mother and I were afraid we were the only ones left. And we could only tend the landscapes that resonated with us, so that left so much of the world unprotected. But we hoped there would be others like us in parts of the world that had been less shattered — and there are. You. Caitlin. There must be others as well, not just in Elandar but in other pieces of the world. But you don't remember what you are. You don't remember why you're needed. And — " A sob broke through her punishing effort to hold it back.
    Michael moved closer. "Say it," he said quietly. "Get the rest of it out."
    "Your world isn't broken." The tears fell now, hot and fierce. "The Guides of the Heart shattered the world — broke it and broke it and broke it again until they were able to isolate the Eater of the World in one of those broken pieces and build a cage that would contain It. But they couldn't leave that place unprotected, not with the Dark Guides hiding somewhere, and the power within them changed, got divided between the men and women somehow. They couldn't leave that place. They couldn't go home."
    Her voice changed to a harsh whisper. "I have lived on that battleground my whole life. Lee, my mother, all of us here have lived on the s-scars of a war, and we're reminded every day of what it cost to stop the Eater of the World."
    "And the rest of us only know it as a story," Michael said.
    She fisted her hands in his shirt, desperate to make him understand. "They broke the world, and they broke something in themselves by doing it. But your part of the world is whole and your gift is whole, and I don't know how your part of Ephemera works. The Eater of the World is out there, Michael. It's out there with no boundaries to stop It and no one who will recognize the signs of Its presence and It can go where I can't follow because my world is bound by my landscapes and if I can't stop It the Eater will change the world into a dark and terrible place and It can go anywhere now and I'm tired of living on a battleground and I'm tired of being alone and I —"
    A storm of feelings broke inside her, and all the words were swept away.
    There were some kinds of tears a man could accept easily enough, even be amused by in an affectionate way, but when a strong woman broke enough to reveal her pain, those tears were a fearsome thing to behold And seeing the shock and confusion on Lee's face was enough confirmation that the woman weeping in his arms rarely broke enough to cry, even in private.
    A look at Caitlin was all it took to have the girl linking arms with Lee to draw him away.
    "Cry it out, darling," Michael said as he shifted