Sebastian

it?"
    "Dissonance. Up ahead. There's something there that doesn't belong in this landscape."
    "The bridge is up ahead too."
    They moved cautiously, Lee scanning the area around them for signs of some kind of creature, while Glorianna kept her eyes focused on the ground, looking for any telltale warnings that they were about to step into another landscape.
    Small. Much smaller than the pond. She'd been able to sense the dissonance in the pond from her gardens on the Island in the Mist, but this alteration of the landscape had eluded her until she'd gotten close to it.
    Lee led them to the bridge, then stopped two man-lengths away. "The ground is torn up around the left side of the bridge. Looks like a struggle took place here."
    Glorianna nodded. "But Ephemera stripped the grass and wild-flowers around that circle of dead grass in response to whatever happened here. And that circle looks slightly higher than the rest of the ground."
    "An access point to an underground den?" Lee asked.
    Thinking about the creatures Sebastian had seen at the school, it came to her. "Trap spider. That's its lair.
    But… the dissonance doesn't feel strong enough. I don't think the Eater's creature is there anymore." She slowed her breathing, waited for her heartbeat to settle. She could feel the currents of Ephemeras power all around her, wanting to respond to a heart—and reluctant to respond with a piece of the Eater's landscapes so close. The currents of power were tangled up, knotted. Without direction, there was no telling what the world would manifest.

    She walked a circle around the trap spider's lair, careful to stay a handwidth outside of the barren ground.
    Hear me, Ephemera , she called as she circled. Listen to my heart . Tapping into the currents of Light and a single thread of the Dark, she altered the landscape, sending the trap spider's lair into the place of stones that she had already taken out of the world when she'd blocked the Eater's attempt to anchor the bonelovers' landscape to the Den.
    The trap spider's lair and the barren ground around it disappeared, leaving a deep hole—a hole the world wanted to fill.
    Listen to me. Listen to my heart.
    It knew her. She was like the Old Ones who had known when to play with the Light and when a place needed currents of the Dark.
    Soil , Glorianna thought, keeping her mind focused on the task, letting her heart beat with the promise of pleasure. Rich soil to fill the hole. Soil that matches the earth here .
    Ephemera hesitated, then manifested what the heart desired. Pleasure filled the heart—and the other heart nearby. Its currents of power began to untangle. Was there more to play with?
    Stone , the heart commanded. Not the stone of anger, the stone of strength .
    It resonated with the heart, resonated with the land around it to find the stone the heart wanted and make more of it.
    Stone formed around the back half of the circle, gray and strong. Not high. Not big. It stopped when the heart said "enough."
    Smaller stones to shape a border. And a circle of stones where the Bad Thing had made a place for Itself.
    Flowers , the heart said. The breath of living things . So it manifested flowers that liked to live in this part of itself.
    And one more. This time the heart resonated so strongly, there was no choice but to manifest exactly what the heart wanted. But it knew this plant. This had come from the Old Ones' hearts to help the world heal. Wherever it grew, the Bad Thing could not change the world into something completely terrible, because hearts that could feel the resonance of the plant would always hold a little Light.
    Glorianna sighed and stepped away from the circle. Lee came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders.
    Waist-high granite formed a half circle of stones, still with the jagged edges that time and rain would soften. Violets, wood iris, and ants with white, bell-shaped flowers sprang up from the newly made soil.
    In the center, where the door of the trap spider's lair had been, heart's hope bloomed.
    "It's lovely," Lee said quietly.
    She felt his hands tighten on her shoulders.
    "But you didn't alter the landscape that time, did you?" he asked. "You didn't find stones and those flowers and shift them to this place."

    "No. This is new."
    He turned her to face him.
    "That's what makes you different, isn't it?" he said slowly, as if fitting together the final pieces of a puzzle.
    "It's not just that you're stronger than other Landscapers, not just