“They’re not bad boys,” he’d whispered as he’d watched the three shuffle up to the quarry’s edge. “Well, two of them aren’t. Without Rory, the other two would settle down and grow up.”
In that moment before things changed forever, he heard notes so harshly abrasive they made him wince. One harsh note, actually, and two others that weren’t quite in tune. Two that might fit back into the song that was Raven’s Hill if given a chance.
In that moment before things changed forever, he saw all three boys jump up and land on the edge with a two-footed stomp.
Before he could move, the boys disappeared, replaced by the roar of stone and air filled with dust.
Michael ran to the quarry, stopping a man-length from the new edge, then testing the ground, step by step, until he could look into the quarry.
Rory Calhoun hung on the edge of a new, sheer drop, impaled on a broken spire of stone. His eyes stared unblinking at the sky, but the fingers twitched, the hands tried to clench. Alive then…for a few moments longer.
As he stared at the boy, Michael realized he was hearing terrified mewling. Realized Rory’s legs hung over the drop.
“Boys?” he called.
“Help! Help!”
Two of them, alive. Clinging to their friend’s legs. Which had probably contributed to that spire of stone punching through Rory’s body.
As he stripped off his coat and dropped it, he studied the side of the quarry. There were now juts of stone he could stand on and knobs of stone for handholds. Best to belly over the side and lower himself down to the first ledge, which would get him close enough to reach the boys. He hoped.
The moment before he eased his legs over the edge, two things occurred to him: that the ledge might be a little too far down for him to get himself back out of the quarry, and that he couldn’t let the boys see what had happened to Rory.
He grabbed his coat. With a wrist flick to spread the cloth, he dropped the coat over Rory. Then he lowered himself over the edge.
Stretched to his full length, his fingers clinging to the edge, his toes barely brushed the ledge beneath him. Would it hold him? Would it hold him and the weight of a boy? It had to hold. Had to.
Saying a quick prayer to the Lady of Light, he let go of the edge, landing solidly on the stone beneath him. He pressed himself against the quarry wall, hardly daring to breathe while he waited a few moments to see if the ledge would hold. Then he pulled off his belt, made a loop at one end, and wrapped the leather around his fist a couple of times before he shifted his weight to bring himself closer to the other boys.
As clear as the memory was up to that point, the rest was fragmented images: a boy’s terrified face looking up at him; the weight as a boy slipped a hand through the loop in the belt and let go of Rory’s leg; the arrival of his friend Nathan, who had come looking for him; the look in the eyes of the men who had helped pull the boys out of the quarry—a look that said they weren’t sure if they should praise Michael for helping rescue the boys or blame him for the fall; the sound of men half swearing, half crying as they brought Rory out of the quarry and saw the damage that had been hidden under the coat.
He stayed in Raven’s Hill long enough to see Rory buried and stand with his aunt and the rest of the villagers to offer his condolences to the family. The next day, he set off on his wanderings. His new coat had been ruined, of course, and there wasn’t enough money to spare for another extravagance. So he’d started off on his new life wearing a patched, secondhand coat—and wondered if it was all he deserved.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Lee said.
Michael braced his head in his hands. He hadn’t realized he’d been talking out loud while reliving that memory. “There were some in Raven’s Hill who thought otherwise.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Lee said again. “If you hadn’t been there that day, most likely all three of those boys would have died.”
He remembered Glorianna as she stood beside the sandbox, studying the landscapes of his heart. Anger makes stone. And strength makes stone.
“So I willed a piece of stone to punch through a boy’s body? Is that what you’re saying?” Knowing now that he might have done exactly that made him ill.
“Don’t argue with him, Lee,” Sebastian said, sitting back. “He’s not ready to listen.”
A cold spot on his back. It took Michael a moment to realize it was the loss of the weight and warmth of a hand resting on his shoulder blade that he was feeling now. That warmth had been there all through his memory of Rory. That comfort of a human touch telling him silently he wasn’t alone.
Until Sebastian sat back.
Who were these people? Michael wondered at the same time something inside him asked, How can I be one of them?
Before the silence around the table could become awkward, Glorianna and Nadia walked into the kitchen at the same time Lynnea and Caitlin eased into the kitchen from the doorway leading to the rest of the house.
“Is everyone done shouting?” Lynnea asked.
“For the moment,” Nadia replied. She looked at the people in her kitchen and nodded. “We’ll have to use the dining room. The kitchen table is too small for so many. Girls, you’ll set the table and help me fix the soup and sandwiches. That will be a simple-enough meal.”
“After we eat, I think we’ll”—Sebastian gestured to indicate Lee and Teaser—“take Michael to the Den for a few hours.”
“We’ll see,” Nadia said, going over to the counter to start another pot of koffee. “You’re not ten years old anymore, but the rules still apply. If your behavior creates stones and weeds in my personal garden, you will clear the stones and weeds out of my personal garden.”
“But—” Sebastian studied his aunt for a moment, then huffed. “Yes, Auntie. The four of us will be happy to clear the stones and weeds out of the garden.”
“Teaser and I weren’t involved in this,” Lee protested.
“Now you are,” Sebastian replied, which earned him a scowl from his cousin.
“And after the meal,” Glorianna said, looking at Caitlin, “you’re going to tell me everything you know about your garden. And you”—those green eyes locked onto Michael—“are going to tell me exactly how you got to this part of Ephemera.”
Glorianna stood by the kitchen window, watching four men spend an unfathomable amount of time sorting out a few gardening tools. “Do you think they’ll actually get anything done?”
“Two of them might dither and not take me as seriously as they should,” Nadia said, bringing two mugs of koffee to the table, “but Sebastian and Lee aren’t likely to forget what will happen if I go out to inspect the beds and find a stone or weed.”
She turned away from the window and grinned. “It was more devastating because you were so polite about it, smiling at them as you handed them lanterns and informed them you would keep their dinners warm, no matter how long it took them to finish cleaning up the garden.”
“They were at an age when food was a fine motivator,” Nadia said, smiling. Then the smile faded. “So what do you think of this Magician?”
“He doesn’t see the way we do, doesn’t feel the resonance the way we do,” Glorianna said, sitting down at the table. “He talks about luck-bringing and ill-wishing and the music of a place. I’m not sure if he’s a Guide of the Heart or a Landscaper or some combination of both. Then there’s Caitlin, who definitely is a Landscaper, but more like me than the Landscapers who were at the school. She’s been tending a garden with no knowledge or understanding about her connection to the places held within those walls. And Michael looks after his landscapes by wandering from place to place, making a circuit in order to tend to each of them before going back home for a few days to rest in a place that resonates with another’s heart. Which is not so different from the Landscapers who traveled through their landscapes and then returned to the school to rest.” She sipped her koffee. “They may have borders in this Elandar, but they have no boundaries, no bridges. Their piece of the world didn’t shatter. Maybe if I can understand how the landscapes work in their part of the world, I can find a way to make this part of the world whole again.”