Bridge of Dreams

Chapter 3

Lee followed one familiar road after another, maintaining an easy walking pace that covered a good bit of ground in a day. He’d been using his little island to travel between landscapes, as he’d promised Yoshani he would do, but the weather was fine and the walking helped soothe the restless unhappiness he couldn’t shake. Just like he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be somewhere else.

But where was that somewhere else? That was the main reason he was walking so much instead of using his island to shift from one bridge location to the next. He’d been keeping a log for the past nine years. He knew where his bridges were located. But keeping an eye out for connections other Bridges had made with his mother’s or Glorianna’s landscapes required being close enough to feel their resonance. Therefore, he was walking so he could check out anything that caught his attention.

It was a good cover story, and he was going to stick to it—especially since it gave him an excuse to avoid his family as well as friends like Teaser, who lived in the Den of Iniquity. The incubus had spent an hour the other night telling him about a girl he had befriended. No sex, just walks and a little talk and holding hands. For an incubus, such behavior was unheard-of unless it led to the kind of steamy dreams the incubi fed on.

A couple of years ago, Teaser wouldn’t have considered doing such a thing, but a lot of things had changed in the Den when Sebastian fell in love with Lynnea and opened up possibilities that hadn’t existed.

Everyone has a chance to change except me, he thought, struggling to push away the anger and bitterness that often filled him.

All his life, he’d never doubted that keeping Glorianna safe from the wizards was worth the things he didn’t dare want for himself—like a real lover or having a piece of his life that wasn’t defined by what his sister needed. Lately, he’d begun to wonder if anything he’d done had ever mattered. Did anyone in his family realize how frightened he’d been during those years at the Bridges’ School? The instructors had watched him, always ready to report him to the wizards if he manifested some oddity in the power that allowed Bridges to connect pieces of Ephemera. They had watched for any sign that he might be in contact with his sister.

Even after he left the school, he had to report back a couple of times each season to list the bridges he’d created or broken or reinforced. He reported the bridges in his mother Nadia’s landscapes and those he’d made in other Landscapers’ pieces of the world, but he never admitted to traveling in any of Glorianna’s landscapes.

Nine years of being friends and partners as well as siblings. Nine years of being the person she trusted with the landscapes in her care as well as being one of the few people who knew how to find her. Then Michael, a Magician from a country called Elandar, walked into her life and everything changed.

Why have a brother for company when she could have a lover?

You’re jealous because you have to share? Sebastian had said, sounding pissed off and appalled. Grow up, Lee.

Easy enough for Sebastian to say. He hadn’t been in the thick of it day after day. He’d been the Den of Iniquity’s premier bad boy, an incubus who could pick up lovers just by strutting down the Den’s streets.

Lee sighed as he reached the bridge he wanted to check. That wasn’t a fair assessment of Sebastian or the incubus’s life. “I wasn’t pissed off because I have to share,” he muttered. “I want Glorianna to be happy. I just—”

The bridge in front of him blurred. Light, dark, and in between. One moment it was a stationary bridge that linked two of his mother’s landscapes, and the next it was resonating wildly in a way he’d never felt before—as if something were grabbing blindly in a desperate attempt to find a handhold anywhere.

Then the blurring stopped and the bridge was back to being a stationary bridge.

“Guardians and Guides,” Lee whispered, feeling as if he’d been spun around and shaken. He’d felt something like this only once before, when Michael’s sister, Caitlin Marie, had yearned for someone who could understand her. That yearning had resonated through the currents of power so strongly, he had been able to follow the resonance and find her. But Caitlin had been a single resonance. This almost felt like three that were entwined somehow.

What—or who—was he supposed to find this time?

Currents of power swirled around him once, twice, thrice.

When the ground felt steady again, Lee turned away from the bridge and reached for one of the trees that bordered the path to the center of his little island.

No bark under his hand.

Alarmed, he took another step. Then another. Where…?

Exerting his will, he resonated with the island—and finally felt it on the other side of the road, a dozen paces from where he stood.

Sweating now, he hurried to the island and stepped up onto ground not too dissimilar from the land he’d just left. Getting a firm grip on the tree in case he became dizzy, he closed his eyes and thought, Sanctuary. Take me to Sanctuary.

He heard water. When he opened his eyes, he saw the stream and the stepping stones that led from the island to the bank. He saw the guesthouse where he had a room that was always ready for him—a courtesy, since Sanctuary was one of Glorianna’s landscapes.

Picking up his daypack and his large travel pack, Lee stepped off the island, crossed the stones, and headed for the guesthouse. He slipped up to his room quietly, glad he’d avoided Michael’s aunt Brighid as well as Yoshani, who acted as host and counselor to the people who, in need of peace or guidance, found their way to this part of Sanctuary.

Glorianna also had a room here, connected to his by the shared bathroom. But she hadn’t left the Island in the Mist since she’d returned from that place.

He shook his head, unwilling to think about that right now—especially when his skin felt clammy all of a sudden.

A bath and some sleep. Later he’d go downstairs and get something to eat.

As he ran water in the bathtub, he looked in the mirror over the sink. Tired green eyes looked back at him. His black hair had gotten long enough to look shaggy. He’d have to stop at a barbershop soon and get it cut. His skin was browned a bit from all the time he spent outdoors, but it wasn’t leathery or lined, so he didn’t look older than his almost thirty years. He wasn’t dangerously handsome like Sebastian, but women thought he was attractive, and that was good enough for him.

This was the second time in two weeks that his island hadn’t been where he thought it should be, the second time he had felt a resistance when he tried to bring it to him. The island was attuned to him, so that shouldn’t happen—unless something was interfering with his connection to it.

Glorianna? No. She knew how much he depended on being able to impose his island over other landscapes in order to tend all the bridges. She knew the value of having fresh water available and being able to camp out overnight without worrying about thieves or anyone else who might want to prey on a lone traveler. Glorianna knew these things. But what about Belladonna?

It was anyone’s guess what Belladonna knew.

It was anyone’s guess what Belladonna might do.

He still loved his sister. He did. But he was tired of not having the things other men took for granted: a partner, a home. He was tired of being a traveling Bridge. He wanted to do something more with his life, wanted to be more.

He didn’t know how to do any of those things without feeling like he had abandoned the people who needed him most—his mother, his sister, the rest of the family.

Currents of power swirled around him once, twice, leaving him a little off balance.

“Those are troubles for another day,” he sighed as he turned off the taps and stripped out of his dirty clothes. Settling into the water, he leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the confusion filling his heart.