Myths and Gargoyles by Jamie Hawke (interesting books to read in english txt) 📕

the curse and set out to find the others. Maybe her memory wasn’t all there either. Maybe it came back in bits and pieces as she found them. She hadn’t been my real aunt at all, but found a way to insert herself into my mother’s life—the estranged, well-off sister—after discovering a young boy was born with a magical connection that had the potential to turn this magical war around.

Or had she seen me in the past and been waiting all this time to find me when I was born, and then put the pieces in place to get us here? It was all a bit much to process, but I felt the puzzle coming together as though my transmutation magic formed the bonds, drawing lines and giving it light.

Kordelia turned to Ebrill and then Steph with a look of confusion. “I know one of you, and recognize this man.” She glared at Steph, then demanded of Ebrill, “Who is this, and where are the others?”

“Others…” I repeated the word, not as a question. It hit me that the others had indeed turned to stone as the spell finished and I was taken out of the heart of the mountain, transported back to this spot. “You think we can find them?”

Her glance my way was even more confused.

“We don’t know,” Ebrill admitted, turning back to me, then Steph. “Did you hear anything while under their influence?”

“Bits of my time under the curse are still with me,” Steph said. “But that side… no, they didn’t have the answers. If anyone, that’ll be—”

“Gertrude,” I interjected.

“I still don’t understand it,” Kordelia admitted.

Realizing that there was no getting around at least attempting an explanation, I traced a line in the air, using my transmutation power to make an actual line of blue light appear. “Imagine it like this. Even with going back in time, we only affect our time going forward. Never truly the past. But that doesn’t explain why I was able to fight, why I was able to take the Liahona.”

“Unless that’s how it always was.” Ebrill looked about as confused as I felt.

“Or she didn’t actually die back then,” Steph offered. “In either timeline, I mean. In that case, you did take the Liahona, and maybe had it in the other timeline, I don’t know. We’re dealing with magic here, so… your movies and the so-called rules of time travel might not make the most sense.”

I frowned. “We saw her, but…”

“Again, magic. Healing. Who knows. It’s possible, though, isn’t it?”

“Actually, we didn’t see her corpse,” Ebrill admitted. “Only her being absorbed by the stone.”

Wiping away my floating timelines, I grunted. Maybe my time explanation wasn’t right, but it was cool.

“What matters is that we know what we have to do,” I pointed out. “We need to get my aunt back.”

“So, she’s not dead?” Kordelia asked.

“We think she is.” I chuckled, realizing how ridiculous this sounded. “But in our timeline, the future where I met you all… she died. However, she left behind some sort of magical version of herself.”

“Perfect. Where?”

“That’s the not-so-perfect part. With… Fatiha.”

“She’s here?” Kordelia snarled, claws bared. “Can someone tell me what exactly is going on? What are we up against?”

I did my best to fill her in on what had happened so far, stressing the point that Steph had been under a curse and hadn’t acted on her own when attacking us, and that Ebrill hadn’t had her memory regarding Fatiha. About how my dreams had taken me back in time, to a world where Avalon had still been part of it, and apparently dark and very different types of people and creatures had roamed the Earth.

“We have the Liahona,” Kordelia said, processing it all. “Why can’t we simply open the way, find Rianne. and restore access to Avalon?”

“Only one person knew how to do that,” Ebrill replied.

“Gertrude.” Kordelia considered this, then nodded. “We have to go after her, then.”

“Exactly. And… how do we get her back?”

“And we don’t know where to find her,” I added.

Steph cleared her throat. “I might have an answer to that. And it… might relate to some of the rest of our problem.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“They’ve found the heart. The heart of the mountain, I mean. They haven’t been able to access it, but have certainly tried.”

“Right…You mentioned that the enemy knew of at least five, but didn’t know where. It would make sense that at least one or some remained at the heart of the mountain. Maybe the others were accessed later by some spell Gertrude put together, or maybe some were cast into our world by the initial magic that sent Avalon away. I don’t know.”

She nodded. “And whatever caused them all to become stone also put some sort of protective spell on it all.”

“Whatever caused them…” I shuddered, looking first at Ebrill, then Kordelia. “It was me.”

“What?” Ebrill asked.

“Me. I caused it. Or, rather it was the Liahona and the only way I could keep it safe.”

Ebrill looked at me with confusion that slowly became a look of fascination. Kordelia had a hint of a smile, the type like one has after figuring out the answer to a riddle.

“Shouldn’t you be mad at me?” I asked.

“No,” Kordelia said. “Because it was the only way. If that’s how it happened, Rianne knew it was the way.”

Ebrill nodded. “She put all of this in motion, after all.”

Steph, too, was staring at me in a new light. “Break the spell and get them, or get them and break the spell—I’m not sure which comes first.”

“But breaking the spell might give the enemy access to the heart.” I frowned. “Do we know what that does? What it means?”

“Access to vast stores of magic,” Ebrill replied. “We’ve talked about it.”

“But, like this?”

She nodded.

“If you can make it there and free her, there’s one more for your side.” Steph glanced at Ebrill and then Kordelia, scrunching her nose as if trying to decide whether that was a good thing or not. “The enemy, as I