The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries 4-6

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

We all started asking questions at once, Brianna managing two or three to Sophie and mine's one each, but it didn't matter since Z couldn't make sense of any of it.

"Children, children," she said, making settle-down gestures with her hands. "One at a time, please."

"Tell it all," I said. "From the beginning."

"Not the very beginning!" Brianna quickly interjected.

"Start with the time portal falling apart. Explain that," Sophie said.

Z looked thoughtful for a moment, as if accessing her memory like an old computer. I could almost hear the whir and whine of a hard drive booting up. Then she gave us an apologetic smile. "I don't contain all the answers."

"Just tell us what you do know," Brianna said. "We can take it from there."

"I was called away," Z said. "I don't know by who, to where, or for what purpose. I just know I wasn't here. There is a gap of about a week in my entries that lines up with that point."

"Are pages missing?" Brianna asked.

"No, nothing sinister," Z said. "My last entry is very rushed. I think I left out a lot because there simply wasn't time."

"Do you think you were called away deliberately?" I asked. "Like it was a distraction?"

"No," Z said after a moment's thought. "If that had been true, I would have noted it. I'm sure of that."

"So what happened while you were away?" Brianna asked.

"I had left my students in charge," Z said. "Kathleen was the oldest, but she was expecting a baby."

"Does that affect magic?" I asked.

"Yes, but in unpredictable ways," Brianna answered me. "One spell will fizzle, another will have ten times the effect. It varies by witch and by spell and by how far along she is and by time of day."

"Unpredictable," I said, nodding.

"Indeed, and so I asked her to rely on Patricia if anything should come up that she couldn't deal with," Z said. "There shouldn't have been any problems."

"The bridge across time was stable?" Brianna asked.

"What do you mean by stable?" Z asked.

"Well, after…" Brianna started to say, then quickly decided that 'you died' was a tactless thing to say. "After we arrived here, when the bridge had been untended for a time, there were weak points. Places where things could slip through. Gaps in the spells."

"Oh dear," Z said, putting her hands to her mouth. "No, that was just what I was afraid would happen. Oh, dear."

"So that was after all this happened?" Sophie asked.

"Yes. At the time I left, the time portal was as strong as Juno and I could make it. It extended from me to her, although her end tended to move through time. I never quite knew if she did that deliberately or if there was something else going on. Juno was the one with time powers, not me. I barely understood it. I felt sure she should be able to control it."

"You and Juno built it together?" Brianna asked.

"Yes. I was here, in my standard time. I never much cared for time travel, so my personal timeline is as close as possible to a straight line, day after day in succession."

"But not Juno," I guessed.

"Juno was always searching for… something. I never really understood her. Everything I did to get to her, working on my end with magic I could barely even do to reach out to her across time, and when I finally connected with her, she refused to come through."

"Why?" Brianna asked.

"I suppose she knew I was planning on stripping her of her power when she got here," Z said.

"What? Why?" I asked. "That sounds so extreme. She was your sister."

"She was making trouble again, I just knew it," Z said. "She meddled in time streams back home. That was what we fought about. It took decades to find her here after that fight. Read my pages; you'll see how sincere I was. I was sorry she had gotten lost in time. I devoted my entire life to getting her back. But once I found her, she chose to stay lost. I could keep a tether to her, but that was all."

"So the other end kept moving," Brianna said. "But the bridge itself was strong?"

"I could've gone to her at any time," Z said, "if that's what you're thinking. But I wanted her to come to me."

"How long did you wait?" Sophie asked.

"Decades," Z admitted. "It took so long to create in the first place; I couldn't give up on it. But by 1968, when I went to do whatever needed doing, it had been decades. Just waiting for Juno to admit she was wrong and come home so I could forgive her."

"Did your students know about any of this?" Brianna asked.

"The magical ones knew about the time portal," Z said. "Not about the family business."

"Did Juno destroy the bridge?" Brianna asked, but I was already shaking my head before Z answered.

"Oh, goodness, no. Juno was the bridge," Z said. "It exists because of her. I don't have time magic, but she has it like no other witch that ever was."

"So when you say you reached out to her, she was reaching back to you? She had to in order for this time portal spell to work?" Sophie guessed.

"Yes. But the moment her mind brushed mine, she knew what I was intending. She tried to flee, but she couldn't pull away from my timeline entirely. My magic was too powerful, and I would never let her go. But I wasn't going to go after her either."

"You couldn't?" Brianna asked, frowning skeptically.

"It was important that she come to me," Z said. "She was in the wrong. It was her place."

Sophie pressed a hand over her eyes, and I felt like doing the same. Everything came down to two siblings with a beef? For centuries?

"So what destroyed the bridge?" Brianna asked.

"I don't quite know," Z said. "I was away, far away, when it was attacked. My magic was part of it; I felt the effects when the spells started hitting it. But more than that, I heard Juno calling out to me across time. She was screaming for help. I used so much power getting to her I'm surprised I survived the experience."

"What spell?" Brianna asked.

Z shrugged apologetically. "I didn't write that bit down."

"What did you see when you got home?" Sophie asked.

"The part of the time bridge that was tethered to the orchard in the backyard was still attached, but only barely. And the other end was so unstable it was almost impossible to perceive. It jumped through centuries of time. Just trying to look at it nearly drove me mad. What it must have done for Juno, I cannot even say."

"And the students?" I asked.

"Oh, the students," Z said with a sigh. "It took days, no weeks, just to get things under control well enough for me to come back out of the time portal. And by that time there was no sign of any of them."

"They weren't around when you arrived?" Brianna asked.

"For the split second I was even aware of this house and its contents, no."

"But the house next door? Was it blown in?" I asked.

She shrugged. "If it were, I didn't write that down."

"And Juno?" I asked.

"I don't know," Z said. "I emerged from the time portal having managed to tether the far end in a specific time, but I heard nothing of Juno. Her cries had gone silent before I made it home, and all of the weeks I spent within the portal showed no sign of her anywhere."

"What's the last thing you wrote?" Brianna asked.

"I had just spent a few days in bed recovering," Z said. "I was intending to go back into the portal to do more magical repair. Juno had to be in there somewhere. I thought perhaps she had been… scattered? Maybe I could bring her back together again? I'm sorry, I struggle with deciphering my own writing in the end here."

"Nice," I grumbled.

"What else?" Brianna asked.

"I was planning on bringing Cynthia Thomas across time," Z said. "She was a bright student. Not a witch, but capable of other things. I needed someone I could trust to manage the house while I worked in the place between times. If the government or someone tried to take my house while I was gone, the orchard would be in danger. I couldn't risk that."

"And you never looked for the students?" I asked.

"I was intending to, once the portal was more stable," Z said. Then she smiled brightly. "Perhaps there's a second volume."

"Perhaps," I said, but Sophie was shaking her head. She hadn't found one, and we both doubted one existed.

There was a reason there were never any more students in the school. Miss Zenobia had dedicated herself night and day to repairing the bridge across time that contained her sister.

And Juno had hidden from her. Or been hidden from her, although somehow I had never gotten a damsel in distress vibe off of her.

"One last question?" Brianna said.

"Yes, dear?" Z said, clasping her hands together.

"Explain this code to me," she said.

"Oh, it's perfectly simple, provided one is acquainted with the language of the Celts," Z said.

She went on from there, but I tuned her out. Honestly, it wasn't going to make any sense to me anyway.