“What do you mean?”
She patted the mirror between them. “With the stones in place, they can be used to manipulate Thoth’s mirror, opening a window that can peer forward and backward—both in time and space. With that knowledge, he could rule all times. That must not be allowed to happen.”
Jake agreed fully with that. “What can we do?”
Again the roar of the winged dinosaur echoed through the mirror from his mother’s side and was answered by the beast on his side.
“Before it’s too late, I must spirit two of the timestones away,” she said. “Magister Oolof has manipulated the alchemy of the remaining stone. It’ll transform the protective barrier around this land into a vortex of time.”
Jake recognized that name: Oolof. He had heard it from Marika’s father. He was the mad writer of the scroll describing the storm. No wonder the guy knew all about it.
“Oolof will hide the timestones, and has already aligned your father’s pocket watch to find them … in case, we need them again.”
That explained the timepiece, but the stones hadn’t remained lost. Jake had found the emerald, and somehow the Skull King had acquired the ruby. But the mention of the pocket watch raised another question.
“What about Dad? Where is he?”
A shadow clouded his mother’s features. “I don’t know. He left three months ago with the watch. I haven’t heard from him since. But once done here, I’ll follow in his footsteps. Don’t worry. I’ll find him.”
Jake wanted to tell his mother about his discovery of the watch in Calypsos, but she turned toward the crystals.
“I’ll use the ruby timestone to halt the battle outside,” she said, “to buy you the time you’ll need.”
“Time for what?” he called to her. “What am I supposed to do?”
She turned, looking infinitely sad. “I can’t believe you’re here. That this burden has fallen to you, Jake. Magister Oolof has spent many years with Thoth’s mirror, carefully using it, going a bit crazy from it. He saw this war coming, and he saw that someone from Calypsos would come again to Deshret. I carved a warning so future generations would have hope.”
Jake nodded. It was the warning that would become the Prophecy of Lupi Pini.
“But I never imagined it would be you.”
Again her eyes swept over him, as if trying to memorize every detail—then an Egyptian warrior popped into view behind her. The swordsman’s face blanched at the sight of Jake, but he was plainly frantic.
“Magister Penelope! We must go now!”
His mother lifted a palm toward the man—a gesture so familiar that it bruised Jake’s heart. She turned to the mirror, speaking in a rush.
“Jake, according to Oolof’s calculations, there’s a way to break Thoth’s mirror. It requires turning it off in the past and doing something very dangerous in the future.”
“What?”
Her gaze flicked over Jake’s shoulder to Marika and Bach’uuk. “It will take all three of you.” She pointed to the timestones at her feet. “Once the mirror goes dark here, you must take out all of the timestones and replace them in the wrong corners.” To emphasize this, she swung her hands clockwise and stared at Jake. “It will be hard.”
He remembered the strange force resisting such an affront, but he nodded. “We’ll do it.”
A small, proud smile shadowed her lips.
“But what will happen?” he asked.
That smile faded. “The alchemy here is potent, warping both time and space. Such an act will forever damage the time component. But the backlash … if Oolof’s calculations about time dilation and spatial fields are correct, then—”
“Magister Penelope! Now!” The warrior’s words were punctuated by another screech of the pteranodon, loud enough to sting all their ears.
Ignoring him, Jake’s mother rushed forward and pressed her palms over his. “I love you.” Her eyes bore into his, which made his knees go weak.
“Mom …”
Tears flooded down his cheeks.
But before he could say anything more, a humming buzz sped past his ear. The wisling raced at full speed, seeming not to understand that the mirror wasn’t a doorway into another room. But rather than smashing into it, the little snake shot through the mirror and whizzed in a circle around his mother’s head.
She stumbled back—at first fearfully, then in amazement. “A wisling!” Her gaze found Jake. “Where did you find it? I thought the last one died centuries ago.”
Jake had a more important question and pushed against the mirror. “But how did it get through?”
His mother answered, one hand held out toward the hovering snake. “According to legends, they’re creatures of time. Oolof calls them Thoth’s dragons. They can travel backward and forward as easily as a fish swims in a stream. But no one knows much more about them.”
This thought seemed to give his mother an idea. She reached to her neck and slipped off a braided leather cord. From its length hung a tiny flute made of some type of animal horn. She held out the braided loop and carefully draped it over the wisling’s neck.
The beast hissed at her, baring its fangs.
“Shush, little one,” she said, and made a shooing motion back toward the mirror. “Off you go.”
The wisling turned with an irritated flick of its tail and sailed back toward Jake, carrying the bit of horn. It crossed the mirror as if it were smoke and wound around Jake’s neck, finding its burden too cumbersome.
Jake slipped the cord free and pulled it over his own head. He looked at the flute briefly, noting that the flute had small gold letters imbedded in it. They looked like Norse runes.
“What is it?” he asked as he tucked it away.
Before his question could be answered, a bellow drowned out all conversation. The Egyptian warrior strode forward. From the dark look on his face, he was ready to drag Jake’s mother with him. He grabbed her arm.
She didn’t resist and hurried back to the triangle. She dropped beside the ruby crystal and waved the swordsman to the emerald one. All the time, her eyes never left Jake’s.
“Get yourself home.” She spoke as if trying to get a lifetime of instructions into as few words as possible. “The flute will help protect you. A great war is coming, spreading across time. Stay home. Your father and I will find you.”
She and the warrior leaned over their timestones. Tears shone from her cheeks, as brightly as Jake’s. “Tell your sister I love her.… I miss her.…”