Elizabeth had stayed on watch at the tree and was sending up lights as an alarm. We followed Agnes out. The fake me was out and about, scrying. Agnes had a little chat with her and sent her on her way. We were all sure by now that there was something buried under that tree.
Perhaps we could have dug it up a little more discreetly, had Alabaster not forgotten that Agnes could hear our thoughts. Perhaps it was inevitable that things would go badly. But Adam, being the only one shaped for digging (and willing to deal with the tree that he'd peed on earlier), dug up a box that those with good noses thought smelt of roses and rot. There were two hearts inside. That's when Agnes caught up with us and we had to make a hasty departure. I picked up Michael as I went, and only caught the tail end of the psychic screaming.
By now I was starting to think Agnes's pouch of power probably wasn't a literal pouch. It was also this place - the tree, the ley lines, everything.
By now Alabaster was pretty much convinced Agnes was as terrible as most of my family, and understandably so, but I was getting a different impression. We were far enough away for Agnes not to hear our thoughts, but not far enough that she couldn't speak into my mind. We are kin, after all, if rather distantly. She told me that Mary was still alive, just about, but that we had to leave for our own safety. She didn't want to hurt me. It sounds like she saw herself in me, just as I saw myself in her. And she needed help in hiding the magic in this place from our family.
At this point though, we were all a bit stuck on what that meant, or what we were supposed to do, or how we were even going to get back to 2023. So we decided to pay a visit to the only other person around who knew what was going on. The woman who looked like me.
She recognised me, even through my current crow shape, just as I recognised her despite being able to recognise that she was currently possessing Moira, the village elder's adopted daughter. That explained a few things. She told me she was my cousin. That made sense. She had to be pretty closely related to look that much like me, and I'd not seen much of her before I ran away, so hadn't immediately been able to tell exactly who she was.
She gave us her side of things, which she of course made sound pretty plausible. My family can do that. We had to get that box of hearts, we realised. But we shouldn't tell her anything about it, I insisted, which should have been easy enough given that we were communicating via telepathy and only Michael and to a lesser extent Elizabeth were capable of talking to her.
And then Elizabeth, who I'd been thinking I might have rather misjudged on our first meeting, decided to tell everything to my cousin. She didn't seem to think it was a problem, trusting one of my family. Did she not grasp what we are? Didn't the many times I've mentioned how Rusty tried to kill Michael, and he's still my favourite family member not suggest that perhaps she should be a bit cautious around the rest of them? But it was too late. My cousin had already gone, as the others pointed out, and we had to stop her before she got to Agnes.
We chased after her. She was fast, but Elizabeth and me had wings and could take a straighter route. Elizabeth set off some kind of flashbang, which slowed her down. I didn't have my usual magic, but I did have the ability to grow plants, and I brought up a barrier of thick bushes that stopped her in her tracks and seemed to knock her right out of the body she was occupying. The poor fae girl was a bit confused but at least that was one less thing to worry about.
We approached the house once more, ignoring Agnes's psychic yelling to go away, and Adam immediately got himself caught up in a net trap. The rest of us managed to be a little less conspicuous. I looked in through the window. Agnes and Mary were there, along with the box of hearts. Now what? Could we put their hearts back in, like when we put the eyeballs on Agnes's chest? I didn't want either of them to die.
We went in through the chimney. Of course there was no way to hide that we were there, even though we were all trying not to think too loudly. Agnes was more understanding than I expected, and I understood her too. We were worried about changing history, given that Mary was going to be dead pretty soon, and not in five years time like Agnes had said when we told her the date on the tombstone. But Agnes said that that had been a lie, and the real date now was the same year as on the stone.
And then Robin scampered over to the hearts, and asked if he could use the mending spell to try to put Mary's heart back together. I didn't expect it to work, and I don't think Agnes did either. But he placed his paws on the heart, and worked the magic, and a few moments later it started to beat stronger, and colour came back into Mary's face.
We stressed the importance of still getting that tombstone made, to avoid temporal paradoxes, and Agnes said that they would move away for a while. And now we knew about the source of Agnes's power, we could protect it. And that was that. We were back in the cafe with Rusty blowing dust all over us.
He asked if he'd found the pouch of power. The others were vague about it. I said nothing. Hiding things from Rusty isn't something I'm good at. But we were home, and knew what needed protecting - from Rusty, from my cousin, from the fae, from anyone else who wanted to mess with it.
I need to have some words with Elizabeth regarding my family, since nothing I've said so far about them seems to have got through to her and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if she started hitting on Rusty. But Alabaster has owned up that he does know what I am, and he seems pretty OK with it, which is one less thing to worry about. Meeting Agnes has clarified a few things for me. She ran away for love. I ran for other reasons. But I've been so focussed on what I didn't want to be, I've not thought enough about what I did want. That changes. Now.
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