I mean, Catherine does work at a book store, at least, right? So like, it is mundane, but still kinda magiq?
Also, does that last comment recall fighting for the oppressed? I feel like her other references to the memories we collected were much more direct.
It sounds like it might be leading up to it, just not quite there yet.
The shop is literally called Books of Wonder, so I will vote yes, still magiq.
Wait could this be the same bookshop as the one we have the number for?
EDIT: not the one Catherine works at
That was Cumberland Books? If I remember correctly? So no, different stores. Unfortunately.
Edit based on @Rimor’s edit:
Before we took it over, the Instagram account used to read “The Ackerly Green Book Shop” so also, I think not the same store.
Can confirm, definitely magiq.
time! Is it possible that we’re hearing a live play-by-play of the Book of the Wild being edited into the Book of Kings? That Monarch’s Mountain was wrong, and that event rippling back and forth in time is actually happening now, rather than in the 1990’s? Or maybe on the converse, now that our two Books are “rebound in butterfly wings,” that magic is draining from their Book into our’s?
That’s where my head’s been, but maybe since it’s her journal, we are seeing The Book of The Wild being edited into The Book of Kings, but not live. We’re seeing how it happened back then as posited by Monarch’s Mountain. But my is that this is all possible because of the two books being tenuously “rebound in butterfly wings.”
It’s not like we don’t regularly peer through the mists of time anyway, so I wouldn’t be surprised if your hypothesis is correct.
OMG, I was tinfoiling so hard I almost missed an entry:
It’s worse than we imagined. It’s not only magic, it’s memory, too. Our minds are being altered. It happened in small ways at first, misplaced things and misremembered plans, but now more and more we are forgetting everything we once knew. It’s also happening more quickly now. What was once a ripple on the surface of the world is now a wave, and we are all soon to be swept up in it if we don’t act in time.
I won’t let my family be forgotten.
Okay, this is a big one, over two pages and I’m not sure I got it all, it was disappearing behind me as I read and rewrote. I don’t know if I got it 100%.
My dear nephew is a genius. If the first plan fails, stopping whatever is happening or whoever is responsible, then we will need a second plan to buy more time.
He and his friends are working on a stopgap spell that I have been asked to help cast when all is ready. He says that my being a Green, and casting it here at Ackerly Green is essential. So despite my reservations, I’ll help.
It’s a multifold spell. A manner of magimystic tripwire that once activated will trigger a spell to cast itself. That’s what they’re working on now, trying to make it work when no one’s been able to make a self-casting spell work before. Like his father, he’s prone to the theater of magic and has named the spell “The Last Figuration.”
As he explains it, if magic reaches a predetermined nadir, and the memories of those fighting to protect it have continued to degrade, then using the wells as measuring devices, the tripwire will snap, and the spell will theoretically cast itself without the help of a magimystic, using the company as its safest center since it is a powerful well. The spell will use whatever it can reach, the people, places, wells, and objects in its surroundings to protect what’s left of magiq and give those still fighting for it a chance. He says I’m important to creating it but is too busy to explain how right now.
He and his friends are grimly excited and feverishly working all hours to bring this about. I can do nothing at the moment but tend to the books and be with Fina. My two loves.
Huh…self casting magic… mind blown. Well now we know why all of this is centered on AGP…i think.
Oh my Goss. The Book of Briars. She’s talking about the Book of Briars.
That’s where my mind went too… Could it be? Are these kids somehow tied to the Council of the 18 Gates?
Well, the Book of Briars has come to different groups through the ages, so I don’t know if this “tripwire” could be snapped multiple times, but I wonder if the events we’re experiencing now might be connected to this self-casting spell? Is the why, how, and why now? we’ve been asking about Secret Society all along?
Whoah. Could magic disappearing from our era have somehow triggered The Last Figuration from theirs? How could that have happened?
That’s a great point. Is this what the Council intended with “two worlds rebound in butterfly wings”?
My mind is reeling. I always understood that The Council was trying to save magic and bring about a new age, and The Book of Briars was somehow their way of doing that. Their agent of change. What I never understood was how, in the end, tenuously creating an unexplained connection between the two eras would help accomplish that.
Is this what they were intending?
Someone please help me and my brain.
Yeah…This won’t help. I don’t get it either.
Are there’ two distinct eras, like a parallel universe? Or are is there one that’s just been mucked with?
Is Sullivan who invented the trip wire the same Sullivan who ran around creating this long path for us and Deeds to follow, or are they mirror versions completely separate? (except both good so neither needs to have a goatee.)
I don’t know. But maybe we don’t have to. Whatever their trip wire did it focused magic on one spot, Ackerly Green Publishing. Whether there are two AGP’s or one, what BoW Sully (I’m getting tired of writing that out every time) and friends did was find a crack (a well) and hammer a piton into it like true Mountainclimbers. And to that Piton they attached everything they could find, so the next climber might have the tools to reascend.
This bridge, or rope, or whatever we’re pulling on is attached to that piton in the Book of the Wild. it’s a stream we’ve been tapping into all this time. Maybe the Council was using it to fuel the Book of Briars.
Now that we have the rope, and we know what it’s attached to. What the heck do we do with it?