CHAPTER 18

It occurs to me to point out, gentle reader, that my mother wasn't completely obsessed with her quest for knowledge of her staff, her Angel and her magic. She was, for the most part, a well-rounded young woman with an active social life. She still had a few friends and relationships with both Faery and humans, though she was never particularly close to any of them. She had learned not to discuss her Angel for fear of accusations of insanity, or her staff for fear of drawing too much attention to it. Even her advancing druid magic was seen as little more than a curiosity, like an obscure hobby that nobody else gets unless they share it. Except nobody did. Jacob was different. When Catriona opened up to him, he did not judge her sanity. If she said she saw a sort-of-Angel who gave her the staff and mended her village with druid magic, then Jacob was prepared to accept it. After all, as Cat herself argued, she had clearly got her staff from somewhere – it could hardly have just been lying around, unnoticed for who knows how long. As for the 'miraculous' restoration of her home, he said, "I don't believe miracles really happen." "Miracles can happen if people make them happen," Catriona countered. Still, from what Jacob had seen Catriona do with druid magic – tending Renjaf's grounds and getting the plants to restrain him – it didn't seem an unreasonable extrapolation. He was only sorry that the stubborn old goat in his tower was standing in the way of something so crucial to Cat when co-operating would cost him next to nothing. He promised to help her in any way he could, but for now, Catriona had no further ideas of how she was going to get her hands on that book. There did not seem to be any other copies of the book. From what Catriona could gather, it had never been what one could call popular, being considered a fringe text at best, and the ravings of a madman at worst. However, given how quick people were to question her own sanity, she wasn't willing to dismiss the anonymous author of Shifting Stars so easily.