Chrysoprase (The Chalcedony Chronicles) Read Free Page A

This wasn’t right. The goddess may have good intentions for bringing people together, and maybe she was the reason I was alive at all since my mother and I could have been put to death for her falling in love with my father. I have no clue what happened to the babies of women who were disloyal to their king, but I still felt robbed. I never knew my father, and my mother was now lost to the past. There had to be a solution. I looked up on the dresser as I passed it. The shiny green stone stared back. Was that stone the key? Could I go back and bring my mother back also?
    A plan was forming in my head. If I could find out how to get to my mother, could I take her back to the future with me? I had no clue how the time travel thing worked. The last time was more of a fluke than anything. I was just following the thread that bound me to Seth. I didn’t have the same connection with my mother, but there had to be a way. I wasn’t going to give up on her. She traveled to an unknown world to protect me, I would do the same for her.
    I walked back over to the new stone in my collection. I rubbed the smooth green rock in my hand as I debated in my head. There had to be a way to get to my mother and save her from the past.
    I had two options. First, I could go and ask the man down the hallway how to travel in time. Mr. Sangre was a time gatekeeper after all, but I doubted he would tell me any more than he already had. I’d asked him before how to find Seth, and he didn’t really tell me how to do it. The second option was to ask the goddess, but I was unsure if that was a good idea either. She had just ripped my mother out of my life, and I wasn’t exactly sure I could be civil to her at this point. If she asked me why I wanted to learn, I’d have to lie to her so that she wouldn’t try to stop me.
    “I see the dilemma,” a deep female voice said from somewhere in my room. I could not see her, but I knew that it was the goddess.
    “You should see it. You created it,” I replied. I had to bite my tongue from saying more. She had taken my mother from me.
    “I have taken nothing from you,” the goddess answered. She didn’t seem at all worried about my growing anger.
    “You took her back. There was no reason to take her back right now,” I replied to the empty room. It was easier to not have the goddess there physically. I had the feeling she knew that, too.
    “I told you that you cannot change the past without changing the future,” the goddess answered. There was no anger to her voice, or even judgment. She simply stated the fact.
    “But I thought you meant big events,” I answered, sitting down and finally halting my pacing around the room. The new green stone was still between my fingers.
    “My deal with your mother was to allow her to stay here as long as you were growing up,” the goddess answered. I still could not see her, but got the feeling she was right beside me now. “In my mind, growing up was always going to be the time that you figured out how to time travel.”
    “But I’m not grown up. I don’t really know how to time travel, and I still need my mother,” I complained, trying to keep tears at bay. Yes, going off to college, living on my own, having a new exciting life made me feel grown up a bit, but I wasn’t there yet. I still needed my mother.
    I felt a breeze caress my back in the windless room. I knew it was the goddess and would have been upset by the comfort she tried to offer, but now my anger was gone and replaced by sadness.
    “Mari, you are strong. Life will never be easy for you with the gift you have. No one else remembers it all like you will. You will find no one like you, but know that I believe in you,” the goddess said cryptically.
    “Strong or not, I need her back,” I answered stubbornly.
    “But this isn’t her time,” the goddess replied. That was true, but it still didn’t make it right.
    “What makes it not her time?” I asked. “She spent more time here than