The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

heart. A secret only she knew. Pale green tears ran down her cheeks.
    The letters shivered and broke apart. Tiny scratchlike representations appeared on the stone: turtles and clouds, a whale, the moon in all its phases and a sun wheel flowed across the emerald tablet in narrow horizontal lines. Virginia pressed her index finger to the bottom left-hand corner and moved it slowly to the right, her lips moving as she remembered a language she had long thought she’d forgotten.
    I am Abraham of Danu Talis, sometimes called the Mage, and I send greetings to you, Virginia Dare, daughter of Elenora, child of Ananias
.
    By this word
, Croatoan,
a word whose meaning is known only to you, shall you know that everything I say to you now is the truth. So when I say to you that I have watched over you all the days of your life, you will know this to be true. When I say to you that I have protected you and cared for you, you will know this also to be true. I directed you to the cave in the Grand Canyon where you discovered your precious flute. And I allowed you to kill your Elder master and protected you from the consequences
.
    I know who you are, Virginia Dare, and more importantly, I know what you are. I know what you are looking for, what you seek more than anything else in the world
.
    And today you can achieve your life’s ambition
.
    Today, you can make a difference
.
    You will not walk the Earth Shadowrealm for more than nine millennia. And yet you receive this tablet from me this very day. You will hold it in your hands mere hours after it has left mine. When I first began to follow your time line, I never imagined it would loop back and we would both end up on the same continent in the same time stream
.
    You are a remarkable woman, Virginia Dare
.
    You survived when all around you died. And you did more than survive. You thrived. You lived alone and feral in the heart of the forest. But you were never truly alone. Did you ever wonder why the wolves never hunted you and the bears avoided you, why you never succumbed to illness or fell ill from rotten food or stagnant water? And in the depths of winter, when the snow thickened on the ground, you never developed sickness. You were never short of food, never went hungry, never even broke a bone or chipped a tooth. When the plagues devastated the native tribes, you remained unscathed. When your enemies came in search of you, they became lost in the forest. When trappers hunted you for the reward, they came to sudden and mysterious ends
.
    Truly, you lived a charmed life
.
    And while I watched over you, Marethyu, the hook-handed man, protected you. He was your shadow, your guardian. Together we kept you safe, because we knew that one day we would need you
.
    We need you today, Virginia Dare—just as you have always wanted to be needed
.
    Being abandoned and orphaned as a child, being left alone for years to run wild, should have made you selfish, greedy and perhaps even a little mad
.
    And yet you are none of those things
.
    It is a testament to your courage, to your strength of will, your integrity
.
    When you had food to spare, you shared it with the native tribes. Even when you had little enough for yourself, you left parcels of food hanging from the branches of trees. You ensured that their traps and nets were always filled. You cared for them in ways you yourself had never been cared for. The natives knew it and honored you for it
.
    You accepted immortality from an Elder you despised simply so that you would have more time to help those who needed it. And for centuries now, you have hidden your passion for justice behind an uncaring facade. Few know you, and those who do assume you are interested only in yourself. Even the English Magician, who thinks he knows you better than any man alive, knows nothing about you. He does not know the real Virginia Dare
.
    I know you
.
    I know you have always resented the arrogance of authority. You have always stepped forward and spoken for those who had no voice of their own. And now you find yourself in a land where an entire class is voiceless, where a handful of Elders, many of whom are so Changed that they are barely recognizable, continue to hold on to power. Worse, they have no intention of ever letting it go. They intend to destroy or enslave the humani. They are determined that the world you know, the world you grew up in, will cease to exist. The people of Danu Talis need a voice, Virginia Dare. They need someone to