Page 94 of An Invocation of Monsters

It had been interspersed with photos from the Void. She had been there shortly before my birth.

If a pregnant woman crossed into another world, was it possible that the baby would be affected? After all, I’d been raw clay at the time, only partially formed.

I frowned against Toth’s chest, staring out at the shimmering lake.

Maybe it had happened even before that. When my great-grandmother, Sophie Marsh, had opened a door on these lands.

Perhaps she had been touched by the Void as well, and passed that on to my grandmother, and then my mother—who had made use of the power and entered the Void herself.

“Toth.”

“Yes?” He stroked my hair, warm and steady against me.

“When you said you could touch space and time… do you think you could make it… go back?”

Toth looked down at me, his expression impossible to read. “Yes. I can open a window to the past… but it is tiring, and dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?”

He laced his fingers through one of my hands. “You could not break contact with me. Even for an instant. Or else you might be left behind in that tiny window into which you peer.”

I swallowed. Of course the bending of space and time could only come with severe consequences. “But we could see… the beginning? When my great-grandmother was here?”

He nodded, looking at me gravely. “As long as you promise to not let go. No matter what.”

I couldn't help but smile at that. “That’s no problem at all.”

He sighed, looking out over the land. “Then come with me. It is better if we do this in a place where they once walked. It makes it easier to open a window.”

I followed him up the hill, until we could overlook the ruins of the Lodge. He led me towards it, but stopped well short of the stone circle with his back to it.

“Grip me tightly,” he instructed, lacing our fingers together. “Tighter. Tighter, Elle! I do not want to lose you to the flow of time.”

I gripped him so tightly my knuckles screamed, then his claws descended on the back of my hands.

I gasped when they pierced flesh, the first pain Toth had ever caused me. His nails dug in between my tendons, blood flowing in thin rivers to my wrists.

But I gritted my teeth and held on.

Toth wouldn’t hurt me without cause.

“To the time of your grandmother,” he said musingly.

“Sophie Marsh. The summer she was here with Marie and Tessa.”

He nodded, then his wings flicked outwards, spreading wide. They began to hum, moving ever so slightly.

Then faster, and faster. They became a blur, a hypnotizing spiral of color.

The colors bled outwards into the air around us, the edges of reality becoming misty and indistinct.

I blinked, feeling like I was falling—but forward, not down.

My stomach began to flip-flop as colors and shapes coalesced. In the mist around us, stars swirled endlessly, moving backwards at rapid speed.

I gripped him tighter, the sensation of motion sickness rising. There were blurred shapes moving, something pale, something screaming…

A massive blot of darkness, enough to block out the world.

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