Aishling knows Ma didn’t die in the fire because Ma is the Celtic witch who summoned it. But where is her mother? She doesn’t know, and she can’t remember what happened that Samhain night or why Ma had used fire magic to protect them. Nor can she remember her prophetic dreams anymore, her “gift” having deserted her too, until now. A shard of her last dream haunts her. . . a giant, horned serpent.
In this first book of the magical realism quartet “Mystic Gates” Aishling, now thirteen, escapes with three others from Herald Home in search of her mother. The perilous trek along the Appalachian Trail and through the mountains of Western North Carolina forces Aishling and her new friends, Morrigan, Lance, and Kelile to work together in order to survive.
Yet, the natural hazards of the wild backwoods are not her only threats. As she awakens to her tethered fate and begins piecing fragments of her past together, she collides with an awakened Cherokee myth. Now, her entangled connection with this myth and its powerful talisman not only endangers her life, but the lives of her family of heart – her best friends.
