Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds

by Louise Blackwick

  Vivian turned to the door, but the door too had faded. She felt something soft brushing her shoulder and the next moment, a thousand metallic wires had fastened themselves around her. Her torso, her fingers, the very hair on her scalp vanished beneath the great tuft of scorching threads. Save her face, she was completely immobilized. The air around her felt hot and heavy.

  ‘Help—’

  No sound came out, and yet, something did happen. The loom of red-hot threads began changing before her eyes. Levelled with her eyes, a large hole had emerged, and within it, a floating rock upon which stood erect a glorious structure. Vivian spotted a familiar outline – its pearl-white turrets distinct upon the sunset-pink sky. It was the same floating citadel she had seen in the Restrict. She gasped.

  A second hole had materialized in the loom, whose apparition immediately headed Vivian’s strong sense of foreboding. This opening was abysmal, pitch-dark and alive! Vivian knew at a glance something was terribly wrong with the hole.

  With the vitality of a whirlwind, the hole began spinning across the loom, consuming all loose threads and dragging everything in. The mass of wires keeping her prisoner seemed to have become enkindled, as if by fire. Vivian thrashed about as they progressively tightened around her chest and neck, burning her skin, constricting her windpipe. Her head began to spin. If she didn’t release herself soon she would suffocate.

  One slash of hand, and the constricting threads broke loose. Vivian emerged from her prison, panting and purple-faced, clutching the Swiss pocket-knife she had reached just in time. She meant to brush off the remaining threads, but they had already disappeared.

  A dark recess had opened at the very heart of loom. It was a darkness so penetrating it looked like the very fabric of the cosmos had shredded apart.

  ‘Get a grip, Vivian. This isn’t real!’ she anxiously whispered to herself, taking a few steps forward. She was just about to reach out towards the abyss, determined to stare it down into disappearance, when the abyss stared right back.

  A face was looking at her from behind a dark veil, in what must have been mixed curiosity and shock. Vivian was well on her way to a scream when the young man behind the veil beat her to it. Once he fell silent, the apparition addressed her in a strange language Vivian failed to identify.

  ‘ Ó Virshii, uthe mardrom arra jes! ’

  Without really stopping to consider her actions, Vivian clutched her Swiss knife, dislodged a small, thin blade from its many tools, and threw it as sternly as she could into the darkness.

  For a waking second, she thought the blade had missed the anomaly. Yet there it was, lodged within a stone wall, inches away from the young man’s face. The blade had missed him by a trim.

  A candle must have been shifted somewhere beyond the veil, for in the sudden presence of the light, Vivian could see the lad’s hands and feet were manacled. A mixture of dirt, sweat and blood covered his superbly-carved, square-jawed features.

  Still fighting the symptoms of her anxiety disorder, Vivian took a few uncertain paces towards the mid-aid suspended abyss, her coal-black eyes searching for the man. His skin was caked with cuts and blisters, scorched by too much sunlight into a pale brown crust. A large bleeding cut spread from his left eye, all the way to a bruised forehead partly obscured by a ruff of medium-cut, chestnut hair.

  He could not have been older than nineteen, yet his bright hazel eyes were brimming with a century’s worth of memories. He noticed the appearance of the knife and struggled to free it from the stone wall, his chained wounds opening from the strain.

  ‘I don’t have the wits about me,’ Vivian garbled aloud as she took one more step towards the abyss. ‘It isn’t real. Nope, not even a tad.’

  At the sound of her words, the pair of bright-hazel eyes fixed her, his mouth breaking into speech. It was queer-accented but unmistakable English.

  ‘This a dream? We both asleep?’ said the apparition.

  Vivian turned her head so quickly it creaked.

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘This a dream or not?’ he repeated.

  ‘I… err, dunno. A-are you one of those… those shadow people?’

  The young man’s eyebrows merged. ‘Don’t think so. You?’

  ‘Umm, no,’ Vivian mumbled, wondering how many marbles she must have lost to even have this conversation.

  ‘Would thank your clever gift,’ whispered the apparition, lifting Vivian’s pocket knife with his bleeding, manacled hands, ‘but blade too wide to fit the lock.’

  ‘T-there’s a passing key.’

  ‘What passing key?’

  It was hard to admit her throwing the knife at the anomaly had been a pure response to shock, but Vivian had aimed to injure, not help. Not for a moment did she imagine the blade passing through the veil. Madness might have surely stricken Vivian to offer a response. For all she knew, she was talking to thin air.

  ‘In… in that bunch I just… just gave you,’ said Vivian, trying to cover her knife-throwing act.

  But the thin air responded. ‘Might be cheated by thirst, but you on the wrong side of reality, human. Middlings not supposed to– the Shroud! Shroud must’ve rent asunder!’

  ‘Err... say what now?’

  ‘Your gift means freedom,’ the young man quickly added. ‘My gratitude, middling beyond the Shroud.’

  The fright of having the abyss talk back in broken English, made Vivian trip herself against the carpet. Before she knew it, she found the floor and a massive bruising. The familiar surroundings of her bedroom rematerialized around her.

  ‘That… that wasn’t… normal.’

  The vision might have vanished into nothingness, but not from Vivian Amberville’s memory. What madness was gripping her? Had it all been a dream?

  Vivian was no stranger to trips upon the astral plane. Dreams of parallel realities in which strangely-dressed people—and this sounded outrageously mad, even for a dream—would weave for a living. Not your common weavework, but the weaving of odds, of events, even that of destinies. Astral visitings aside, to dream about them was one thing; to feel their touch was another.

  In the light of the moon, Vivian stared at her hands. The scorching-hot strangling threads have left a trace. Red marks now covered every bit of exposed skin, like a million burns and papercuts.

  No dream , she thought.

  And what about the white rose? Her eyes fell on the single flower, now abandoned on the wooden floor. Touching the rose had triggered the vision. She gently picked it up.

  Nothing happened.

  It was the most perfect flower in the world – and that was saying something, considering the many breeds of roses the Amberville gardens preserved. Its white was beyond white; it very nearly emitted light.

  Vivian put the white rose aside, crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head. Not willing to see or hear anymore, she buried her face in the pillow, thinking hard. Perhaps the traumas of her childhood had finally stolen her mind away. Perhaps she was coming down with something. Perhaps she was coming down with Filth.

  No, she must banish such thoughts before inviting them. Surely the long years of starvation she faced at Ala Spuria’s Shelter for Strays distorted her perception of reality. Gave her an imagination too great to contain. Made her see things with no license to exist.

  ‘Rise and shine mistress!’

  By the time her buzzing thoughts came to a dim, the sun had already risen.

  Both my families are gone and I need to let them go , Vivian thought, before I lose my head completely .

  Vivian’s Descent

  ‘Cor, what awful weather!’ cried Vivian while changing television channels. ‘Great England’s cowering under ice! What’s next, then?
Dead birds?’

  Atypical weather-news had been broadcasting for eleven days in a row. Vivian quickly jotted an eye out of a nearby window, checking for accuracy. Indeed, a little over four inches of solid ice-pellets currently coated the Manor’s precincts. Ice capsules the size of pigeon-eggs submerged the rear gardens in translucent, glassy mounds.

  There was a frown on her face as she surfed the weather channels. They all broadcast the same calamity, over and again.

  First Floods, then storms. This world’s gone to the dogs , Vivian thought miserably, and the dogs don’t seem to mind it.

  Eventually tired with catastrophic news, Vivian opened the window, her eyes searching for the newest tenant of her unwillingly-inherited Manor. She smiled, her black eyes filling up with an old memory: the orange she received from beyond the wall. Vivian opened the door and shouted.

  ‘The saplings, there’s nothing you can do to save them. They’ll need replanting, those.’

  But Patricia Kate just waved nonchalantly from across the ice-sprinkled gardens and continued her work. She was busy building hail-repelling tents for Vivian’s miniature orange trees. After a while, Vivian called her inside.

  ‘It’s monkeys outside,’ said Kate, shivering hard. ‘What’s the matter? You look anxious.’

  ‘You know I’m always anxious. I suffer from it. It’s just—’

  A dark thought had been clouding her mind ever since Miles had let her on the truth. Vivian decided the best approach was to blurt it out.

  ‘The fire in the western wing… it was me.’

  Kate clutched her chest. ‘WHAT?!’

  ‘Shush!’ Vivian called for silence. ‘The others don’t know, though I reckon the gardener’s onto me.’

  Kate’s sea-green eyes rounded up in visible fear. She even took a few steps back.

  ‘ You set the fire?’

  Vivian shook her head from side to side. ‘Not exactly, but –’ she then lifted an old leather-bound journal and holding it open at a specific page, she presented it to Kate. ‘I imagined it true.’

  Half expectant, half reluctant, Kate took it. Whilst on most pages she used blue ink, the indicated entry had been hand-written in an ink so penetrating, Vivian might have written it with a scalpel:

  “ June, 2323. Aniya has forbidden me to leave the Manor. She fears the Black Flu would get me. That I would bring it into the house. They called Miss Brims to have me home-schooled. Put Miles in charge of my education. I’m not allowed to go to a regular school. Darien said I needn’t study for I will lead a rich life anyway. He said someday I’ll take over the Ala Spuria franchise. As if!

  “August 2323. We fought yesterday. I lost my temper again and ended up shouting at the pair of them. I still can’t believe their ignorance. In the face of everything I’ve ever told them about their precious “ children shelter ”, how can they still keep that place running? How can they want me to run it when they’re gone? Sure, it’s easy to forget yourself when you’re living in a cosy, lavish manor the size of five districts… But to build their fortunes on the misfortune of abandoned kids, that’s too much for me.

  “October 2323. End of the line! They’re not even keeping tabs on what’s happening at Ala Spuria. They think they’re saving those orphaned kids when, in fact, they’re dooming them to a life of depression! I told them over and again: those kids are better off living on the street, but the Ambervilles’ ignorance shocks me. I bet they’ve never even known true thirst; never felt the burn of hunger. It’s the kind of burn that eats you away, and you won’t forget it in a hurry. I know that burning feeling well.

  “November 2323. They knew! They knew all along what was happening in those shelters, but took no stand. Their own franchise and they didn’t take a stand! This is scandalous! Burn, burn, burn. Burn, for once, their ignorance away. They think they’re keeping those kids safe by locking them away from the ghettos – by locking me in the Manor? Wrong. I won’t have it again! Won’t be a prisoner in my own home! I’ll run away—”

  ‘I wrote that the night their quarters caught fire,’ Vivian said miserably. ‘I wrote it all down. I wished it true. I made it happen.’

  Kate gathered her silver eyebrows into a sympathetic frown. Her whole body seemed to have relaxed. ‘Viv—’ she begun.

  ‘I hated the pair of them,’ she said, her eyes avoiding Kate. ‘They were good people but… but the whole Ala Spuria business—synthetic foods, bloody awful conditions, the philosophy of pretence, the curfew, the confinement – it’s all wrong, alright? The Ala Spuria Shelter for Strays should have been an option for Neds, not a prison.’

  ‘They protected you.’

  ‘Protected? When I couldn’t as much breathe without their permission? When I couldn’t decide my own fate?’ she scowled. ‘I was a caged bird, Kate, forbidden to leave the Manor. They could’ve sent me to a bloody normal school, but noooo, I got stuck with Brims instead.’

  ‘So they weren’t all perfect people, big deal,’ said Kate. ‘Loving them was sometimes tough, I get it, but don’t blame yourself for that fire. Just because you wrote an angry entry in your journal—’

  ‘That’s… that’s not all I d-did,’ said Vivian, and for the first time there was a great tremor in her voice. ‘That week Ayesha had the pox… some of her responsibilities fell on me. I was so angry with them, I refused to change the oil in their bedside lamp,’ her voice was now a mere whisper. ‘I— I am entirely responsibly for the fire in the western wing.’

  Kate sighed. ‘Oh, Viv—’

  ‘Don’t “Oh, Viv” me. I know what I’ve done! And the worst part is… I don’t feel much remorse.’

  ‘Of course you do! Just listen to yourself rave.’

  ‘No, Kate. I don’t feel nearly as responsible as I should feel. I didn’t even cry. I had it all, and blew it all to bits.’

  ‘You still have it. The wealth, the status, a great deal of love and care—’

  ‘Wealth and status ain’t worth a sausage when you live in a cage!’

  Kate continued to return a sympathetic smile. ‘You must forgive them, Viv. Forgive yourself. They were concerned for you, is all. Didn’t want you roaming the ghettos, catching Filth and ending up like Mira Amberville.’

  ‘I understand that,’ said Vivian, still not looking at Kate. ‘I do. But I was still mad at them. “ Burn, burn, burn. Burn, for once, their ignorance away. ” I wrote that in the library, the night of the fire— and now they’re gone. All because I ignored my responsibilities. All because I messed up the odds.’

  ‘Not odds, Viv. Coincidence,’ Kate said calmly. ‘Stop blaming yourself. All kids are mad at their parents sometimes. All kids make mistakes. It wasn’t your fault— what’s that on your hands?’

  Vivian automatically shoved her hands into her pockets to hide last night’s scars. She wasn’t ready to admit to Kate that she was losing her mind.

  The following weeks persisted just as peculiarly, with heavy downpours of hail more often than not. Cirrus Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds floated over the city of Milton, descending their ocean of bedraggled shades upon the world. Vivian had made quite a habit out of following their spiralling shadows stroll along 3 Sulgrave Court . She always seemed to search for patterns of order in their otherwise chaotic movement.

  Heaps of tennis-sized hail had pilled across the Amberville lawn, which put Angus Trimmings in quite a state. Vivian could see him breaking into a hot sweat as he hopelessly jabbed his spade at the mounds of ice to little effect. Vivian wished he would work just as hard in the back gardens.

  Vivian soon learned from Miles that the Manor’s rear grounds were the last resting place of Mira, Darien and Aniya Amberville. Their desiccated tombs were partly-obstructed from public view by a sea of tall, entangled grass, peppered with snakes.

  Despite endless thr
eats, Angus Trimmings avoided doing any gardening in the spot. It was Vivian’s excuse for avoiding it too. Only the orange trees seemed to have survived unscathed, as a result of Kate’s ongoing care. A rust-ridden plaque displayed: Jardin de l’Orangerie .

  ‘I’m having someone over,’ Kate panted, having walked a length of two football stadiums. ‘Will you be in the garden?’

  Vivian nodded, showing Kate a half-written journal. ‘Thought I’d write some things down today,’ she lifted her head enough to peer at Kate. ‘Who’s your visitor?’

  ‘His name is Lucian Blossom.’

  Vivian jumped from her lounging chair, looking upset. ‘Cor, Lucian Blossom? The wagtail from Today’s Weekly ? That hollow bespectacled tit-with-a-wit—’

  ‘Keep your shoes on, Lucian taught me speech! His family sponsored me at the orphanage, didn’t I say? I merely invited Lucian to thank him and his parents.’

  Vivian folded her arms. ‘You also said Lucian likes stories. Right about that one, weren’t you? The amount of times I’ve seen the Amberville name dragged through mud—’

  ’It’s not Lucian’s fault, you know. It’s not personal or anything. If he stops writing slanderous things, Great England won’t pick up his tab. You don’t get paid in this world, you don’t eat.’

  ‘Then let him starve. Today’s Weekly practically sustains from writing all sorts of wild stories about the Manor,’ said Vivian. ‘By letting him come here, you’re giving him more fuel.’

  ‘Or give him a first-hand reason to question his writing,’ Kate argued. ‘Come now, Viv. Had it not been for him, I wouldn’t have survived Ala Spuria. Stories or no stories, just let me thank the guy.’

  ‘Well, if you must Kate, but I advise you to keep to the sitting-room. I heard bad things about that newspaper he writes for. Just make sure he doesn’t snoop around.’

  ‘Will do,’ Kate winked. ‘Good luck with your…umm, writing.’

  Vivian’s retreat under the willow tree served well to her writing, yet little did it do to stop her hallucinations. In the corner of her eyes still birthed things: vivid, frightening, pressing. More than once she was disturbed by sounds that had nothing to do with her current environment. In the dead of night, Vivian often heard people – their language strange, unearthly; their voices muffled and breaking as though emerging from a badly-tuned radio.