Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds

by Louise Blackwick

  Lucian lifted a brow. ‘Well, well, well. Never took you for a believer.’

  ‘But you took me for a realist,’ said Kate, airing her wet hair. ‘Scientists have been tempting fate for centuries. All that balmy antimatter research must’ve opened a door to Planet Teapot.’

  ‘On Planet Teapot, are we now?’ he laughed.

  ‘Better believe it. Seen enough of this place to understand it’s one of those silly-dilly realities that defy all logic or sense,’ Kate pointed at her forehead.

  ‘As if our world makes better sense,’ Lucian pointed at the tiny microchip in his earlobe. ‘Nots and bolts and bits and bytes.’

  ‘Lucky Madhad citizen you are. I’ve never been earmarked, me,’ Kate grinned. ‘Looking something up on the Neuro doesn’t makes me come down with all sorts of munchies.’

  ‘No real harm in subliminal adverts. Mind you, I agree. Ads do get annoying.’

  ‘Dunno why they bother to sell you stuff. It’s not like people have money,’ said Kate, giving Lucian a searching look. ‘Except you, of course. You’re a top journalist, you are. You get paid lots for your stories. The more sensational, the better.’

  ‘ Sensational , you call them,’ Lucian lifted his head. ‘I call them lies . Don’t look so shocked, Kate. I know I eat lies for dinner; it’s the one thing that gets me dinner in the first place. I put lies in writing and get well paid for it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kate. ‘Viv complained about your stories many times. At one point, she thought your newspaper targeted her.’

  ‘She was right, your friend. “ Today’s Weekly ” did target the Ambervilles for a long time, and she was no different. That fire in the western wing was quite the scandal, and I hated writing those lies. Hated every bit of it. If the world wasn’t what it was Kate, I’d have loved to read up on some good stories – some true stories – write some of my own, someday.’

  ‘Wait till you’ll have written this one down,’ Kate winked. ‘ Escape from Planet Teapot .’

  ‘Me, write about... about this ?’ Lucian made an animated gesture with his hand. ‘Oh no, no. This would never work. Even fantasy stories need to make sense!’

  And they rambled on as they followed the distant lights, cutting their way through the luxuriant forest. After a while, Lucian said, ‘rather vacant, this world.’

  ‘It has life,’ said Kate.

  ‘Violent, mace-wielding life.’

  ‘People Lucian, people. Viv saw a face. A real man,’ Kate pulled a leather book from under her armpit and indicated a handwritten passage. ‘Says so in her journal.’

  Lucian gave her a pressing look. ‘It also says she threw a knife at him.’

  ‘Well, maybe he attacked her?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lucian, wiping his sweaty forehead with his expensive shirt.

  ‘Lucian…’ Kate began timidly. ‘Did you… did you really mean what you said out there? Before we—’ she cleared her throat ‘—we fell through that hole in reality?’

  Lucian blushed a deep red. ‘Y-yeah…’

  They continued to walk shoulder to shoulder through the undergrowth. Unlike the opposite riverbank, this side of land preserved its luxuriant vegetation intact. Some of it glowed in the dark.

  ‘Interesting flora,’ said Lucian, pointing at a tuft of albino roses of such paleness they appeared to be giving off light. They grew in veins of luminescent silver, spreading across the shrunken moss as far as the eye could see.

  ‘Oh no…’

  Kate stopped dead in her tracks. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘The lights we’ve seen earlier... I don’t think there’s a town nearby.’

  Kate gathered her wet sleeves and sighed. ‘You meant to say I half-drowned in musty riverwater for— hold on, I’ve seen this glowing flower before!’

  She sat on the ground, picking a flawless white rose. Vivian’s crumpled handwriting materialized before her eyes.

  “ The white rose connects it all. It’s like it didn’t even come from this world.”

  The next moment, Kate dropped the rose and jumped to her feet.

  ‘Lucian, this flower just whispered something!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I’m telling you. It bloody talks!’

  The fallen rose, turned on the ground, its petals moving with distinct sound. Whichever message it uttered, the nearest rose took over and whispered it onward. Before long, the entire vein had burst into whispers, carried across a network of white roses until the whole forest was filled with ominous murmurings.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ Lucian ushered, grabbing Kate’s hand.

  A brown shape broke out of the darkness and knocked Kate over. It was something of little weight, if somewhat large, strong and vigorous. A feathered wing slapped her across the face. She meant to stand up but a pair of sharp talons had already pinned her to the ground.

  Lucian rushed to pull the hawk off the struggling Kate. The bird warningly snapped its beak at him, its orange eyes alight. Its powerful wings knocked his glasses into the moss.

  ‘ Marata, fugla! Marata! ’ a voice boomed out of nowhere. The hawk bent its head, as though in obedience, spread its wings and left Kate’s torso.

  Kate clutched her neck. ‘My necklace is gone!’

  ‘ Aftar ne festi, fugla! ’ commanded the voice and the hawk dropped the necklace into Kate’s lap.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Lucian asked the empty air, helping Kate up and forcing his own glasses back on. ‘Look, we heard you just now. Come out!’

  A young man dropped out of a nearby tree, making them jump.

  ‘Blimey!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the man in strange-accented English. ‘Shéy enjoys things with shine,’ he indicated the hawk flying above, in survey of the scene.

  He had medium-length chestnut hair, wild eyes and wore a fur coat that seemed to have been crafted from ten different animals. Strapped to his back were a short sword and a bow, while his chest was adorned with numerous knives of various length and scariness. The hawk circled the scene a few times before landing on his leather gauntlet.

  Kate thought the man looked identical to a human in every respect, except his light hazel eyes, which had an unnatural metallic gleam about them. The stranger seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

  ‘Middlings? Must have a death wish, coming here. Who are you? Speak fast!’

  Lucian’s voice died in his throat. It was Kate who spoke.

  ‘We’re not middlings, we’re humans.’

  ‘Means the same to Alarians.’

  ‘It does sound a tad rude, though,’ Kate insisted. ‘Why middlings?’

  ‘Meant no disrespect, lady,’ said the wild man. ‘Alarians label humans as neither higher beings nor lesser creatures; neither Alarian nor beast. For them, you be a thing in the middle. A middling .’

  ‘Umm, right,’ said Kate, trying not to look insulted. ‘Well... I am Patricia Kate and this is Lucian Blossom. The last thing we remember is falling through something like a hole in… in empty space. We are confused and unarmed. You have nothing to fear from us.’

  ‘A hole in space,’ muttered the wild man, relaxing his shoulder. ‘There’s that, of course. Weavers working on sealing it.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Lucian asked.

  ‘Acciper’s the name.’

  ‘Lucian,’ he said, extending a hand.

  The wild man Acciper grabbed Lucian by the head, pushing his forehead against his. Kate screamed and Lucian doubled back, at which point the stranger let go.

  ‘Middlings not greet like this?’

  Lucian had a stricken look on his face. ‘We… we shake hands.’

  Still quaking with shock, Kate boldly extended an arm. The wild man named Acciper copied her.

  ‘Yes, and now you take my hand too,’ sh
e said encouragingly ’and we shake— oh never mind. That’s also good.’

  Acciper had grabbed Kate’s hands in a crisscrossed way, so his right hand shook her right hand and his left clasped her left. He did the same with Lucian, only to restart the whole proceedings with Kate.

  ‘We’re looking for our friend,’ she said after the longest handshake of her life. ‘She… she fell into this world before we did. We found a trace of her blood leading out of the mines, but no body, so we assume she’s still around.’

  Acciper’s eyes widened with shock. ‘Ne’erine Mines?’

  Without as much as an explanation, he pulled Lucian towards himself and began searching his pockets.

  ‘Hey, what gives?’ said Kate, when Acciper did the same to her.

  ‘Sorry. Had to check you haven’t taken anything,’ he said in a considerably more relaxed voice.

  ‘Take what?’

  Acciper stroked the hawk with a dirty fingernail. The bird shook its hooked head, her eyes like glowing embers.

  ‘Shéy seen no one in these woods.’

  ‘Well, if you do…’ Kate whipped out Vivian’s journal and flashed it at Acciper. ‘She’s shorter and skinnier than me and has long black hair. Vivian Amberville is her name.’

  For a moment, Acciper seemed to have forgotten to breathe. He reached for the journal, snatching it out of Kate’s hands like a bird of prey. His finger stroked the front cover, where the initials “ V.A.” had been painstakingly scratched into the leather.

  His other hand jumped to the pouch, from which he withdrew a short, wooden handle that opened with a blade. Kate recognized Vivian’s matching initials carved into an age-worn pocket knife.

  ‘Vivian Amberville,’ Acciper repeated, turning the curious knife in his hand ‘She gave me this. Got me out of a tight spot—’

  The forest awoke in agitated whispers. From one many-petalled mouth to another, the flowers carried whispers across the forest moss. Let it be over! Over! Ver!

  Someone on the other side of the forest was in pain. A man.

  Kate and Lucian jumped. ‘What the sods is happening?’

  Another patch of roses twisted in the soil and screamed: My life is yours! Yours! Ors!

  Acciper turned on the spot. Like a choir of ghostly echoes, the forest was progressively filling with whispers and screams.

  Equal punishment. Punishment. Nishment. Shment.

  ‘Murmura Rossa,’ said Acciper through pursed lips. ‘Whispering Roses. Forest’s full of them. Everyone, keep silent. Trying to—’

  Consider my clemency granted. My clemency granted. Ency anted. Anted.

  ‘Voices coming from Solidago. Something terrible must’ve happened. Whispering roses picked up its trail.’

  Acciper lifted his leather gauntlet upon which perched Shéy the Hawk.

  ‘ Fa’ra! ’ he said, and the hawk spread its massive wings and took flight amid the millions whispering roses, in the direction of the screams.

  An Errand of Hope

  Lady Saah was so busy mending patients Vivian barely found a moment to tell her what she had witnessed in the marketplace.

  As an apprentice Artisan, Vivian mostly spent her time cleaning the house, reading up on cures, mixing various healing salves and going on errands. Though Vivian returned daily to the market with a fresh list of herbs for pickup, Dominus Ashlar had stopped visiting the blacksmith. In fact, as much as she explored the city, there was no sign of either of them anywhere.

  What could Ashlar want with an unforgeable metal? What was so special about Æbe’trax that made it forbidden to an entire world?

  Soon enough Vivian learned none of Lady Saah’s books on Artisanship would reveal anything on Æbe’trax, except its connection to Kaalà, a force known to exist in everything. Vivian didn’t know much about Kaalà except the Weavers needed it to weave their precious little Threads into the fabric of reality.

  Without Kaalà, there could be no change in the cosmos, but why was Æbe’trax forbidden? When Vivian had ventured to ask, the Artisan had refused point-blank to tell her anything she didn’t already know.

  Important as Kaalà seemed, Vivian learned two ever greater mysteries pressed the Alariankind. One: what was the purpose of intelligent life in the entirety of the cosmic whole? And two: what lay under a Tuuk’tan’s loincloth?

  The origin and purpose of Kaalà was only under number forty-two on their “Need to Know” list and it wasn’t getting any higher. Not with questions such as: “Am I going to be wealthy?” and “Will I ever find a consort?” occupying more pressing positions. In that regard, her world was not much different than Ærria.

  The closest Vivian had come to an answer had been in “ Become a Weaver in just 10 restings – I will make you a Weaver in 5 easy steps or your ruvi back guaranteed! ”. It was one of those books which made any reader promptly lose hope in their species.

  Kaalà had only been mentioned in “step 5: Believing is Achieving” as an obligatory component in concluding a cosmic change. Whatever that component stood for, the book would not tell. In that regard, it was as useful as those “How to get rich” type of books.

  ‘Lovely stitching, dear. Never seen finer. You can barely see the line.’

  ‘Small hands,’ said Vivian, demonstratively lifting her arms.

  Here was something Vivian had natural talented for. Her petite hands had proven to be ideal in stitching wounds, regardless her initial squeamishness. The Artisan nowadays left her patients entirely in her care.

  More often than not, Vivian merely had to deal with simple axe-slipped-through-my-fingers-and-chopped-me-legs-off kind of situations, but every once in a while came the man with the odd knife in his back and twenty-six stab wounds who vouched it had been an accident and wouldn’t hear his relationship was over. In such rare cases, the Artisan would assist.

  ‘You’ve been mudding your boots again, I see. Give them here, aymma give them a proper wash,’ and Vivian removed her Artisan boots and handed them over to Lady Saah, who plunged them in a great vat of soap-water. ‘I told you not to venture into the bog. You get all sorts of grime there, and I’m not talking mud. Rapists roam those parts.’

  ‘Lady Saah… can I ask you something?’ Vivian began one evening, after an old question had awakened in her mind.

  ‘Not asking about that Æbe’trax again, are you? I tell you, you’re gonna land us both in trouble.’

  ‘No, no, this is something different. Remember my first day at the Haijk—’

  ‘Un-huh,’ mumbled the Artisan, who was currently busy treating her son’s eczema.

  ‘—and how you pulled those runes, err, those outcome leaks—’

  ‘Hm-hmm’ said Lady Saah as she applied generous amounts of Kaalà-enriched salve on Matijas cheek.

  ‘—and I touched them, and got that symbol, which one was it again?’ she pretended to hesitate. ‘Oh yes, the Burning Water .’

  The Artisan had not lifted her eyes off her son. ‘What of it?’

  Vivian quickly acknowledged the hostile tone, but decided to press on.

  ‘Well, did it mean anything in particular?’

  ‘It meant you’re here to learn Artisanship, so quit asking questions about Weaving or Seeing. I told you, you’re gonna get us both in trouble. Now hand me that sour rag. His skin is starting to turn.’

  Still curious to know what the symbol of the Burning Water commonly depicted, Vivian attempted a book on Alarian runes. Sadly, the study of outcome leaks and their interpretation had proven to be more complicated than Miss Brims’ pointless private lessons on spherical geometry. Even with all the cosmic languages coursing through her mind, Vivian had found the charts unreadable.

  Halfway into “ The Way of Seeing ”, Matijas walked in on Vivian and brought her lunch. Part of his face was wrapped in bandages beneath whi
ch paper-thin wires stuck out at odd ends. His eczema must have got worse, Vivian thought. Protective mother, that Artisan, but her cure was clearly exaggerated.

  ‘Matijas, your mom wouldn’t tell me anything that’s either connected to Weaving or to Seeing. Nothing of Kaalà, Æbe’trax or the Pattern of Threads. Why is that?’

  The dark boy with hypnotic copper eyes shrugged. ‘It’s hard for Mother to accept some things are inevitable. Hard to trust people too. Just give Mother time.’

  Vivian took her face in her palms. ‘I wish she would trust me enough to explain some things.’

  ‘Mother will trust you,’ said Matijas, without looking at her. ‘You’ll grow on her, I’m sure.’

  ‘Matijas, you’re a very intelligent little boy…’ she held up “ The Way of Seeing ” and pointed at an overly-complicated chart which contained the Burning Water symbol one hundred and four times. ‘What do you make of this symbol?’

  ‘Ah, that’s just the Æbekanta,’ said Matijas. ‘A Seer’s term, that one. It means “unwiring”, but it’s more, a lot more than losing control of a Thread. Every Seer is afraid of it. And one more thing—’

  He picked up the charts, folding them in four, then in two, opening them like a flower and folding them back into a five-pointed shape.

  ‘—you’ve been reading this wrong the entire time.’

  On his way out, Matijas slipped “ Æbekanta – The Grand Narrative ” under Vivian’s pillow.

  ‘Don’t tell Mother,’ he winked.

  Finding out the meaning behind the symbol had raised Vivian’s anxiety levels. The innocent-looking triangle with a wavy line underneath was none other than Æbekanta , the Levelling Force. Its overall description was complicated, yet Vivian did understand the general idea behind it.

  Æbekanta was the complete opposite of Kaalà, which predestined death and chaos. Not your regular backyard-sale chaos, but the complete antagonist of cosmic creation.

  Æbekanta … Now, where had she heard that name before?

  Lady Saah seemed to know a great lot about the Weavers, but she didn’t enjoy talking about them. She had, nevertheless, told Vivian the reason she loathed them.