‘Great!’ exclaimed Kate, throwing her arms around Lucian, ‘that’s your one item. ’
‘Blimey, a Featherweight Philtre,’ cheered Lucian, trying to peel himself off Kate. ‘Tell me you know how to make it.’
‘Piece of cake,’ said Vivian confidently. ‘The ingredients are common weeds. I should find some around the palace or at the edge of the forest.’
‘They won’t let you leave your room,’ Kate pointed at Vivian’s double doors, on the other side of which two guards awaited. ‘Better describe us the herbs then.’
Lucian was already ahead of her. He pressed Kate aside and unfolded a long scroll containing hand-drawn illustrations of various herbs and roots. It took Vivian less than a minute to identify all the twelve common weeds needed for the Featherweight Philtre, which she marked on a separate sheet of papyrus, along the specific quantities required from each plant.
‘Leave it to us,’ said Kate through a small wink, before dashing out of Vivian’s room, with Lucian by the arm. Vivian had barely managed to empty an old vase that she planned to use as container, when Kate and Lucian returned to her room, slightly out of breath and wearing a miserable look on their faces.
‘Wouldn’t let us through!’ Kate complained. ‘Something about the forests being sacred. Mind you, we didn’t come back empty handed.’
‘Five out of twelve,’ said Lucian, rattling a small leather bag filled to the brim with various plants. ‘Looked everywhere else for the remaining ones but couldn’t find any.’
Vivian felt the wave of hope turn into a nasty empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. Of course the Guilt wouldn’t let anyone enter their sacred grounds. They wouldn’t want anyone tempering with their Pattern, would they? Vivian doubted anyone could enter except a Weaver, or the regent herself. She had been so close.
‘Viv, don’t despair…’ said Kate, reading her like an open book and approaching with such care, one would have thought Vivian was a large rabid gorilla. ‘Withdraw from the Trials, I say. Tomorrow morning, just tell them you can’t compete. I mean, no one is forced to prove themselves a Weaver—’
‘I need to be alone,’ said Vivian silently, the gaping pit in her stomach now as large as the hole in the Pattern itself. She hadn’t had the heart to tell Lucian and Kate that pulling out wasn’t an option without putting both their lives in danger. ‘I’m going to give one more try to Brother Haral’s Weaving exercise.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘I HAVE LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS TO LEARN TO WEAVE. NOW LEAVE!’
‘You heard her Kate. She needs to practice, and she can’t focus with us here.’
‘S-send for us if you need—’
‘Let’s go, Kate,’ signalled Lucian, and they walked out of the room hand-in-hand, leaving a dejected Vivian behind.
But Vivian found neither the heart nor the spirit to practice. She merely watched with tears in her eyes the two Alarian suns slowly descending beneath the horizon, wondering whether she would ever see them again. An absolute darkness descended upon the great Urb Lantana. It was a moonless night, with very few stars and a biting wind about it. Would she live to see another sunset?
Vivian bit hard into her fist. For one glorious moment, she thought she had a chance, but it had all been a trap. A trick of the mind. “ Think with the end goal in mind ”, Brother Haral’s words came back to her, and for a brief time, she struggled to imagine a scenario in which her life would continue past the events of tomorrow. She quickly found out she couldn’t. Her imagination was dark and limited in that way.
The Trial of Paths, they called it. “Death is our only path” , Vivian thought darkly, and secretly wondered why there was so little love in the world, with everyone knowing their life would someday end. It seemed impossible that only a few months ago, her greatest demons were the Amberville’s curfew or her private lessons with Brims. Trifles and trivialities, the lot of them. Her whole life she had been worrying about little somethings… when it was the vast and eternal Nothing that heeded her path – hers and everyone else’s.
Even now, she was worrying about Nothing, and the thought of nothingness, of oblivion, was putting more painful emptiness into her than any other fear. The more she thought about the eternal Nothing, the more it expanded, until the very air she breathed felt forced; her blinking on manual control, her breathing almost mechanical. She chocked.
The walls seemed to be closing in. Vivian had never really noticed how uncomfortably constricting her room really felt. And the sudden lack of oxygen surely related to her living in a tower. Was she dying? Cold sweat was dripping from the tips of her fingers. Her heart – why was it beating so unnaturally, so erratically? Every odd beat could be her last, and off she would be, about to embrace the eternal Nothing. Yes, this was what dying felt like. She was going to die before even reaching the arena.
As her anxiety peaked, Vivian waited in silence for her breathing to cease, for her heart to stop, for something – anything – that would deliver her from the suffering she was in, but her chest continued to pump in the thin, desiccated air. The mean commentator living inside Vivian’s head rambled on, filling her up with all sorts of poisonous thoughts, and yet her heart, if erratic, refused to surrender. Seconds lengthened into minutes, minutes into hours, and there was Vivian still, alive and well.
She wasn’t going to die. None of it had been real. Her scary and crippling anxiety had been just that… a fear, a thought, an emptiness devoid of content. After having survived such crushing emptiness, she’d survive anything.
Besides, I could always quit .
But could she afford to quit? She wouldn’t put it past Daimey to torture her friends – kill them, even – just to talk Vivian into the Trials. It was easy for Lucian and Kate to speak about quitting without knowing what was at stake. Her friends were far from perfect, but they did follow Vivian into this hellhole. She felt responsible for their lives. She couldn’t leave their fates to chance. Daimey was a dangerous woman and they were a long way from home. If anything were to happen to them—
No, it would be Vivian who had to live with the consequences of such decision. Aniya, Darien and Mira were already three ripe old reasons to blame herself. She was not going to bring the count up to five, even if it meant dying in that arena. She had to do it. She had to compete.
And yet, walking into that arena knowing what awaited her was no easy thing. None of them knew. None of them were in her shoes. Her ancient, manky, miserable shoes. A dead woman’s shoes. Shoes with deep holes in them, just like that Pattern, like the decaying fabric of reality, like the growing, sinking void in the pit of her stomach.
‘—STUPID—’ Vivian removed her left boot and threw it with all her might in one corner of the room. ‘—LIFE!’ she discarded her right boot, which angrily landed on top of the other.
Why did Lucian and Kate have to follow her here in the first place? She could have been so happy in Kranija, gathering herbs and stitching people up. Her life would have meaning at the Haijk, and now… The Artisan had warned her not to trust the Weavers; not to ask about Weaving; not even to speak of Weaving. If only she listened. If only she had a chance to say goodbye to her and Matijas and her much devoted friend, Kaap. Kaap, whom she had left behind. Kaap, who had depended on her for survival.
The sound of hasty footsteps emerged from across the room, and Vivian craned around only to see a messy trail of footprints across the blank, opposite wall. Her eyes instinctively turned to the corner where she knew she had tossed her dirty old boots only to discover they were no longer there, but hanging upside down from the high ceiling.
As though an invisible someone was wearing them, the boots seemed to defy every law of physics as they paced towards the open window, their shoelaces dangling along like a pair of soggy spaghetti. They would have walked out of the window had Vivian not snatched them right off the windowsill.
It w
as all coming back to her, like the sudden awaking from a terrible nightmare, when you realize you had been dreaming. Her first day in Solidago, the merchants had gifted her with great many things, among which an old pair of boots that would wander off on their own unless its shoelaces were tied together; boots that would adhere to any steep surface, as though it were level.
‘I wonder…’ she whispered to herself, and as though guided by an unseen hand, Vivian climbed over a chair, hastily pulled on her boots and she stepped onto an empty stretch of wall.
Like a magnet to steel, the boot clang onto the surface of the wall and the world around her promptly shifted. If there was a shift in gravity, Vivian didn’t feel it, and yet her manky old boots were effortlessly carrying her across vertical structures as though she was nothing but the meanest spider, weaving its way across a prison of walls.
“Good shoes take you along many paths ” were Matijas’ parting words, and as she remembered them, she felt a great wave of relief spreading through her body. It’s almost as though Matijas knew this would happen; as thought it had all been leading up to this moment. The key to surviving the Trial of Paths had always been “at hand”– or more appropriately said “at foot”.
Vivian only realized she was hanging upside down from the ceiling when the other side of the window revealed a flock of birds flying the wrong way up. And just like those birds, Vivian was free at last, for finally her own feet could carry her out of that tower, if she so wanted.
Matijas’ voice gradually turned into Kaap’s, which rang just as true as it did that fated day it had entered her mind: “ Vivian may only progress when Vivian leave place of beginning . ”
‘The place of beginning…’ mumbled Vivian, calling to mind the series of visions she had upon entering the Pattern of Threads. ‘…is this very tower,’ and with her heartbeat in her throat, Vivian stepped onto the window ledge and into the starless night.
Jumping over balconies and side-stepping windows, Vivian journeyed downward, across the façade of the tower, and reached the foot of the palace in no time. Two armed sentinels guarded the bolted entrance to Palas Lumina, but Vivian simply tip-toed along the archway stretching above their helmeted heads, raising no suspicion in her passing, only to touch solid ground upon reaching the Western Gate of Urb Lantana.
A string of dancing runes – which gradually formed the words “Forests of Arc Luteus” the closer she drew to it – informed Vivian that she was treading on sacred grounds. She pushed on.
Vivian needn’t travel too deep into the forest to find the remaining seven weeds needed to brew the Featherweight Philtre. She was just bagging the last herb and tightening her shoelaces for the journey back when she heard angry voices creeping through the undergrowth. She quickly climbed up the nearest tree and hid into a thick canopy of ginger leaves just as a tall young man with oversized eyes, and his long-haired female companion came to view.
‘—I don’t know what you’re inferring, big brother,’ said the woman, and Vivian thought she glimpsed a glint of violet, concealed by too many eyelashes. ‘Sunya volunteered for the Trials out of her own freewill.’
‘ Freewill , was it?’ said the man, and Vivian recognized Bastijaan’s boyish voice, now draped with annoyance. ‘Or was it the threat of having her friends killed that persuaded her?’
‘A little of both, I believe,’ said Daimey, her hands caressing a strange contraption Vivian had seen her carry before. ‘Freewill played its part, big brother. How could it be otherwise? Spending time with middlings hasn’t made Sunya any less Alarian than we are. Unlike her human friends, her will is as free as our own.’
’I think she prefers being called Vivian, if you don’t mind,’ Bastijaan argued. From the thickset of orange leaves, Vivian gathered her hands around the sack of herbs, listening hard.
‘Oh, but I do mind , big brother’, said Daimey, nocking a silver arrow and pulling the bowstring back with two sturdy fingers. ‘That’s not the name our beloved mother gave her, but you know Sunya: self-made through and through. Never mind what we all think. It’s what she thinks that makes the cut. Her reality over ours. Her Thread over our Weave.’
Vivian pushed her face out of the canopy, hoping to catch a glimpse of their faces when the silver arrow swished past her ear, lodging itself into a nearby branch.
‘Do watch where you’re shooting those!’
‘Thought I saw something move up that tree,’ said Daimey, her lilac eyes narrowed to a line. ‘Probably just a bird.’
‘Vivian didn’t deserve that. Our sister, she’s… she’s just a child,’ said Bastijaan persuasively, while Daimey continued to cast her glance at the orange canopy, as though daring it to move again. ‘Vivian’s our sister, our flesh and blood.’
Daimey’s beautiful features contorted into a hateful grimace.
‘Our sister, yes, and a dangerous little creature with dangerous powers who should’ve been Unwired at birth.’
‘You had her locked up in that tower again. Why did you do that for? Why sign her up for the Trials? You know perfectly well Alaria would never anoint Vivian in your stead, so why do it? She’s no threat to you or the line of succession.’
‘She’s only a threat to us all!’ snarled Daimey, nocking another arrow, only to release into the sky. A moment later, the arrow returned with a leathery creature around its middle. ‘You heard the Guild. Vivian’s mere existence had opened up a hole in the Pattern that is tearing the fabric of reality asunder.’
‘As if you’d care about our fallen world. You’re just repeating what that Lazuli woman said. She’s made Vivian sound like some kind of Creature of Chaos, not a frightened little girl, with broken memories and very humane, selfless ambitions,’ Bastijaan argued back, colour mounting in his boyish cheeks. ‘All she wanted was to be an Artisan – you said it yourself – and you pushed her to her doom! Yes, you pushed her to become a Weaver!’
‘Vivian will never be a Weaver,’ whispered Daimey in a dangerous voice, removing the arrow from the dead creature’s breast. ‘Vivian will die during the Weaver Trials as it was woven, and in her death, she will abolish Chaos, within and without.’
‘And if she survives?’
‘If she survives… if she becomes a Weaver–‘ Daimey broke mid-sentence, pushing the leathery game into a bag, ‘—by the rulings of Balance, she might just close that accursed hole in the end. A win-win either way, from where I’m standing.’
‘You’re standing in blood,’ chirped Bastijaan, eyeing the hem of his sister’s robes, currently soaked into the blood of the hunt. ‘And you’re about to hurt an innocent. As future Queen of this Queendom, I hope you understand that.’
Daimey wiped her bloody hands on the front of her robes, her cold violet eyes throwing daggers.
‘No Thread is innocent, if it affects the loom,’ she stated.
‘Hula Synnoyia, so you’re a Weaver now—’
‘—for many an age, under the tag of “innocent”, the Guild did nothing ,’ Daimey ploughed on, ignoring her brother’s remarks. ‘We elected Elders to keep our council in times of need – Elders who knew what Vivian was – and who did nothing . And now, big brother, I bet my shagash our beloved Mother and Father will continue doing nothing , like the Great King Oaf and Queen of Nothing they are. You’re all too cowardly to see my deed for what it is: an act of mercy for a girl with a dangerous destiny. You’re all afraid to spill royal blood and rid yourself of the sickness she carries within, but I’m not. Spilling blood is what I do!’ said Daimey, brandishing a blood-spattered arrow right under her brother’s nose.
Bastijaan angrily crossed his arms. He appeared to be fighting against a silent urge to punch his double-eyelashed sister in the face.
‘An act of mercy , is that what this is? You’re granting Vivian “mercy” by keeping her under lock and key? By
tossing her in the middle of the most dangerous event our civilization created? Is that how you rule, Daimey vin Gar? Is that how you save our dying Queendom? By killing small children?’
’Small children? She’s nearing womanhood, big brother.’
‘Only in our world,’ said Bastijaan, his big eyes ablaze.
‘Our world, our laws.’
‘And by our laws, the Weaver Trials are voluntary. Putting Vivian up for it was a very poor choice, Daimey.’
‘Poor choice? At least I made one, big brother. At least I took a stand. What did you do for Garlaan? What did any of you do? Draw our enemies into the Folde. Gave them access to Kaalà, so they can power their urbs and toys and factories. Kaalà is all we have to sell. If the Pattern falls, our economy falls and the Folde will be at our throats! I won’t have this, big brother. We need to seal that hole in the Pattern, or the Æbekanta will tear it Thread by Thread.’
‘Do what you may, but soon as she’s back, I’m telling mother!’
‘Go on and squeal then! Alaria will understand the difficult choices I had to make in her stead. She will rejoice my little “act of mercy” when that hole in the Pattern is gone and our Queendom has an economy again. Now step aside, big brother. You’re in my way.’
Vivian pushed an eye through the canopy only to see Daimey moving away from the scene, her blood-soaked robes trailing before her. Behind her disappearing outline, her brother Bastijaan was still shouting.
‘You want me to take a stand, Daimey? You want me to make a choice? Fine! I’ll send an even better Weaver to assist Vivian in her training. In fact, I’ll send the very best Weaver of all! Supervise the sessions myself, if need be!’ Bastijaan screamed after her, rushing away in a right temper and driving a flock of leathery birds to take flight.
Ikko and Jaari were about to rise when Vivian finally climbed out of the orange canopy, the bag of herbs securely tied to her belt, and made her way out the forests through the Western Gate and up the Tower of Knights. The Trial of Paths was to start before long, and she needed the Featherweight Philtre ready by then.
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