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The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 8, third continuation)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 4, continued
Part 5
Part 5, continued
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 8, continued
Part 8, second continuation
Notes: my characters like surprise me.
Lucille had only heard of soul repair because it was one of the powers mentioned that the quetzels could have when she was studying Quiar. From what she’d read it wasn’t an ability she would wish to have… or wish upon her worst enemy. It was easy to understand why Sini was uncomfortable with it, especially after hearing the story of her great-grandfather’s mistake. Shivering, she tried not to think of what might have happened, and instead focused on the interesting chimera sitting opposite her. Their eyes met and Sini shrugged, but her eyes showed more of what she was feeling than she probably would have wished them to.
Just as Lucille opened her mouth to speak the deer waitress wandered over with their meals. Shutting it again, not certain how much Sini wanted anyone to know about her, Lucille sipped her drink for the first time. The mix of fruits was one she hadn’t tried before, but as she hadn’t yet been confirmed as Quiar’s Walker, a position no one had chosen to take for centuries, she hadn’t spent as much time on the world as she would have liked. Until that happened she’d felt it best to keep her distance, knowing that the Council would be uncomfortable with her connection to Quiar, and then the counterfeit problem fell into her lap.
With a dish of the special, whatever the special was, in front of her, Lucille stared into it, wishing she had answers to her questions. After a few seconds, which were filled with the sound of Peric talking to Sini, she picked up her spoon and dipped it into the bowl. That appeared to be the cutlery item of choice in the Quiaran eateries she’d been in. She found rice in the bottom of the bowl, which appeared to be the best cooked rice she’d seen, with a mix of grains in it, some she’d never seen before. On top of the rice was what looked to be a mix of vegetables, she was almost certain she found a piece of bell pepper and some corn, in a sauce that smelt wonderful.
“What do you think?” Sini asked, as Lucille chewed her first mouthful, taking in the mix of flavours.
“It’s nice.” She took some time to have another spoonful. “This was a very good choice, Sini.”
Sini smiled, looked over at Bertram. “What do you think?”
Bertram, wiping his beak on the napkin that had been provided, smiled back at Sini. “I agree with Lucille. The sauce is wonderful.”
Peric nodded in agreement. “Thank you, Sini, for choosing the special.” He held a piece of bread in one paw and put a spoonful of the mix onto it. “The bread here is lovely, too.”
Using her free hand Lucille picked up one of the rolls and followed Peric’s example. Nodding, she smiled over at the mouse, who smiled back, even though he still looked uncomfortable. Glancing at Sini she thought of the offer the chimera had made, deciding that she would take up the offer of a charm to help Peric. He wasn’t going to be able to help them if he he had to keep dealing with everyone else’s emotions.
***
Sini looked back at Lucille and it was obvious what the Moonjumper was thinking about. It was hard not to feel sorry for Peric, if you understood what it was like to be empathetic, so Sini made the decision to get Lucille alone sometime soon. Considering what was going to happen in the future, Sini could already see some of the people within the eatery had made the decision to talk to Lucille about their problems, the Moonjumper was going to need someone to help her who knew Seahorse Port, and Sini knew she was the best bird for the job. She’d be able to explain the many races of Seahorse Port and how they were allied, without anyone knowing about it because she was simply guiding the new arrivals around the city.
It was good to have something to take her mind off her family. Sini didn’t like to think about her father, or the Motharan side of her heritage, but she knew they’d had a huge effect on her. Hearing stories about them and what they’d done made her grateful that she’d been brought up by her mother. Occasionally she wished she was more parrot when it came to her magical abilities. At the same time she appreciated her ability to divine, no matter what its drawbacks were, and for that she had to thank her quetzel father, even if her other abilities were slightly more terrifying.
“Enough about me for now,” Sini said, after a few beakfuls of her rice and vegetables. “We need to work out a plan of attack if we are going to begin searching for the counterfeiters.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until we’ve talked to the raccoons?” Peric asked.
“They won’t be able to tell you a lot.” Sini sighed. “Even though they’ve been working on this problem for a long time Seahorse Port is an easy place for people to hide what they’re doing. It’s large, there are a lot of people here, and probably one of the best places for criminals to hide.”
“So what good are we going to do?” Peric sounded disappointed. “If the inhabitants of this city can’t find anything then we have no chance.”
“I disagree.” Sini ate another beakful of food as she thought of how she wanted to word what she was about to say next. “You don’t know Seahorse Port, so she don’t have any expectations. Everyone here has as much of a chance of being the counterfeiters as they do of being innocent, because you don’t know anyone or who they have a connection with. I will be easier for you to see things that we have missed because of the expectations we do have.”
Lucille nodded. “She makes sense. I think that’s why the majority of the races would actually like for the Moonjumpers to get involved in problems on their world, rather than staying detached. From what I’ve seen Moonjumpers who connect with worlds aren’t from any of the races who actually inhabit it, giving us a position where we could help people, but we have to be so careful circumventing the first rule.”
“Have you ever thought of getting rid of the Council?” Sini asked.
***
“Lots of people have.” Lucille knew no one on Quiar would tell the Council what she was saying about them, but that didn’t make it easy to say what she thought of the people who had taught her what she needed to know in order to become a Walker. “Sometimes I think we’d be better off without the Council. Then Moonjumpers could be what they’re needed to be, rather than what the fae thought they should be. Hopefully it would bring an end to the animosity between Council Moonjumpers and natural Moonjumpers. Unfortunately the Council do a lot behind the scenes that no one sees and I think that what we actually need to do is work to make the Council understand what we need to be doing, so they, hopefully, choose to change the rules.”
“Is that likely?”
“Right now, I doubt that it’s possible. The Council truly believe that Moonjumpers are better off if they keep detached from the races of the worlds they travel to. Originally the fae wanted to use the natural Moonjumpers to write the histories of the worlds from an outside viewpoint. It was easy for the majority of them to keep themselves detached, although they were some fae who couldn’t, and that meant they believed it would be the same for the Moonjumpers. What they found out was that Moonjumpers connect with worlds, with people, so in the end they told the worlds that the natural Moonjumpers were demons and that only their Moonjumpers should be permitted to travel the worlds. Due to the tattoos, that can easily be removed, we have very little choice whether we follow the rules or not, and we don’t have the natural ability to travel from world to world.”
“I didn’t realise that.”
“Unless you know a Council Moonjumper it’s not something that an outsider would ever be told about. I wasn’t told until after I’d received my first tattoo.” Lucille could still remember when she was told and how she hadn’t believed it would be a problem because she didn’t really understood then what being a Walker was like. “The magic was created specifically so the tattoos could basically be chanted away if a Moonjumper does something against the Council’s rules.”
***
“It is magic through,” Sini said, thinking through what Lucille had just told them. “All magic evolves.”
Lucille nodded. “There is every possibility that the magic used to create the tattoos has evolved too. I’ve known a couple of rule breakers and they haven’t returned to Athare, but that could be because they’re avoiding the Council.”
“Which rules did they break?”
Smiling, Lucille shook her head. “One of them… well, he fell for a natural Moonjumper and told the Council where they could stick their rules. The other was selling copies of books from the private libraries in the Council buildings, believing that everyone had the right to know what we did. We were all friends, actually, and I’ve visited them both on their home worlds since they had their tattoos removed. Neither of them mentioned still being able to travel, but they wouldn’t.”
“Don’t they trust you?”
“They trust me. I know that for certain. As ex-Moonjumpers they know that the less I know the better it is for me. When you connect with a world lying to the Council is putting the best interests of that world first. It’s the right thing to do. Lying to the Council about ex-Moonjumpers who can still travel between the worlds would put my position in danger and neither of them would do that to me.”
“You are very strange people,” Peric said, sounding amused. “From what I can tell Council Moonjumpers only follow rules when they know the Council might find out about their rule breaking and pretty much believe that the worlds of the Web come first at all times.”
“That’s pretty much it, but there are Council Moonjumpers who follow all the rules. I thought I was going to be one of them, up until I passed my final test and started getting to know my mentor. He taught me that there are rules that need to be followed, rules that should be ignored, and rules that you need to act like you’re following when you’re really ignoring them. The first rule is one of the third type.”
Sini looked at Lucille. It was easy to have preconceptions based on what the majority of the races believed Council Moonjumpers would be like and Lucille was almost the total opposite of almost all of those preconceptions. The chimera was beginning to like Lucille much more than she’d expected to, which was nice, so Sini knew that helping the three of them was the right thing to do for both Seahorse Port and Quiar. Glancing out of the window she took some coins out of the purse she kept around her waist.
“Dinner’s on me tonight,” she said, as she put the cost of everything plus a nice tip for the waitress on the table. “We need to head off if we’re going to get to the guard house in time to meet the raccoons before their shift.”
“Really?” Lucille picked up another roll as she looked out of the window. “Wow, time really has got away from us today.”
“That’s what happens when you start talking about interesting things,” Peric replied, also picking up another roll. “Today I have learnt about Mothar, quetzels, Moonjumpers, and Atharian tattoo magic.” He smiled. “I think that’s makes today a good day, even though I didn’t plan on getting stuck in Seahorse Port.”
“Once we’ve met up with the raccoons,” Sini said, glancing at Lucille, “I think it might be a good time to meet with the charm makers, if you are interested.”
***
“I am.” Lucille bit into her roll as they made their way through the eatery, trying to ignore all the eyes on them. “Even though I won’t be able to take any of them back to Athare with me I’d like to have some charms to help with what we are going to be doing.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. If you want to keep charms here Bertram and I will look after them until you return to Quiar,” Peric said, surprising Lucille.
“Thank you. That’s really sweet of you.”
“If you really are serious about Quiar being one of the worlds you’ve connected to,” Bertram replied, “then we want to help you be our Council Moonjumper.”
“I am serious, Bertram. There is no way I would have got involved with helping you with the counterfeiters if I wasn’t connected with Quiar. Being able to stop them from affecting the rest of the Web is just an added bonus, and it means that a couple of the other worlds I’m connected to won’t have to deal with this problem.” Lucille sighed. “They have other problems instead.”
As they made their way back towards the guard house, a group of four instead of three, Sini flying above them and Peric gliding along next to them, Lucille felt the happiest she’d ever been. “What other worlds are you connected to?” Sini asked, her voice sounding different from the air.
“Beshaki and Kniroch.” Lucille bit her lip, wondering what she should tell them and what she shouldn’t, before deciding she trusted them. “I was actually born on Kniroch, but my parents decided to move to Athare when I was about four. Until I went back there, after I’d completed all of my Walker tests, I didn’t know that, or that I’d once them about visiting Oracle. I haven’t tried one of the doors yet, but I’m almost certain that seeing them means I should be able to travel to at least one of the sibling worlds of Oracle.”
“Would the Council have let you become a Walker of they knew about that?” Peric asked.
“I doubt it very much, but I didn’t know so it wasn’t something I could have told them about.” Lucille smiled. “Knowing that I might in part be a natural Moonjumpers has made me view things in a very different way, as well as my mentor, and I’d be a very different person if neither of those things had been a part of my life.”
“I can’t help being glad that they were a part of your life.” Peric reached out and gently touched Lucille’s hand with a paw. “You’re the right Moonjumper for Quiar because of both those things and I appreciate the help you have already given us.”
Lucille felt embarrassment heat her cheeks. “You’re very sweet, Peric.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.