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k_a_webbSini shivered and she could tell that Meriwether had noticed from the way he looked at her. “A soul doesn’t often chose to split when it’s lived one or more lives, but sometimes the memories get too much for them.” He shrugged. “I can’t imagine doing something like that myself, although I can understand why some souls do, and normally the split parts will set a time for a meeting, usually after their first life as different people, so that they can decide whether they want to stay split or if they want to become one again.”
“How often do they become one again?” Lucille asked, sounding more fascinated than uncomfortable, but that wasn’t really a surprise. Whenever she got a chance to learn more about the Web it didn’t seem to matter how weird it was. “It seems like something most souls would chose not to do once they’d lived separate lives.”
“From what I’ve seen it’s about one in ten split souls that chose to become one again, even though they know it can be very hard to combine their new selves. Some fail and have to split again, which can go right or very wrong, while others actually appreciate being able to see things in differently.” Meriwether rubbed his antler. “Unless the soul decided to start again.”
“That’s when they drink a forgetfulness potion in order to wipe out all the memories they created.”
Nodding, Meriwether smiled at Lucille, and Sini could tell how much he appreciated being able to talk to someone who really wanted to learn from him. “Then it makes more sense for the souls to split, but drinking a forgetfulness potion… it’s final. Drink that and everything you’ve become is gone.” He sighed. “A couple of times I’ve known the soul who chose to drink the potion and I knew them, but they looked at me with new eyes. I’ve lost friends because of the potion, which makes me wish sometimes that no one ever discovered how to make it, even though there have been times when it really was needed.”
Lucille reached out and covered Meriwether’s hand with hers. “With everything in the Web there’s good and bad. Being able to travel the worlds is something I would never give up, but it does mean I have to deal with the Council.” She shrugged. “I never imagined that my life would change so much after I passed my final exam, because I didn’t know how much I hadn’t been taught, and every journey I make I seem to find out something more that wasn’t on the curriculum, even though it probably should be.”
“Unfortunately the fae have more control over the curriculum that’s taught to the Moonjumpers than they should. Riordan always knew that was probably going to be one of the things he would have to give up, in order to keep the Moonjumpers alive, and he prepared for that as best he could with the mentor scheme that follows the Moonjumpers’ completed schooling.”
“Do you have a mentor?” Sini asked Lucille.
“We started working together when I began my final class, on Raenarin, making decisions about what my plans are for when I graduated. She always wanted me to believe that I was going to pass the thirty-fourth exam and started getting me interested in learning about the things I hadn’t learnt in class. I know that the mentors are still chosen by the leader of the Council, which makes me think she might be a true Moonjumper, but I didn’t know for certain what she knew, so I was always careful about what I talked to her about.”
“I’m glad they kept the mentor scheme going,” Meriwether said. “During my fae lifetime I was lucky enough to mentor several Moonjumpers, but back then it was very different. Even though the fae weren’t happy that the Moonjumpers existed they accepted the advantages of having a group of people who could travel the worlds working for them. Now…” He shook his head. “When the fae decided the Moonjumpers were too dangerous to have about they knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of them, especially as they’d begun to reply upon them for information about the other worlds, and that’s when that started to work out how they could keep the system going.”
“That led to the tattoos,” Lucille continued. “It meant that the fae were in control of where their Moonjumpers could go, but that wasn’t enough, because they didn’t control when they could go. Not until they created the gargoyles.”
“Doing something like that could have gone very wrong.” Meriwether had a faraway look in his eyes. “The Yellow family were asked to create a race of shapeshifters that would start off being rock and turn into human form when they were needed, which is something none of them had been asked to do before, because by then it had been centuries since the worlds were created. Knowing what their ancestors had done meant the young family members were happy to experiment, but the elder Yellows tried to talk them out of it.”
“Once they were completed, and the creators believed they would do what was needed, they were placed on the doorways the fae had built. Every door had one.” Lucille shivered. “Now there’s a couple of fae created doors that we can’t use, because two of the gargoyles turned out to eat anyone who travels though them, while others are on the side of the natural Moonjumpers and let them through whenever they need to get somewhere. It turned out to be another mistake the fae had made, although a few of the gargoyles do actually make sure that only the right person can travel through the door at the right time.”
“Unfortunately the fae believed, and I think they probably still do even now, that magic can solve any problem. It can’t, obviously, but they never had a reason to find another way of doing things, the way they should have done when they first travelled to Athare. Now they’re trapped in an unending cycle of stupidity.” Meriwether shrugged. “There’s nothing that can be done about that.”
“Not all of the fae follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents. Some have realised that clinging onto the past is the wrong thing to do, so they leave the wards behind to start new lives with the races of Athare, even though they aren’t sure what sort of welcome they’ll get.” Lucille smiled. “I’m sure I mentioned them before, because I honestly believe they’re the future of the fae. The race that’s trapped behind those wards will never change, and we may always have to work around them, but the ones who leave it all behind to learn about the Web their ancestors created are going to become something more, something better, and eventually they’ll be someone we’ll be able to work with to make the Web the way we want it to be.”
“Knowing the future of the other Webs will never make it impossible for us to believe that we can make this one better.” Meriwether returned Lucille’s smile before turning it onto Sini. “During all of my lives, and deaths, my aim has always been to do something to better the Web, even if it’s just in a small way.”
“No matter how small it is it can help,” Lucille said. “There are some worlds that may never be what they might have become if someone had been there to guide the races who were placed there.”
“Like Raenarin.” Meriwether shook his head. “That was easily one of the stupidest things the fae did during the time they were creating the Web. Place three magical races on a world and leave them to it.”
Lucille nodded. “The Witches are now split into thirteen groups and do their best to destroy each other. The Witch Queen is on another world entirely, trying to work out how she’s going to take the world back, because she needs to be there in order to make sure the Covens don’t end up destroying Raenarin entirely. The Sorceresses are watching everything with a touch of bemusement, as though they’re wondering why they were so unlucky. The Sorcerers are doing their best to keep the world in balance, because they’re the only ones who can, even though I’m pretty sure that they’d be quite happy to let it fall apart if they didn’t know what it would do to the rest of the Web.”
“What would it do to the Web?” Sini asked.
“Somehow, and no one really knows quite how it happened, the fae managed to create something that works, but the Web is very sensitive. If one world was to lose a little magic due to an accident that is something that could easily be fixed. On Raenarin the Covens are balanced in such a way that the destruction of any of them would lead to the Web falling apart.” Lucille ran a hand through her hair. “There’s nothing we can do to stop it, in part because the Council don’t think it’s something we should be involved with, but there are a couple of natural Moonjumpers working with the Sorcerers to keep the Web intact.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
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Date: 2013-08-06 01:30 am (UTC)That should say "choose" above.
>> being able to see things in differently.” <<
That should say "see things differently" or "see things in different ways" or something like that.