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k_a_webb“Temporary is fine,” Sal said, smiling at Lucille. He couldn’t quite believe he’d been lucky enough to meet the Moonjumper, let alone have a conversation with her, and to have her offering to help him in such a way… it was unexpected, even though he’d heard about how wonderful she was from others. “I never thought I’d be able to travel the worlds, so to be able to travel somewhere for any amount of time is wonderful.”
“Why is that door so important?” Sini asked.
“It’s not on any maps,” Lucille replied. “Every time a new door appears we make sure it gets documented, for the safety of anyone who might accidentally step through it and any Moonjumpers who don’t know it exists. There’s always a chance that the Council may find out that the tattoos do more than the fae expected them to if a Council Moonjumper walks through one of those doors.”
“Do you think they would?”
Lucille bit her lip. “I honestly don’t know. Some of the worlds are less careful than others. Quiar, generally, doesn’t let anyone through who might endanger the people of this world, but they can always made mistakes. That’s how the slavers got through.” She shrugged. “Anything is possible.”
“That’s the reason Taithmarin took control of the only door on it, which was something we never thought could happen when we were making the Web.” It took Sal a moment to realise that Meriwether had said we in relation to the creation of the Web, which was confusing. “All the other doors are controlled by two worlds and sometimes they don’t agree.”
Sal had questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. His sisters came back with stories about the other races of the Web, which was one thing, but it sounded like Meriwether was talking about past lives. Knowing the way the Web worked it wasn’t entirely a surprise and yet… Sal looked at the deer, trying to see him as one of the fae. It wasn’t easy, especially as Sal didn’t know much about the fae, other than what he’d learnt when he was studying with one of the missionaries of Mothar. He’d decided, in the end, that the religions of Mothar weren’t for him, but he’d appreciated the time the llama had spent with him. Learning about the fae from a religious point of view was very different to learning about them from a Moonjumpers point of view or being one.
“All of the worlds act like a family and that is how they view themselves,” Lucille explained, as Sal realised he’d joined them during a quiet period when they allowed themselves to learn from each other and he really appreciated them letting him join. “Athare is their mother, the fae their father, and the worlds all argue the same way siblings often do.” She smiled. “They do mature at different rates, so some of the older worlds are not necessarily the more mature worlds.”
“Taithmarin realised very quickly what was expected of him by the fae and made the choice to walk away from that, although he does help the other worlds when they need it.” Meriwether rubbed his antler. “He wanted to be able to make his own choices based on the knowledge he had, which he got by listening to the group we sent to make sure things were working correctly, from Athare, and from some of the other worlds. If I was in his place I think I would have done the same thing.”
“Every one of the worlds wants to make their own choices, which is why the natural doors exist.” Lucille ran a hand through her hair. “There’s a chance that’s why the shyders evolved. If you think of them as magical spiders who create webs the same way the fae did, so that we can travel the worlds in a more sensible fashion, there’s a chance that as well as the original webs there are others that link the worlds in different ways, created by the shyders out of magic. Doors could appear, disappear, and change because the shyders have lost a link or moved on…”
Meriwether nodded. “Although that doesn’t explain why the doors go to different places depending on the phase of the moon, the weather, or the other strange reasons they seem to change.”
“No, it doesn’t, but it’s a start.” Lucille sighed. “I’ve always wanted to be lucky enough to meet one of the shyders, but that’s even more unlikely that being able to meet someone like Emrys. They’re shy and as far as I know even the people who’ve been gifted magic by them haven’t had more than a glimpse.”
The longer Sal listened to them the easier it was to come to the conclusion that the Web was a much stranger place than he realised. He looked between the Moonjumper, Lucille, and the possible reincarnated fae deer, Meriwether, wishing he had the courage to ask the questions he wanted to. When they both looked at him, neither seeming angry, he guessed they must have felt him looking at them. Like all the guards there were times when he’d felt the same thing, but it was different when he was the one staring.
“Sorry,” he said, shrugging.
“Don’t apologise,” Meriwether and Lucille said at the same time, before laughing, and it was Meriwether who continued, “Questions are normal, Salvadore. Everyone sitting at this table is welcome to ask them, even if they’ve already been asked before, because we’re allowing ourselves this time before the situation gets much worse.”
“There’s every chance,” Lucille said, sounding sad, “that we won’t be able to do something like this for a long time and it’s important to me that I learn about Quiar, as well as having a chance to teach you all about the Web. Pass along everything you learn, because I’ve come to the understanding that the worlds of the Web aren’t something you know much about.”
“If it wasn’t for my sisters I wouldn’t know anything about the Web. It wasn’t a subject that was ever taught in school, instead we learnt about the geography and history of Quiar, about the races of our world and how their magic works, and the basics of maths and language.” Sal sighed. “I always wanted to learn about the Web, but my sisters spend more of their time travelling than they do home and there arent many people here to learn from.”
“That’s going to change,” Meriwether said. “Lucille will help us, by writing down what she knows about the Web and bringing copies of Leolin’s journal here, for us to learn from.” He glanced out of the window for a moment before looking back at Sal. “It’s also time I started to teach people what I know, rather than pretending I’m not who I am, because it’s time I started doing something more for the world I love so much.”
“You really were once fae.”
“I was, a long time ago. Since then I’ve travelled the Web and learnt more about the worlds than I would ever have been able to if I’d chosen to stay in one of the settlements.” Meriwether’s eyes met Sal’s. “We made some bad choices when we first travelled to Athare, because we were scared of what might happen in the future, but creating the Web wasn’t one of them. That’s something I’ve learnt from people who lived on an Athare where we chose not to make the Web, as we ended up destroying the world and ourselves at the same time.” He shook his head. “Emrys was the first to connect with one of the worlds, when he dreamed of Athare and what he’d need to do to allow us both to survive, and he had a notebook he carried around with him that I believe, now, must have had all his notes in, from dreams when he was told what hadn’t worked.”
“Emrys? The creator of our world? You knew him?”
“Yes, I did. I knew Emrys, Riordan, Tegan, all the other fae who were a part of creating the Web and the worlds…” Meriwether sighed. “Now I have no idea where they all are, but I hope they’ll be doing the same thing I am, if they can. Teaching the races we created about the Web, because the fae decided they were going to hide themselves away, and the Moonjumpers were never meant to be teachers. It should have been our job. The Council, after we’d completed the work, should have pushed for us to be involved more, even if the rest of the fae didn’t want to be, but every little compromise we got made it harder to get the next one, and we didn’t know how the fae would react to certain things.” He shook his head. “By that time we really had stopped thinking of ourselves as fae, because we weren’t like them, even though we were fae and we’d been brought up to be just like everyone else.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
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Date: 2013-10-08 04:03 am (UTC)Tense and number agreement problems here; I suggest ...
"Quiar, generally, doesn’t let anyone through who might endanger the people of this world, but it's always possible to make mistakes."
>> from a Moonjumpers point of view <<
That should say "Moonjumper's" above.
I love the discussion about webbing the worlds together.