The World Walkers: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 56th continuation)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

Part 9, 55th continuation

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Lucille fought to hide her shudder, but she could tell from the look Meriwether gave her that he felt exactly the same way she did. “I still can’t imagine what it must be like to do something so… final. That decision…” She shook her head. “Even though I don’t know about my past lives even losing the memories I have of this one is something I wouldn’t want to happen, so purposely removing every single one of your own memories, permanently, seems a step too far. Of course I do only know this life – maybe something I learn about my past lives will make me feel differently.”

“I hope not, Lucy. Every single life we live teaches us something and if we remove the memories of those lessons all we do is make ourselves have to go through it all again, because we are beginning with a blank canvas. Maybe we will make better choices than the ones we made in our previous life, but there is no guarantee of that, so instead of slowly becoming a better person that we were before we may well turn into someone our original selves would have hated.” Meriwether sighed. “The spirit races keep track of all those who chose to remove the memories of their previous lives and some of the people I once knew have started to follow a path they never would have taken if they hadn’t decided to let go of who they once were. It makes me sad to know that, even though I understand why they made the choice that they did. Personally it’s not something I would ever do – I may not always have been a good person but I am glad to have the memories of the lives I’ve led. Although it can be hard to be six years old and be going through school once more, when you already know how to write in seven different languages, speak eight, and are probably better at teaching the history of the world than the person who’s standing in front of you.”

“How come you can write more than you can speak?”

“One of those languages can only be written. There is no spoken form, because it’s a magical language, and if we have a chance I’ll teach it to you. You probably won’t be able to use it, unless you are lucky enough to find that you lived a life with that form of magic.”

“My magic will change?”

Meriwether nodded. “It will take time, but with every life that you remember you will be able to use the magic you had during that incarnation. Your abilities may not be as strong as they were before, however, and that is part of the reason that so few people remember their past lives. For most it is better that they only have the abilities they are born with, rather than those they may have had in another life, when they were another person.” He smiled. “I can still do fae magic, but I chose not to. I still have the magic of Janoch and, even in this form, I have a bond mate. Maybe one day I’ll introduce you to her. Right now I chose not to because we are all in danger from the counterfeiters and I refuse to drag her into this.”

“So, if I was to find out that I had once lived on Janoch I would have to find a bond mate…”

“Normally they come to you. There is a race on Janoch, a race who don’t have bond mates in the same way the other races do, that keep themselves hidden, because they are the mates of people who don’t have their past life memories yet. It’s strange the way it works, but their magic has evolved, and that makes it slightly less volatile that the magic those races were gifted by their creators.” Meriwether laughed. “Janoch was one of those worlds where the race creators were, once again, experimenting with the magic they could give their races, and one they really didn’t understand. Knowing the theory, knowing how it should work, is entirely different to the practice, especially when those races were dumped onto a world and left to their own devices, because that was always the plan. Again I say it – we should have set it up so that those who went during the first year stayed there to teach the races how to use their abilities, about their world, and about the race who created them, instead of just abandoning them to their fate.”

“Why didn’t you change things, once the fae had hidden themselves away, and send groups to help guide the newly created races?”

“At first it was because we couldn’t. Only the fae could travel through the doors and there wasn’t enough of us for that to work the way it would have done if we’d made the choice from the beginning. It’s something the majority still would have argued against, because they didn’t think it was safe for their people to live on the other worlds, partly due to what happened to the doors and partly through fear that what we’d done was never going to work, that the worlds were going to collapse after a couple of years… and I honestly believe that was what a lot of the fae were hoping for. When I look back at the choices we made during that time I wish we’d known then what we know now, so that we could have argued better that we needed to have groups of fae living on the created worlds, that we needed to have people travelling to them on a regular basis so certain events could have been stopped before they happened, but all we had was Emrys’ knowledge and he wouldn’t tell us where he got it all from. Of course I don’t think we would have believed him if he had of told us. Sentient worlds were things we didn’t even know existed.

“Then, when we could, the rest of the fae were so terrified of the Moonjumpers that they wanted rules put in place that meant they couldn’t possibly do the job we hoped they would. Instead of being guides for the races of the worlds they were to watch and record everything that was happening, without getting involved more than was necessary, but they couldn’t possibly have known then what choices the races were going to make. We had wars on Beshaki, because one race believed they were better than the others; the covens of Raenarin have been battling each other since the beginning and they assassinated their own Queen; Janoch isn’t a safe world; the people if Quiar were taken as slaves to other worlds… they are all things we might have been able to stop if the Moonjumpers had been permitted to do their jobs properly, because I am certain that is why they evolved.”

“Quiar was telling me earlier that there are some things that are meant to happen, so it’s entirely possible that we wouldn’t have been able to stop those things from happening, although I don’t think the assassination of the Witch Queen is one of them. That’s something that should never have happened, because the Witches need their Queen to keep them in line and without her… bad things are happening, things that the worlds are trying to put a stop to, but they aren’t sure they’ll be able to, and they’re worried that it might cause problems within the rest of the Web.”

“Raenarin has always been like that and, to be honest, I think it’s a world we should never have created, but Emrys said it was one that we had to place. He knew so much more about what we were doing than we did that we went along with everything that he told us, even though there were times when we weren’t certain he was making the right choice. I know we were all worried about Gaelom, because we knew he was doing something unusual with it, but we had no idea what it was.” Meriwether shrugged. “Now that I know he was doing as Athare asked him to… I’m still not certain that Gaelom was a good idea. However it’s a world that needed to be a part of the Web, as I have a feeling that, if the Witches were to bring an end to Raenarin, one of the Gaeloms would take its place. Athare and Emrys created it the way they did as a way of making certain that something she’d seen happen couldn’t possibly happen again, although I have no idea how the magic would work.”

“I’d never thought of that.” Lucille bit her lip. “It makes sense, especially with what I know about both Emrys and Athare, and it does seem the most logical way of doing things. However knowing how many Gaeloms there are I can’t help wondering what other worlds might be in danger.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>Although it can be hard to be six years old and be going through school once more, when you already know how to write in seven different languages, speak eight, and are probably better at teaching the history of the world than the person who’s standing in front of you.”<<

So very true! You really hit on a key feature of farmemory here.