k_a_webb | The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 63rd continuation)

“You’re still having trouble with that?” Meriwether shook his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised, not after what the way the fae damaged the relationship the Council was beginning to build with the races of the Web, but I really wish things had changed.”

Lucille sighed. “There are still a lot of people who view us as interlopers, because we weren’t born with the ability to walk the worlds. On some worlds I’ll walk into a village and no one will talk to me, as they ‘know’ that I’m nothing more than a created Moonjumper which, to them, means I shouldn’t exist. What people don’t seem to realise is that there are a lot of natural Moonjumpers who save up for years so they can purchase a tattoo, because it’s safer for them that way, so by discriminating against any with a tattoo they may well be looking down on the very people they think should be permitted to use the doors freely.”

“Honestly, Lucy, I’m surprised how well you’ve been accepted here, but then I didn’t realise before how different you were to almost all of the Council Moonjumpers I’ve met before. In general the people chosen by the Council, even if they are true Moonjumpers, seemed to have been trained not to care about the races who live on their worlds. All they do is watch. They don’t have any interest in getting involved the way you did and I am so glad that you have, because without you I don’t think we’d be getting anywhere with the investigation.”

“Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t. People have been hurt because I got involved.”

“People were getting hurt before you got involved, but by helping you have made things easier for a lot of the market traders and their families. We would never have thought of putting together a fund to make it simpler for someone to switch from selling charms, because most of them couldn’t afford to buy from someone like Kaito, and with that little bit of money they’ve been able to keep their stalls open, so they don’t have to worry about not being able to buy food or keep a roof over their heads.” Meriwether shrugged. “That wasn’t the sort of thing we needed to do when we were first creating the worlds, because there wasn’t really any currency then. Everyone was living off what they could find or grow, in houses that we had made for them, and by the time some of the races started creating their own systems of sharing what they had with each other our hands were already tied.”

“What was it like when you first stepped onto Athare?”

“Empty. The first day was spent setting up tents, because that was all we could do without our magic and Mab hadn’t yet given us permission to use it, and then the second day we went out foraging, hoping that we’d find something edible before our supplies ran out. Emrys’ group came back with the most, as they were lucky enough to have him with them, so all spent some time with him learning what we could eat. It never crossed our minds to ask how he knew. We were just grateful to have someone who could tell us what was safe to eat and what wasn’t.” Meriwether smiled. “I remember, on the third day, I was lucky enough to be with him, and when everyone was busy he took me off to a clearing I didn’t know existed to tell me about the plants I’d find there. He wanted me to remember it, because there would come a time when illness would strike and we would need them, but he wouldn’t be around.

“Back then I thought he was a seer, even though that would have been very unusual for someone with his bloodline, but I didn’t know anywhere near as much about him as I came to in the future. To be honest I just thought he was begin nice to me because he’d seen how hard it had been for me to leave Kalinia behind. If it hadn’t been for one of my sisters grabbing hold of my hand and literally dragging me I would have stayed there, so I could have died with my grandmother. She was the only one of my family I actually really loved, and she seemed to love me back, but she died early on, because she was both old and strong. No one else seemed to care when I spent three days crying in my room, because I missed her so much, and I just got told to grow up. We were in a time of crisis and we were going to lose people.

“That was three years before the elders admitted there might be a problem, four years before Willow’s people left Kalinia for good, and six before we finally travelled to Athare. Maybe I did need to grow up, but I was ten. Even now I think I should have been permitted to grieve for the people I lost, because I stopped after that, forced myself to stop caring, and that was a mistake. Fortunately Emrys took sixteen-year-old me under his wing. If he hadn’t I never would have learnt to care again, but I never felt close to him. He didn’t talk about who he’d lost or what his plans were if we were permitted to create worlds. Instead he taught me things he thought I should know about the world we had found ourselves on, about the magics I had inherited thanks to my really unusual bloodline, and asked me what my plans were if I was a part of creating the worlds.

“Occasionally I wished he would open up to me, but I understood why he didn’t. He was the only one left. None of his family had survived and he was ill, even though he didn’t seem it. He managed to spend ten days foraging, seven of which he made sure he was with me, before we woke up one morning to find him unresponsive in his bed and after that he spent six moons with the healers as they tried to save him. I visited him every day, before I went out foraging, and told him how much I wanted him to wake up, because he had cared enough to talk to me. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt like I was close to him after just seven days of getting to know him, but I did, and it was during that six moons that we needed the herbs that he’d showed me.

“First one illness swept through our midst, one that seemed to be nothing more than a cold to begin with but soon became much worse. In the end we gave it called it Fire Flu and I know it’s something that still affects the races of Athare occasionally. You know how to cure it thanks to the experimentation we were forced to do when we were first affected by it, because all I could do was give the herbs I gathered to our healers so they could try to find something that worked. All of the herbs we knew were lost to us and what little we had managed to bring didn’t do any good. We lost more fae to that, which was to be expected, especially as we were all still affected by what had happened to us on Kalinia.

“A second hit when we were still dealing with the Fire Flu. Some people ended up with both and every day lost someone to either the Fire Flu or the unnamed illness that later became Golden Pox, mostly because of the golden spots anyone who had it ended up with. To be honest they were more yellow than gold but naming illnesses is something I wish I’d never had to do. Unfortunately even after Emrys was well we were still affected by illnesses we’d never seen before, because we were on a new world, and there were some that still ended up killing us.”

“Hearing about them makes me wonder why the fae would chose to shut themselves away in warded settlements.” Lucille bit her lip. “I’ve had Fire Flu on three occasions and it isn’t something I would wish on anyone, which is why I made certain that I didn’t go to classes on those days. Carter insisted, once, on sitting with me until I was better and I was certain he was going to come down with it too, but he never did. Now I wonder if he had a natural immunity because he was born on Quiar.” She shrugged. “Surely it would be easier for it to pass from one person to another in the settlements, especially as it takes a couple of days for the symptoms to become obvious, and I don’t know how many healers are left now. I remember hearing from one of the fae who chose to leave that it seemed like the ability to heal was fading from her race.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 63rd continuation)

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