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k_a_webb“Is pretty much suicidal.” Lucille sighed. “I know we’re trained, Kai, and that we prepare as best we can for all this, but…” She shook her head. “There are days when none of the preparation I’ve done helps, I don’t think there’s anything I could have done in order to ready myself for what’s coming, and all I want to do is curl up in a ball somewhere so I don’t have to deal with it all any more.”
Kaito nodded. “Tell me about it.” He stood and made his way over to her, as she tried to see him as his old self once more, but it had become too normal to see him in his fox form. “I never once thought I’d end up calling Quiar home, no matter what Carver said, but here I am.” He smiled. “Lucy, because you’re tied to the Council your life isn’t your own and I wish that things could be different for you, even though I know, of all of us, you were always the one most likely to be able to stay with them. Being friends with us didn’t change anything and I’m glad, but I can’t help wishing that you had a way out. Until I came here, and found out what true freedom was, I had no idea what I was missing. At least I didn’t start studying as early as you did, because I had a little freedom before I became a Moonjumper – although it was a different kind of freedom.”
“Sometimes I wish I had a way out too.” Lucille bit her lip. “There are times when I think about the choices I made then and wonder if I would make the same choice if knew then what I know now, because I had no idea what it meant to be a Moonjumper. All I really knew was that I wanted to travel the worlds, I wanted to help people, and the best way to combine them was to become a Moonjumper, even though it meant a lot of hard work. Maybe I still would have, as I have met some wonderful people in the short time I’ve been travelling the worlds, but life would be so much easier if I’d made a different decision.
“Mother tried to talk me out of it and I thought she was going to all that effort because she didn’t want me to end up in the same position that she was in – tied to a debt she might never be able to pay off, due to the choices she made after she spent ten years studying the worlds and two moons travelling them, but I never understood why she had walked away. Now, as I know Grandmother is a true Moonjumper, it seems likely that Mother was as well, so she knew what might happen… and she couldn’t warn me in case I went to the Council to turn her in for being different. Back then I might even have done exactly what she feared I’d do.”
“We all believed in the Council, until the time came when we realised that really it was the fae in control.” Kaito shrugged. “You’ve been talking to Kester, recently, haven’t you?” Lucille nodded. “It wasn’t long before I was arrested that he came to talk to me, to tell me about the shadow Council, and it was something I didn’t believe in for a long time, but I can’t help thinking he let you continue working on the case because he thought we might run into each other. You being here makes me wonder how much he does actually know, how many spies he has, and whether I was wrong to mistrust him back then, as he might have been able to help me.”
As Lucille studied Kaito she thought about what he might have gone through when he left the Council behind and how hard it must have been for him to travel the worlds alone. She couldn’t imagine it herself, but then she knew things were different for her. Being a true Moonjumper, chosen by three of the worlds of the Web, everything would be simpler. The doors might even take her right where she wanted to be if she was lucky. For him it would have been a much longer journey, using the known doors to take him from world to world, hoping they hadn’t changed the way they did sometimes, with no idea of where he was going to end up.
“You think I should trust him?”
“I do.” Kaito smiled. “Azure’s been here a couple of times, you know, and Carver, and they both told me that I made a mistake when I turned down Kester’s help, because he’s one of the true leaders of the Council. Unlike some of them he is the right person in the right place at the right time.”
“Have you ever got this feeling there might be something Azure isn’t telling us?”
“Yes, but I always thought she’d tell us when she was ready. Now I can’t help wondering if she was waiting until we were ready, because she had something to tell us that we wouldn’t have accepted before, for whatever reason, and, having learnt about Merry’s past lives her being fae makes the most sense.”
“We thought she might be Mab.”
The long silence that followed was unsurprising and eventually Kaito nodded. “That does seem possible, but there are so many fae who did chose to stay out of the settlements that she might be someone we’d never have thought of. For her to be Mab… I can definitely understand why you would think that and it’s a question I might ask her next time I see her, although I have no idea when that will be. She has a habit of appearing here when I least expect her.”
“Do you think Carver knows?”
“Carver was always the person Azure trusted the most, so it’s likely he does already know, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something unusual about him too.” He laughed. “From what Merry said I can’t help wondering if there’s something unusual about the two of us, too, because of the positions we’ve found ourselves in. Apparently there are certain signs that make Merry think someone might be an old soul and he said he saw some of them in me, especially as I went to the effort of creating myself a charm that would make me look like I’d always been here. No one questioned whether I was born here – until Merry walked in the door. He seemed to see something that made him think I hadn’t been born on Quiar and then he started asking some questions I couldn’t answer.
“I was terrified that he was going to tell everyone what I was, but he didn’t. He just wanted to learn more about me, about where I’d come from, about the people I’d spent time with, and why I’d ended up on Quiar. Telling the story wasn’t easy, but once I had it was like this huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.”
“Would you tell me the story? Obviously I don’t mean right now, because I don’t really have time, and I’m sure it’s a very long story, but I do want to know what happened to you.” Lucille reached out and touched Kaito’s paw. “I didn’t find out what had happened until it was too late and I regret that now. If I could have done I would have helped you, even though we weren’t close then, because you didn’t deserve what happened to you. You were a good Moonjumper and I never believed the reason there was a warrant out for your arrest. Knowing that you couldn’t have done what they said you did was why I started looking into the arrest warrants from before, to understand why you might have been accused of something you hadn’t done, and I found out that some of your family had been arrested.”
“I’ll tell you the story in return for you telling me what you found out about my family.” Kaito sighed. “When I was on Athare I never stopped to think about what my family’s past might have been like and now I can’t do the research myself.” He scratched the back of his neck. “At least I can’t in this form or as myself. Maybe it’s time I started exploring the limitations of my magic again, to see if I can make myself look like you, for example, because if I can… the possibilities are endless. I’ll be able to send some of the people who really want to travel the Web to other worlds without them having to go through one of three doors, so they can visit one of the other charm makers. They, unfortunately, already know they can’t create forms from worlds that aren’t their own, but it might be different for me. Especially if I am an old soul.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.