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k_a_webb“What happened when you got to Athare?” Bertram asked. Lucille knew some of it, as she’d read the journals, but that was different to learning what had really happened from someone who had actually been there. “How did Mab react to all the changes?”
“She actually coped with them much better than the majority of the older fae did, as she was much younger, although she did find working with her new elders difficult. I don’t think it helped that they were so young, because Mab was used to working with elders who actually knew more that she did, while her new elders were more open to experimentation that the previous ones had been – in part due to their desperation to survive. Even though I know they thought otherwise it became more obvious the longer we were working on the Web.” Meriwether shrugged. “What they wanted us to do was not what we wanted to do, and, as I’ve said before, that did cause some real problems. I think it must have been the Blue elder, Riordan’s older sister, who suggest the warded settlements one she realised there really wasn’t anything she could do to stop us from making the Web.
“Riordan was worried from the beginning. He knew that there were more fae who wouldn’t be able to understand why they were doing something so intricate, when the elders were so certain that placing five worlds around Athare would work. There were fae who listened to us and chose to stay out of the settlements, but that was the minority, because the rest wanted to believe in their elders. It was as though they were desperate to have a group of elders who weren’t going to let them down. When the elders suggested the settlements as sanctuaries for the fae it was something the Thirteen Families jumped at. It meant they would be safe from the created races.
“You see the issue they had with the created races came from two places – the first was the Dragons, as they had been a mistake, and the second was the Weavers. The majority of the fae believed the Weavers could only be a mistake, which meant that we were listening to a race that might well be attempting to take over the Web, and nothing we said could convince them otherwise. It didn’t matter to the fae that the Weavers were helping us to create races who wanted to be a part of the Web, although they chose not to help certain of the creators because they had been taught by Athare. Of course that caused more issues.” He sighed. “Aubrie was another of Riordan’s siblings. He asked her to be a part of the creation of the Web, so he felt really guilty when she wouldn’t accept what Emrys was telling her. She created Raenarin, she placed the Witches there, and she was the reason that Emrys turned Gaelom into a group of worlds, one within the other. There were other creators who helped him with that, holding each of the layers in place with magic while he added the next one, until the onion world, as he called it, was complete. I was one of them, although I wasn’t a world creator. Oscar, my brother, called me in to help.”
Lucille looked at Meriwether. “You were Oscar’s brother?” Meriwether nodded. “I liked Oscar. He was sensible.”
“I’m glad.” Meriwether smiled. “Like a number of other creators I was involved in the small things and I couldn’t believe that I was lucky enough to help Emrys work on Gaelom. Emrys might have wanted to ask me himself, but Oscar got there first, not long after he went to have his first conversation with Emrys. That wasn’t long after Emrys had come out of a coma, because the magic of Athare affected his body, so we were all being a little more careful with him than he appreciated. I remember a conversation I had with him when we were working together on one of the cities of Gaelom and he told me he was fed up with being treated like he might fall apart at any time, which was one of the few times he actually talked about how he was feeling. Normally he kept stuff like that from the rest of the creators.
“Sibeal didn’t count though, because she was his baby sister, and he trusted her in a way that he never trusted the rest of us, although he didn’t tell her that he was going to leave Athare until after it happened. I visited her not long after Aubrie had stormed into her room, accusing her of knowing things she hadn’t been told, and she looked as though she couldn’t quite believe Emrys really had gone. When she went into his room, where he’d left the majority of his things, she broke down, which was horrible to witness but I looked after her as best I could. In the end she curled up on Emrys’ bed while I went to get the people I thought she needed – Bronwen, Riordan, Piaras, Bryn, and my brother. Once they were there I went to leave, because I didn’t think she’d want me there, but then she grabbed hold of my hand.
“As I’d been there when she was at her lowest point she wanted me to stay. We talked together about what our next steps were going to be, because keeping the Council together wasn’t going to be the easiest thing to do after his disappearance, but it was something we did all want to do. To us that was the most important thing, especially as we had the Moonjumpers to look after, and as it wasn’t long since we’d convinced the fae that we could use the Moonjumpers we needed to act together, although with Aubrie being her normal self that was going to be difficult. She thought we were keeping things from her, even though we weren’t.
“Eventually it was Riordan who convinced her that none of us had known about Emrys. I’m not certain that she truly believed us – I get the feeling the only reason she accepted what we were saying is because she realised how important the Council had become, but at least we were going to be okay. We would be able to keep going, keep working with the Moonjumpers, and take steps towards making the Web the place we wanted it to be rather than the place the fae wanted it to be. With Aubrie working with us it was easier, especially when Riordan asked her to do something I didn’t think he would have trusted her to do.”
Lucille studied Meriwether. “She became the first leader of the shadow Council.”
“Yes, she did, and she did a better job of it than I thought she could. Of course it did help that she fell in love with a Moonjumper, the same way Riordan did, so she wanted to do everything she could to protect him. If I’d been in the same position as her I would have done the same thing.” Meriwether smiled. “The longer Aubrie spent with her Moonjumper the harder it was for her to accept that she had made the right choices when we were creating the worlds, and she realised she should have believed Emrys when he told her what the Witches would become, but by then it was too late to change the decisions that she’d made. I haves seen her since she moved to Gaelom with her lover, although she is someone I would quite like to meet now, to see what she’s learnt from the lives she must have lived.
“I have no idea if it will ever happen though. I don’t know what choices she would have made when she was picking her lives, so there’s a chance she might be living on one of the lost worlds, one of the sibling worlds, or she might have chosen to spend all her time on Gaelom.” He rubbed his antler. “To be honest I think I’d like to see all of the creators again, to find out how they feel now about what we did, and see if they feel the same way I do. After everything we went through, everything they’d probably lived through since then, I don’t doubt that their perspectives will have changed, especially if they had lived on certain worlds. If any of them chose to spend time on Raenarin they probably would have realised why emrys pushed so hard for the Witches not to be one of the races of the Web, although once they were he did back down on a couple of the others he thought could be dangerous. Mairin was especially pleased about that as it meant she could ask the world creators if they’d let her put her race on one of their worlds. The idea was based on a book she’d read, but she wasn’t taking everything from it and that was what most of the creators couldn’t accept. Piaras didn’t bother to read the book – he trusted Mairin.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.