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k_a_webb“Life clay, maybe.”
Meriwether’s eyes met with Lucille’s and he nodded. “That does make sense.” He rubbed his antler. “We’d been using that clay since we first arrived, which we wouldn’t have done if the pots we made from it in the beginning started walking around. If Athare really did know about our arrival then she would have been able to start the evolution process before we arrived, which would explain why it happened so quickly. Maybe, now that there aren’t so many fae, it will lose its magic.”
“I doubt it will, as I get the feeling that it isn’t just the fae who transform magic when they use it.” Lucille bit her lip. “When you created the races you didn’t know what you were doing, so it would have been pure luck if you managed to do what you aimed to, and we both know that.”
“What was the aim?” Sal asked.
“There’s a race on another world who, for reasons I’m not certain of, can transform magic used by the fae into magic that can be used by the world to refill their core. We wanted to create a race like that, even though we didn’t know if it was possible, because that way we would have to worry about is destroying Athare, and I still don’t know if we managed it. I think we must have done. If all we’d done was create races that were like us then the Web wouldn’t still been here, no matter what Athare and the other worlds did.”
Lucille nodded, agreeing with Meriwether on that point, but she couldn’t help thinking that the worlds themselves would survive. “Although part of that is probably thanks to the Weavers, because they actually seemed to know what they were doing when it came to the worlds.”
“Unfortunately the Weavers never were appreciated by the fae.” Meriwether smiled. “They hated them, in part because they were different and in part because they were something the fae couldn’t control. Of course things would have been very different if the fae could have brought themselves to embrace the Weavers, but it never happened, which is something I’m always going to be grateful for. I can’t imagine what the Web would have been like if it was ruled over by the fae and the Weavers working together.”
“Would that really have happened?”
“Maybe.” Meriwether rubbed his antler again. “I think it’s possible. Athare didn’t want the Weavers to hate the fae, but the fae, unfortunately, didn’t behave particularly well when they first met the Weavers. The elders were… unhappy, although that doesn’t really describe the mix of emotions they showed when the first of the Weavers walked into the room to be introduced. It wasn’t something we were planning on doing before the Weavers, but once we realised how important they were we had no real option, and it went very wrong when the Blue elder told the Weavers they couldn’t possibly understand the difficulties our race had lived through, so had no right to have the opinion they did – that creating the Web the way they thought we should would be a massive mistake.
“Of course we couldn’t let on to them that Athare was sentient and we had to come up with an explanation that made sense. Most of them made sense, but didn’t quite work, as the Weavers knew so much more than they should. However one of the things the Yellows experimented with before it was made illegal for us to experiment with creation magic was using fae souls within bodies. The fae didn’t know this and so we said that we’d gathered the souls of the lost to use within the Weavers, which went down badly, although it was the only logical explanation we could come up for why they knew so much about what had happened to us and what our plans were. Fortunately one of the souls we could have used was a Blue and that’s what we said the Weaver elder was, as we thought it was important for the soul we chose to know as much as possible about our plans.
“Even though the elders did, eventually, accept that we’d used fae souls to create the majority of the Weavers none of the fae were never comfortable around any of the Weavers. I guess, in one way, that’s fortunate, because I’m not certain what would have happened if any of the families had chosen to speak with one of the Weavers.” Meriwether shrugged. “Knowing the Weavers they would’ve played along, although…” He looked at Lucille and she could see the same worries within his eyes that she had about them. “We all trusted Eithne, and we all came to trust the Weavers, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t know they were keeping secrets. The Weavers always have kept secrets from everyone else. It’s part of who they are, although they did seem a lot more open with Eithne than they were with anyone else. Eithne, in turn, probably told Aidan everything, as she trusted him more than she trusted anyone else.
“I’m not certain that the Weavers were pleased about that. Trusting the person who had helped to create their bodies was one thing. Trusting that person’s brother…”
“Aidan and Eithne were siblings?” Lucille shook her head. “I never got that from their journals, although they did seem very close.”
“They were only close because of what happened – if we hadn’t destroyed Kalinia I think they would have spent their entire lives as enemies.” Meriwether sighed. “One of the main issues we always had was family. It wasn’t unusual for siblings to hate each other, thanks to their father or mother, because one of them hated the other after the handfasting had come to an end. Falling in love with someone from the wrong family was frowned upon, as everything was about alliances, but that didn’t stop it from happening, and occasionally those couples would walk away from the Thirteen Families. The other thing that sometimes happened was someone falling in love with a fae from one of the other groups and that was worse in some ways.
“One of the ones I know of is Sabia, who left behind her entire life to marry the Crown Prince of another group. She became his Queen, but that wasn’t why she did it – she left because she was in love with him. It didn’t matter to her what he was, although I’m certain it must have been hard for her to become royalty like that, and I heard that he sent her away before things could get really bad on Kalinia. He knew she was in danger, due to her magic, and he was as well, but he didn’t leave soon enough. Fortunately he had the sense to send a messenger to Sabia to let her know what had happened, although I have no idea when she was. There were thousands of doors that led to other worlds.”
“Thousands?” Durai’s question was one that Lucille was about to ask as well, because the thought of there being that many… she shook her head. It explained how the fae had managed to destroy their world, at least, as she knew that a open door would continuously use magic. “How can you have made that many doors?”
“First you have to remember that no one ever seemed to close them, even though they were reminded to, and that meant there were doors around that had been opened during the first few years of our lives on Kalinia. Then, of course, every door led somewhere different, although they might well lead to the same world. On some worlds it was impossible to leave the continent that you found yourself on, so it was much easier to make your way back to Kalinia and open a new door. As no one ever closed them that could mean that we had ten doors leading the same place. You also have to remember that we were able to open doors under the sea and in the air as well.”
“How could you do that?”
“In the early years there were fae who could fly and swim underwater, as well as create doors, but those are magics that faded away, because we didn’t need them. Very few people knew why we would have done in the first place, although they didn’t know that we’d already left a couple of worlds behind. Once you find that out it makes much more sense that we would have had abilities that we had no need of once we found ourselves on Kalinia. Apparently on the world we lived on before Kalinia some fae did need to fly and swim underwater. I just wish I knew more about it.”
“Maybe I can ask Quiar.” Lucille smiled. “If there were doors that led from there it’s also possible that one of the doors here might connect to it…”
“So some might unexpectedly find themselves on that world.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.