“My name is Leif, not Olive.” The grumpy bastard at the academy tells us when we rock up and look like two idiots asking around for someone who is right in front of us. Too bad that Soren told us duff information. This is not a good start to our meeting with someone that might have information about Wren.
“Oh right, sorry, we were kinda expecting a woman called Olive. Guess the message must have come through garbled or something,” Echo replies brightly and I can see the guy’s asshole façade wavering slightly. That’s what my girl does. She disarms you with a single smile.
“I didn’t know that weavers could be male,” I say.
Echo shrugs. “We’re mostly female. I guess because the original three sisters were women? But fate, karma, and destiny aren’t the only types of weaver. You also get dream weavers and time weavers, but they’re super duper rare.”
I stare at the guy like I’m trying to see inside his soul and he just raises an eyebrow.
“Dream weaver?” I guess, and he shakes his head slowly, not smiling.
“Close, but no cigar. I’m a fate weaver, like Wren. We met while I was a tutor at the academy and she was a student. We spent time together out of class, and I guess we knew each other pretty well.”
“We’re trying to work out whether this is something she’s chosen, if she just said fuck it, I’m outta here, or if maybe she might be in trouble somewhere,” Echo explains softly.
Leif runs his fingers through his hair, staring into the coffee mug in front of him. “I remember even then she had a forked path in front of her, fraught with danger. One wrong decision and she’d slip off the path entirely.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, confused, since this guy kinda sounds like a dodgy horoscope.
“I think he means Wren might be in danger, but I’m guessing you don’t know where she is?” Echo says.
“I’m afraid not. And it’s not like I could tell her about her possible fate, either.”
“Why couldn’t you warn her if you were friends, and she was in danger? Do something about it?” I ask.
He laughs, but it’s a mirthless and dry thing, practically cutting me in half with its sharp edges.
“You think that fate is a weapon we can wield or something we can control?”
I frown at him and then at Echo cluelessly. “I thought that was the point? You’re weavers. You control the fates or destiny or whatever.”
He huffs another laugh. “We control them as much as a ship controls the ocean. There are many strings of the divine, many routes that life can take, decisions that can be made. We are just more attuned to them than others. Sometimes, yes, we might help them on their way, but we do not create the threads, we do not have any proper control. Fate is a force, like gravity.”
My frown just deepens even further. “But… you could, right? You can see the threads and whatnot so you could, maybe, tug them if you wanted?”
This time it’s Echo that answers me. “We’re not puppeteers manipulating things behind the scenes. If we try to pull one string, often the whole curtain can end up falling down.” She looks kind of sad about the whole thing, and I wonder if she’s got any experience of trying to change things and fucking it all up instead.
“Didn’t Wren ever explain any of this to you?” Leif asks.
“We didn’t exactly get into it. We just trusted her and Camellia to get on with their thing while we do ours.”
“Your karma weaver is Camellia?” Leif asks, his head perking up with interest.
“Yeah, do you know her?”
He gives a brief nod, the sudden display of emotion fading from his face and being replaced with a cool mask again. “Used to. We knew each other at the academy as students.”
Huh, that must mean that Camellia is a lot older than I thought since I get the impression that Leif must be a good few years older than both Wren and Echo if he was a tutor back when Wren was a student.
“Okay, so let me try to explain this as simply as I can,” Leif says, his tone dry, making it clear that this is all a colossal waste of time for him and he’d rather be doing anything else right now. “You guys work on afterlives, right? Soul reaping and afterlife destinations? So, Wren will see all the threads from all the decisions that a soul has ever made, all the paths taken, the forks selected. And I guess she and Cam will work together, weaving the threads of fate and karma together until they can see where all these choices, all the twists of fate, have led them.”
When I continue to look at him stupidly, he continues, “If your life has been nothing but bad choices in a sea of opportunities to do something different, you’ll probably have threads that lead you to an afterlife that’s… not so great. But maybe you made those same choices, but it wasn’t like you were given any alternative. Your hands were bound by the challenges thrown your way. Then your thread might lead to getting recycled, sent back into the system in another world to try again.”
I stare at him. I know I’m a reaper’s hound but I’m just the muscle. This whole metaphysical shit always has my head spinning. Glancing over at Echo, she pats my arm placatingly.
“So what you’re saying is that you saw some of the maybe danger that Wren might have faced in the future, but you still didn’t warn her? Not even a vague ‘stay away from mulberry bushes’ or something?”
He sighs, and it’s a heavy, world-weary sound. “I’ve just explained to you I couldn’t. I don’t control fate. If I tried to explain to her the things that I’d seen in her future, I’d probably wind up doing serious damage and she would have found herself in danger, regardless.”
