“So Wren was a fate weaver, you say? What exactly does that mean she did here in your, uh, garden?”
“Wren and our karma weaver, Camellia, worked together to look at the strands of peoples’ lives to help determine which afterlife would be best suited to them,” he says.
“Huh, that sounds pretty neat.”
“It is a much coveted position amongst weavers,” Soren snaps.
“I’m sure it is,” I reply breezily. This guy is super intense. Plus a whole lot grouchy. “Seems a lot of responsibility.”
“It is,” he says.
“Cool beans, cool beans,” I reply, petting the ears of his massive dog. His tail thwacks into my leg enthusiastically and his tongue lolls out of his mouth.
At least someone here seems to like me.
I stare around the garden, which really is beautiful. It’s right at the base of a huge gray cliff and seems to stretch for miles, with trees and plants all swaying in a warm breeze.
“So what exactly happened to Wren? She went out reaping souls with you and disappeared or something?”
Soren shakes his head. “That’s the thing. Our weavers don’t leave the garden… or at least, she had no way of leaving when she disappeared. She was here and then the next time we checked on her, she was gone.”
Huh, that is weird.
I let out a little yelp as I feel a sudden tugging deep in my gut. It’s a feeling I’ve not experienced in a long time.
I’m being pinged, summoned back to the Ether. Guess Madame LaFontaine tired of waiting for me.
The feeling grows stronger and stronger with every second that passes. It’ll keep on growing until I answer the call.
I know that most people don’t last five minutes after being pinged, their souls called ‘home’, but I spent six months with this uncomfortable heat as my near constant companion. After six months, they finally stopped bothering, realizing that I wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
Until now, apparently.
“I have to go,” I tell Soren.
I take a last long look around the garden and tickle Brogan’s massive ears again. Weirdly, I feel a strange pang in my chest at the thought I might never see this place again. Despite the less than friendly reaper, I like it here. It gives me good vibes.
Soren gives me an indecipherable look as I wave and smile and take myself off into the Ether.
Who knows if we’ll ever see each other again? Maybe my flyby visit will be my first and last time in their garden. I feel a strange sadness at the thought of leaving and not coming back.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling. These days I don’t get sad leavinganywhere, I’m so used to it. I push the strange feeling down and focus on my surroundings as I arrive in the Ether.
3
Echo
The Ether is a weird place. Part of that is because it’s not so much a ‘place’ at all. It both exists and doesn’t exist simultaneously, spreading all the way across the many worlds. Because of that, it shouldn’t really have an appearance, but when my feet hit solid marble, I know that Madame LaFontaine has drawn me back to the part of the Ether I know best—the academy.
In appearance, the academy looks like one of those boarding schools from 1940s storybooks for children from Earthen England. The ones where everyone is incredibly polite and proper and sneaks out to have midnight feasts and japes and adventures. Which… wasn’t so much my experience of this place back when I attended the academy.
I find myself in the headmistress’s office—Madame LaFountaine’s office. I wasn’t invited in here back when I was a student, preferring to keep my head down and hope that no one noticed I was too dumb to understand most of the material they were teaching us. As I take the place in, I try not to gape.
So many motivational quotes. They areeverywhere, plastered onto mugs, on the walls, on her desktop. It’s such a contrast with her ball-buster, dominating personality that I can’t quite mesh the two together.
Madame sits opposite me, a stern look on her face. She’s dressed in a full black suit, dark hair tied in a tight bun that must give her a major headache. She eyes my mass of curls disapprovingly, but I shrug it off. My hair might be a disaster zone, but I’ve long since given up caring what anyone else thinks about it.
“Echo.” She nods briskly, arranging papers on her desk with brisk efficiency. “I’m glad you’ve finally come to your senses.”
