“Have you eaten today, girl?” the shaman asks, as he always does.
“No,” I reply, ignoring the fact that he calls me “girl.?
?? Strangely, I’m not offended. From him it feels like an endearment. “No food, no water. As usual.”
“Good.” The shaman pats my knee in a grandfatherly way. “I want to talk with you before we spirit walk.”
“Okay,” I say tentatively. The shaman is not a chatty fellow, and he usually saves his speech for teaching. “About what?”
“The Woven,” he replies, his eyes far away. The shaman straightens suddenly and looks me in the eye. “What would you do to get rid of them?”
I’m stunned. I stare back at the shaman and think of all the times Rowan has awakened next to me in bed, screaming. I think of how many times I’ve tried to drop into Rowan’s nightmares to lead him to safety, only to find him on a never-ending plain, being chased by countless monsters. He’s always a child in his nightmares about the Woven. And he never, ever escapes them.
“Anything,” I whisper. “I’d do anything to get rid of the Woven.”
He nods, like he thought I might say that. “On a spirit walk, I found a world that was like ours, except for one thing. The Woven have been eradicated.”
“When? Where?” I say excitedly.
The shaman sighs and tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling. “When?” he asks ruefully. “Maybe too late. Where? In one of the hardest worlds to find, buried between millions of cinder worlds.” He looks at me, and I’m shaken to see deep regret in his eyes. “It’s a miracle place, folded between so much death and destruction I’d never have thought it could be possible.”
I know what that means. It means only one universe out of thousands that were nearly exactly like it got it right. One slip, one wrong choice, and the path to a Woven-less world will end in destruction.
“But it’s there,” I say, my face bright with hope. “We can go there and find out how they got rid of the Woven, and bring the secret back here.”
“We’d be stealing something from a world we ought not to have,” he says gravely. “We’d be puttin’ the Great Spirit out of balance.”
“The Woven are what’s out of balance,” I say angrily. “They are a mistake that witches made, and that a witch should fix.”
“It will be hard to get there. There are no versions of you, or any of your loved ones, alive in that world,” he says, his eyes stern. “You’d have to jump without a lighthouse.”
“How did you find your way there?” I ask, my voice small. It’s treacherous to spirit walk without the lighthouse of love to guide you through the darkness between the worlds and I’ve never even considered trying to worldjump to a place where there was no other me, Juliet, Mom, or Rowan. I look at him, my brow furrowed. “Is there a version of you there?”
“There is,” he says darkly.
“And do you love me?” I ask him, my voice quavering. It’s an awkward thing to ask, but the shaman is not one of my claimed. He could only be my lighthouse if that other version of him loves me. I realize as I say it that I want him to love me.
“Not there,” he says gently. “And that me is dying. When he goes I’ll lose my lighthouse and we’ll have no way to find that world again. I’ve watched that world for months, hoping to learn the solution to our problem by watching alone, but time’s almost up. We can’t wait anymore. I’d go myself but—”
“You’re not a witch,” I finish for him. “You can spirit walk, but only a witch can transmute a body into pure energy and make it worldjump.”
“Could you send me?”
“You’d have to be one of my claimed so I could key into your energy, and you don’t even have a willstone,” I say, not bothering to keep the frustration out of my tone this time. His antiquated ways about willstones have always annoyed me, but until now I’ve respected his taboo about keeping witch magic and shamanism separate. Little good his respect for the old ways does us now. I sigh and try to be more respectful. “Even if I were to send you, I’d still have to know where I was going. It has to be me.”
“Yes,” he whispers. “But stealing from another world is an evil thing, Lillian. I question whether I should have told you ’bout this at all. I’ve already got an account of my evils to settle with the Great Spirit, and maybe I shouldn’t be charging debts onto your soul, too.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the only evil here is the Woven,” I say. He looks at me with a worried frown, like he sees a moral flaw in my statement, but he can’t bring himself to argue against his own wishes. It’s my turn to pat his knee. “It’s okay. This decision isn’t yours. It’s mine. And if it’s evil, then the evil is mine, too…”
Stop. I can’t take this anymore, Lillian. You killed him. You sent the shaman to the oubliette to die. You actually had me fooled for a while. I was starting to see things your way, but there is no excuse for what you did to him. How could I have been so stupid?
Wait, Lily. There’s still something you need to know about Chenoa and the shaman. The account he had to settle—
Chenoa? The Outlander scientist you were so desperate to kill, you sent out an army to mow down a defenseless tribe? Rowan’s tribe! You say that you did everything for Rowan, but you went to war against him and his people. I must have been out of my mind to have listened to you for so long. Just shut up, Lillian. I don’t want to hear you anymore.
You want to bury your head in the sand? Fine. But first ask yourself this. Would you have worldjumped into the unknown to find a way to get rid of the Woven—even if the shaman told you it was evil?
You know I would have. You’re not the only one who’s woken up next to Rowan while he’s having a nightmare. I’ve felt his fear and I hate them for it. The Woven never should have been created in the first place.