Will, Will, Will. Damn Will.
"In the Arms of an Angel" had been playing when Ollie turned on the car radio – Sky suspected it wasn't due to coincidence but rather to Fate's screwed up sense of humour – and Sky could feel Will staring at the back of her head around the headrest adamantly. Of all the factors she'd calculated, Will's undeniable adoration had been a surprising happenstance she'd overlooked. But, she should have suspected, she berated herself.
Once again, she was reminded that the Fates were cruel. They wielded the sharpest knife, always, always, trying to get Sky to bow to their whims. They wanted her to remember what she was, but she wasn't one of them.
Will had opened the car door for Sky, like the gentleman he was, ushering her into the front seat of the beat-up silver vehicle. She had tried not to look into Will's eyes, but she'd sought them instinctively in the rear-view mirror. She was apprehensive about the ride – she'd never been in an automobile before and she knew how her mother, Uror, liked to cause car crashes. She would have much rather relied on her own wings, or ridden on the back of a horse, a flying wyvern, a griffin or even an angry unicorn.
Observing Will was like sailing an emotional current through the turbulent and ever-changing winds of a stormy sky: hope, pain, guilt, attraction, sadness, joy, and grief waited, just on her periphery, to consume her and war for prominence.
His eyes. His kind and beautiful eyes. They were so similar: the flecks, the lines, and the rings, even the shape and intensity with which he peered into her soul. It was like taking a trip down memory lane, wishing to stay in their inky depths, to get lost permanently, only to be jolted back to an aching reality. Will's eyes were gray-blue. His had been deep brown. And yet ... they were the same. It felt like home when she looked into his eyes. And then it felt like hell.
It wasn't going to be Will, she begged, rejecting the notion viscerally. And then, It still might not be Will, she tried to convince herself. But she admitted it only a few seconds later – It was Will, of course it was Will. The more she tried to bargain with her beliefs or deny the thoughts in her head, the more certain she was that he was the one. She wished it weren't him. But her heart knew; it was written in his sweet nature, his goodness, his awkwardness. It would be Will. She hadn't known it with Nora or Eldron – there'd been no hint or clue – but this time she was sure.
For a moment, Sky's eyes watered and she was boughed by the weight of the truth. She felt like the pain might break her.
Will had been watching her face in the side mirror, and his hand squeezed her bare shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. It was electric and yet, soothing, like bathing in someone's energy after an eternity of absence. "Don't be scared," Will said. "We'll be there soon. It'll be okay."
Don't be scared. You're strong and brave, my love. His voice, a remembrance so strong it was like he was behind her, whispering in her ear. He had left her no choice in the end, but to be strong.
She gave Will a wan smile.
She sighed, looking over at Olleander, then back at Laina, and out the window to the people driving beside them in vehicles and walking along the sidewalk of the small Muskoka town. She'd learned to love people when she'd fallen for someone a lot like Will, a long, long time ago. They passed a playground; a child with a red balloon was exuding pure joy, pulling on it's string and running around with wild abandon. It was beautiful, to be human.
The intellect and the emotion came together, and with free will they were allowed to pursue the pull of their nature of impermanence – something most Gods saw as proof of their innate inferiority – incentivizing them to make a mark on history, live a happy life, devote themselves to procreation. They were precious, the moments of meaning they contributed to the universes.
Which is why she had no choice but to intervene. She'd protect them, keep protecting them, even if she was breaking the rules, even if it would mean they would punish her. But the idea that Will – she was already certain, yes, it was going to be Will – would be hurt in the process... that's what she couldn't bear. It was unfair. And yet, the gods were not fair. And it was everyone or him. She couldn't keep both safe.
She couldn't even tell Laina, Olleander and Will how all of this would inevitably end. She wanted to tell Will everything and to give him a choice. Run in the opposite direction, she wanted to yell at him. Don't come to Htrae, she warned him, but only in her head. Don't fall in love with me! But Sky couldn't bargain with the shared fate of two worlds, not because of a guilty conscience and a heavy heart. She always made the same bitter choice and she would continue to make it, over and over and over, as long as she had to.
Sky closed her eyes. She was flying high. She was stationary, lost in a shroud of soft grey clouds, subsumed by them. The clouds whispered against her and left dewy tears on her skin, crying for her. And she knew: she had to give in, to take advantage of every moment she had with Will, before ...
When she opened her eyes, there was a building in front of them – a large cement beige block on a carpet of green grass penned inside of a high iron-spiked gate. The words Barrie Mental Health Services were etched into a pink and beige granite block. The architecture was as sterile and characterless as could be, but the lot backed onto a view of Lake Ontario, and was decorated with a few weeping Willow trees and paths with wildflowers winding along the side. That, at least, was something.
Sky braced herself to face Will's mother. Again. As they parked and she got out of the car, she realized that she was very, very nervous.
***
"Maybe I should wait outside," Sky equivocated, "so the two of you can say goodbye to your mother, just as family." Avoidance. Sky should have been old enough to know better, but it was an indication of how much she cared, how she had more in common with these people than the callous Gods above. Good. If she could still feel something as mundane as an urge to escape an awkward encounter, then it was a sign she would never take up her mother's mantle.
"No, no," Will insisted. "Come on in. You're welcome."
Why did Will have to be so damn accommodating?
And it had gone pretty much exactly the way she'd expected it to: it had been a bloody mess.
When they walked into the room, the former Queen of Aary, Meryl, sat in a day chair by the window, humming. The image of the woman in front of Sky, in a pink robe with slippers dotted with roses, her hair white and sheared short to her head, her eyes hazy and unfocused, stood in sharp contrast to the regal and intelligent Queen of Aary, the fiercely protective and loving mother, the young flaxen-haired beauty she'd once been. That witch was gone, and in her stead was an old woman, but one who couldn't be far into her forties. Perhaps the overuse of magic, the lack of selfcare, or the atmosphere at the institution were to blame, but it was sad to see what had befallen this woman.
When she saw her children, her eyes lit up and she flapped her hands at them in childlike glee. Will and Laina each hugged her, and she clung to them until they broke away. Then she saw Olleander, and said, "Hello father," in a jubilant tone. It was clear she was happy about the visit, and was preparing to put her best foot forward.
She wore a shadow of the smile she had had the first time Sky had met her: the day she had held her newborn daughter, the heir of Aary, Rowan, in her arms for the first time. It was the day Sky's aunt, the Wyrd Veroandi had laid a destiny, one Sky was still not privy to, upon the babe's brow.
Then Meryl's eyes fell on Sky. Will was about to introduce her, but the change was so sudden, so immediate. Her eyes glared towards Sky and the atmosphere was charged with crackling fury.
"OUT! DO NOT TOUCH THEM. YOU CANNOT HAVE MY CHILDREN!," she yelled. "I won't let you take them away from me. Try and I will eviscerate you!" She stood up on the chair and her hands gestured threateningly at Sky.
Nothing came forth. Sky glanced at Olleander, at his pained and guilty expression, and realized he must have found a way to bind her powers. A witch without her full faculties was dangerous when she had no control over her magics. It was smart, but it likely caused poor Meryl a great deal of inner pain. To have something that's part of you, caged and locked away, would be torment, Sky knew.
"Meryl," Sky said, looking into the woman's eyes compassionately. "I'm not here as a Valkyrie. Not like with your husband or with the soldiers. Your children are very much alive. I do not need to take their souls to their next destination. They're safe and fine," she said, trying to calm the woman. The last time she had seen Sky was over a battlefield, as the Valkyrie lead her husband to his afterlife. Her presence would be a jarring experience, one perhaps she should have spared the woman.
"Liar!" the frail woman wailed at the top of her lungs. "Liar! You are trying to take them away from me! You're taking them away. That's why you're here, isn't it? That's why, because you're going to bring them back to Htrae and lead them to their death. You should die! Decide! Are you a Wyrd, a Valkyrie, or a bringer of doom? You don't get to do it all, to meddle with my children's lives in every way conceivable! NO. I say NO, NEVER! Wither up and die you hypocritical hag. Shrivel into nothingness. Be expunged from existence!"
And then she started howling, angry and violent shrieks, complimented by erratic jerky arm flailing, that had the nurses running into the room to deal with the outburst and her visitors looking up at her, alarmed.
"Nah, sweetpea. Go on get down from 'der," a Jamaican nurse said in thick Patois. "You gone got yourself visitors and now you decide to act like a true mengkeh? Hush sweetpea. Hush."
Meryl looked back down at the nurse, bewildered, and she stopped yelling instantly, as if she'd forgotten why she'd been yelling in the first place.
"May I have some blue flowers?" she asked the nurse. "I like blue flowers." She smiled conciliatorily and the nurse smiled amiably back at her. Meryl looked over at her children. "Who are you?" she asked Laina and Will.
They both flinched, hurt by the sharp blade dealt by madness, the caustic ephemeral quality of memory and the thin tether between nonsense and reality that shifts so quickly, with no care for the feelings of those who can only helplessly watch.
"Now an you come lie here," the nurse said, patting the bed patiently, waiting for the woman to move from the chair by the window to the bed, to lie down and settle herself.
Meryl obliged, shuffling along merrily.
"What tings set 'er off?" the nurse asked, hands on hips. "She usually peaceful. We don want 'er to ova do it."
"Not sure," Ollie answered, "but we can handle it from here. Thank you. My daughter will be fine now. And we'll say goodbye soon."
The nurse nodded and hustled out and on to the next patient.
"I'm just going to wait outside," Sky offered, as she slinked out into the hallway, trying to keep herself out of Meryl's direct line of sight just in case.
When she was safely around the corner, Sky let out the breath she'd been holding and slumped into a chair nearby, miserable. A few seconds later, before she even had time to analyse her guilt, Will joined her.
He looked stoic and calm after the whole incident. He sat beside her. "You were there, then? When my father died?"
"I arrived there afterward, to collect souls on the battlefield. I ... found your father and lead him to where he needed to go. I was his Valkyrie. There was much he still wanted to do, many he didn't want to leave behind, but I guided him to a good place."
Will looked at her with those searching eyes.
"I'm glad it was you. I'm thankful you were the one who helped him find his way at the end."
She was touched. Of all the words Will could have chosen, she felt her heart ease with his sentiment, thankful that Will, young as he was, could find such wisdom and understanding. He was an old soul.
"Thank you," Sky answered, just as she noticed Laina marching out of the room towards them.
"Look lady, I'm not going anywhere until you answer some questions. Mom may be one flew over the cuckoos nest but that sounded like she knew exactly what she was talking about. So start talking," she demanded, glaring at Sky with the same dagger eyes – that if-looks-could-kill expression – her mother was so good at giving, even now.
"Laina!" Will scolded, "You don't have to be rude."
"Uh, uh," Laina waggled her finger at Will. "Just because you think she looks like your dream woman and appears to be an angel doesn't mean she's being straight with us or she isn't a demon from hell. And it sure as heck seemed like mom knew something we didn't, even if her babbling was a little convoluted and she can't remember any of it three seconds later. I'm sure Sky isn't telling us something, whether or not Gramps trusts her. I can tell. Call it a woman's intuition." She leveled her angry stare at Sky.
Good. Suspicious, smart, and strong. If Laina was going to get through the next little while she'd need all of those traits, Sky thought. And Will would need her, too.
"What did mom mean when she called you a Wyrd? And why does she think you're leading us to our death?"
"You do deserve more of an explanation," Sky conceded. "I'll explain what I can in the brief amount of time we have. A Wyrd is ... a goddess of fate. There are three of us. The most powerful Wyrd is Uror, my mother. Some call her a Morai or just Fate. You know the old hag who cuts the string of life? That's my mother."
"So you're a Valkyrie and a demi-goddess?" Will asked.
"Yes," Sky admitted. This time Will just nodded as if it all made a great deal of sense.
"And?" Laina asked, impatient for answers.
"And, my mother is the most powerful Wyrd and was the original. She is technically the Wyrd of the past, of all that has happened, but she can also manipulate events and decide when someone dies, when an accident occurs, when someone gets sick. And she does so rather cavalierly. Veroandi is her sister and my aunt. She is the Wyrd of the present. She blesses children and designates their fate. She is much more ... rational, but she's still a pain. She also finds witches in Htrae to be daughters of Wyrd, or those humans who will have a prophetic aptitude."
Will looked a little dazed and confused, but Sky continued.
"And then there's me. I'm supposed to be the Wyrd of the future. I can see the future, sort of. Every time the other two Wyrds choose something, change something, or do something, like cause a storm or give someone a particular destiny, I can foretell what the exact outcome will be. None of us can affect human will, but I seem to be able to predict it as a seer."
Now Laina looked a bit confused too, but she didn't stop Sky.
"I hate what my mother and aunt stand for and disagree with how they perform the Goddess duties. For centuries now, I've chosen not to be a Wyrd. Instead, I've been working as a Valkyrie, or following my own path, or saving the worlds when their futures were in danger. My mother and aunt have never cared about what the outcomes of their deeds are. I do care. Htrae and Earth, and all their peoples should have been obliterated twice by now. I can't let that happen."
This time both their faces held true understanding.
"So I intervene, as often as I need to in order to keep humanity's armageddon at bay. But according to a decree of the Gods, since the times of your ancient Greece, I'm not supposed to intervene directly."
"Why?" Laina asked.
"The told-tale is that Gods used to back warriors, cause mayhem and play tricks on humans long ago. It caused war and strife on all worlds, but Gods hardly cared about that. That is, until it started to cause fighting and chaos among the Gods. It was a terrible time, hence the law to forbid godly entities to get personally involved. Gods and demigods like me are now forbidden from intervening directly, so I can't do this alone. And if I don't help this time, Earth and Htrae will be gone, nothing more than dust in the atmosphere, in less than twenty years. But I can't save the twin worlds myself. I need heroes. I need warriors to fight with me. It is dangerous. You could be hurt or even killed. But you'd likely die in twenty years if you don't help."
Laina looked horrified and Will looked determined, resolute.
"Will you fight with me for the preservation of humanity?"
It was a deluge of information that had poured out of Sky, everything she knew how to explain and that she was allowed to tell them. Half-truths. Or half-lies? She supposed the difference was immaterial. She was glad, sometimes, that she could not see her own future directly, or see the futures of those who were involved in her life. Looking at Will, she was thankful she knew nothing, could see nothing. She was too afraid of what might be there, waiting in his future, and what that would do to her will to fight for this cause. She knew only that her aunt had given him and Laina both a destiny.
"Yes," Will said. "I'm helping."
Sky had almost wished he'd said no.
Laina looked at her, shrewdly. "Alright," she said. "Will, lets go say goodbye to mom and Gramps."
And that was that. In less than an hour, they would be headed to Htrae and Sky, whether or not she wished to, would face the future. But she wouldn't be alone.
***
If you enjoyed the chapter, please vote and comment. :) How do you think Will, Laina and Sky are going to get to Htrae? Weigh in now, cast votes! Can't wait to hear what you think. ~ Emmy