Caroline attempted to gently shake Martin awake. The man could sleep like a log. She had gotten plenty of time to think while riding the cart. At several times, she’d attempted to share her thoughts with July and June, but in the presence of Martin’s dampening she was unable to convey anything above the most basic of messages.

The most surprising by far had been how easily he had accepted the explanation. She could’ve understood it if it was the only floating item to cling onto in a sea of confusing mess, but he didn’t seem to act that way. It would probably have been far easier for him to strike her off as insane. Maybe it was related to whatever he witnessed? Maybe he had just resigned himself to insanity already?

She had felt oddly comforted by his presence, when it should have been the other way around. He had witnessed God knows what at the party and then gone several days without proper medical attention. And then been told the world he knows is wrong. On second thought, was she certain he hadn’t gone insane?

Her repeated gentle shaking finally bore fruit. He barely managed to open his eyes with a grunt. “How are you feeling?” she attempted as cheerily as possible. Maybe he was just in denial, and the reaction would come any minute now.

Still fighting his eyelids, he muttered something that included the word ‘water’. That was a request she could easily comply with, at least. She pulled out a bottle from the food basket and hold it out to him, waiting for him to take it. Martin finally dug out a hand from the three layers of blankets she had put on him. His hand lightly brushed hers as she handed off the bottle, but that was enough to set off the warning bells in her head. He was burning up!

Putting her hand on his forehead, she quickly discovered that he was running a high fever. How could she not have noticed? Well, she knew the answer, she just didn’t want to admit to herself that easily that she had forgotten to check up on him now and then. Caroline, you clutzhead. How come you don’t have any painkillers in the first aid kit?

Well, they had reached their destination, now it was just a question of how hard it would be to get a obviously sick person inside without causing him too much additional harm. Turned out to be easier than expected. Despite his condition, Martin somehow managed to rise to his feet. Granted, he looked as graceful as a zombie, not to mention as life-like. “I’ll be okay,” he muttered, blatantly lying through his teeth. Yet Caroline still felt herself oddly comforted by his words.

Through some intricate maneuvers including “how to help someone off a cart when you’re worrying they might collapse at any moment” and “surviving the equivalent of morning breath of a man leaning hard on you” they reached the front door. She rang the bell and waited as patiently as she could. Her arm warned her that its patience for keeping a grown man from collapsing would reach its end sooner rather than later.

Thankfully, there was no need to wait for an extended period. The door opened, revealing the ancient witch. Caroline knew that she was neither a witch nor ancient, but found it hard not to think of her that way. Ancient because her skin and hair suggested she might have lived far longer than any other human on earth. Witch because of all the witch-like trinkets and accessories she liked to surround herself with.

“Good evening, Mrs. Olind,” the witch greeted with the wheezing voice of someone living more than a hundred years combined with the enthusiasm of a school girl. “I see you’ve brought a visitor. Please come in.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Clover,” Caroline nodded, grateful for the short introduction. The witch had always been good at reacting swiftly to the situation. So fast, in fact, Caroline sometimes wondered if she divined each day in advance or something.

“You are aware that I’m no longer Mrs. Olind, Mrs. Clover?” she asked as respectfully as she could while half-carrying Martin towards a couch. For all her speedy reactions, the ancient witch was also mired in tradition, and divorce was not among the topics she seemed very comfortable with.

“Ah, I’m sorry about that. It’s a shame when youngsters such as yourself give up the sacred tradition of marriage,” Mrs. Clover replied while removing any offending items from the couch before helping Caroline put Martin down on it. “Which name do you go by these days, then?”

Caroline stretched her arm, now free of a lot of dead weight. “You may just call me Caroline, but I suspect you’re more comfortable with my original surname, Ivory. The boys still use their father’s name, though.” Not that she hadn’t attempted to convince her ex, but, since she had originally taken her husband’s name, that’s the name her sons got as well. She had hoped they’d change when they left home, but that hope was rapidly dwindling.

“Well, I doubt you brought this guy here for tea and cookies,” Mrs. Clover abruptly changed topic, which Caroline didn’t really mind, “You seek my talents for this one.”

Caroline nodded. “Have you been watching the news, Mrs. Clover?” she started explaining. Mrs. Clover shook her head. “This is an old classmate of mine. He is — or was — part of the veil, if you couldn’t tell. He’s a witness to a huge homicide case involving practically the entire upper society of the city, and many from other places as well. Also, he’s been shot. I was wondering if you could…”

Her voice trailed away. Mrs. Clover nodded understandingly. “You want me to look into his fate,” she responded. “Well, I can make an attempt. You know how unreliable these things are.”

Caroline nodded in return. Mrs. Clover worked a very special brand of magic: Fate-weaving. She could look at a person’s fate and divine their future, most likely including her own. That would at least explain why she was always on top of her game, and also so understanding of the current situation.

Exactly how much information she could gleam varied on a case by case basis, since fates were hardly written in stone. But it was far from a long shot; if the fate of the person was very uncertain, at least that’d mean he or she was most likely not in immediate danger of dying. While freak accidents might escape Mrs. Clover’s sight, definitive ends did not.

Caroline noticed that Martin’s eyes were open. His breath was somewhat shallow, but he was definitely awake and following the situation. That was actually not a bad thing; it’d save some time trying to explain what was happening afterwards.

The ancient witch placed a hand on top of Martin’s own hand. Her fate-weaving had a huge advantage; it was largely unaffected by normal magic dampening of veiled individuals. Caroline didn’t know exactly why. Maybe she was just skilled enough? Or maybe because the magic did not affect an individual as much as his or her fate, and the two were somewhat separate as far as magic was concerned?

After closing her eyes for mere seconds, she opened them again with a grim expression on her face. “It is as I suspected,” she muttered, probably mostly to herself. Caroline held her tongue. She’d get her explanation faster by being patient than launching a bombardment of questions.

Mrs. Clover did not disappoint. “Your fate is sealed, I’m afraid” she addressed Martin directly. Once again, he displayed an expression that showed he understood the seriousness of the situation. No hints of doubt or confusion. That confused Caroline somewhat, even if she had observed it once already when she revealed that she was a druid. Or more likely, it confused her more because this was the second time it happened. Was he just extremely gullible? Her memory told her no.

“How bad?” Martin asked with the calmness of someone already resigned to their fate.

“I see no paths in which you survive for more than four days,” Mrs. Clover responded.

An uncomfortable silence descended on the situation. Mrs. Clover leaned back in her chair. Caroline felt a desperate need to lighten Martin’s mood somehow, but how do you encourage someone who was literally doomed a moment ago? However, Martin did not look disheartened. He looked expectantly at Mrs. Clover. What for?

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“But…?” he spoke in a very soft voice. Caroline found herself even more confused.

Mrs. Clover looked a bit taken back. “There is a way, yes,” she responded. She allowed the silence to go on for a full ten seconds before continuing.

“My power allows me to weave fates, not just peek at them,” she revealed. She went on to explain that while this power might change his fate, it was in no way a controllable force. Despite her best efforts, she could at best avoid certain fates, not dictate the new fate of said person. And that weaving the fate of a person more than once carried very grave consequences.

This was news to Caroline. She had known the ancient witch for more than ten years, ever since she bought a farm in the relative vicinity, and yet she had only known of her power to peek at fates. She could understand why the old woman had chosen not to share it, though. What better way to invite trouble for yourself than announce a power that could change people’s lives? After all, she would most likely have been held responsible for any failed fate-weavings as well.

“You speak from experience,” Martin stated between his shallow breaths. Mrs. Clover hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

She let the situation seep in slightly uncomfortable silence for a while before continuing. “A long time ago, I attempted to weave the fate of a friend of mine whose fate was sealed. Like yours, though not quite as urgent. It worked; I could see entirely new paths when I divined the fate again. Yet, my friend was not fully satisfied, and neither was I. So I weaved again, and again. But each time I did, the threads of fate grew thinner. And finally, they … snapped. And then my friend disappeared. It was as if my friend had never existed. Only my memories remained.”

Caroline noticed that Mrs. Clover omitted the gender of said friend. Despite being seemingly memories from a long time ago, they still hurt. Most likely she hadn’t spoken to many about them at all, just bore them silently in her heart.

“Your husband?” Martin asked, more confidence than uncertainty in his voice.

Mrs. Clover looked startled again, but quickly recovered. Not only that, she broke out a grin. A sad grin, but still a grin. “That’s right,” she nodded. “I’m surprised you guessed that so easily.” Martin did not respond, merely meeting her eyes.

“That’s how your husband died?” Caroline attempted to confirm, “he simply stopped existing? That sounds … terrifying.”

Mrs. Clover turned to meet her eyes, slightly puzzled. “How so?”, she asked. “I regret what happened for my own sake, not so much for his. Remember, his fate was sealed in the first place. In a way, I just hastened the process. I don’t think he suffered, if that’s what you’re wondering about.”

Caroline thought she sounded a bit too self-deprecating. There was also something that bugged her about the explanation earlier, and she finally managed to put her finger on it.

“Exactly why did you not accept his fate the first times?” she asked, sounding a bit more hostile than she had intended.

The ancient witch’s eyes darted between herself and Martin. She sighed, as if giving up.

“You don’t realize the consequences of changing one’s fate. What do you think happens when a person’s fate is rewritten?” she asked, sounding like a teacher quizzing her student.

“I don’t know,” Caroline answer honestly, “I’d guess that some fates would be avoided and others added.”

“But if a person wanted to murder you before the weaving of a new fate, how would that prevent the person from wanting to murder you afterwards?” Mrs. Clover asked rhetorically. Her words were deliberately slow, like a teacher trying to teach a less gifted student.

“No. The only way in which someone’s fate can change is to become a new person,” she explained before Caroline could hazard another guess.

“Once I weave a person’s threads, the world itself will rewrite that person to fit with the new fate. Any memory of the last person would remain, though that person would no longer exist. It’s not a foolproof method of saving someone’s life if your would-be murderer knows of the existence of this method, or can somehow deduce that you’re the same person.”

Caroline’s head was almost swimming with the new information. The world would rewrite the person? How would that even work on a veiled person? Wouldn’t their inherent magic dampening prevent them from being affected?

Better to focus on questions that she could get an answer to. “So, after changing his fate, your husband was no longer … “

“He was no longer a he,” Mrs Clover interjected. “He turned into an infant. A cute little baby girl, at that. But that was not what he or I wanted him to be. So we tried again. The second time he turned into an elderly man, almost twice my age. And so we tried again and again. Five times. The sixth time, he simply ceased to be.”

Caroline tried to imagine Martin as an infant or an old man. She realized that was not even the full extent of possible results. But it did open some interesting possibilities. What was there to lose, for example, if you were so old the alternative didn’t … “Wait a moment,” Caroline called out, surprising even herself. “How old are you… really?” she emphasized the last word.

“Clever girl,” Mrs. Clover grinned. “Your suspicions are correct. I recently celebrated my two hundred year birthday, albeit privately. But I doubt I’ll hit three hundred. The threads of my fate are already stretched too thin. This is most likely my last life, so to speak.”

Despite being complimented, Caroline felt anything but smart. Despite how many years they had known each other, she hadn’t really known the witch at all. That made her wonder just how many other secrets the old woman was hoarding.

Martin observed silently from the side. Either he was not scared of the prospect of changing into something entire different, or he hid it exceptionally well. Having said that, not changing his fate was probably the greater of two evils by far.

Hearing no more immediate questions, Mrs. Clover turned towards the man again. “So, let’s skip the pleasantries already. I know that you’ll accept. That surprised me when I divined it, but I can see why now. I like you. But the offer comes with no guarantees. If you don’t like your new fate, well then, sucks to be you.”

Martin nodded. Whether to affirm Mrs. Clover’s assessment or to accept her proposal, Caroline didn’t know. But it was apparently good enough for the witch.

“Let’s get to it, then,” the witch announced. She put both of her hands on Martin’s body and closed her eyes. Caroline tried to sense anything magical happening, but drew a complete blank. Even if her senses were not particularly sharp, she should be able to feel something, right?

Then, as if she had a tear in her eyes, the world became unfocused. She tried to blink it away, only to realize that she had already missed the big change. The person lying on the couch was most definitely no longer Martin. It was a much younger face, free of any facial hair. Female. Full of acne. Peering closer, Caroline realized that he -- now she -- was not even of the same ethnicity as before. She looked to be a mix of something, and at least some of it was probably middle eastern or possibly Indian descent. Not particularly dark-skinned, but with a hint of something exotic in her features.

The former man stood up with surprising ease and started examining herself. Surprising, because a part of Caroline still expected her to still be wounded. That appeared to not be the case.

Now that she was standing, her most notable feature was how short she was. Since Caroline herself was 175 cm, she measured the girl to be somewhere around 150-155 cm. She also appeared to be a bit plump, without being close to obese. If she had to estimate an age, Caroline would guess somewhere around 14 or 15. Her comparison was primarily based on her sons’ classmates.

The sudden decrease in height and also width, relative to his former self, meant that his clothes barely hung on. He pulled at them in order to peek at his new body, with a complicated look on his face.

“Well, this is new,” Martin commented to himself. There might have been a hint of surprise or even fear in his voice; Caroline wasn’t certain which.

“Hold on for a moment,” the witch said. It was a bit weird how she as suddenly taller than the former man. After concentrating for a moment, she appeared pleased. “Looks like this fate is much more open. Which means no immediate signs of death. I hope you’re not displeased with your new fate, girl. Let me tell you from personal experience having tried both sides; living as a girl is neither better or worse than the alternative. It’s all what you make of it.”

“Everything considered, I’m much more in favor of this than the alternative, when the alternative was certain death,” Martin tried to joke back. Caroline could hear from his voice that he wasn’t completely satisfied, but not dissatisfied enough to complain about it… too much.

“It may take some time getting used to, though,” Martin motioned towards her breasts. They were not very noticeable through the way too large clothes. Possibly still developing, considering her age.

The witch simply laughed. “If those are the worst of your worries, you shouldn’t be particularly worried at all.”

The girl smiled meekly. She then made a deep bow towards Mrs. Clover, which made her clothes even more disheveled. On her way back up, she had to hold on to them not to simply lose them all to the ground. “I am genuinely grateful for your help,” she said with a serious face.

While the attempt looked more comical than anything else, apparently the point came across. Mrs. Clover wore a satisfied smile on her face.

“I’m aware that you took a risk helping me,” the new girl continued. “Though I’m not clear exactly why you chose to.”

Mrs. Clover sat down heavily in a chair. “That, my dear, is a question you may never receive an answer to.” She sighed deeply.

“Now, let me give you one last thing before I ask you to leave,” she said, her voice tinted with fatigue. “A change of clothes.”