Vivian Amberville: The Weaver of Odds

By Louise Blackwick

Vivian lives in a cage, in Ala Spuria's Shelter for Strays and has never tasted real food. When one of the other orphans gives Vivian hope, she discovers a hidden power to reshape her circumstances completely.

From the English town of Milton Keynes, Vivian discovers a neighbouring universe, where Alarian Weavers - an ancient race of powerful beings - have perfected a way of altering reality. By weaving Threads into the fabric of the cosmos, the Weavers strive to imprison freewill, banish Chaos and bring balance to cosmic reality.

Faced with a sudden hole in the Pattern of Threads that threatens to consume the substance of everything, it is up to 13-year-old Vivian Amberville to repair the damage. Believed to be a formidable weaver of odds and circumstances, Vivian must now attend the Weaver Trials and master the mysterious art of "Weaving into reality" in hope of preventing the impending apocalypse.

Together with her friends, Patricia Kate, Lucian Blossom and Acciper Sparrowhawk, Vivian stumbles upon terrible insights into her identity as she explores what lies beyond the fabric of reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Creascriptum
• Release date: Nov 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9789492064073

Louise Blackwick

Louise Blackwick is a next-generation fiction writer, author of science fiction/fantasy novels, surreal short-stories and narrative poems. Blackwick is particularly known as the writer of the international bestseller "Vivian Amberville", which follows the epic adventures of a girl whose imagination can reshape reality. She is also recognized as the creator of a new niche subgenre of science-fiction: NEON SCIENCE-FICTION."Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds", the first novel in a series of five books was released November 2016 on eBook and March, 2017 on paperback. It sold an estimate of 3.3 million copies worldwide and was popularly acclaimed by a score of metacritics, most of whom have compared her narrative style with C. Paolini, J.K. Rowling and E.R. Eddison.For short fiction, Blackwick main influences were the father of surrealism André Breton, the twisted storyteller Edgar A.Poe and the existentialist Kafka. At times, she unweaves the general conventions of space and of time, bending them at odd angles into a mesmerizing and surreal dream construct.Blackwick primarily considers herself a "fantasy novelist", though the erudite complexity of her work has been appraised to exceed the genre of fantasy. For epic large-scale fiction, Blackwick greatly looks up to the legendary Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.Upcoming books from the author include: the humorous science fiction novel "God is a Robot", the sci-fi thriller "29 Seconds" and the much-awaited sequel "Vivian Amberville - The Book of Chaos".

Book preview

Published by Creascriptum, 2016, The Netherlands.

Text copyright © 2016 by Louise Blackwick. All rights reserved.

Cover designed by Louise Blackwick, copyright © 2016 by Creascriptum.

VIVIAN AMBERVILLE® is a registered trademark of Creascriptum.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this book are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or physically, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author or publisher.

ISBN: 978-94-92064-07-3

To my beloved Wouter and his contagious laughter

Who loves me as I am, eternities hereafter;

To whether odd or bold ones, the broken and the whole

Who stay true to their journey and to their final goal;

To you, ideal reader, who looks beyond the meaning

This story’s true, if but to you,

in evening nights, redeeming…

Contents

PART I

Vanadium Threads

Girl without Name

A Play of Odds

Syzygy

The Face in the Shroud

Vivian’s Descent

Friends and Freaks

PART II

A World Within

The Gold Mask Man

An Errand of Hope

Avis’aan

The Pattern of Threads

Mens Agitat Molem

The Forests of Arc Luteus

PART III

The Trial of Paths

Turquoise Banners

The Trial of Fears

The Return of Ashlar

The Trial of Wills

The Weaver of Odds

The Weaver of Ways

PART I

As the Weaver, so is the Thread.

Vanadium Threads

Ærinna everly worked passionately at balancing cosmic reality. Her agile fingers stirred to and fro with much ease and visible talent amid billions of wires. They were Threads of intelligent design she wove into the very fabric of reality.

Like all Weavers, Ærinna delved in neither good nor evil. It mattered only that reality would live to see another day, with its countless threads, weaves and tapestries. She also didn’t believe in justice. One couldn’t have been a Weaver and embrace that anything about life was, in any measure, fair. Justice was something that happened to optimists.

The Alarians’ craft was set in the central-most area of a colossal web of pulsating light and heat. As large as a city, the metallic loom mapped with subatomic precision the entireness of cosmic reality. The Pattern of Threads, they called it. Ærinna always believed the Pattern had more dimensions than it was allowed, but kept the thought to herself.

The Pattern was the focal point through which raw energy was harnessed, altered and translated into the substance of the cosmos. By weaving their thoughts and feelings into the substance of reality, the Weavers had ensured anyone writing about them would secure an instant bestseller – which wasn’t particularly difficult, considering the Weavers held the strings on the one holding the pen. Those who controlled the Pattern, controlled reality.

‘Weave in the good, weave out the Black,’ Ærinna prayed daily to the powers that be.

Of course, the powers that be were pretty much synonymous with being a Weaver. One needed to be quite adamant about religion not to recognize any being capable of manipulating the cosmos at will, would merit a small scripture of their own. If not a scripture, at least an interview in an obscure newspaper, somewhere.

It was said the Alarian civilization had taken a few wrong turns in history and failed to discover technology. Progress, however, was eventually achieved when the Alarian brain evolved the ability to directly influence energy from a distance, a mind-over-matter process known as Weaving. In later years, the Pattern of Threads was built to extend the act of Weaving not just to their world, but to the whole of reality.

But Weaving required painstaking regulation. When it came to altering the substance of reality, there was no such thing as too many rules. Ærinna’s work was based on seven cosmic laws which governed the cosmos, from the largest universal membrane to the smallest unit of matter.

The Law of Coherence was one of the seven laws of cosmic sway by which the Alarian Weavers condoned their craft. It was the first law ever engraved as principle of truth, and so it stated: Nothing exists for free. Everything happens for a reason.

So knew Ærinna her being chosen as Weaveress was no mere coincidence. Nothing often was in life. That very purpose had been pre-written for her by other Weavers before her time – not that she could have a say against it. One could not weave straight into reality without accepting they might have been predestined for it.

An alien energy flowed through each thin-as-a-hair strand of Palladium. It made each cosmic Thread shine in psychedelic colours no eye beheld before. Ærinna knew each colour embodied an emotion, and each coil spelled the turning of outcomes. With thoughts as pure as the rare strands of Palladium metal, her weavework had to be balanced down to cosmological precision. One small error would have spelled disaster for the whole of reality.

As every other night, paper-thin Threads rapidly slid between Ærinna’s burnt palms, painfully cutting into her fingertips. The act of Weaving inflicted a level of pain that over the years she had learned not only to accept, but ignore altogether. Palladium, the only metal known to effectively conduct cosmic energy, was now tainted in her blood; hers and all of the others who shared her efforts.

Weaving was no simple act. Ærinna looked down at her heavily-scorched hands. They were positively shivering under the worldly burden. Messing about with people’s fate was one thing, but killing them off was another. She knew she held entire universes in the palm of her hand, and the thought often startled her.

‘Right, now where did that black Thread go?’

The Weaveress squinted at the loom. While any other person would merely see a thickset of colour-flashing Threads, Ærinna saw cosmic events, destinies and the collective soul of countless beings. Some of them were about to kick the bucket and kick it well. They weren’t to die of any expected natural causes either – unless one counted being woven out of the Pattern either natural or expected.

She pushed her fingers into the entanglement of Threads and removed a single dark Thread, which she replaced with a synthetic strand of Palladium. So what if one had to die to save the many? At the end of the day, the rule of thumb was that life needed to be preserved. No one ever told the Weavers whose life in particular.

Even by Alarian standards, Ærinna was no ordinary Weaveress. As the Weaver, so was her Weave: wholesome and pure, which was very much fortunate, given the circumstances. Whatever a Weaver was made of, it had to be stronger than the atomic no. 46 Palladium they worked with.

Every chosen Weaver had long known what was at stake. At the center of the Pattern, pinned onto a large coat-of-arms was the adage: "As the Weaver, so is the Thread". It reminded the Alarians their weavework could only be as good as their greatest weakness. Which was why Weavers didn’t have any weaknesses. Not visible ones, at least. They buried them deep and they buried them well.

The purpose of the Pattern was to assist the cosmos in keeping itself alive. Naturally, given the overall lazy and self-deprecating nature of the cosmos, the Alarian Weavers took it entirely under their control, just to be safe.

"In Schools of Thought our lore is preached

Into our fingertips now reached

To find our path among the darkness

By weaving Truth in divine aptness"

Ærinna’s eyes now found a loose Thread. It stuck out of the loom with deliberate defiance. Not the right kind of defiance, mind.

She knew a terrible gold-haired leader had been elected somewhere in the multiverse, despite odds going against it. She also knew it would lead to the death of a billion souls. Even so, if she removed this one Thread from the cosmic Weave, an even worse leader would replace them. Ærinna decided the best action was no action, and merely pushed the Thread out of sight.

‘Weave in the good, weave out the Black,’ prayed Ærinna on and on, dividing godly skill amid the countless shimmering Threads, the weight of the cosmos on her shoulders.

Her attention was now drawn upon a boy whose imagination had the potential to change the face of reality. Unfortunately for him, Ærinna liked reality the way it was: fluid, slippery and with a brick in it. The case was quickly resolved by giving the young boy an appetite for procrastination.

Whenever their weavework got the better of them, the Weavers raised their spirits in song, humming late Karura’s weaving chants. Ærinna loved singing. Her burnt hands deep into the loom, she opened her mouth and carolled:

"It is a Truth widely-sought

A lore is preached in Schools of Thought

To stand in honour for our kin

And fend ourselves from Reaper’s grim

For Alarians, born in vitality

Bend odds with true alacrity

By weaving out blackening Thread

We keep the cosmos safe from dread

Open your conscious to the Truth

An eye for eye, a tooth for tooth

And since the mind is former portal

Veil it in Threads of light immortal"

Of course, the Weavers were not particularly talented at singing either. Taken individually, they sounded like a bagpipe mauled over by rampaging bears. It was when they all joined in singing that one would notice the difference. Hypnotic drums and hair-raising choirs – the Alarians were believers.

Imagine a fleet of ships, whose slaves are forced to row under the crack of whips and the prosaic sound of drums, while the London National Choir performed their most exquisite overture. It might not have been ethical, but the general effect was mesmerizing.

So had the Weavers perpetuated Karura’s elated chants; songs of crafts and of their ancient lore. They often sung in tandem, in the loudest voice available, in Æurlek’ääj, the ancient Æurlek, the oldest Alarian language and of the cosmos.

As for Ærinna, whenever her Guild sang, she always sang along, her voice seeping into the Pattern like so many rainfalls:

"Karura blessed us with the Pattern

In times of doubt, became our lantern

As Fate sought our extermination

We wove white Threads in abrogation

Our divine Will in Threads is sown

One step ahead of the Unknown

And heavy loads our hearts must carry

In woven aims, extraordinary

Translating Thought in apt Intention

We fashion Threads of pure creation"

‘Weave in the good, weave out the Black,’ prayed Ærinna again and again to the grand cosmic narrative. She was also secretly praying for a raise. One could never have enough Æns, she reckoned.

The most esteemed Alarian was no royalty, leader of armies, teacher of craft or high priest of lore, but the so-named Weaver of Threads. Age, skill and resolve aside, much separated Ærinna from the rest of her Guild.

She was born with the Sight, a quality which allowed her to glimpse into events beyond the Shroud setting the Alarian universe apart. To see into Existence was to see into the mind of one of the most ridiculously absurd creatures in cosmic creation: the human being.

‘Forgive me Mr. Hamershin…’ she was often heard apologizing to whichever unfortunate soul she had collected.

She knew her weavework demanded cosmic sacrifices for a greater good. It was a human this time; a man whose life had ended at her fingertips.

Beyond a thin veil of space stretched Existence, the frailest and most imbalanced reality of the cosmos. No one was really sure why it was imbalanced, but some believed it had something to do with the general alcohol consumption per capita.

If reality was a soap bubble, the universe accommodating humans would be living right on its surface. Concurrently, the Alarian universe would be seated within, on the bubble’s interior. Surprising how only a thin membrane of space separated Existence from Non-Existence.

‘Oh dear. I hope you find your rest, Mr. Hamershin.’

Humans fascinated Ærinna. Unlike other Weavers, who popularly regarded humans – middlings – as nothing more than slugs on legs, Ærinna thought very highly of the creatures whose universe was but a thought away.

Despite never having met a middling in flesh, Ærinna had studied them at length and in great secret. Frequent were the times the Weaveress found herself singing to herself in a low voice, her fingers swiftly spinning the hot Threads of Palladium:

"Oh, how I have longed for evermore

To have a middling on our shore

And how I long to have their greeting

And learn their habits: eating, sleeping

Oh, how I wonder what they seem

I often meet them in my dream

Baffling me in cognizance

A beam locked in their countenance

They’re all amazing, middlings are

At an arm’s reach, and yet so far…"

The scorching heat of the web was slowly eating into her flesh, her memory and her focus. Ærinna felt tired, yet determined to complete another successful shift. She knew only too well that with each woven Thread, a part of her soul would be entering along, never to re-emerge again. As Weaver, she wove a little bit of herself with each turning of an odd Thread.

‘Weave in the good. Weave out the— Umbra of Kavi, what’s this now?’

Ærinna gazed into the Pattern, beyond the Shroud of souls and of faces, and saw a child with long dark hair and eyes like black marbles.

There was power about the girl… power as the Weaveress had never seen in a living creature. Her life was tangled into a tight knot. Her Thread had no beginning and no end. She was a cosmic impossibility.

‘She’s different…’ Ærinna whispered to herself. ‘Why is she different?’

Something was wrong – or perhaps right – about that Thread. A volatile Thread, it seemed. A little girl named Vivian.

The Weaveress watched the middling child being threatened with a long, nutsy stick. Ærinna narrowed her eyes. Someone had taken the patience of naming the stick.

‘Poor Vivian...’

And yet Vivian’s Thread was unlike anything Ærinna had woven before. Unlike any other middling she had studied, Vivian seemed to live from the inside-out.

‘This child will change many lives,’ she whispered to herself. ‘If she survives.’

But Vivian wouldn’t survive, thought the Weaveress. Vivian had been mouthy, ungrateful and rude, and the large woman with the boltsy stick was at the end of her patience. She would not tolerate the little orphaned brat much longer. She would have her order, even if that meant another order of coffins. The large woman pulled a small syringe from her chest pocket, and filled it up with a tar-like liquid.

By the laws of the Pattern, the Weaveress ought to have looked away and pretended there was no abuse at work. Pretend she had not seen Vivian’s impaling doom. After all, a Weaver’s job was to balance the cosmos, not to save lives.

And still, the weight Vivian’s Thread exerted upon the fabric of reality was phenomenal. In the infinity of Existence, she was the heaviest point alive.

Alive indeed, but not for long...

Ærinna pushed back her sleeves and plunged her hands elbow-deep into the thickset of Threads. Miss Syringe-of-Justice was in there, somewhere. Feeling her way into the soup of metallic Threads, the Weaveress’s hands enclosed around a pair of very chubby forearms.

The large woman gave an agonized shriek, the syringe rolled away, wasting away its deadly dose. The tiny middling beyond the Shroud was safe once more, and no one would know Ærinna had meddled.

‘Ha!’ snorted the Weaveress. ‘We’ve shown that abusive woman, didn’t we?’

Ærinna had always had a soft spot for middlings. It was like watching a puppy being sent to the slaughterhouse with a smile on your face. Humans might not have deserved the love and loyalty of puppies, but they were at least worth saving as species. It wasn’t the first time Ærinna had interfered to save one either. A human, not a puppy. What could ever go wrong?

Expectedly, the cosmos took no delay in coming up with an answer.

An abnormally large Thread had sprouted about. It glided its way across the iridescent web, pulsating in uncanny tints of green. Ærinna patiently followed its evolution across the loom.

The mysterious Thread had materialized out of thin air, and seemed to be heading nowhere fast. Its behaviour was most unusual, too. It coiled and slithered along the tightly woven fabric like a belligerent snake.

‘And who might you be, vanadium Thread?’ Ærinna asked, as though expecting it to sprout a mouth and identify itself.

Her bloodshot eyes traced its progress as it wriggled and squirmed within the Pattern, a desperate worm in its captor’s hook.

Except this Thread was no worm, but the king of serpents! It skidded towards the centre of the Pattern, bending odds and circumstances like an exhibitionist god. Ærinna felt the dread rising in her.

‘What yields this affliction?!’

She quickly wove the most potent Koperträäd she could muster just to counter it. Nothing changed. The pea-green Thread continued crawling across the Palladium netting like creepers in canopies. Its composition indicated neither matter, metamatter nor any kind of hypermaterial. In Weaver’s terminology, that spelled massive trouble.

Without much of a warning, the Thread tripled its length. It was now a biblical anaconda of resolute chaos. Ærinna flinched.

‘Ærrian’sha Lazuli!’ she beseeched, her cerulean eyes still affixed on the anomalous circumstance the wild, turbulent Thread was amassing before her. ‘Irra! IRRA!’

A thin ginger woman responded the call by approaching. Irra Lazuli’s skin was scorched, reflecting many years of service to the Pattern. Her eyes were cloudy, as though covered by fog, and yet she saw more than most. Behind a white face, Ærinna asked in fast-spoken Æurlek.

‘What see you?’

The ginger woman, known among them by the name of Blind Irra, fixed her fogged eyes on a random spot in the loom. For a few moments, she did nothing but stare unfocusedly at the bright display of multi-coloured Threads. As she emerged, she indicated a predetermined area of the Pattern.

Ærria searched the loom. Whatever Irra saw, her eyes alone could spot it.

‘What see you?’ Ærinna repeated, trying to identify what the Seeress was pointing at. ‘Loose Threads?’

The bright-green Thread wriggled a little before it came to a complete halt. Without warning, it turned black and motionless.

‘Not loose,’ Blind Irra responded in a puzzled voice, ‘binding.’

Blind Irra, an Elder among Seers, approached the new blackened Thread. She gingerly caressed it, weighting it in her palm. When she whispered next, her voice felt doused by fear.

‘I am blind to everything but Threads,’ said the Seeress, ‘and I am no stranger to this one. Happened upon the old steel before. This is Shaa’janta.’

‘Ghostmatter?!’ Ærinna cried, a mixture of panic and excitement flooding her voice. ‘Are you for real?’

Irra Lazuli turned her fog-veiled eyes in the direction Ærinna’s voice had originated. The Seeress could no longer see the face of people right in front of her. She could, however, see the Threads of living souls from all across the multiverse.

‘I am yet to be mistaken,’ she said smugly.

The rogue Thread webbed its way across the Pattern, like a cancer eating its way through healthy tissue.

‘But we can’t unweave ghostmatter, can we?’

Ærinna did not need this on her watch; she did not need a cosmic anomaly at the end of her shift. The disease seemed to be expanding. As its breadth grew by the heartbeat, it oozed out a thick, dense smog.

The Pattern was smouldering.

‘Someone interfered,’ said Blind Irra, her unseeing eyes fixing onto the Weaveress. It was unbelievable how someone who only saw Threads was capable of such a penetrating look. ‘Someone attempted to change things from the way they should be’

Ærinna scrambled her face into what she hoped was an innocent look, her eyebrows locked in visible indignation.

‘Who would be stupid enough to—?’

‘—someone who loves middlings,’ Blind Irra cut over her, her unfocused eyes upon the reddening Weaveress before her.

‘Pff, no one likes those slugs on legs,’ Ærinna twiddled her thumbs. ‘What could this mean for us, though? For the Pattern?’

‘It means chaos has eroded its way into cosmic reality,’ said Blind Irra. ‘It means calamities are afoot, within and beyond the Shroud.’

Ærinna’s expression was bloodless as the blind old Seeress went on.

‘This is not the first time the Guild disturbs the darkness and invites chaos among us. Before you were born, Weaveress, we faced the outcome of chaos reclaiming more Threads than we could have counted. And now, by the rulings of Chance, it has returned to claim the Weave.’

‘You mean—?’

‘—the Æbekanta, yes,’ confirmed Blind Irra. ‘I’m afraid the cosmos is no longer under the control of the Guild.’

Ærinna flinched as she heard the Elder’s dark interpretation. Irra, of course, spoke of the legendary Æbekanta—the most noteworthy cataclysm in cosmic history. Its force was above all forces, for it vanquished subtle Thread and penetrated all solid weave. Although the Æbekanta had first struck in the time of her forefathers, Ærinna was no less aware of its ills.

Countless Threads had perished. Numerous had deceased. All because of one sick Thread; a Thread fitting a child the Weavers needed to sacrifice, but ended up helping instead. What cosmic intrusion had invited chaos this time around? Surely it couldn’t have been the puny, vulnerable, starving Vivian—

The blackening loom was now smouldering itself to dust. Ærinna swallowed, fighting to keep her composure.

‘What’s causing it all?’

‘We can never be sure, Weaveress,’ said Blind Irra, her foggy eyes once again pasted onto the smoking loom. ‘But that Thread over there looks unnatural. Very powerful, too.’

To Ærinna’s horror, Irra pointed at the same area Vivian’s resilient Thread minded its own business, while the Great Weave around it smoked itself soggy.

‘Has her Thread penetrated the Pattern of Souls, sister Irra?’

‘She is beyond souls and faces, Weaveress. She is fate now; she is prophecy.’

No sooner had the Seeress spoken than a hole materialized at the heart of the loom. Possessed by a cosmic hunger, it seemed to be feasting on primary Threads and the metallic loom itself.

Colour drained from Ærinna’s face – Chaos. Apocalypse. A second Æbekanta.

‘Umbra of K—The Pattern!’

Like a candle through silk, the Pattern was falling. The Weaveress traced the horrible opening that had singed itself into the Pattern of Threads. She knew only too well what it stood for. Somewhere, out there in the vast cosmos, countless Threads were being pulled right back into the Unwritten, into Inexistence. What agony those souls must trial in death! There might be middlings amongst them.

No, no, she must not produce the thought. Her head must stay clear otherwise the idea alone might invite the event. Equanimity was expected of her Weaver rank. In with the good air, out with the bad air…

As the Weaver, so was the Thread. And yet, that ever growing hole in the loom primarily meant the cosmic populace was dying. Something had birthed the celestial anomaly. Somewhere out there, something was afoot. But what?

‘No-no-no-no-no-no!’

And yet, a darker truth picked at Ærinna’s mind. Her luck was made, not born, so it was likely to waver. She had been helping middlings get even with the cosmos. She had been questioning her weavework too. Surely, her deeds and misplaced doubt had now invited sickness. It brought about her heart’s deepest fear, and the result was the gaping hole before her eyes.

But no, the other Weavers must not know she was the one who interfered. She would, of course, deny it.

‘Oh no, our dictum!’

The Weavers’ coat-of-arms had burst into flames. The silk banner which depicted the mark of the Guild – an endless icovellavna knot on shamrock-green backdrop – was now ravelled in fire.

She had to tell Irra.

One heartbeat later, the Weaver’s dictum – As the Weaver, so is the Thread – had disappeared beneath the smoke. The last standing guardian of cosmic reality lay now in ruin, compromised. The loom had fallen, and in its stead, Chaos and Chance had come to rule.

No, better keep silent.

Ærinna’s eyes traced the rapidly expanding borders of the hole. A generation’s work, obliterated. Their precious Pattern, shattered; its countless Threads, unwoven.

Just open your mouth and say it…

People, so many people, were about to expire. The grand purpose of building the Pattern of Threads was to prevent events such as the Æbekanta.

…or not. The Guild will have your head for it.

And yet, against all odds, Chaos had returned. Here it was now, its claw sharpened, ready to strike reality down— once more—ready to kill…

‘If we cannot control the Pattern, we’re fated,’ began Ærinna ‘The whole of reality is fated!’

‘Calm down.’

‘We cannot have this!’ she erupted, colour rapidly returning to her cheeks. ‘Not on my watch Irra, we cannot!’

‘Steady there, Weaveress.’

Ærinna could hide the truth no longer. The hole in the Pattern had been her doing. The Weavers tell no lies, for to lie was to alter the multiverse. Part of the lie would be entering the Weave and substitute the truth for deception.

‘I have doomed us all!’ exploded Ærinna, tears rolling across her scorched cheeks. ‘It was me who meddled with Threads beyond my meddling rank. Now we’re facing the unwiring of the Weave! One hundred and eighty billion years of evolution will perish at my own stupid mista—’

‘—ENOUGH!’

Irra Lazuli, the wisest of Seers, had raised a hand, pleading for silence.

‘CONTROL YOURSELF, WOMAN,’ boomed Irra, ‘ELSE YOU MAKE IT WORSE!’

The blind old woman sounded more upset with Ærinna’s meltdown than the prospect of a second Æbekanta, but when she spoke next, her voice was steady.

‘Remember your lore, Weaveress. You have interfered, yes, and your punishment will be severe. Yet in times like these, you must remember why our Weavework endured.’

Ærinna fell silent, ashamed of herself, her cerulean eyes fading to a dull grey, her auburn hair extinguished by the nearby mounting flames.

‘We survived because of Kaalà,’ stressed Blind Irra. ‘The life and substance of everything. The force of all forces, the soul of creation, Kaalà,’ she repeated. ‘That terrible power between your ears. I’m talking about your imagination, Weaveress. Is this not why the Guild chose you? Everything you can imagine is real.’

Ærinna mumbled something indistinguishable which sounded a lot like I know.

‘As the Weaver, so is the Thread. If you think we are doomed, doomed we shall be,’ Blind Irra continued in a calm tone, all traces of kindness erased from her old features. ‘A fate more terrible than your darkest fear is picking the loom; darkness deeper than my Sight can penetrate. Give us a way, else spare us your rants.’

While Ærinna shamefully fumbled about, trying to find a solution to what she knew to be an irreversible catastrophe, the Elder Seeress considered the event in full composure.

After the longest spell of silence during which the hole in the cosmic loom had expanded to the size of a small crater, Irra Lazuli’s voice returned.

‘There is little time left, Weaveress, so hear me well.’

Her voice was grave, her expression as undiscernibly fogged as her unseeing eyes.

‘Unless we weed out this Chaos soon, we’re speaking cosmic extinction.’

‘Irra, you don’t mean—’

‘The girl must die’ said Blind Irra. ‘It was woven, and yet you interfered and changed her path. Balance must be restored.’

‘But—’

‘I like it no more than you do, Weaveress, but sometimes—’

Her sightless eyes now mirrored the enlarging gash in the loom, which seemed to grow with crude, near-devilish defiance.

‘—sometimes the Hand of Fate must be forced.’

Turning to a frightened-looking Ærinna, Irra gathered her scorched hands and commanded.

‘Send word to the Guild. Tell them we request their Unwirer.’

The Weaveress shook her head, but verbally consented. The Seeress had a point. Now was not the time to give in to the terrors of imagination. To weave better circumstances, one had to imagine better circumstances.

‘Imagine better,’ Ærinna whispered to herself, her retiring outline growing thinner and thinner against the mounting, all-engulfing Great Black.

Girl without Name

‘Get dat mangy ol’ bag outta ma face!’

‘Alms ser. Spare a penny for a hopeless soul, ser. Alms…’ begged the old man.

His white hair was tangled and oily, his foot-long beard was matted with twigs and his feet were wrapped in plastic bags. Arend the Wanderer, they called him – the oldest beggar in Keynes.

The passerby spared the homeless man no consideration. A large piece of carton adorned the old beggar’s torso. In heavily discoloured ink, it read ALMS.

‘Push off, ya lousy bag of wank!’ the nobleton shouted. The mere existence of the beggar seemed to have caused him a great personal affront. ‘Go find a real job!’

‘Spare yourself some food, ser,’ Arend insisted. ‘For a poor old sod. Please ser, I will work for you.’

For his audacity, the old beggar was rewarded a slap across his unshaven cheek. He collapsed in the street like a ragdoll, sporting a bloody lip.

‘Irkin’ fookin’ Ned. Serves ya proper for pestering me!’

Arend the Wanderer scrambled back to his feet, wiping his bloody lip against his tattered sleeve. He stopped requesting for alms and allowed the passerby clear passage. As his silhouette melted down the alley, the old beggar turned his carton plaque around. It now read THE END IS NIGH.

‘The end is coming!’ cried the old beggar behind him. ‘And it’s coming within!’

At the highest floor of a derelict building, a little girl had viewed the scene from behind the grimy window of her prison-cell. Another clash between the fortunate Milton citizen and the scrapebyer of Keynes.

Though officially registered as one city, Milton Keynes could not have enjoyed more separation. Whilst Milton hosted the upper class, Keynes sheltered the social rock bottom. A historian would have told you it all began with those who brought the Madhad Way, but many historians were too afraid of being accused of practicing history.

History was of course, illegal, for it contradicted the absolute and adamant way of Madhad. Anyone refusing its clear-as-snowmelt teachings would be playing with fire – the fire of eternal damnation. But not everyone was ready to elect a foreign doctrine that nullified the human rights and current laws of the state, so they elected a proper temper, a large brick and a bloody good aim.

The people took to the streets, but when the streets ran out of bricks to be thrown out in anger, the world economy was on its deathbed receiving morphine. The world was thereupon split into very rich and very poor, which deepened the crisis, and a Madhad government stepped in to pick up the pieces. Crippling laws had followed; laws that ultimately sent the working class to meet its maker. Turned out its maker didn’t live there anymore. The middle class disappeared from the midst of society.

Over the course of decades, the poor and jobless generated a new social order: the Non-Educated Demographics—popularly nicknamed "Neds—whose main trait was vagrancy (and the occasional mooning" of unsuspecting passersby). From the ashes of homelessness, clusters of Neds mushroomed into existence, afflicting society.

So had the Ghettos come to be.

It was in the Keynes Ghetto area of the city that a little girl’s ordeal began. Staring down at the beggar’s carton plaque, she contemplated the man’s disturbed sensation that the End of Humanity was drawing to a close. In her opinion, humanity had long been dead.

Just then, the high pitched voice of her warden brought her back to the present; a somewhat glum present.

‘Ya even effing listenin’? I said I’ve brought ya sumfin’ warm. And here. Promised ya a drinking cup, didn’t I?’

A porky-looking woman, whose aquiline nose was adorned by a diamond-shaped mole, pushed forth a stale dish and a porcelain cup. She quickly wore her special-occasions smile; a smile the girl who received the meal did not bother to return.

‘Whassamatta?

‘How am I to eat this? You’ve given me… plastic.’

‘A mouthy one, eh? Whut, fink of yerself too good for artificial meals? Mayhap ya fink yer lordly pomp deserves all-naturells for having lousy Neds for parentage.’

‘But it’s… stale. It’s gone bad, it has.’

‘Stale, she says. Beggarin’ street rat. We took ya in, didn’t we? Ya should be fankin’ us we’re givin’ ya anyfing at all.’

‘I don’t want to be in… in here,’ said the girl, eyeballing her gift, a fresh symbol of her detainment. It was a small beige porcelain cup with "Ala Spuria. Room 209" printed on.

Rooms, were they? Her only contact with the outside world appeared to be a small window with diamond-shaped bars propped against its surface. Was she a prisoner? Mouldy sheets, cracked walls, pestilential smells. Children shelters, they called them. More of a penitentiary. Who were the shameless gits running it?

‘Please, I… I need to find my family.’

The woman gave a small rub to a visibly-hairy armpit. ‘Dat’s why yer here, dearie. Tah find ya some decent ‘un. Well, far as decent goes.’

The girl seemed to be fighting against tears. ‘I don’t want a new family. I need to find my own!’

‘Ya may well be wantin’ ‘em all ye want, but they don’t be wantin’ ya back now, do they? Wouldn’t’ve left ya with us lot now, would they?’

The girl leaned back in her chair, her coal-black eyes reflecting epochs of memories. With her arms folded together, she contemplated Martha Burlington – a woman whose IQ equalled lemonade temperature.

‘S’okay, luv. Not yer fault ya were born a Ned. Sumday ya’ll understand.’

She was a world’s away from understanding. What did she do to deserve a prison? Apart from losing her memory and breaking state curfew, of course.

She was a scrawny child of pale complexion, crooked teeth and eyes like black marbles. Her clothes were equally one of the finest. It certainly wasn’t the customary hobo-look they fished off the streets of Keynes. Whoever the girl was, she had known wealth; she had known comfort. Who abandoned her? Even a simpleton as Martha Burlington found the arrival of the unmarked child, who called herself Vivian, at least puzzling.

‘Listen luv, me hands are proper tied. Yar not earmarked and... nobody in da ghetto came tah claim ya. An’ without no identity chip tah prove otherwiz, ye be waifs and strays Neds. The Madhad state would go as far as callin’ ya a dissenter. Yar in da right place, I tell ya. Ala Spuria’s a children shelter. Sheltering Neds is whut we do.’

‘But Miss Burlington, I’m not one of them Neds, I’m not!’ the girl protested, tears clumping in her eyes. ‘And I’m not a dissenter. I got Vivian popping into my mind. That must be what I’m called, mustn’t it? Mind, a Ned I am not. Please, you got to let me go!’

The large woman detached a long, boltsy stick and whipped it against the table. Vivian’s plate clattered on the old damp wood.

‘I don’t got to do nuffin’, hear?’ she flourished the stick, threateningly. ‘Won’t have me wage risked by an ungrateful dissenter. Can tell ya haven’t been taught in the way of Madhad. Now eat yar darn supper!’

Two crocodile tears made their way to Vivian’s chin. ‘I won’t tell anyone you h-helped me. I’ll say I-I escaped! P-please, if you j-just—’

‘What d’ya wanna do, then? Join yer homeless lot? M’afraid law’s not on yer side, luv. Madhad law, and so backforth: "All children without known parentage, living relatives or blood alliances are to enter Madhad state custody",’ chanted

Reviews for Vivian Amberville

[Jyrki Hämeenniemi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I would have given it 10 stars if I could!

This book was one of the most remarkable stories I've read in a long time. The story is fast-paced and easy to follow, but the Vivian Amberville universe is vast, complex and multi-layered, just like the characters. The story takes place in a dark and dystopian UK (now called Great England) - a futuristic world ruled by poverty, social dissolution and an incurable sickness brought by the rising ocean ties called "Black Flu". We meet Vivian, an orphan who suffers under the tight hand of Martha Burlington, a woman who runs the Ala Spuria Shelter for Strays (sort of an English orphanage for low-born, orphaned kids). Vivian escapes the orphanage through a Number Lottery by "bending the odds" and ends up being adopted by a rich and prominent family from Milton Keynes. Vivian is a troubled child, who realizes she can make the most unlikely event, likely (weaving odds), a realization which brings her to all sort of supernatural experiences. She ends up hallucinating about a "hidden dimension" and even ends up going there in person, to a place called "Non-Existence". What she experiences is A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter-level of storytelling. I don't want to spoil it for you, but Vivian's adventures beyond the fabric of reality is what really hooked me to this story. In that world, Vivian is both villain and hero, and ends up participating in "The Weaver Trials", one of the most dangerous competitions in cosmic reality. An astonishing, surreal story that deserves a huge audience. I would have given it 10 stars if I could. incomparable to anything I've read so far!

[Mathias Michael · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Vivian Amberville is what Harry Potter was to the 1990: a trendsetter. It's something completely unique altogether, being an epic philosophical fantasy with science fiction traces. You get this little girl whose imagination can reshape reality and everything that happens to her just sucks you right in.

Picked Vivian Amberville, the weaver of odds at the library in my town. It had the trippiest cover and I admit its blurb intrigued me, but nothing prepared me for the awesomeness I experienced while reading it. I actually had to return 4 times to the library to finish reading the book cos I'm a broke ass teen, don't ave no library card to borrow it either, but I really recommend anyone else who's a bit better off than me to invest in this book series. Totally worth the cash, it entertains, makes you laugh, and it makes you think. This author's work is a-mazing! You can actually read some of her stories for free on her website louiseblackwick.com or read the calendar stories which are also free and set in the Vivian Amberville universe.

I recommend this book to anyone who has an open mind and wants to lose themselves in a dark and twisted world where reality is everything you imagine it to be.

Read it and spread the word. Vivian Amberville is a new fantasy series worthy of its fame!

[Alecsiya Ivanović · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favourite fictional universes ever!

I purchased the softback months ago, and devoured it in only a few days! This little-known author has somehow managed to give birth to currently, one of my favourite fictional universes in the world, seconded only by George R.R. Martin's universe. I loved the dystopian world of Vivian Amberville! The characters, the plot, the settings... everything is memorable. If you're a sci fi or fantasy fan, you need to read this ASAP