Maggie pulled her hair back up into a studious ponytail as she worked her way back into the depths of the Temple, still grinning in amusement. Helping June get ready for her date with Kuwabara had been a welcome break from poring over ancient documents with a fine-toothed comb.
"I'm happy to see the room is still in once piece," she appraised as she opened the door.
Woden didn't look up from the assorted stack of papers he was sorting to answer. "Not for lack o' trying, Verdandi."
"Learn anything while I was gone?" Maggie asked.
"Tkadlec have lots o' daughters."
"Such as?"
"Average of four to a mother," Kurama reported.
Maggie whistled. "That is a lot of daughters." She sat at a large table next to Kurama, swinging her feet up and around to rest in his lap as she leaned back in her chair. He didn't seem to mind being a decorated footstool, and didn't even bother looking up from his book.
Maggie took a stack of inheritance records from the pile Woden had sorted for her, trying to remember where she'd left off. They were woefully out of order, sorted by - of all things - the name that the new Tkadlec had chosen for the shuttle. June's record was high, given that she named the shuttle Blue Bitch, but her grandmother's Odegra was much lower. Woden had offered to re-sort by date and Maggie had been more than happy to give him the task.
Maggie hummed thoughtfully, scrunching her nose as if that would make her eyesight better. "Does that seem short to you?" she asked, pointing at the inheritance log. Kurama leaned over slightly to read the entry. "She only had the shuttle for a few days, then the log records a new Tkadlec."
"There's a few short'uns," Woden added from his corner. "Marked 'em at the corner." He gestured, and Maggie spotted the folded corner at the top. He looked almost comical in his corner; just slightly too proportionally large for the furniture he looked like an odd art installation.
Maggie teased out another short entry. "A few months," she said thoughtfully. "I wish these stupid things gave reasons for succession. What kind of shitty record-keeping system is this?"
"Spirit World," Kurama and Woden chorused.
Maggie snorted. The two men didn't get along all that well, probably because they had similar personalities, but definitely near-identical senses of humor.
Her humor was short-lived, as some inkling of significance kept nagging at the back of her brain. "It looks like it just jumps all over the place," Maggie thought out loud, "but that can't be right." She squinted at the records, shuffling through and hoping that she'd find some inspiration, but nothing came.
She came to June's inheritance log and paused, mouth thinning into a grim line. "She seems so scared."
"Who, Novak?" Kurama asked
"Yeah," she said, still looking at the log. The crisp sheet recorded the date, time, and location of the shuttle transfer. The clean paper identified the shuttle's new name, Blue Bitch, and the name of the carrier. It didn't record the suffering of the bearer, or give reasons for the mottling of scars they would carry for the unwitting observer to find as they played with a friend's hair.
Maggie had met the stocky Czech under probably the strangest of circumstances of everyone. She could remember deciding whether or not to consume the trespassing soul in her head as everything rearranged again. She remembered a collection of lights and sounds and fluctuating emotions as she and the Song learned to share one body, but also as she sorted through a recollection of events tainted by warped senses.
In those odd circumstances, the weaver had seemed strong. She had pulled Maggie's mind apart and together again to let her fight her own way through. There'd been no yield to her work and no room for hesitation.
But at the temple she'd folded inward, and hadn't approached Maggie again. Maggie had worried that her internal aggression had left the weaver less than confident in her stability so she'd kept her distance.
But the beach. Assuming this powerful weaver to be strong on her own, Maggie had fought her own battle only to be pulled away by that same unyielding force like a toddler pulled from a chair. Furious, out for blood, she couldn't understand when the Czech crumbled nearly into dust. Overdrawn, overburdened. Weaver's Lament. Just a human anchor for that cosmic power, putting up a front of strength against a harsh world.
Maggie regretted her distance. Seeing the fear and loneliness in her eyes reflected in the bedroom mirror, and a hesitant tremble of her hand with 'and are we? Friends, Magnolia?' It had been nearly enough to break her heart. June wasn't a sagely cleric with years of experience, but more of a thoroughly-beaten child just trying to find the safest path. And a friend.
"She wasn't taught like mos' Tkadlecs," Woden said. "Whole generation of 'em learn in big groups, all hopin' to be the next. Learn th' rules, the Ways and Waters. Long time ago t'was a thing you'd go and see. So beautiful." He sighed, remembering. "So many, learning together."
"But June's an only child," Maggie said. "And her grandmother took her out in the woods, far away from the family, to learn."
"But her grandmother didn't succeed the shuttle to her daughters," Kurama reminded. "She withheld it, so June should have been able to learn with her cousins until one of them inherited."
Maggie shook her head. "Intentional isolation seems so cruel."
Woden shrugged. "Can be a good way t' learn, Verdandi; you did well with it. Even hated to be bothered - smacked people around when they came lookin'."
The Song agreed with Woden, and Maggie didn't like it. "Yeah, well it didn't go so well for June," Maggie snarled, grabbing a random book and yanking it open. She yelped in surprise as a daisy cheerfully popped up from the centerfold to greet her with a bright white face. Maggie slowly turned dagger-eyes to Kurama, who was tactfully hiding a grin with his book.
"That's 'cause Weaver's are fixers. Can't stand to hurt a soul. "I'm starvin' for supper," Woden announced, standing from his too-small chair to stretch. His knuckles brushed against the ceiling. "Ye want some grub?"
"I'll eat soon, but thank you," Maggie answered. She shot Kurama a warning look that he continued to ignore.
Woden shrugged it off, maneuvering sideways through the door with a slight duck of his head to avoid hitting it on the frame. He closed the door behind him with the gentlest click of the latch.
Maggie lifted her feet from Kurama's lap and smoothly rose from her chair. While she knew Kurama was keeping track of her movements he did not watch her directly. The Song inside her clamored with annoyance, not liking to be ignored.
Maggie moved to stand behind Kurama, running her fingers through his hair. Like moonlight on a red sea, faint lines of silver appeared at her touch. She liked doing this, pulling at the demonic parts of Kurama with her touch.
"That's very distracting, you know," he scolded.
Maggie didn't stop. "Oh, I know. I just don't care." He wasn't so delicately careful with her anymore. He liked to play little tricks and would dare her to return them with his eyes.
She wasn't the same person who entered demon world all that time ago. She wasn't entirely a person, either. Song rattled around in her head, expressing a near-sentience of its own. But it liked Kurama; it liked the way he hid plants on his body like little prizes to be found; it liked his calm presence, and the resonance of his voice.
Kurama snapped the book shut and spun his chair, pulling Maggie onto his lap. The Song rang through him at a careful resonance that he'd never be able to detect. The reporting of his collection had Maggie making a strange face.
"What did she find this time?" Kurama asked with a laugh, knowing that he was inspected at every contact. His eyes glittered with flecks of gold, as he already knew the answer.
"Where on earth did you pick up pumpkin seeds?" Maggie asked incredulously.
"I'll answer that question if you answer mine," he bargained. "Where did you hide the box?"
Kurama had adapted well to the dual personalities he needed to entertain, likely in the same way Maggie understood his demonic duality of Kurama and Youko. Their budding relationship - regrowing from a sharp cut-back - strangely accepting of the duo becoming a quad.
The fox couldn't stand to be bored. It hated routine and consistency; likely considered it to be a very pretty cage. Kurama's adventurous life had kept the fox fairly occupied and occasional brushes with death more on the satisfied end of the spectrum, but it was never enough. It kept Maggie on her toes, thinking of puzzles she could leave and treasures she could hide, just like Kurama did for the Song.
A consistent object of territorial dispute was a little metal box, maybe three inches across on all sides, where Kurama stored his watch at the end of the day. She'd never steal the watch - it was a gift from Kurama's mother, she wouldn't dare provoke either one of them like that - just the box.
"You'll have to do better than pumpkin seeds to get me to give it up," Maggie teased, leaning forward in his lap to give him a quick kiss.
"We are supposed to be working," Kurama chastised, even as he held a firm grip on her thighs to keep her in place.
"I took a break, and so should you," Maggie reminded. "Otherwise you'll get all cross-eyed and lose sight of-" in the middle of teasing, her head snapped up and her eyes widened with sudden realization. The Song pitched high, annoyed, but Maggie swatted around her head as though that would fix the problem. "Not now! I'm thinking!" she cursed.
This wasn't completely unusual, so instead of asking 'have you lost your mind', Kurama stayed silent, letting Maggie and the Song work it out.
"We're looking small," Maggie mumbled, "individual records, looking for consistency, but we're getting myopic." She stood, rummaging through the collection of records on the table before finding the largest one: The Line of Dusana.
"Kurama," she said slowly, trying to talk and think at the same time, "Can you come hold this? The Line, can you hold it up so I can look at it?"
Kurama took the scroll without comment and stood to let it unroll towards his feet. "What are you thinking?"
Maggie tilted her head slightly. "How many daughters did you say they have on average?"
"Four," he reminded.
Maggie held up her hands like bookends and walked backwards to frame the Line from a distance. "And they don't even record sons for the Line, because they can't inherit."
"It is an unorthodox method of tracing genealogy," Kurama admitted. "But very succinct."
"So…" the collection of facts that had been building and bothering her all day buzzed around in her brain. "So why's the family tree shrinking over time?"
She drew in her hands a little to mimic the thinning shape. "Stay there," she said slowly. "Or- no - lay it down on the table; I need your help with this."
With a deft flick of the wrists, Kurama unfurled the scroll onto the long table and Maggie held it down at the four corners with books.
"Inheritance logs," she mumbled, picking up a stack and feeling for the marked corners Woden had left on the shortest successions.
"You want to compare them to the Line?" Kurama asked, and Maggie nodded.
"They're the two most important pieces; who held the shuttle, and who's in the family." She could feel the importance of it ringing through her chest like excited music, and it wasn't coming from the Song.
It wasn't even coming from her head, now that she thought about it.
Kurama pulled out his ringing cell phone. "Yes, Kuwabara?"
Maggie checked the clock. The two had only been gone for an hour or so - was it going that badly? Kurama's face hardened, and Maggie knew that something had gone wrong. "What's happened?" she asked as Kurama hung up.
"The barrier has weakened to the point where Makai insects are getting through. They're coming back to the Temple now."
Maggie ground her teeth. Two steps forward, one step back. Not even that, she argued internally, the Spider just side-steps us at every turn. Side-stepping. Moving out of the way. Outmaneuvering.
That feeling of significance nagged at Maggie's brain again. "Don't look, Kurama; I'm going to deface Spirit World property," she said, grabbing a red pen and pulling the cap off. With the inheritance logs in one hand and a pen in the other, Maggie circled the Tkadlecs on the tree, starting with Dusana.
Dusana to Lada… Maggie thought, circling the two. Lada to... Kamila. Circle, circle, circle, changing out logs as Kurama handed her the next in the series, focused entirely on accuracy and a growing sense of victory as a pattern emerged.
"It's always the mother of the most," she declared, reaching the bottom of the Line. "Always."
"Almost always," Kurama pointed out, tapping the last name in the Line. "June."
"June," Maggie agreed.
"It would be unheard of to change tradition after so many generations," Kurama mused.
"Revolutionary," Maggie agreed, raising an eyebrow. "But maybe that was the idea."
Maggie watched from the porch as protective wards rose above the temple, sealing off the access of low-drifting swarms of Makai insects. "They must've reached the steps," she said out loud, sensing Kurama coming up behind her.
He didn't try to hide or play games. Their revelations looking at the Line had left them feeling sober. "They weren't far when Kuwabara called."
Maggie crossed her arms over her chest. "I wish we had more time; maybe we could find a work-around, or just... more options."
Kurama frowned. "You and I both know now that was never the plan."
Maggie let out a snort of spiteful humor. "And isn't that just our kind of luck? Me, Aria, and June; all three of us." She straightened, spotting figures rising on the stairs. "That's them."
Under most other circumstances, the picture would have been endearing; smartly-dressed Kuwabara carrying his ruby-gowned date up the stairs, having whisked her off her feet. But today, Maggie knew it was because June was exhausted from pulling them all out of danger barely twenty-four hours before. Today, Maggie knew it was because they faced too much danger to give her the luxury of taking her time to get up the stairs on her own power. Today, Maggie knew she would have to be the one to ask the weaver to do it all again.
Genkai made the girl crouch as Kuwabara set her on her feet in the courtyard, but evidently deemed the insect bite on her neck not life-threatening as she swiftly ushered them into the temple.
"Besides the world as we know it starting to come to an end, did you have a good time?" Aria asked, joining them in the hall.
June smiled weakly. "We played arcade games. It was very much fun."
"Is Hiei joining us?" Kurama asked Aria, who shook her head.
"Yukiko's asleep, so he's staying with her."
They entered the central room, finding Woden clearing off the last of the papers they hadn't had time to review.
"We need to know what you've got," Genkai said, addressing Maggie and Kurama.
"Well, Maggie sighed, running a hand through her hair, "it's not a lot, but what we've got isn't good. I wasn't able to figure out who the Spider is, and since Matylda and Yanko weren't part of Clan Tkadlec, they aren't mentioned at all, so that was a dead end, too."
"What did you learn?" Genkai asked.
Kurama and Maggie shared a look, and Maggie began to talk. "There's no recorded instance of the Shuttle ever following a different branch once the bearer has been selected, and all of the transfers are recorded. All of them. But - and I think maybe this is the most important - your grandmother did a lot of very odd things by choosing you, June."
She pulled out the Line. "Look," she traced the lines up and down. "Tkadlecs choose their successor - seems so, anyway. It's probably more complicated, but," Maggie waved her hand, "unimportant. The point is that - look; inherited by the middle daughter, with three daughters of her own. Then, her eldest daughter inherits, who has four daughters, then her youngest takes it, who has three daughters."
June shook her head slowly. "I don't understand."
"I know, just wait; so let's skip down to you," Maggie tapped June's line, "only child. Your Aunt had three daughters. Tkadlec women have been doing the same thing over and over again for hundreds of years, so why pick you?"
Maggie gesticulated. "Your grandmother picked you. You, so specifically and carefully. A childless one-handed only child should never have been chosen as Tkadlec."
June frowned, opening her mouth but closing it as quickly as Maggie continued. "And - and this is related to the whole thing I'm going to get to eventually - while the Spider isn't mentioned directly, but you can almost track him through the line based on a few factors." Maggie returned her attention to the Line.
"Here, and here - surprisingly young deaths of Tkadlecs. She'd only had the title for a few months, and then it got passed on, and the other woman had the title only a few days." Maggie's finger moved down the delicate parchment. "And here - two of her three daughters with no children of their own. Likely gone mad, just like your mother, which I'm betting is also from either the Spider or Mishka."
"Then look at the bigger picture." Maggie stepped back, holding her hands to frame the shape of the narrowing Line. "The whole Tkadlec line starts with Dusana, right? Her daughter, Lada, has six daughters. These lines all start to spread out," Maggie tapped along them like hopscotch, "but look at this - the family tree should have just gotten wider and wider, but-" she traced the whole shape of it. "It's narrowed severely over time."
"If shuttle can't skip back up the Line, what does it matter?" June asked, frowning.
Maggie shook her head, emphasizing. "Because it's not just the whole tree, it's each generational line. The shuttle has always been going to the next daughter with the most daughters - the greatest number of successional lines possible; the tree should have all but exploded in size, but it's not."
"The Spider hunts them," June realized.
Maggie nodded. "Yeah. So the Tkadlec is always the next generational step with the greatest number of next possible steps, rather than strongest weaver or greatest skill. It's just numbers. They've been playing the numbers game since the beginning, just trying to keep up with the Spider's tendency to wipe out families one by one."
"They've been fighting a losing battle, but haven't changed tactics." Maggie looked at Kurama. "We think that maybe your grandmother hoped you'd be different. No problem was ever resolved doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Maggie pulled out a stack of books, dropping them onto the table. "Tkadlec families used to live close together around the same general area, and the generational lines stayed that way for the most part - probably for safety. But with you…" Maggie let the question stay leading.
June nodded. "We moved out into forest. Middle of no-place."
"Right - she taught you to weave, but only in the old, old way. But, she didn't tell you the Tkadlec rules, the dangers of using or misusing the shuttle, or the cosmic battle the family was fighting. She introduced you to someone who could keep you safe, outside of the family." Maggie gestured to Genkai. "She just didn't get to finish preparing you before her time ran out."
"This is less fact-based and more… well, a hunch, but," Maggie took a deep breath. "I don't think your grandmother picked you at all," Maggie said slowly. "I think the Shuttle did." She let the sentence hang. All of the recorded successions made it look like a careful selection by the previous Tkadlec; something reverent and possibly even decided by committee, but June's grandmother had ignored all of it.
"And that would be amazing; an incredibly brave subversion of hundreds of years of survival tactics by a Clan designed to do one thing; continue to bear the shuttle. Ignoring everything all the relatives must have been yelling and hiding you away in a forest to learn, all because a voiceless spirit inside the totem picked you." Maggie tried to stress the importance of it, but realized as June's eyes fell that she had somehow gone too far. "June?"
She swore, darkly, in Russian, and kept her eyes low. "Is wrong."
"Wh-which part?" Maggie's eyes narrowed.
"Not part - all-" she waved her hand, eyes flashing with anger. "The doing. The thing done - to me!"
Oh. What they did to me is wrong, is what she was trying to say. "Er-" she looked to Kurama, not sure of what to say. She hadn't considered how much it would hurt to find out that her pain and confusion was intentional.
"What is it?" June asked, her voice beyond bitter and creeping into spiteful. "What is the thing they wanted different?"
"We don't know," Maggie said.
She continued. "Spider is killing us - but is one of us; which one? Why does he hate us!?"
Maggie tried to show sympathy as she repeated, "We don't know."
June screamed in fury, shoving a perilous stack of books off the table with a tremendous thundering of cover and thick paper tumbling to the floor. Cries of the powerless, of the angry and cheated and abandoned, poured from June's mouth in a stream of Russian so agonizingly painful it couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Maggie held out a hand, opened her mouth ready to try and comfort her.
But Kuwabara caught her eye with a subtle shake of his head. Don't.
It was only a moment, and June stopped immediately. She breathed heavily, staring at the fallen books. Then she crouched, gathering them in her arms, smoothing scrunched pages and trying to fix bent covers. She lifted them onto the table but split them into two smaller stacks to keep them from falling over again. She left her hand on the slightly taller stack, still breathing quickly, and stared at the books until she steadied completely.
Weavers are fixers, Woden had said. Can't stand to hurt a soul. And that had been their undoing. Incapable of killing the creature that hunted them they had lost the battle over time.
"What do I do?" June asked Maggie, her eyes on the table. "To fix this, what do I do?"
"The Spider is trying to pull down the barrier and we need to stop him. It's that simple." Maggie almost regretted calling it 'simple', but the word itself seemed to amuse the weaver.
"Simple, yes," June said flatly. "Walking through the park, smelling flowers. Will be so easy. Shall I bring tea, also? I will bring blanket for picnic," she turned to Kuwabara, her expression politely curious, "will you bring little sandwiches?"
To her right, Kurama snickered into his hand. June looked at him, the laughter somehow making her smile more genuine even in the dark situation. "Perhaps we have marshmallows over fire?"
Maggie couldn't help it; she burst out laughing. Maybe it was the deadpan stare, maybe it was the clipped Russian accent talking about picnics and campfire marshmallows, or maybe it was just all the built-up stress and the swift left turn into gallows humor, but she laughed.
It spread, catching Aria and Yusuke, and Genkai looked at them like they'd lost their minds. "What's wrong with you?" she barked.
Aria sucked in her lips to hide her grin, took a short breath to hide the giggle, then asked. "You-" she snickered and started over, "you think if we ask nicely the Spider will bring something?"
"Blood pudding!" Yusuke cried, realizing the possibility for a pun!
"Eyy!" Aria cried, high-fiving the joke.
"This is serious!" Genkai chastised.
"You're right," Yusuke agreed, "we can't count on him to bring anything to share."
"Thank you," said June, stepping forward and holding out a hand. Steady, no tremble of fear. Maggie took it without knowing what she was being thanked for. "We should prepare, yes? Many human people will die if we wait."
"Um, yes," Maggie agreed. She knew that June couldn't feel the rush of Song that buzzed through her body, and felt uncomfortable knowing what the Song had reported back.
"I will change, and meet outside soon," June said shortly. "Cannot win a fight in party dress and with fancy hair. I feel the," she paused, asking Kuwabara, "what is the word, avos'?"
"Uh," he frowned, shuffling in place. "I don't know that one."
"Ah," June sniffed, nose wrinkling. "No matter. Nadeyemsya na avos'" She squeezed Maggie's hand and let go, turning on her heel and leaving the room's strange energy behind.
"June, wait-" Kuwabara cried, following swiftly after the weaver.
Maggie stood in that spot, watching the door as the variety of demons and psychics followed the weaver out of the room, surely off for their own preparations for battle. A little knowledge never hurt anyone, isn't that the saying?
"Maggie?" Kurama asked, giving her a curious look. "Is everything alright?"
The Song had run through June's body as quickly and thoroughly as she did everyone, seeking familiar things and unfamiliar as well, always hoping to satisfy curiosity. The Song remembered June; remembered the way her soul had felt pulling her mind apart - a steady beat of a drum, a calm lake of a loving soul whose shores had only just started to recede from the demands of the shuttle's power.
The Song had gone looking for that power, and found an empty lake-bed with barren shores. Hardly a drop remained of that calm and encouraging soul.
A/N: Gallows humor is the best.
Avos' is one of those untranslatable words between languages. It's a concept word that relates to blind faith, representing an optimistic hope that things will work out. Literally, she said "We hope for a chance."
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