Chapter 37 – Seid-Space

We were in seid-space. We had entered from Yggdrasil, but quickly Apparated to the branch where Frijjo had once abandoned us: the stretch of ribbon which travelled to our world and passed through the Hogwarts pyramid. We had kept moving, making just one remarkable stop, prior to the more interesting seid-space I intended to explore. In fact, we were standing at the beginning of the 'heaviest' region of seid-space which Blacky had found. We had hiked along the ribbon to this spot, our birds resting upon our shoulders, under the false confidence that Hermione and I could identify the spot from the images we had plucked from our birds' brains over a month ago. We were briskly strolling past this spot, when Blacky began to squawk furiously. No wonder Odin used his ravens. It was a lot harder than it seemed for humans to navigate seid-space. The combination of changes in both time and position in space, along with the undulation up and down, with gentle or sharp curves of the ribbon from one side to the other could be extremely disorienting. Your body perceived you walking slightly downhill, around a rightward-bearing curve, but you also were travelling several days back in time with each step you took and each step you took was half a mile in the real world. It was light in that real world, so we could see it when we stopped moving. While on the move it was just a colorful blur – the soft colours of early Spring, with a blue sky on top. We were here without Odin, both because he was at Ve's fortress questioning and persuading Vili, and because we didn't want him to veto our going to all the events we wanted to view.

Hermione and I had convinced Odin of the urgency of searching out any harmful edits Frijjo had made to our personal and world timelines during the time she was free. This was the absolute truth, but there was a deeper truth, which I hoped we had hidden from Odin: we were curious about the events which had shaped our personal past, the pasts which may or may not have been Frijjo's long-ago creations. I had to know if I was supposed to be alive in the original, 'real' history of this time, whatever that meant. I think we had succeeded in keeping that deeper motive from Odin. Both Hermione and I were becoming progressively more adept at shielding our minds. We practice a little every day. Our Occlumency skills almost certainly surpassed Snape's. Unfortunately, Odin's Legilimency skill greatly surpassed Voldemort's. We were in contact with Yggdrasil but knew from experience that this contact could be lost at any time. Seid-space is funny like that. If we lost contact, we were on our own – nobody would come to our rescue if we got into trouble.

We had only stopped once as we marched to this point, although we carefully examined our surroundings. In addition to Odin's slime lights, which we had kept, we had tech lights supplied from one of Hermione's professor friends. We each had one or another of two lights which did an excellent job of displaying slight changes in colour of the weave. We checked both sides of the path with each type of lamp. Hermione and Captain Davies took the left side, Cho and Catta took the right. Since we had learned from Yggdrasil that the ribbon itself, or at least new branches of the ribbon, could be woven, Tendra and I checked the ribbon upon which we walked. Aagog, Baalak, and Boldgog did their own unique spidery surveillance of our environment. We had walked a good distance before discovering the first altered area. There was only a single edit, surrounded by large distances from where we started to the edit point and from this edit point to the spot where Blacky alerted me that we were entering 'heavy' territory.

The lone edit was faded, but it led to an adventure. I cut a knot and examined the fibers at the cut edges. Totally faded. Aagog told me "little smell, very old. Not Frijjo, not Gna, not Odin. Some other."

There were no pictures. I used Yggdrasil's magic trick to command the pictures to appear. I was rewarded with a single non-moving, all-beige picture. I could make out little detail: I made out two Goblins but had no idea where or when they were or what they were doing. I cut a few more knots and shone the light through the hole. There was no ribbon beyond the weaving. Whatever future had once forked off from the ribbon at this point no longer existed. I told the group "nothing to see here, let's keep moving."

"Please! Allow me to explore off the ribbon. In all our ribbon travels, these are the first Goblin's we've seen. I assumed this was just Witch magic and it didn't show Goblins, but now I learn that it does. This be important!" Tendra was both begging me and boldly declaring that she was right, and I was wrong.

I had promised to take more advice from the representatives of the other magical communities. They had perspectives which I was ignorant of. I hated to divide our group and reduce our level of security but wanted to maintain our control of this part of the ribbon. "Okay, everybody, Tendra, Captain Davies, Aagog, Blacky and I are going to explore this area and try to figure out why this picture is the first to show Goblins. The rest of you - please guard this spot and rest. We will be back in a few hours."

Hermione halted me, loading us up with powerful lights, two cameras, a compass, a beacon with associated homing devices, and a handful of what looked like metal stakes, but which Hermione described as 'time markers'. "pound them into the ground or rock and conceal them. We can look for them later and find out how far in the past you will have visited."

As my team and I made our final supply checks, I saw Cho arguing with Hermione about "the danger of cultural and technological contamination of the past."

It looked dark outside the ribbon. We turned on our lights and stepped off the ribbon and I blew the whistle to summon Blacky. I placed my beacon at the spot where I had stepped down from the ribbon. Not only was it dark, this place had the smell of underground and our lights revealed rock walls. We were in a tunnel, about eight feet high and twice that across. There was a single metal track running through the tunnel and a metal cart sat upon the track. A taut metal chain was attached to the back of the cart. I did not see the Goblins, whose pictures had prompted this excursion. As I walked around the metal cart, I had the sense that I had been here before, but this place had been different. There was a rock wall five feet in front of the cart. It looked very familiar. To be sure, I started to scratch it with my Mother ring. I was right! This was a magicked barrier across an opening from the tunnel.

"We're in the original entry hall to the Cavern of the Goblins, beneath Gringotts," I excitedly told Tendra. While I continued to scrub a hole in the phoney 'rock' barrier, Tendra played her light upon the wall to the right of the opening.

"Yes, this is the work of Goblins! Very long ago, old style work."

As soon as I stepped through the opening I had made, lights came on and I saw a cavern with an actual magical circle. Both the cavern and the circle were smaller than when I had visited them. There was about a ten-foot-deep space in front of me, then the circle began. There were no benches. As I approached and shone my light upon the metal web between the outer basalt stones of the circle, I got my first surprise: the webbing was gold rather than silver. It was as intricate a web as we had used, before learning the Light Guardian's design. There was a foot and a half gap between the bottom of the web and the floor. I shed my pack and crawled under. The others followed. There was an inner ring of milky-colored crystals, but they were not much more than half a foot tall. They were linked by a single strand of gold, which we stepped over. I was curious to learn how the crystals atop the lodestone were arranged. As I stood beside the lodestone, I recognised it as the same large stone from our own time.

I suggested that we all pause to 'feel' the power of the circle. I could tell that this circle wasn't tuned for me. I also felt that it was more 'off' than the Gringotts circle of our time. Perhaps the magical taste of Goblins had involved or perhaps the Goblins of our age made some allowance for human preference when they tuned their circles.

"Do you want to explore the top of the lodestone?" Tendra nodded 'yes'. "Okay, take the camera. get ready. I'm going to lift you, straight up against the side of the stone. You'll have to grab hold and pull yourself up over the edge. Ready and lift on three. One, two, three... Levicorpus! That's good, you should be high enough. Grab hold of the top. I'll give a Levicorpus push to your bottom, then up you go."

We waited, or at least Captain Davies and I waited - Aagog had left my shoulders to scramble up the lodestone. I could see Tendra's light reflect off the ceiling, directly above the center of the lodestone, and knew she was looking for a quartz cylinder embedded in the ceiling. Her light continued to play across the top of the lodestone, then she called down to me that she was ready to be lowered. I did that. She and Aagog made a joint report. There were five small quartz crystals in a circle. They were stuck into a disc of gold. In the very center was a ruby. Tendra thought, and Aagog confirmed, that there was a small diamond directly above the ruby. It was a more primitive circle than I was used to, but it apparently got the job done. I could feel the magical force and Tendra pronounced it "quite comfortable". I took several pictures of the circle, including a close-up of the webbing on the basalts.

I still had to conceal Hermione's 'time marker'. I used my wand to blast a hole where the floor and rear wall of the cavern met, behind the lodestone. I had to return to my pack to grab the mallet, so that I could pound the stake in a little. I then filled the hole with the rubble, magicked a fake stone barrier atop the hole, and Accio!ed the rest of the stone debris, so that my mess didn't give away the hiding spot. I noticed a low table at the side of the cavern, near the entrance. As we moved closer to examine it, I saw an unrolled scroll on the top, weighted down with stones, and several rolled-up scrolls next to it. I took pictures of all of them. Did we dare to steal one of them? I asked the group. Tendra wanted a scroll as a present for her father. Hermione could have made copies. I decided to try. I had a book in my bag; actually, I had The Goblet of Fire. I had only another fifty pages to read. I hurriedly went to the pages upon which I had written questions for Madam Bones or somebody to answer. I had folded over the edges of those pages, so I easily found those eight pages and tore them from the book. I used the rest of the book to Witch Sculpt copies of the scrolls. I knew that the scrolls were animal skin, not paper. I could compensate. What I had to do was get the writing correct. I had the others train their lights upon the page and memorised the scrolls, one-by-one as I sculpted copies. I was a little short of paper and binding to copy the last scroll. Captain Davies gave me the book she was reading. Task complete! I handed the treasures to Tendra. We were keeping the originals and leaving my copies. I thought the copies probably wouldn't be detected. It was very much in the personal interest of the workmen not to have the scrolls stolen from their worksite.

"Thank you so much! My father's birthday is tomorrow. I'm sure we won't be back in time for the celebration, but these will be the best gifts ever."

As we left the cavern, Tendra restored the phoney stone barrier. I thought she probably could match the original well enough that workmen arriving to enter their job site wouldn't notice the difference. We Apparated back to the spot where we had left the ribbon. I collected my beacon and we remounted the ribbon. Hermione told me that we had been gone just slightly over two hours. She ordered us "take a rest, then we'll continue our travel to the heaviest section of the ribbon."

At first, I couldn't figure out why that area was 'heavy'. Odin had taught me that a lot of seid edits led to heaviness. For our first hundred yards of exploration, we found only a single point where editing had occurred, although it looked like the scene of an edit war, with a side passage having been woven shut, then forcefully slashed open, only to be closed off again. Of course, I had to cut several knots in the most recent sealing off, both to make a hole to see behind and to allow all of us to investigate the cut ends of the knots for colour and odour. I went first. There was a path beyond the barrier. The newly exposed fibers were sufficiently bright in colour that they couldn't have been very old. Aagog had the next shot.

"Frijjo!" she told me. She climbed over to the remains of the slashed away prior closure. I cut the end of the weave hanging from a slashed knot. "Frijjo and Odin." I cut a knot closer to the side wall, but part of that rent barrier. Aagog told me "Frijjo." She walked along the remnants of this former barrier. "Odin hold weave here." Two legs pointed to a section where the weave was looser, right before it anchored to the side wall of this path.

We found a group of pictures on the main path, a few yards beyond the blocked side path. I saw a picture of a very young Snape. Then one of Snape and Harry's mother. Then Snape and Dumbledore. It was a useful trove of pictures. We knew when we were, and we knew where we were - I saw Hogwarts in the background of a picture of Snape and a student I didn't recognise.

"Do we explore off-ribbon, or do we examine the side path first?" Captain Davies asked.

"Side path first," Hermione demanded. "If it's dangerous, we can't leave it open. We may have made a serious mistake in cutting it open, but I don't think it can do much harm if we investigate quickly and then weave it shut again, if it leads to a tampered, bad, alternate future."

We examined the entrance to the side path, initially going no farther than ten feet beyond disrupted barrier. I didn't understand exactly how or how quickly a blocked off path died and collapsed. I convinced myself that if half our team went no farther than this along the path, that the others could rescue us. Yggdrasil had taught us more about seid-space, but that was just one of countless things which remained a mystery. Since our training had focused so much upon recognising subtle colour changes and identifying weaves as the work of a seid master, I was able to understand what Hermione meant when she exclaimed "this isn't a normal ribbon. Look here, and here, the colour is wrong, it isn't even the same over this little bit of ribbon. This is a new path. I'm not even sure it is worth the risk of exploring .it any further."

This comment caused all the spiders to insist upon examining the ribbon. Hermione and I returned to the main ribbon to make room. Captain Davies stayed to hold two lights. The spiders eventually messaged her "you must leave. Your smell distracts from our investigations. Please stab ribbon with knife."

Captain Davies left, without taking offence. She grabbed a very large serious looking knife, turning a questioning gaze to Hermione. "Is that a dangerous thing to do? Could that cause the path to collapse prematurely?"

Hermione shared her fear but confessed that she had insufficient knowledge to predict what would happen. She surprised me by suggesting "we can make a spear and pierce the ribbon from this side of the barrier."

Hermione took the knife. I wondered what she would lash it to in making a spear. Of course! She Accio!ed her hat from her carry bag and Witch Sculpted it and the knife into a long, brutal-looking spear. "Everyone out here!" She shouted at the spiders.

With considerable effort, Captain Davies finally managed to pierce the ribbon. The path did not collapse. I was startled when she withdrew the spear and I saw that the end half of the knife part had vanished. How was that even possible? I pointed to the end of the spear."

"Yes," Hermione admitted. "I was afraid that something like that, or worse, would happen. We are dealing with very peculiar physics. We've stepped off ribbons quite a few times. Have you ever seen the bottom side of a ribbon?"

No, I hadn't. Why hadn't I even wondered about that? My thoughts were interrupted by a message from Aagog, "I be light. I smell." She scampered onto the ribbon before I could stop her. She explored carefully around the hole in the ribbon. "Not Frijjo. Not somebody, some thing. Almost Vanir, not Vanir." She walked off the ribbon as if drunk and collapsed in a heap at my feet. Hermione and Baalak were instantly at my side.

"We cured Baalak, with a huge help from Yggdrasil - but that was burns. How does one cure a spider of too much exposure to a wounded ribbon?"

"She still breathes," Baalak reassured me. "A big part of my treatment was pouring magical energy into me. Without that, I would have died."

"Too dangerous!" Hermione's energetic rejection caused me to step back, as I had leaned over to begin applying energy. Hermione elaborated "Aagog was sniffing around a rent in an artificial path into space-time. There probably is nothing more magical than that. I suspect she may have been sickened by an over-abundance of magical energy - probably very mis-tuned energy from the standpoint of a spider's body, although the Acromantula are at home here. Perhaps I spoke too emphatically, but I think we should wait, before rushing to a 'cure', which may prove more harm than good."

That made sense. Within ten minutes, Aagog was stirring. Another half hour and she was able to walk. We gave her food and water. We decided to try a little magical energy, now that she was able to help us determine whether it helped or hurt her. I pointed my wand at her head at thought of magic flowing down my arm and into her.

"Stop! That hurt. I wobbly."

Okay, too much magic. The obvious solution was for Aagog to perform magic to 'blow off' the excess. She mind-communicated nonstop, to us and to Yggdrasil, as she spun silk to partially close of the side path. This seemed to improve her condition. Apparently, Yggdrasil urged her to keep doing what she was doing. She also should try to Apparate. We explained what she must do to Apparate, especially the importance of visualising where she was and where she wanted to be, paying careful attention to height above the ribbon. Aagog Apparated a hundred feet down the ribbon in the direction from which we had come. She waited a minute and then returned to her starting spot. "Aagog is wobbly."

"Happens to the best of us," Hermione told her.

I halted Aagog's weaving efforts. Despite the dangers of this passage, it related to Harry and his parents. I felt the obligation to explore. I told Hermione that I was sure I could Apparate to freedom. In fact, I would Apparate to a point ten feet beyond the rent in the ribbon. Hermione insisted I wait while she adjusted one of my portkeys, clipping it onto my belt. "Press it once and you should be right back where you are now standing. We'll vacate this whole area. Touch it a second time and you're in our camp on Asgard."

My visit to the side path was both safe and informative. There were plenty of pictures. I could tell that in this reality Snape had dated Lily. They were together for more than one school term. It was Snape who soured on Lily. I saw their separation and I saw her crying afterward. As best I could make out, Snape couldn't stand that she was just a smidge better than him at Potions and that his fellow Slytherin Death Eaters couldn't stop teasing him. The next term, Lily was with Harry's father. I saw no sign of a Snape-Dumbledore alliance. This path went all the way to Dumbledore's death, and beyond. I Apparated back to my team, telling them "we must seal this path. It is bad." I told Hermione only "Snape dates and dumps Lily. He and Dumbledore are enemies. I only saw Harry once. Snape nearly killed him."

My diversion had the benefit of allowing Aagog to return to full health. We pressed onward. We found a dozen woven shut side passages. Half of them had collapsed. In the other half we saw Neville as the Chosen One - that was oh-so predictable, Harry killed in the graveyard, Harry never attending Hogwarts, Harry and Dumbledore both being devoured by the inferi, Harry dating and marrying Cho, and Bellatrix giving Harry a lethal 'Avada Kedavra' in the back as he walked down the path from Hogsmeade. Aagog reported that each of these side passages had been sealed by Frijjo, unsealed by the 'something', and resealed by Frijjo.

Hermione announced that more exploration should await another day. We didn't want Odin to catch us at this and she had to think about all that we had learned.

I said "Okay," even though I knew that one of Odin's ravens, if not one of our own birds, would report our presence in this seid-space heavy spot.

"What is the next step?" I asked her.

"I think Percy and Callista must return to Vanaheimer."