Chapter 4 - CLOTHO

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The following days were unpleasant, despite the grief abatement spells she was using. They merely dulled the cutting edge of her sorrow, but did not—could not— should not!—provide happiness in its stead. They enabled her to function in a superficially normal manner, but below, in a cavernous depth of despair, the agony remained. There was only so much that magic could do.
Niobe went to the Prof and asked why he had not told her what Cedric had done. "Because he forbade me," the man replied sadly. "I hoped—by interceding with Death, you might—but—"
"The murder was willed by Satan," she said. "It was too late. One of us was doomed."
"He insisted that you be saved," the Prof said. "1, selfish as I am, wanted him for the college. He had so much potential! But he—and evidently Satan!—believed that you were more important, and I could not refute that case."
"He was the one with all the promise," she agreed. "Cedric was worth two of me. I have no idea what I can do to justify my survival. But for his sake I will carry on, raise our son, and seek my retribution against Satan. If the Prince of Evil suspected that I would cause him trouble, he has surely guaranteed that I will do so now!" But once more she was overtaken by tears. She felt so desolate! Her marriage to Cedric had been, to a large extent, promise—the promise of his maturity. The promise of the life they would have together as two adults. They had just begun to taste that joy—and now it was gone.
She went to the hospital in the city, where the doctor still labored to hold life in Cedric. "Let him go," she said. "I love him. I will not let him suffer longer." And she kissed her husband's unresponsive lips, and wet his face with her tears, and turned away. "May you have joy in Heaven, my bonnie boy," she whispered. "May I join you there—when my business here is done."
She went to Cousin Pacian's parents' farm, where Junior had been boarded for several days. Junior saw her— and burst into tears. She picked him up, in tears again herself, and held him close.
"But he was doing so well!" Pacian protested. "He was having a good time here, honest!"
"Of course he was," Niobe agreed. "It's just that once he saw me, he realized how he missed me. It's a natural reaction." But what, she wondered bleakly, would be his reaction to the permanent loss of his father?
Indeed, once reassured. Junior returned to his play with Pace, and it was obvious that the two liked each other, the baby and the boy, though about twelve years separated them. It was more than kinship. "You are a truly wonderful family," she told them as she departed with Junior. "I can never thank you enough."
"Bring him back to visit soon," Pace said, hiding a tear of his own.
Niobe nullified the anti-lac spell and nursed Junior— but he quickly turned colicky and screamed in pain, and she realized that her grief for Cedric was in her blood and in her milk, poisoning her baby. She had to restore the spell and prepare a formula and return him to the bottle. She felt guilty doing it and less a mother, but perhaps it was for the best. Certainly she had no right to inflict her pain on him.
And I will cry—she sang to herself. I'll cry when the wetlands are dry. It had new meaning now; it was as if her own drying-up was an echo of the suffering of the forest wetlands when man interfered.
She attended Cedric's wake, and Niobe smiled dutifully, but she had no taste for festivity. The ghost did hover near the corpse, reluctant to depart before the burial, despite the burning candle and ritual eating of bread. No one could make it depart until Niobe herself faced it and tearfully demanded an accounting. Then the ghost floated to her, touched her wet cheeks, shook its head, kissed her with the touch of gossamer but also of music, and faded away. It seemed to be a message of reassurance, ironic in this circumstance.
Now it was over, and her life loomed bleak before her. Come live with me and be my love, she sang to herself, trying to remember the feeling of being with Cedric, but she could not. She knew, too well, that he was gone.
She set about fulfilling as much of Cedric's ambition as she could. She talked again with the Prof to see whether it was feasible to develop a spell to enable the deer to shoot back, but he said that such magic was beyond his ability. "The magician who accomplishes that will be a master," he said.
Cedric's death did accomplish something useful: the suspicion that the developer had done the deed turned out to be unfounded, but local sentiment was now so solidly against the project that all such plans were canceled. Perhaps Cedric had known that this would be a side effect of his sacrifice.
There was a death settlement on Cedric which left her economically comfortable for the time being, but she also returned to her weaving, producing fine tapestries for sale. She kept herself'busy—but though she had lived mostly alone for two years while Cedric was in college, this wasn't the same. That had been temporary; this was permanent. Now she knew he wasn't coming home, and that hurt constantly. It was a tunnel with no light at the end.
Increasingly she thought about her trip to Purgatory. She had met five Incarnations—entities she had hardly believed in before. She had seen some of their powers and realized that there had to be more that she had not seen. They had pleaded inability to do what she asked—but they had enormous abilities nevertheless. What did they do when they weren't talking with visiting mortals?
She had no life here on Earth, really. Even Junior would be better off with his cousin's family; she knew that. He was her baby; she loved him. But she had no illusions about the long-term life she could provide for him, alone.
She went to the water oak, set Junior down to play with the hamadryad, and explored the region near it where she had emerged from Gaea's home. As she had expected, it was now merely brush. The magic was from the other end. She could not get to Purgatory this way.
Neither could she use the route she had used before. When she had had a living love to salvage, she had been able to face the prospect of incineration in a burning boat—but she had no love to salvage now. She needed to find another way.
But what did she have in mind to do there, once she got to Purgatory? Ride Death's pale horse? Zoom about the cosmos behind Chronos' traveling Hourglass? The fact was, Cedric was not in Purgatory, either; it would be just as lonely there as here on Earth.
She glanced at her baby, now asleep, lulled by the dryad's soundless lullaby. Of course she wasn't entirely lonely; she did have Junior. He was of Cedric's blood, and that was an enormous comfort. But—he was only a baby.
Increasingly, as the days passed, another emotion rose in her—her need to be avenged on the true perpetrator of this outrage: Satan. She wanted to find some specific way to implement her vow. The Incarnation of Evil had sought to kill her, and instead had destroyed her happiness. She knew that if she had been the one to die, Cedric's fists would have sought the hide of the one responsible, though Hell barred the way. Instead he had chosen to save her. Could she do less for her husband than he would have done for her?
But how could she do it? She was only a mortal woman, caring for her baby, while Satan was the ultimate bastion of evil. She had no way to reach him, and no way to prevail if she could reach him. It was ludicrous to believe she could punish Satan—yet that was her vow and her need. Mars would have understood!
She continued to ponder, for this need was restoring some purpose to her existence. Obviously Satan was neither all-knowing nor all-powerful, for he had muffed the job on her. Also, she must have some power he feared, for otherwise he would not have tried to snuff her out.
What could Satan have feared about her? Surely he did not try to kill a person without reason. He had to be a very busy entity, seeing to all the wrongdoing in the world, constantly waging his war against God and the other Incarnations. She had not thought of interfering in Satan's designs before and was hardly a threat to him. She was not smart like Cedric or magical like the Prof; she had no great muscles, only her beauty and skill with tapestries. Yet he had sought her demise—now she knew her visions had been the first suggestion of that evil—and the other Incarnations seemed to agree that Satan had reason.
So she did have some power—if only she could ascertain what it was. Power enough to make Satan notice! What could it be? And why should the Incarnations refuse to tell her of it? She knew they were not in league with the Prince of Evil! It seemed to make no sense.
And Cedric—why had he not simply saved her from death? Surely he had not been required to go in her stead! He could have told her of the plot against her, and they could have gone far away until the danger was past. Cedric had had free will and had loved life; it just didn't make sense for him to seek death.
But it had to make sense! Cedric had been an extraordinarily intelligent young man, with a clear notion of his destiny. He had talked with the Prof and, instead of telling her, he had sworn the Prof to secrecy.
The Prof! He had to know why! But she knew he would not tell her. Why?
For days she mulled it over, debating with herself. She knew she was not nearly as smart as Cedric had been, but she was sure she could solve this riddle if she kept at it. It was like a code puzzle, with the letters of a sentence changed to other letters so that it seemed to be gibberish. But the underlying pattern remained, and bit by bit the letters could be corrected until the original sentence was restored. She had a number of hints, if only she could understand their application.
Bit by bit, she pieced it together. Satan feared her—so she must be more than mortal. The Incarnations knew of her, and Chronos knew her personally; he had called her Clotho. She had almost forgotten that, but now in her deliberations it came back. Chronos had also seemed to have a personal interest in her welfare; Lachesis had remarked on it, and certainly he had gone out of his way to help her. He had jumped her ahead half an hour so that he could explain things to Mars, who had then agreed. Yes, Chronos had known her—but the others had not. How could that be? Didn't the Incarnations work together? Well, presumably each focused mostly on his-her speciality; Chronos might know people the others didn't. Yet Lachesis had acted as if it were more than that. She had shimmered and changed into a young, lovely form, then back, and Chronos had nodded. He had confirmed— what?
Also, Lachesis had called Chronos "my backward friend." That had obviously not been an insult. What did it mean? Chronos was not backward, either physically or magically; his power had been as great as any. In fact, Gaea had called him a nefarious time-traveler.
But backward also meant to travel in reverse, as in a person walking backward. Yet Chronos was not fixed on the past; he seemed rather to know something of the future.
And then it came to her: Chronos, the Incarnation of Time, could travel backward in time! He could know the future, having been there and back. In fact he could have come originally from the future!
He could have seen Niobe there first—then recognized her here in the present. He had known her as Clotho. But who was Clotho? The name did have a certain familiarity.
She concentrated, focusing on it—and placed it. The Incarnation of Fate had three aspects: Clotho, who spun the threads of life; Lachesis, who measured them; and Atropos, who cut them.
Chronos had remembered her as an Aspect of Fate! She sat perfectly still, shocked at the implication. Herself—Niobe—as Fate? How was it possible? Yet it explained so much: the diffidence of the Incarnations and Satan's effort to eliminate her. As Fate she could indeed interfere with Satan! She wasn't sure how, but was sure she could. Those Incarnations had their special abilities!
Yet if that were so—if it could be so—why hadn't they told her? The question brought the answer: they hadn't known, except for Chronos—and they didn't want Satan to know. It might be that if they had told her, that would have changed it so that it wouldn't come true. A paradox.
But Satan had known! Or had he? Could Satan see the future? He was the Incarnation of Evil, not of Time; his foresight had to be relatively limited. More likely he had some crude divination, some indication that she was going to cause trouble for him, or at least had the potential. So he had struck at her. And the Prof, reading the same divination, or interpreting her visions—which suddenly fell into place in this connection!—had told Cedric, and Cedric had done what he had done.
But, again—why hadn't Cedric simply told her. so she could avoid it? Why had he died, then come to her as a ghost with his gesture of encouragement?
She wrestled that about and finally concluded that probably Satan's minion had been told to go out and kill and, if balked, would continue to try, again and again, until at last successful. Who could avoid a demon-spirit forever? Distance would not have balked it; it would have flown wherever they could have gone, taken over the body of someone there, and stalked them. That would have been a sustained horror, with only one ending. But once it completed its mission by making the kill, it was done and would be no more threat. Satan's minions did not survive beyond their missions. So Cedric had saved her by interposing himself, by abating the demon's imperative— with his life. Cedric had not told her, so that neither Satan nor the demon would know of the ruse. And so she would not scream and carry on and cry, forcing him to desist from his sacrifice. Now it was done, and it seemed that Satan was unable to attack her again. That one demon must have been all that the Prince of Evil could spare. Or perhaps he simply hadn't checked and didn't realize that she hadn't died.
It did seem to fit together. It did account for Cedric's action—and that was a perverse but considerable comfort to her. Cedric had acted to abate once and for all the threat to her so that she could fulfill her destiny—which was, apparently, to become an Aspect of Fate.
But how was she to do that? Again, she knew what the answer had to be. She would do it; Fate would do it— when the time was right. When, perhaps, she needed the skill of a mistress of weaving. Fate—the ultimate worker of thread! The ultimate weaver of tapestries.
All Niobe had to do was wait. She was probably safe as long as she did nothing to attract Satan's attention to her. Of course the Incarnations weren't talking; the fewer who knew a secret, the better it was kept.
But now she had some hope. She could not bring Cedric back, but she could tackle Satan. When she became Fate.
But what about Junior? Surely she couldn't take him to Purgatory! She would have to give him up.
If Cedric had lived, she realized, none of this would have been possible. Had he known that, too?
Perhaps he had tried to tell her at the wake: that he wanted her to do this, to assume the office, that this was part of his motive. O Cedric!
She could not turn it down, now.
She continued about her routine, her grief slowly easing. She took Junior daily to play with the hamadryad, for he really looked forward to it and seemed to be learning something, though she was uncertain what. She worked hard to complete her current tapestry, lest it be forever unfinished if she were called suddenly away. She took Junior to visit Cousin Pace, because now she knew that one day he would have to go there to stay. She did not want to part with him, but knew this would be necessary—and that it had better be done sooner rather than later, to make his emotional transition easier. She quietly put her finances in order, arranging for a trust fund that would pay a stipend to his guardian, so that he would be no financial burden on others.
Weeks went by. Almost, she began to doubt. Then a fat letter arrived. It was addressed to her—but inside was a ticket to a city on another continent, with another woman's name on it. One Daphne Morgan.
Niobe looked again at the envelope. It was definitely addressed to her. She looked for the return address and found none. The postmark was indecipherable. Evidently the wrong ticket had been inserted, but there was no way she could send this letter back.
Wrong ticket? Why should she receive a ticket at all?
Who was Daphne Morgan? Had she received something intended for Niobe? From whom? Why? This seemed like total confusion.
Yet someone had prepared the envelope, and mailed it. It could not be a complete mistake.
She thought about it. She nodded. "Of course!"
She bid farewell to the hamadryad, explaining that she would be going away for a while and would not be able to bring Junior to the tree. The dryad didn't answer, but looked so sad that Niobe felt terrible. But this was a thing she had to do. "Maybe the family who will be keeping him—maybe they will bring him here," she said. "I'll ask them to."
The dryad smiled, and Niobe felt better. She turned Junior over to Cedric's cousin's family. She had taken a null-grief spell, but still it hurt. "Once before," she told them, "I boarded my baby with you, uncertain whether I would return. I am uncertain again. I have arranged for regular money to cover his expenses—" She could not continue.
"He is kin," Pacian's father said gravely as his wife took Junior. That said it all for these good folk. The Kaftans would do anything for kin and do it generously, without asking any return. Niobe could tell by Junior's reaction to them that he had had loving care here. Wise indeed had Niobe's parents been when they had her marry into such a family.
Niobe felt her tears starting again. She kissed her baby farewell and kissed the good man and good woman, too, and Cousin Pace, who seemed stunned. At age twelve, he had never been kissed by a truly beautiful woman before. "There is a tree, a water oak near our cabin," she said. "If—well. Junior has befriended the hamadryad there, and—"
"We will take him there," Pacian said eagerly, and the others nodded.
Then Niobe turned quickly away and returned to her carriage.
She rode directly to the train station, bought a ticket, waited for the train's arrival, boarded, and settled into her seat. She was on her way. She sobbed silently into her hanky.
In due course she was at the port city of Dublin. She presented the ticket she had been sent, the one made out to Daphne Morgan, and it was honored without question. She was provided a first-class cabin, and her meals were covered. As Miss Morgan, she traveled in style. But what would happen when she arrived at Miss Morgan's destination?
The ship got up steam and set sail. As it got out on the larger swells of the open sea, the captain invoked the proper spells and the wind manifested and filled the sails. Some of the passengers turned greenish as the continual sway got to them and lost their appetite, but Niobe had sensibly brought along a spell against motion sickness and had no trouble.
There were men aboard, of several generations, who seemed to view her as approachable; she declined politely. "I am a recent widow," she explained—and then had to retreat to her cabin as the tears welled up again. O Cedric!
Thus it was that, five days into the voyage, she had not made any genuine acquaintances. She spent much of her time alone, reading. She missed her loom and her baby and she tried not to think about Cedric, without success.
She looked up from her book to discover a spider descending by its thread. It reached the floor, then shimmered and became a human woman. "Lachesis!" Niobe cried.
"Niobe, do you understand what we ask of you?" Lachesis asked.
"To become—part of you," she replied. "To be an Aspect of Fate. I am ready."
"But we must be sure you understand completely, for this is no simple thing. We are three, but we have only one body. If you join us, you will never be alone."
"I have lived too long alone!" Niobe exclaimed.
"Because we are three in one, there is no privacy or separate identity," Lachesis continued. "No individual rights. Each must do what is needful for the whole, without exception. If, for instance, it is needful to dally with a man—"
"Oh. You mean—my body might have to—"
"To indulge with my man," Lachesis finished. "The most youthful Aspect generally bears the onus of such endeavors, because of the nature of men, just as the middle Aspect bears the onus of household chores, and the oldest performs grandmotherly functions."
This set Niobe back. She had never imagined having physical relations with any man other than Cedric and hesitated even to commence such imagination. "But what of the spinning of the threads of life?"
"That, too," Lachesis said. "But you will have no trouble there. A woman is not a single-purpose creature, and most purposes you are already prepared for. Our use of the distaff is merely more sophisticated than what you have known before." And in her hand appeared a glowing distaff, the short staff on which thread or yarn was wrapped, "We have only to keep the skein orderly; it is the social aspect that can be difficult."
Difficult indeed. The idea of being with another man— another woman's man—appalled her. Yet she could see that it did have to be a consequence of joining with other women, when there were not enough bodies to go around.
"Suppose—I decline?"
"My dear, we do not force anyone to join us! It may be different with a couple of the male Incarnations— though of course there is no law about that, only custom— but we women are more accommodating. If you elect to remain mortal, you will return to your prior life, and we will select another woman for the exchange. But I confess that we do like you, and not merely for your beauty; seldom does a mortal person have the courage to approach Thanatos as you did."
"I have no courage!" Niobe protested. "I had to do it!"
"Oh? Why?"
"To save my husband, the man I love!"
"And for love you went literally into the fire. If that is not courage, it remains a quality we deeply respect."
"And it was all for nothing!"
"Yes, it is an irony. We could not give you what you desired, then, and we offer you some of what you do not desire now. Yet there are compensations."
Niobe knew she would burst into tears again if they remained longer on the subject of what she had desired; she had to focus on new things. "Compensations?"
"Immortality—as long as you choose. Power—as much as you can manage. Purpose—for you will spin the ultimate threads of man's existence. We are Fate."
Niobe thought about returning to her former life—without Cedric. Then she thought of immortality, power, and purpose—and the opportunity to seek to settle her score with Satan. She would rather have had Cedric, but she really had no choice—as Chronos had known. She was destined to accept this role. "How do I join?"
"Take my hand," Lachesis said, extending it. Niobe took her hand. There was an odd sensation of flux. She felt simultaneous loss and gain. Then she saw that Lachesis had changed to the form of the young, pretty woman who had appeared momentarily in her Purgatory Abode.
Their hands separated. "Farewell, Daphne," Lachesis said. "And welcome, Niobe."
What? Niobe looked down at herself—and discovered she looked like Lachesis.
Yes—you are with us now, Lachesis said silently to her. Your body has gone to Daphne—the former Clotho. Be silent; your day is coming, while hers is done.
Niobe was silent. She watched and listened and felt, while Daphne turned about, verifying her new separateness, then faced them. "Farewell, old friends," Daphne said, and her own eyes were bright with tears. "And thank you, Niobe. You have given me back my life." She opened her arms, and Lachesis embraced her; this time there was no transfer of personality.
Tell her she is welcome, Niobe thought, feeling an almost overwhelming surge of nostalgia. Her body changed to that other form—gone forever!
You tell her, Lachesis replied. Something shifted—and Niobe was back in her own form. Except that two other minds were with her.
She glanced in the cabin's mirror—and there she was, as lovely as ever, standing beside Daphne. Fate had assumed her likeness!
"You are welcome. Daphne," Niobe said.
Then, suddenly, she was crying uncontrollably. Daphne opened her arms to her, and they hugged each other, the tears streaming down both their faces.
At last they pulled apart, looked at each other, two comely young women, smiled—and burst into tears again. For pity's sake! the third mind in her body grumbled. That was, Niobe realized, Atropos, the oldest Aspect.
Eventually Niobe and Daphne ran dry. "I can see you resemble me," Niobe said tearfully. "I hope you have the very best of lives ahead of you."
"I surely do," Daphne replied. "Fate pulled a thread."
They had to laugh at that. Then Niobe turned the body back to Lachesis, who turned it into the spider, and they climbed nimbly up the thread to the cabin ceiling, on through the ceiling, and up out of the steamship and into the sky, suddenly cruising with great velocity along a cable extending across the world. In a moment they slid into their web-home in Purgatory and resumed human form.
"You will not need to learn the way things are by yourself," Lachesis said. "We will guide you when you need it—and routine homelife is mostly my department anyway. But you will need to spin the threads."
First Lachesis introduced her to Atropos. The body assumed the form, and the old woman went to stand before the mirror so that Niobe could see her clearly through their eyes. Atropos was in her sixties physically, with iron-gray hair, deep wrinkles, and an overlarge nose; she looked like anybody's grandmother. "I lived a routine life on a goat farm," she said. "I helped my husband milk the goats and I cooked and washed and bore four children—one of them died of smallpox when he was eight— but my two girls and remaining son grew up and married and moved away. I felt put out when they made it on their own; I had, I confess, enjoyed running their lives. So I concentrated on my husband and made him sell the farm—the market for goat's milk was declining as the big cow-dairies got established, though of course their milk could not compare in quality to what we produced—and invest the proceeds in a furniture factory. But we had been deceived about its prospects; it went bankrupt, and we lost our life savings. My husband took sick, got consumption, got pneumonia, and died broken-hearted, and I knew it was my fault; I should have left well enough alone. But meddling in other people's lives was always my predilection, and when Fate came to me and asked whether I wanted a real chance to meddle—well, here I am! I've been at it fifteen years, and I'm satisfied. And, I trust, I am not ending people's lives frivolously."
But doesn't Death—Thanatos—end people's lives? Niobe asked in thought. She couldn't talk aloud when she didn't have the body.
"Thanatos sees to it that the souls of those who die go to their proper appointments—Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. He must judge the balance of good and evil in each soul, and tend to the difficult cases personally. But I determine when each life shall end; I cut the threads."
You cut the thread of Cedric's life?
"I had to. He had arranged to take the place of the thread I was supposed to cut short, so I had no choice. I do not have complete autonomy, especially when there are changes in the existing tapestry. I do not act capriciously. I must operate within parameters so that no thread extends beyond its proper position, or ends too soon. Otherwise the tapestry would be distorted."
But why any thread? Niobe demanded. Why not let good folk live?
Atropos formed a weary smile. "Child, that is a common fallacy of mortals. They assume that Death is the enemy and that everything would be all right if only they could live forever. It's just not true; the old must pass that the young may come into being. None of us would exist today if our elders had not made place for us. So each thread of life is given its appropriate term, some being longer than others, and each must end as it begins, according to the pattern of the tapestry. I simply tailor the individual threads for the good of the whole tapestry, facilitating the greatest good. It is not for any single thread to decide its own place in the tapestry! It would be disaster to live forever!"
What about the Incarnations? Niobe still felt guilty that she should have such a future reserved for her, while Cedric, the one with the most promise, had been cut short.
"The Incarnations are immortal, but not forever," Atropos explained patiently. "We maintain our lives without aging, as long as we hold our offices—but we do not hold them for all time. We have variable terms. Your predecessor, Daphne, served for twenty-six years, doubling her mortal life—until she spied a situation that was too tempting to resist. She found a good man—there's much to be said for a good man!—and he needed a good woman he would not otherwise obtain—and she simply had to have him. So she has left the office. Now she will age normally, until I or my successor cuts her thread, and she will move on to the Afterlife. Similarly, the other Incarnations change office, all in their own fashions. Thanatos dies when he becomes careless and is slain by his successor; Chronos assumes office as an adult and lives backward until the hour of his birth or conception—I have never quite been certain which—"
Backward? This was confirmation of what she had suspected. How can he associate with others?
"When you want to talk, here in the Abode, just take over the mouth," Atropos advised. "When we are in the company of others, we maintain separation of identities, but we can relax here at home. But to address your question: Chronos controls time. He can reverse himself in order to converse with others, or he can reverse them to align with him, for brief periods. At any rate, immortality is not perfection, and we Incarnations do eventually become bored or tired, and so we leave office. Only in mortality can the true guts of existence be experienced. Theoretically one of us might continue forever, but it has never happened, except in the case of God and Satan, and I'm not entirely sure about Satan."
The old woman seemed to have the answers. Things did seem to make sense—but still Niobe could not accept the necessity other husband's death. "Would it have hurt the Tapestry so much," she asked, discovering that she could indeed assume control of the mouth without the rest of the body, when Atropos permitted, "if Cedric had lived?"
Atropos shifted to Lachesis. "That is my department, Niobe," she said. "I measure the threads of life, which means I determine their approximate length and placement. I don't actually weave the tapestry—it is far too complex for any individual mind to compass—but I set the threads according to the pattern and see that they are properly integrated. Mortals tend to blame Fate for their failings and fail to credit Fate for their successes, which is annoying, but actually my options are limited. The overall pattern is determined by the interactive compromise between God and Satan—the macrocosmic balance between Good and Evil—and we other Incarnations simply implement it to the best of our ability. Certainly there would have been no harm if your beloved man had lived; he was supposed to live. Then we were forced to substitute your thread for his—and then to eliminate that too, for you are no longer listed among the mortals, though they are not aware of your departure. Let me show you."
Lachesis gestured, and the mirror clouded, then opened onto an awesome scene. It was a phenomenal pattern in glowing colors, a Tapestry as wide as the world, with threads in their myriads like stars in the nocturnal welkin, forming a pattern of such marvelous intricacy as to baffle the mind of the beholder. Niobe had never seen a tapestry as magnificent as this; she simply stared, entranced.
"Your thread, and Cedric's, are approximately here," Lachesis said, using the distaff to point to one section, which expanded obligingly to show a better definition. It was like descending to Earth from Purgatory, watching the continents expand until they lost their cohesion, only this was not land but the enormous and splendid Tapestry of human existence. The line of color that Lachesis indicated became a mighty river of threads, and these continued to be magnified until at last the individual threads showed like cables, each in its separate region. "To this side is the future, and to this side the past," Lachesis continued. "The present is the precise center of the image; as you can see, it is moving."
Indeed, the cables seemed to be traveling toward the "Past" side, so that the center drifted steadily toward the future without actually moving. The Tapestry was like a river flowing by. Niobe had to blink and blink again to avoid being mesmerized—but this was futile because at this moment Lachesis had the body and control of the eyes.
Lachesis indicated two cables in the near past. They converged from different parts of the Tapestry and linked, twining about each other. "Your marriage to Cedric," Lachesis said. The two continued on, separating a little to show when he went to college, and touching again when she visited him there. There was a sparkle at one point, and Niobe blushed in her mind when she realized that was their first lovemaking, a significant point in their relationship. Then, after a bit, a new thread started, tied in to theirs: Junior's conception or birth. Then the two major threads exchanged places, and Cedric's ended. There was his death—in lieu of hers.
Finally her thread separated from Junior's and faded out. It was not cut off; it just became obscure. Her assumption of the Aspect of Clotho. Its texture changed: Daphne. Niobe's mortal flesh had not left the world, only her spirit.
"So you see, the Tapestry now has one thread where there were two," Lachesis concluded. "And that one differs. We have tied it in in such a way that no one who does not inspect this region closely will realize that any change occurred. But the Tapestry as a whole is basically unchanged, no cohesion lost."
"But Cedric—"
"Incarnations do not make policy. We conjecture that Satan anticipated your assumption of the Aspect and sought to prevent it. In that he failed—but there generally is a cost when one foils the Prince of Evil."
"Then Satan can force mortals out before their time?"
Lachesis sighed. "Niobe, our firmament is not perfect. God and Satan made a Covenant of old that neither would interfere with the operations of mortal humanity. The idea is that each soul is given its chance in life, to make of it what it will, and those who prove they deserve to be in Heaven then go there, and those who deserve to be in Hell go there. All of mortal existence is merely the proving ground for the classification of souls, which is one reason why eternal mortal life cannot be permitted: it would clog the Tapestry and interfere with its function. But there was one loophole."
Lachesis turned away from the mirror and went to the Abode's kitchen to fix a meal. Niobe was half afraid that the larder of this spider's den would contain some huge, juicy fly for consumption, but the food was normal. She realized that Fate, unlike some of the Incarnations, did not have a household staff. As a woman—or three women—Fate preferred to do for herself. Niobe approved.
"God, as the Incarnation of Good, naturally does what is right; He honors the Covenant," Lachesis continued as she worked. "Satan, being the Incarnation of Evil, naturally does what is wrong; he cheats. So Satan is constantly interfering in the affairs of mortals, yanking the threads about, generating no end of mischief. We other Incarnations, who are supposed to be neutral, must thus oppose Satan, just to get our jobs done. So the answer to your question is: Satan shouldn't take out mortals before their time, but he does. We try to prevent this—but your own case is an example of the problems we encounter. It is no easy thing to deal with determined evil, as we all know to our cost. I am sorry; we would have saved you and your husband if we could, but Satan has agents in the Purgatory Administration office, and he has absolutely no scruples. Your husband's death is a miscarriage of what was supposed to be—but it happened."
And with that Niobe had to be grudgingly satisfied. It strengthened her resolve to make Satan pay. Somehow.

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