“Good.” The shaman pats my knee in a grandfatherly way. “I want to talk with you before we spirit walk.”
“Okay,” I say tentatively. The shaman is not a chatty fellow, and he usually saves his speech for teaching. “About what?”
“The Woven,” he replies, his eyes far away. The shaman straightens suddenly and looks me in the eye. “What would you do to get rid of them?”
I’m stunned. I stare back at the shaman and think of all the times Rowan has awakened next to me in bed, screaming. I think of how many times I’ve tried to drop into Rowan’s nightmares to lead him to safety, only to find him on a never-ending plain, being chased by countless monsters. He’s always a child in his nightmares about the Woven. And he never, ever escapes them.
“Anything,” I whisper. “I’d do anything to get rid of the Woven.”
He nods, like he thought I might say that. “On a spirit walk, I found a world that was like ours, except for one thing. The Woven have been eradicated.”
“When? Where?” I say excitedly.
The shaman sighs and tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling. “When?” he asks ruefully. “Maybe too late. Where? In one of the hardest worlds to find, buried between millions of cinder worlds.” He looks at me, and I’m shaken to see deep regret in his eyes. “It’s a miracle place, folded between so much death and destruction I’d never have thought it could be possible.”
I know what that means. It means only one universe out of thousands that were nearly exactly like it got it right. One slip, one wrong choice, and the path to a Woven-less world will end in destruction.
“But it’s there,” I say, my face bright with hope. “We can go there and find out how they got rid of the Woven, and bring the secret back here.”
“We’d be stealing something from a world we ought not to have,” he says gravely. “We’d be puttin’ the Great Spirit out of balance.”
“The Woven are what’s out of balance,” I say angrily. “They are a mistake that witches made, and that a witch should fix.”
“It will be hard to get there. There are no versions of you, or any of your loved ones, alive in that world,” he says, his eyes stern. “You’d have to jump without a lighthouse.”
“How did you find your way there?” I ask, my voice small. It’s treacherous to spirit walk without the lighthouse of love to guide you through the darkness between the worlds and I’ve never even considered trying to worldjump to a place where there was no other me, Juliet, Mom, or Rowan. I look at him, my brow furrowed. “Is there a version of you there?”
“There is,” he says darkly.
“And do you love me?” I ask him, my voice quavering. It’s an awkward thing to ask, but the shaman is not one of my claimed. He could only be my lighthouse if that other version of him loves me. I realize as I say it that I want him to love me.
“Not there,” he says gently. “And that me is dying. When he goes I’ll lose my lighthouse and we’ll have no way to find that world again. I’ve watched that world for months, hoping to learn the solution to our problem by watching alone, but time’s almost up. We can’t wait anymore. I’d go myself but—”
“You’re not a witch,” I finish for him. “You can spirit walk, but only a witch can transmute a body into pure energy and make it worldjump.”
“Could you send me?”