It Was Fate

The day Fate lost her patience, a human lost her life. 

Fate sat alone on her padded chaise, her slender fingers working to untangle a knot in the delicate wool pooled at her feet. 

This is useless, she thought. My shawl will never be finished at this rate. She bent her head down closer to the tangle, trying to get a better look. A breeze drifted through the open window and lifted wisps of her gossamer hair, but she paid it no heed. Instead, she focused on the knots slipping between her fingers. 

Why–won’t–you–untangle, she thought, nose scrunched and eyebrows furrowed; she tugged and tugged and tugged but the string simply would not give. She wrapped it around her finger to get a better grip and pulled hard and fast to tear the knot. The string, pulled too tight around her finger, slit the surface of her skin, and with a quiet twang, snapped. Silvery blood leaked out of the tiny cut and soaked into the string. But Fate was a goddess, and her skin would heal before she even had time to register the pain. Fate breathed a content sigh of relief at freeing the knot and tossed the thread over her shoulder. 

I’ll sweep it up later, she thought, her hands already busy again with the shawl. Her hands were always busy these days.

            Charlotte had been walking down the sidewalk of a busy street near her house. She remembered tripping on a large chunk of loose concrete. She remembered hearing a loud sound, not unlike a truck’s horn, and then she remembered nothing. She came to on the floor of a giant workshop, with a silver cord draped loosely around her body. Charlotte stood up slowly as she untangled herself and began looking around. A wooden table towered twenty feet above her head. A giant pale green chaise lounge sat at the opposite side of the massive room, with a silvery-pink statue lain across, like a fainted woman in a Victorian novel. A shimmering cornflower blue bundle of cloth lay heaped on the woman’s lap. 

            Charlotte took a few steps toward the statue, her feet making little plops on the stone floor. She looked down and realized she was barefoot.

            “This is a weird dream,” she murmured. She started walking again to the statue and screamed as the statue’s eyes popped open.

            The statue turned her head slowly towards Charlotte — frozen in place — then swung her legs down from the chaise. Her dress fell around her with a soft whoosh as she stood up and crossed the floor to where Charlotte stood, in three easy steps. She knelt down and leaned over, her pearlescent oval face close to Charlotte’s.

Are you a human? A soft, velvet voice that felt like sinking into bed after a long day flowed through Charlotte’s mind. Charlotte immediately relaxed and stared up at the statue.

            “Of course! I’m Charlotte,” Charlotte replied. “I’ve never dreamt about talking statues before. You must be at least fifty feet tall.”

            I am not a statue. I am Fate, Goddess of Destiny, the velvet voice replied. You, Human, are not dreaming. You are dead.

“I’m what?” Charlotte stared up at Fate’s smooth, silvery face.

            Fate stared back. Dead, she replied.

            “Is this a joke?” Charlotte asked.

            Fate blinked once, slowly. No. You are dead. Come, step onto my hand. I will place you on the table. I do not wish to kneel for so long.

            Charlotte stepped into the open palm of Fate and fought the urge to scream again as she was whisked up to the tabletop. She noted with a start that it felt remarkably similar to the feeling of being pulled up the first drop of a roller coaster. Then she realized what Fate had said. 

“I’m not dreaming?” 

            You are not.

            Charlotte felt the air rush from her lungs and ice fill her veins. She looked up sharply at Fate, eyebrows furrowed. “If I’m dead, then why can I feel my body?”

            Fate cocked her head slightly. She gave Charlotte a slow once-over. Her eyes flicked back to Charlotte, indifferent. Human, I do not know why you still feel your body. But the living cannot exist here. You are dead.

            “Why am I here?” Charlotte wrapped her arms across her chest, holding herself tightly.

            Fate glanced towards her shawl, lying in a heap on her chaise, then down at the silvery scar on her finger that had almost completely faded. She looked down at the floor where she had tossed the broken, bloodied thread and noted briefly that it was lying where she had found the human. She leaned down and picked up the thread, laying it on the table next to Charlotte.

You must have come from my blood. A thread in my shawl was knotted. I ripped the thread and sliced my finger open. Now the thread is on the floor beside you and you are here.

            Charlotte unwrapped her arms and held them out in front of her. She stared hard at them, turning them back and forth slowly as she curled and uncurled her fingers. “Dead,” she said finally.

            Fate nodded once, face impassive. Charlotte nodded back once, curtly, then leaned over and retched.

            Once Charlotte had fully emptied her stomach on the Goddess’s table, she sat upright and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and looked around. Fate was sitting again on the chaise underneath the window, her eyes closed against the gentle golden light filtering through the flimsy window coverings. A candle burned unnaturally bright on the opposite end of the table from Charlotte, next to some parchment. 

            “Hey,” Charlotte croaked, her voice raspy from retching. She cleared her throat and tried again. “HEY.”

            Fate’s eyes drifted open slowly and she got up and wafted over to the table. She pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, Charlotte’s head level with the centre of Fate’s chest. She stared down at Charlotte. Charlotte looked up at Fate and squared her jaw. “I want to go home.”

            I cannot send you home.

            “You have to,” said Charlotte.

            No. You are dead now, and you must go to the Afterlife, replied Fate.

            “You said you did this. It’s your mistake. You have to send me home,” Charlotte’s voice rose higher and higher as she spoke, panic fluttering and growing in her chest.

            It is a long and arduous process to fix the thread. I do not have the time to do this. 

            “But you can do it?” Charlotte’s voice grew hopeful and she sat up taller.

            I can try. If the thread wants to be fixed, it will allow me to mend it. If not… She trailed off and stared into the distance, at the flickering candle at the other end of the table.

            Charlotte scrambled to her feet. “How do you know if the thread wants to be fixed? How do we fix it?”

            Convince me that you are worth bringing back to life.

            The words echoed and circled in Charlotte’s head as Fate gazed at her. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. And then opened it, and then closed it again. She paced back and forth in front of Fate, hands on her hips. Finally, she puffed out her cheeks and blew out the air.

            “How?”

            Who are you? 

            “What?”

            Who are you? Fate repeated.

            “I’m Charlotte,” said Charlotte, her brow furrowed.

            No, Child. I know your name. Tell me who you ARE, Fate said.

            “I don’t know what you mean!” Charlotte cried, her voice bouncing off the stone walls of the room. Fate remained silent until the echoes faded into silence. Charlotte stood, panting, arms wrapped around her chest as if holding herself together.

            The thread beside you on the table was your life thread. It was severed and has forgotten who you are. You need to remind it. Tell it about your life. Tell it what made you Charlotte. If it can remember, if it can be convinced that you are enough, it will rebind to the rest of the thread and you will go back home.

            Charlotte stared down at the length of limp thread at her feet. “Okay. I can totally do this. Yeah. I can do this. No pressure at all.” The nerves that shook her voice worked their way into her hands and legs and she sat down abruptly.

            Fate reached over to the chaise lounge and held up the heap of blue cloth that had been on her lap when Charlotte first saw her.

            Your thread was torn from here. She pointed to a frayed edge. As you speak, I will try to mend the thread.

            Charlotte nodded. She closed her eyes, clasped her trembling hands in her lap, and took a deep breath.

“I am Charlotte Carver. I am twenty-one years old. I’m an only child and my parents are Maria and Arthur. My best friends are James and Victoria. I grew up in Toronto and I go to University of Toronto. I’m taking English and Classical Studies, and I only have a few months left until I graduate. I want to study historical texts and work in the restoration department to preserve really old books. 

“My mom and dad never let me have a dog, so when I move out of my parents’ house, I’m going to adopt a dog from the shelter. Whoever I marry has to like dogs — that’s a deal-breaker for me. And I want to get married by the time I’m twenty-eight and I only want to have one kid. Maybe.” Charlotte paused, then groaned, “I don’t even know if I want to have any! I’m only twenty-one, and I don’t even have a boyfriend yet!” 

Charlotte opened her eyes and turned to look at Fate. “This is worse than first-year orientation day with all those stupid ice-breakers. Is it working?”

            Fate’s head was bent low over the cloth, Charlotte’s thread hanging between her fingers. 

            Not yet. Try to give more details about yourself. What makes up you as a person.

            “Okay,” Charlotte sighed. “Here we go.

“My mom is from Mexico, and that’s where she met my dad while he was on vacation. He fell in love with her and moved to Mexico to be with her, and that’s where they got married and had me. 

            “We lived there until I was two. My mom would take me down to the beach and I played in the ocean every morning until it was time for her to go to work. She was a teacher at a local school. My dad was a scuba instructor. He would go out every morning to bring tourists to the reefs. He taught me how to dive, and I saw an octopus on my very first night dive with him. I think I was fifteen.

            “I love scuba diving. I tried to get Victoria and James to try it once when they came on a family trip with me, but James was too afraid. Victoria jumped right in, though.

            “My parents have always been super supportive of me. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to university. They were so patient with me and always made sure I knew that they would be there for me no matter what. 

Charlotte paused, then said, “I don’t know what else to talk about, I don’t know what’s important enough. Should I mention some of my hobbies?”

Are your hobbies important to you? Fate asked.

“Well… yeah,” Charlotte replied, her mouth twisted as if she were unsure. Fate gave a gentle wave of her hand, encouraging Charlotte to go on.

“I spend most of my time reading. I love celebrity autobiographies and Greek mythology and 18th- and 19th-century poetry, and I want to spend my life studying and restoring old books of plays and poems. My 18th Century Literature professor said that she’d hire me on as an intern in the summer, working with her to restore and digitize a collection of Oscar Wilde speeches from his American and Canadian lecture tours.

            “I can’t wait to start working with these speeches, and working with the other old books in my professor’s collection, especially this one from 1864 that my professor loaned to me last week–”

            Charlotte paused for a breath, looking worriedly at Fate. 

“I will get to keep doing all this stuff, right?”

Fate’s even gaze met Charlotte’s tear-filled eyes.

The thread is not rebinding.

“It has to. Try again,” Charlotte said, her voice wobbly but determined. 

This isn’t working.

“Please,” Charlotte pleaded, voice raspy with desperation.

There is one other way, Fate began.

“Anything! I’ll do it!” Charlotte cried.

There is a risk to it, warned Fate.

“I don’t care. Please just do it,” Charlotte 

Charlotte. This comes at a price.

Fate’s use of Charlotte’s name caused a hitch in Charlotte’s breath. 

“Tell me,” she whispered.

Do you see the candle over there? Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at the candle she’d seen sitting at the other side of the table. Fate waited until Charlotte nodded, then continued. 

That candle is the Everlight. It has been burning since before I existed, and it has burned every day since. No water can douse it, no wind can blow away its flame. No wax drips from its sides. It has and will burn forever.

I can set both ends of your thread to the flame and melt them together. But in doing so, your life will shorten; time will be taken from the end. I do not know how much time will be taken, or how you will come to meet your death. I do not know if it will be months or years or decades. But if I do this for you now, you will be brought back to life, and you will get a chance to continue to live.

Fate fell silent. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to imagine the rest of her life. She saw bursts of colour and faces flashing through her mind’s eye. 

She saw her parents. She saw the laugh lines crinkle around their eyes and their happy tears as her father walked her down the aisle at her wedding. She saw streaks of silver snake through their hair as the years passed. She could hear them bickering over whose turn it was to get up and answer the phone when it rang. She could smell clean laundry as she leaned in to hug them.

She saw her friends, James and Victoria. She could hear their cheers and glasses clinking over the din of a noisy bar. She could feel their warm hands nestled in hers as they consoled each other over broken hearts and felt her sides ache from laughter over stories of dates gone horribly wrong. She could smell the cookies they’d burn because they were all terrible, impatient bakers.

She felt the sting of tears in her eyes of rejected job offers and failed projects, but that was swept aside by the pride of her first promotion — her first of many.

She felt a warm presence next to her; it was the comforting presence of someone she loved curled against her in bed on a sleepy Sunday morning. She felt them drape an arm over her waist and pull her in close as they drifted back to sleep for a little while longer.

She felt a tiny weight in her arms and knew it was the child she might one day choose to have, and when she felt the weight leave her arms, she knew that the choice was still hers to make. She heard a loud RUFF and knew this was the dog she’d always dreamed about, with the wiggly butt and prancing paws and soft fur.

Charlotte knew that no matter what her end would be, this was the life she had to get back to. 

Charlotte raised her head, slowly, to meet Fate’s luminescent eyes and unwavering gaze. Only a moment had passed, and yet Charlotte had seen so much. She couldn’t tell if it had been a true glimpse of the future or her own imagination, but it was hers either way.

With a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips, her eyes softened and she nodded at Fate. 

Fate bowed her head. When she straightened, there was light swirling in her eyes. She stood up as graceful as the sun rises, carrying Charlotte’s thread and the torn cloth to the candle. 

Close your eyes, she murmured. 

Charlotte obeyed. Almost immediately, a bright light illuminated the room and the darkness behind her eyelids was turned red through the thin skin. Wind whipped around Charlotte, mussing her hair and grabbing at her clothes. The force of it made her gasp sharply.

Charlotte, she heard Fate whisper her name softly. Charlotte…

“Charlotte!” a voice yelled. A hand grabbed hers and yanked her arm, hard. 

Charlotte yelped and her eyes flew open, her body crashing into the hard torso of James. They both went tumbling to the sidewalk as a truck went speeding by, horn blaring. 

“Oh my god! Are you guys okay?” cried Victoria, running to Charlotte and James.

Charlotte blinked in the bright sunlight, then looked to James on the ground beside her, and Victoria standing above them. 

“I’m not dead,” Charlotte breathed.

“Of course not,” scoffed James.

“Char, your hand is bleeding,” said Victoria. 

Charlotte looked down and sure enough, there was a small cut on her finger, leaving a crimson trail dripping into her palm. She smiled. “I’m okay.”