A distant bell tolls with all the moody drama of the metal song my sister Jet is currently blasting out of her mini speakers. Dirt devils of ash and sand swirl high over the barren wasteland and a baking heat runs through the air like a thrill, scorching the earth. Our grief-seekers huddle together in the middle of the plain, a few hundred feet from the outskirts of the town, with its wooden shacks groaning against the growing wind.
I glare at Jet while keeping my smile for the customers in place—which probably makes me look a little too killer-clowny to be comfortable. I’ve told her a million times that we don’t need to have music on our tours. This place is plenty atmospheric enough without her bursting our eardrums with her choice of music. Sadly, she ignores me and the act of widening my eyes just leaves me with an eyeful of sand and dust.
Sugar lumps and shitshows. This is why I hate the grief-seekers tour. We’re at the end of the world and still my sister is making me mad. Plus, not all of our customers appreciate the music or the fact she’s head-banging along like she couldn’t give a fig that there are people around… or that the world is ending.
“Isn’t that a bit insensitive?” One of our clients asks me, gesturing in Jet’s general direction.
“Because all these people are going to die soon, you mean?” Jet asks. My sister, ever the sensitive soul. “It’s not like it’ll change anything for them. They’ll all be gone soon either way. I don’t think it matters if we have a bit of fun while we’re here.”
As insensitive as she is, Jet is right. We call this the ‘grief-seekers tour’ because it’s a very weird place which is caught in a kind of loop in time, so the world is always ending here. Every day, midday strikes and the apocalypse begins. Every night, midnight comes and the place resets. Like clockwork.
We always get at least one Judgemental Jessica whenever we come here, despite us being very clear with the disclaimers before they sign up. On this particular tour, we pop in, sniff the sulfur-filled air and despair, hang around for a bit and then pop out.
Unsurprisingly, this tour is mostly popular with demons since they get to absorb a lot of yummy energy from all the raw emotions in the air.
Also unsurprisingly, it’s always the humans that give us grief and pile on the guilt trip. I say that with love as a person who grew up in the human world. They’re always the ones best at playing ostrich until reality slaps us in the face.
Today’s tour has thirteen customers plus me and Jet. We’ve got five humans or human-ish folk, four demons, two witches, and a couple of unknowns. There’s one in particular that hasn’t removed their hood for the whole time we’ve been here and I can see Jet’s itching to bump into them just to see if it’ll slip and we can get a peek at what’s beneath. We had to stop allowing vamps to book onto this tour once we realized that something about the whole apocalypse atmosphere drives them absolutely wild with blood lust. I’m not really into decapitating or staking rabid customers.
Not part of my job description. All I’m here to do is hop us into the world, put on my best smile and spout my usual spiel for a couple of hours, and then hop us right back home again. I’m pretty good at it too. Not to toot my own horn, but I can talk up anywhere, no matter how bad it stinks like rotten eggs.
And holy meatballs, does this place stink.
For the past three and a bit years, ever since we absconded in the dead of night, Jet and I have hopped from place to place, world to world: from beaches, mountains, cities, visiting in all manner of seasons and experiencing all types of weather. We saw glitter tornadoes and sentient snowstorms, we visited the grand hallways of Hades and snuck around in just our socks so we wouldn’t get caught. We visited the Labyrinthine Caves—an entire world that is just an intricate labyrinth… of caves. It was dark and creepy and we wandered around, lost, for hours before giving up and hopping out of there.
And then we decided, after a couple of weeks of camping on beaches and fluttering our eyelashes for snacks, plus a brief stint where Jet tried fortune telling and was absolutely terrible at it, we turned our trips into a business. Two boss bitch sisters raking in cash while still flitting from place to place.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t hard to find customers. Then we got more and more as word spread and people told their friends.
It was great. For a bit, anyway. Then we both remembered how people suck—a sentiment, it turns out, that extends to all people across all worlds. As soon as you make something transactional and get people to hand over their cash, they talk about ‘customer service’ and ‘service with a smile’ and ‘find us a proper restroom, we will not pee behind that bush’.
We quickly learned that doing tours is like looking after five to twelve adult babies. Someone always gets sick on the journey, someone always wears totally inappropriate shoes, someone is hungry and someone else needs yet another pee break even though we just went.
It’s a lot. And we both sometimes get sick of each other, sick of spending all day, every day together.
And the grief-seekers tour is probably my least favorite of all. The atmosphere, the smell, the taste of the place, blech. But it’s popular, so we’ve been here a lot.
But it makes me feel so guilty. We come here and we stay as late as we can, skirting the edges of the apocalypse and witnessing it like it’s a geyser going off. A natural phenomenon, one that we can’t do anything about.
… but if anybody could do something. It’s me.
I’m a destiny weaver, after all.
That’s what I was created to do. To weave the threads of destiny and carry people along… somewhere. I spent nearly six years at the weaver academy, learning about weaving and feeling waay over my head. Since I never technically graduated, I never went through the placement ceremony that would tell me exactly what I was supposed to do with the abilities I got from being a weaver.
And since Jet and I are technically on the run from the higher level weavers, we set ourselves a few rules when we first escaped the academy: like we don’t go back to the same place too often, we never go back to the Ether, where the weaver academy is located, and we keep on going forward.
It means that if I were to, say, move hundreds of people from this place, to save them from the apocalypse, that would be like waving a million flares and announcing our presence. The higher-ups would find us. And then who knows what they’d do.
So… I do nothing. Apart from feeling guilty as all hell.
I don’t even know what would happen if we relocated the people that live here. Would they somehow get stuck back here the very next day? Would someone else take their place? Who knows? I could just end up making things worse.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
It sucks. I keep asking Jet to stop booking this tour, but she insists on us doing it because we keep getting booked up every time we offer it.
To be honest, I’m kind of exhausted with it all. Tired of hopping from place to place, never spending extended amounts of time anywhere. Always looking over my shoulder, waiting for our past choices to catch up with us.
But that’s the price we pay for freedom. When you’re a weaver, everything is decided for you, including where you’ll be placed after attending the academy. A lifetime placement that you have zero choice over. You could do anything from influencing love matches, to weaving the threads of fate, destiny or karma to decide which kids get their cancer cured, and which don’t.
Free will? Yeah, that’s not a luxury we’re normally granted.
So when my sister, great believer in free will and hater of the invisible puppets pulling our strings, was due to undergo her ceremony, we decided that, nah, we would not stand there and let them take our choices from us. I had the power to get us out of there, and so I used it.
Back on the tour and the human woman who complained about Jet’s speakers has started praying to someone called ‘Zoddar’, right in my ear. I throw a glare in my sister’s direction since she’s the one in charge of the pre-tour surveys all our customers are supposed to complete. We designed one question to weed out all the religious fanatics, but clearly we haven’t done a very good job this time.
Holy meatballs. My head’s already pounding thanks to the whole heavy atmosphere of this place and what with the music and the praying, it’s all very distracting and my headache kicks up a notch.
“Er, Echo. Echo?” a voice to my left says. “Could you ask her to stop doing that, please? It’s making me and the guys a little uncomfortable.”
I suck in a wince. Demons really do not enjoy it when people pray around them or sing hymns, any of that stuff really. That’s one problem with having mixed group tours. It’s a challenge not to upset anyone.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to the incredibly polite demon beside me. “Can you stop that, please?” I direct my words to the woman beside me with my well-practiced customer service smile.
But instead of listening, she shows no signs of stopping. In fact, she’s getting louder. The rest of the group is shifting like they don’t much like it either, so I hiss out a breath and glance up at Jet, who nods to show she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“We’re going to have to gag her,” Jet mutters in my ear, just loud enough for the group of demons, who are all handsome as hell, to hear. “Any of you guys got one on you? I’d prefer something not too drooly if possible.”
They do not disappoint. Three of them pluck various strips of material from their pockets and offer them over. My eyebrows shoot up into my hairline as she picks one at random.
One of the other humans looks intrigued. “What else have you got in those pockets?”
“You probably don’t want to know,” Jet mutters, just as one demon replies, “A fuckload of lube.”
I can’t hold in my giggle and the—now chanting—fanatical human takes a step away from me, raising her voice even louder. The other human, the one who asked the question, looks even more intrigued and moves into the demon’s space. She’s a pretty little thing with straight black hair down to her waist, which I’m jealous as all hell over. I can’t imagine not having a whole dang mane that doesn’t snap combs in its snarls. Getting apocalypse dust out of it is going to be a total nightmare later.
Another glance at my sister and I continue with the tour while she deals with our little songstress. It’s chaotic in a way that I used to find fun, but these days, I’m pasting on a smile and having to dig deep for enthusiasm I don’t feel.
It never used to be this hard. But I guess that two tours per week for the past few years are taking their toll.
“Okay guys.” I clap my hands to distract from the fact my sister is currently gagging one of our clients and that two demons are waving a bottle of lube around while the human girl is practically panting at them. “It’s ten minutes to midnight, so things are about to crank up a notch.”
Ten minutes to midnight, but the sun is still burning high in the sky, blasting through the atmosphere with zero care. It’s about now that the earthquakes start, and then the air fills with the smell of burning rubber… and the sound of screaming.
That’s the part I hate the most.
I keep my smile just wide enough to be friendly, but not too wide that it’s creepy since this is, y’know, the apocalypse. The demons breathe deep at the despair and wild emotions floating around the place. The humans’ eyes grow wider and wider as the wind picks up, and the sky splits in two. Even the mysterious hooded one among our group is quivering with something like excitement.
And then I gather everyone together, hand in hand, and hop us out of there, right before things get too hairy. We leave before the acid rain starts. It’s not like we have insurance to cover these trips, but the last thing we need is someone suing us because all their skin melted off.
The entire gang is buzzing with excitement and adrenaline as we arrive back to our drop-off zone on the outskirts of a city in the human world, not too far from where I grew up. If I hopped in a car east for a couple of hours, I could wander my old neighborhood. Not that anybody there would know who I am these days. It’s not home anymore, that’s for sure.
I’m fighting a yawn as I do my last bit of spiel, telling the group that they were all great—although one of our members has only just been ungagged—and that they should tell their friends about us and we’d love to see them again soon. With a last grin and wave, they disperse off into the night and I grab Jet’s hand to take us back to our crappy little apartment, home for the next couple of weeks until we move onto someplace else.
I remember that right before we escaped the academy, Jet kept saying how we were caged birds that needed to fly. And it’s not like I want to go back into a cage or anything, but I never considered how exhausting it would be to have to flap your wings the whole dang time.
I’m tired. Maybe I just need a nice branch to roost on for a while.
That’s what I’m thinking as we get home and I finally have a chance to check my phone for messages and I listen to the voicemail that’s been left for me.
You’d think that as a weaver, I might be a little leery of tempting fate. But dang it, I never seem to learn.
A familiar stern, female voice speaks through my crappy phone speaker.
“A weaver has gone missing. You’re needed. And once you find her and bring her home, you’re going to stop this childish need to rebel and undergo the placing ceremony.”
Sugar lumps and shitstorms, seems like maybe my destiny’s caught up with me.
