A Forgotten Fate

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

A Forgotten Fate

By Plot Roach

Mitch ran for the cab, sure that he would miss it before it pulled away from the curb. His foot caught on the edge of the sidewalk and he sprawled forward into the street, a car coming to a screeching halt mere inches from his face. He breathed a sigh of relief, even as the driver leaned on his horn, sending him blaring back into reality. He watched as a rain drop landed on the bridge of his nose, almost in slow motion. The coldness of it shocked him as it clashed against his skin. Then time resumed its normal speed and he picked himself up from the hard pavement and stumbled toward the cab that was still waiting for him.

A shudder passed through him and he attributed it to the near fatal accident which he had narrowly avoided. He looked out of the window, into the rain streaked road and saw three women glare at him from the very spot he almost met his end. When he could not hold their predatory stare any longer, he turned away and looked down to his briefcase, now scuffed and damp from the encounter. When he managed the courage to look back at them, they were gone.

Back in his office, he unloaded his briefcase and was elated to find that the manuscript had suffered no ill effects from the afternoon’s encounter. The pages were old and fragile as dragonfly wings, the smell of history wafted off of them like a fine perfume. He turned each page carefully, as if touching an ethereal lover that might vanish if he breathed too deeply upon it. The phone rang, sounding too loud for his ears, jerking him taut in his chair.

“Hello?” he asked. “This is Dr. Barnes.”

“Do you have it?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.

“Yes, Dr. Landun. I was able to find it and bring it in. I will be here in my office, examining it until my class at seven this evening.”

The two men made arrangements for the manuscript to be safely viewed before it would be locked away in the university’s private vault. Mitch was tempted to have his secretary scan the papers into the computer, but was unsure as to what the light form modern technology would do to the frail forms. He settled back down in his chair, aware of everything that surrounded him, from the humming of the air conditioner to the smell of the leather top of his desk. Nothing was lost on him, not even the heartbeat of the person who now slipped into his office.

She did not use the door to enter, and she could not have come in by means of the window, since his office was on the third floor. One moment he had been alone with the manuscript and his thoughts, and the next instant she was simply there, as if by some magician’s trick.

“I will not ask you how you got here.” he said. “Because quite a great deal of odd things have happened since I obtained this manuscript, but I will ask you who you are and what your presence here means to me?”

“You are not naïve to the ways of the gods, then?” she asked. She moved across the room as gracefully as a hunting cat and as light on her feet as a ballerina.

“I should think not, I have been a professor of mythology for ten years, and an avid student since I could pick up a book.”

“Then you should know that what you have there is of great consequence to the Old Ones.”

“It is a collection of stories from an unknown scribe.” he said. “And although I have no means to date them as of yet, I am sure that the stories told here date back to almost the beginning of Greek history.”

“It is more than that, Mitch Barnes. It is a history of the gods themselves.”

“And how would you know this?”

“Because I have been following that manuscript since it was created, waiting for the right time for its truth to be unveiled to the world.”

“You look no older than my students, miss.”

“I assure you that I am the oldest thing in this room -nay, in this university.”

“Are you a god?” he asked.

“Nothing so powerful.”

“A Muse?”

“Nothing so flighty.”

“Then what sort of creature are you?” he asked.

“If you study us so greatly, then you must have heard of my sisters: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.”

“The fates.” he said. “The one who spins, the one who measures and the one who cuts. They determine a person’s fate as soon as they are born, and nothing can divert it, not even the gods. There were only the three, I have never heard of a forth.”

She thrust her chin forward with a slight pout and for all the world reminded him of his daughter at a younger age. For all of her bravado, she looked as fragile as a butterfly and he wanted to reach over the desk and smooth a stray lock of hair to its rightful place back behind her ear. Yet he knew even as he felt this way, that she was a creature of myth and magic. And that if he let his guard down for even the slightest moment he might find himself tortured for all eternity in the Greek underworld, or transformed into some ridiculous beast.
“You have never heard of the forth -until now.” she corrected. “I am Alyssus, the one who tangles.”

“The one who tangles?” he asked.

She glared at him and he dared ask no further questions. “Sometimes, while a person's fate cannot be changed, it can be averted if only for a few moments. When something needs to be found or someone needs to finish a task, it is my job to give the extra time that is needed.”

“But isn’t that cheating?” he asked, immediately regretting the fact that he had opened his mouth.

“Is it cheating when you implant an elderly patient with a pacemaker, or give the organs from the dead into one who is terminally ill? What about the medications which prolong the lives of your people, and the inoculations which keep them from illness and certain death?”

“I never thought about it that way, but you’re right.”

“Now that we have an understanding, shut up an listen. I am the one who takes the thread of life and tangles it in such a way that the other fates must spend the time tracking down the right life in order to end it. But in the process, they have no other alternative but to extend the lives of the few that are entangled in order to make sure that they end the right one. Do you understand?”

“The accident this afternoon? Was that you?”

“Now the professor gets it!” she said. “I needed you to bring the manuscript here, so that it could be studied and the truth could be told.”

“What have you done in order to get it here, besides sparing my life, that is?”

“I arranged for the scribe to write the manuscript, for a messenger to take it to a library where it would be stored safely until it could be hidden in a temple whose ruins would later be discovered by another of my ‘tangled souls’, it would be set aside in his personal effects until it was sold to a book dealer and would eventually come into your possession. And you, dear man, brought it here for me.”

“And I will write a book on it, making its contents famous.”

“No, dear. You have already done your part. And now the knot is untangled and I can spare you no longer from your death.”

“What? But I can do so much more for you!” Mitch cried out. “Think of the connections I have in this university, think of my past and how it will add credibility to your manuscript.”

“I appreciate the offer, Mitch. But we both know that I cannot delay my sisters forever from their hunt. Besides, Dr. Landun will be here soon. He will take credit for finding the manuscript and make sure it falls into the right hands.”

Mitch tried to argue further, but the lancing pain in his chest robbed him of his final breath. The forth fate shimmered and disappeared like a mirage, while three women crept forward from the shadows. He knew them instantly, for he had seen them at the scene of the failed car accident. He put a hand out to stop them, as if he could appeal to their better nature. A long red thread passed from the first one, her hands permanently dyed and calloused from the many years she had formed the cord. It was measured by the second, who squinted at it as she held it against a knotted silver chain. The third stepped forward and brandished shears rusted dark with age, that carried an edge Mitch knew without touching that was sharper than anything mankind had ever made. Slinkt! And the office fell to silence, the thread unraveling as the professor’s blood cooled in his veins. The three women paced back into the darkness, their job done for the moment.