Outside the world where Olivia and Oliver are trapped in Mother’s prison, Vellie the Seer wakes up from a less-than-restful night of sleep. Vellie lives and works in the Ether which surrounds all of the multitudinous worlds, including the one where Olivia and Oliver find themselves currently (known as the Narwitches’ world), and the one called Earth, which they came from. And the world they don’t know their friend Paul has been taken to, a world known as The Burrow, from where the rabbit people export magic to many other worlds.

Today, Vellie has been tasked with a special assignment to help one of the Seven Seers on the Council. It is an honour, to step in and assist one of the Seers who sits on the Council. The Council is comprised of the seven most senior Seers named, very simply, The First, The Second, The Third, and so on. Whenever the First releases his spirit into the Ether, a new Seventh will be appointed, and The Second will become The First, The Third, The Second, The Fourth, The Third, and so on. Seers live for thousands of moon cycles before their spirits are released. In Vellie’s lifetime there has been only one succession. According to the telepathic text messaging rumour mill, though, another succession is imminent. The spirit of The First grows weaker with each moon cycle.

Vellie would have been more honoured by this request to help the Council if they weren’t all so busy these days. Vellie worked more double shifts in the last few moon cycles than he can keep track of. It’s just work and sleep, that’s all. No time for the games Seers love to play under the full moons. No time for all the songs and pranks and celebrating. Even with sleep, that last little luxury, he’d had to cut down on the standard 14 hours most Seers are accustomed to.

The moon man is just beginning to peer up from the horizon line as Vellie surfaces from his hovel. It is going to get dark very fast now. It always happens this way, at exactly the same time. The moon man rises, laughing, in the sky, guiding all Seers through the evening. He brings the darkness quickly, with no time for prolonged dusk which beings in some of the worlds, like Earth, are accustomed to. There are no seasons, no shorter and longer days. In the Ether where the Seers live, everything is predictable. They know exactly what they have to do, and when. This is essential. They must focus without distractions because their tasks are of the utmost importance for all worlds.

There are too many Passporters, that is the reason the Council gave for having all Seers work so much harder lately. “Unusually high passport activity,” said the memo handed down from the Council of Seven. Passporters are those creatures with their papers, which give them the capability to jump worlds. Any Seer with even a basic command of the charts knows Passporters cannot be the only thing the Council is concerned with. Passporters are always a reality. On their own they are not a problem. Something else is going on; It has to be. Plus, Vellie knows what the charts look like when there are a lot of Passporters. He’s seen the spikes documented in the archives the Council keeps about great migrations of the far-gone past. None of the charts from the past few moon cycles look like any unusual inter-world travel is happening.

Yes, the Seven have some secret reason for monitoring certain worlds more closely, Vellie and his fellow Seers have concluded. Monitoring isn’t even the Seers’ main job. A Seer’s chief job is to make time. There are hundreds of worlds, and for these worlds, the Seers create time, in a process not unlike knitting or spinning. (Seers only have an intimate knowledge of crocheting, thanks to a group of lost artisans who once did a presentation on their unscheduled trip through the Ether, but knitting is more like their time-creation process.) What makes the Seers’ knitting process unique is that the Seer’s fingers are his only tools.

Every shift, day or night, a contingent of Seers reports to the office. Each one studies the Pattern, sanctioned by the Council, which tells them how much time to make for the world assigned during that particular shift. With their four-handed, 20-fingered nimble touch they shake loose long strands from the Ether and spin them into time that is threaded through to the world via orbs representing each world. Just like there are hundreds of worlds, there are hundreds of orbs. Hence why the Council’s role is so significant, and each Council member’s job so prestigious. One small ripple, one snag or snarl in the time being made for an important world, and disastrous domino effects are liable to cascade through many other worlds. As the Seers make time for the worlds, the creatures in each world decide how to use this time. And the Council of Seers compiles knowledge about how time is used into a giant database: the Time Use Ledger, In Perpetuity (TULIP, for short). All Seers can access TULIP by contacting the Operator via telepathic text-messaging.

Today, Vellie arrives at the office to receive his orb-assignment, like any other day. He takes a minute to study the Pattern which has been automatically downloaded into his brain via telepathic text. Simple enough, he thinks to himself. In addition to time-construction, he’s been tasked with closely observing anomalies in this world. Apparently, we have to see everything, as if making time were not enough! He places his four long, veined hands over the smooth, cool shape of the domed surface and swirls his fingers in opposite directions. The murkiness clears soon enough, until he can clearly see the outline of floppy tails, like fish, through the dissipating fog. He turns up the brightness with his first right index finger on a bright yellow dial. He squints through sleep-deprived eyelids at the little beings. His measly nine or ten hours of sleep between the last three shifts might mean his eyes are playing tricks on him, but he’s never seen creatures quite like these. He tries his best to follow the movement of the little brightly-coloured tails. This is the Narwitches’ world, but these are not Narwitches. Even with tired eyes, he is sure of that.

Vellie shakes his head to clear it, nearly upsetting the carefully-balanced tall dark blue pointed hat perched above his wild blonde mop of hair. He wills himself to focus, to push away the grumpiness that comes with fatigue. He is working hard to present himself as the best candidate to become The Seventh whenever the First passes. Even before the recent increase in workload, he’d spent long nights in focused study, always volunteering to relieve the others during the least desirable times. While his peers amused themselves with telepathy-ball and levitation competitions, Vellie did extra sessions with The Seven. (Vellie is on hand to step in whenever a situation gets particularly hairy. When The Seven need anything — a comforting pep talk or someone to bring them more wild blueberries and almonds so they could focus on their meditation — Vellie makes sure he was there.) It was so, so long ago that he had been informed of his candidacy for the Council. But he can’t lose sight of that goal. He tries to conjure afresh the feeling he felt when he first found out: Elation. Also terror. Channeling the adrenaline from his memory, he turns his attention to the two human-shaped fish-scaled beings infiltrating the Narwitches’ world and begins to log their motions — distance, intensity, location, cadence…

Suddenly his gaze breaks away from the orb. He has had a realization: these are not mature beings, they look like human children from that far-off disconnected world named Earth.

@Operator, ‘Scan for human children at Narwitches’ world,’ he telepathically texts the Operator.

@Seer Vellie 1530, ‘humans detected,’ The answer comes back almost instantaneously.

@Operator, ‘Reveal human children’s names at Narwitches’ world,’ he telepathically texts back.

@SeerVellie1530, ‘Human children’s names are Oliver and Olivia’…Who names their two children almost the same name? Vellie wonders with slight contempt, because for all the rigour and repetition in his day-job, Vellie the Seer has a deep respect for originality. Typical of what I’ve heard about Earth parents…He watches with further judgement as a large seanicorn swoops up the girl on its back. The sparkly pink insignia tattooed on its side shows this seanicorn is one of Mother’s chief sentinels. Mother is the head of the Narwitches. Moons ago, she was a patient queen, earning the true respect, love and admiration of her people. Lately, though, it was as if someone else had entered her brain. Mother has become authoritarian and autocratic.

Oh, Olivia, you have no idea what peril you face, thinks Vellie, pained at the sight. Mother never helps anyone, except for those she forces into her service. He watches as the two unfortunate earth children become separated by thousands of kilometres of black ocean as the seanicorn swims like underwater lightening through the Narwitches’ dark waters.

Floating on the surface of the water where the children must have entered the world, Vellie’s well-trained eye captures the most appalling sight of all: a small grey passport, bobbing abandoned in Olivia’s quick departure. Vellie is appalled. Two intruding Earth children is one thing, but two Earth children traveling with a stolen passport?! That is unheard of. As he moves to log the anomaly, something makes him pause. He feels an urge to rescue these mere feeble Earth children, first. If he reports them now, their case will be buried in a pile of paperwork. Help will come too late, and Mother will have her way with them. Their time is running out.

Vellie sighs, out of irritation as much as desperation. Intervening with naive Passporters in over their heads is not a part of my mandate, thinks Vellie. The mandate is clear: make time. Record unusual activity. But these particular children are quite lost and quite without hope. Miracles happen in all worlds, but a rescue from Mother and her Narwitches requires divine intervention of a profound nature. Vellie can work from anywhere — just bring the orb into the world with him and enough strands of the Ether to buy himself some time. Why is it always up to me to help everyone?

He looks around. Tired Seers around him face orbs of their own, engrossed in the simultaneous processes of making time and rigorously logging observations. No one will be the wiser if he disappears for awhile — not if time keeps on spinning.

He pockets the orb inside his midnight-blue robe and prepares to descend into the sea.