Ava Sheridan dies when she is four thousand and ninety six or she dies when she is fifteen.

  Counting is hard when you live both in the present and the future.

  As the poison spreads through her body, Ava watches the most beautiful and brilliant sister in the world, little Regina Sheridan, scream for help.

  Ava knows she made the right choice to sacrifice her life for the sake of her sister.

  If Regina runs now, she will miss the fire that will start in five minutes in the garden or started forty minutes ago or started three hundred years ago after that duck with the bad attitude tried to bite her.

  Counting is very hard.

  Either way, Ava has made her choice.

  She cannot regret it.

  As she closes her eyes, she can feel the wings under her skin and the sky in her blood.

  ~???~

  When Ava is three years old, the ducks come for the first time.

  Ava does not like living in the Sheridan manor. Everyone here is angry or sad and Ava wants, more than anything, to sprout wings and fly somewhere, anywhere that is not here.

  When she is so scared and frightened and… something that she can almost feel the wings beating beneath her skin, she runs to the Sheridan garden and hides in the bushes so that the angry people cannot find her.

  She is in the garden and a duck lands in front of her and suddenly she is not in the garden anymore.

  Ava is inside a duck. His name is Notfondoflittlegirls or at least that is what he keeps saying and he seems annoyed that Ava is looking out of his eyes.

  Ava looks up from where he is grumpily swimming in the garden pond and…

  ...sees her mother.

  Her mother is holding a baby and then Ava sees another Ava come out and take the baby and call it "Regina" and it is all very very confusing and then Ava is not a duck anymore.

  There are no babies in Ava's family.

  Ava has cousins, but they find Ava strange and do not like her.

  The baby was beautiful and Ava looked bigger and happier while she was holding the baby.

  It is the first time Ava sees Regina, the most beautiful and brilliant little sister in the world.

  It is not the last.

  Ava has been alone and lonely and she has never wanted anything as much as she wants a little sister.

  This will be tested.

  ~???~

  The next two years that Ava lives through before the birth of her little sister are the hardest ones in Ava's life.

  She dreams every day of her little sister Regina. Ava dreams of what it would be like to have a little sister who will hold her hand and read books with her and make her feel less lonely.

  Her parents love her, she knows they love her, but they do not know how to love her because they never learned any such thing.

  When Ava cries and asks why the other little Sheridan girls will not play with her, all her parents do is tell her it will be better.

  Ava knows it will not. The ducks have shown that to her already. When Ava sits inside the duck heads, she can see an older version of herself being ignored by her cousins.

  So she dreams of Regina, of the two of them flying free together, turning into birds as they flee from the Sheridan manor and into the skies that spread light above the seas.

  Even as Ava dreams of wings, she starts to wake inside the minds of ducks that show her visions of flying and other strange confusing scenes.

  Sometimes the visions are beautiful…

  Ava and little Regina are holding some little cakes and laughing together as they hide from their parents and when their mother finds them, she actually smiles-

  Ava flies over the land, a free duck, a free girl, and follows the path of a girl and a boy riding a horse as they shriek in laughter, her dark hair mingling with his green and brown-

  Ava flies over a strange hedge where a dark haired woman decides that she is going to write her own story.

  Ava likes the idea of writing her own story.

  ...And sometimes the visions are terrifying.

  Ava is looking for Regina and she cannot find her and something is wrong and she flies and flies and flies and she wakes just before she finds the owner of the pale hand that falls heavily out of the doorway –

  Ava watches the man with the white hair fall and then rise again, blood so clear against his white clothes, his hand reaching out, as he tries to shield whatever is behind him –

  Ava flies over a carriage and watches the fire rise and rise and when she dives down, the weeping face in the window never fully leaves her mind –

  It would be worse if Ava understood all the visions.

  It would be better if Ava understood all the visions.

  As it is, all Ava knows is that the visions show her what is going to happen –

  -Her mother wins more money at the races. Her father buys a new hat. Her grandfather pours something from a container and gives it to Ava in a glass.

  -and that means she is going to get something more important than any horror she might see.

  Ava is going to get a sister.

  It is worth the pain of the visions to know that she will receive what she wants most.

  She only hopes that she can make her sister as happy as Regina's existence makes Ava.

  The ducks mostly do what they want and do not talk to Ava and ignore her, but sometimes if Ava asks very nicely, they will do… mostly what they want.

  "I want to see something that makes my sister happy," says Ava wistfully.

  She is a little scared when the duck she is inhabiting seems to start laughing.

  When she wakes on a strange woman's lap in the middle of a crowded hall, Ava is very, very confused.

  She is even more confused when a man who looks like her Grandfather chokes and starts to fall and she is kicked out of the duck head by what feels like… another Ava?

  For the first time, Ava thinks that maybe she should talk to her parents about what is happening to her.

  "Mother," says Ava when they are alone, "what should I do if I see Grandfather collapsing and dying when I close my eyes?"

  "We all," says Ava's mother absently, "see Grandfather collapsing and dying when we close our eyes. It is a very nice dream."

  Ava's mother is very round and she looks very happy and Ava feels almost sad to have to correct her.

  "But," Ava hesitantly says, "someone was getting married and Grandfather was very old and people were screaming that the Buren Duke had killed him."

  Ava's mother freezes, her hand on the belly swollen with Ava's sister who will be born just after Ava turns five.

  "We never," says her mother softly, "told you about the Buren family."

  "But the crowd said it," said Ava, not sure why it matters.

  "No," says her mother, equally softly, "they did not and you will never tell anyone that they did."

  Ava looks at her mother, at the way her hand trembles over the belly full of her little sister.

  Oh, thinks Ava. My stories are too strange to share.

  The Sheridans do not like strange.

  ~???~

  Ava Sheridan is five years old when the man with the box comes.

  He is there to test how powerful her magic is and Grandfather is fighting with him and Ava sneaks into the room where the box is.

  Nobody is around because all the elders are fighting with the people who want to do the tests and so only Ava hears how the box starts to click faster and faster and faster as she gets close to it.

  Ava knows she should stop, but she wants to know and when she touches the box–

  -A duck flies overhead as a dark haired woman and a blond man hide in the bushes as people walk around them, as a small brooch scurries out from the bush

  -A duck flies past as the woman and the man dance in a garden, frolicking without a care in the world

  -The woman opens a window and begins to throw gifts out of it as the duck sits in the tree

  -The woman and man pledge to love one another while corpses hang above their bodies

  -The woman and man disappear into a pool of blood and the ducks become strange

  -The sky is red and strange metal objects fall like stars

  -Do you really, says the woman with braided purple hair with grief and rage in her voice, think that we will let you write the story?

  -The dark-haired girl looks out as a thousand futures shift around her and screams out in defiance against the world that wants her dead

  -Another dark-haired girl looks out as a thousand futures shift around her and screams out in defiance against the world that wants her dead

  -Why are there so many dark-haired girls?

  -What is this story?

  -These are not things, says the beautiful red-head with the golden eyes, that you need to know.

  Ava opens her eyes, wondering why she closed them in the first place.

  "Oh," says Ava blinking, "the box is gone."

  The box is gone.

  It is gone in little pieces of some kinds of strange metal and strange stones all over the floor.

  Ava shrugs.

  She had dreamed she was powerful and now she knows she is.

  It does not matter much.

  All that matters is that she can go back to her room and Regina will be waiting and they can continue to practice for the day they can actually fly.

  ~???~

  Nobody knows what happened to the box that tests magical power.

  The men from the Capital think the Sheridans destroyed it because they are trying to conceal their magic from the Capital.

  The Sheridans think the men from the Capital brought a deliberately defective box to frame the Sheridans when the Sheridans refused to test the strength of their powers.

  Neither of them are completely wrong, but Ava is not about to tell them the truth.

  If the Sheridans have made more nobles angry at them, at least nobody will even try bringing boxes anymore. There are not enough testing boxes to afford to break one every time they visit the Sheridans.

  As it is, Ava has bigger problems.

  Hello, says the duck whose body Ava seems to be borrowing, why are you making me fly north?

  Ava did not know that she could do that.

  She has never before controlled where a duck is going.

  Yet now she realizes she can do more than simply see through the duck's eyes.

  She can move this duck like it is a puppet.

  I don't mind, the duck says, oddly placid. You can take me where you like. Just make sure you give me treats sometime.

  All right, Ava says, before she thinks of something else.

  If I start moving you, Ava says, what will happen to my body?

  If ducks could roll their eyes, this one would.

  It will just be where it should be, it says. After all, you can be both you and me. You can be everything.

  Ava likes this idea.

  At the time, she does not realize that ducks are not always honest.

  At the time, she does not realize that power comes not from choice but necessity.

  ~???~

  Ava loves her little sister Regina.

  Her little sister is necessary for everything that Ava wants in her life.

  Regina may have been born too early and too sick, so small and pale that her parents had worried that she would not last even her first month of life.

  Yet Ava has always known that her little sister would survive those early fights.

  "Do not listen to them," she tells Regina with such conviction the toddler stops her fussing. "You are going to survive and be so strong and so pretty and you are always going to play with me."

  Regina is two, with the softest cheeks in the world and a streak of stubbornness that even ducks would fear.

  Even so, she smiles for a moment at her elder sister's words.

  "I like you," Regina says with the solemn confidence of a beloved child. "So you will always like me."

  "I will," Ava promises, "and I will keep you safe too."

  Maybe that is what prompts the next set of dreams.

  ~???~

  It takes some time for Ava to realize that the dark haired woman – well – one of the dark haired women that Ava sees is Regina.

  It is hard to connect Regina-the-toddler to Regina-the-woman at first.

  Yet as Regina grows older, Ava can see how her little sister will become the dark-haired beauty she sees through duckish dreams.

  At first, it is comforting to see Regina grow and be happy. Regina manages to keep her sweet smiles and sunny nature even as she grows. Ava is sure that Regina will stay happy no matter what horrors the Sheridan family brings.

  "One day, we will both wed and be away from this place," Regina says as she braids Ava's hair. "Maybe we can even live near one another and still be close as family. We can finally stop being afraid of having to marry Cousin Gomer and perhaps poison Grandfather on our way out. Would that not be sweet?"

  Regina will be fine, Ava tells herself, even as her parents look increasingly afraid as her grandfather questions them about her… oddities.

  Regina is beautiful and brilliant and no one could ever think she is strange.

  Not like Ava.

  Ava's future is clouded even to herself but Regina's future should proceed like a dream.

  Then Ava sees the first vision of Regina's death.

  ~???~

  It goes like this.

  There is a glamorous ballroom of the sort that Ava usually only sees in stories, as ducks are never invited to ballrooms.

  Yet something about this ballroom calls to her and Ava forces the duck to sit in the window.

  After this long, Ava has more than enough strength to force the ducks to serve her.

  They can either do it voluntarily or she will make their body move through sheer determination.

  Either way, Ava knows that this ballroom holds something special… and is strangely familiar.

  Ava has a vague memory of her grandfather falling and her mother being scared when she told her –

  That is when Regina appears for the first time… and she is so beautiful in her shimmering dress that it takes Ava's breath away.

  Then her father comes out and he says Regina will marry a prince and Ava is happy, so happy.

  Her sister, Ava knows, will finally have the happy life she deserves.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Regina will marry a prince and she will take Ava away from the Sheridans and they will live together in a palace and drink tea and have sweets every day.

  Even Ava's family cannot kill Regina if she will be queen… and Regina will keep Ava safe.

  Ten minutes later, Ava lets out a loud QUACK of rage that no one outside a strange and shiny blond man seems to hear.

  Regina will not be marrying a crown prince.

  In fact, when Ava is inside a duck staring down at her exiled sister's carriage as it burns to ashes, it seems like Regina will not be doing much of anything at all.

  I need to keep Regina alive, Ava thinks, as her mind starts unravelling once more.

  The problem is, how do you change the future?

  ~???~

  Before this, Ava has rarely had to force the ducks to show her the future.

  She has mostly let the visions come to her as the ducks desire, going where they wish to go.

  Now Ava frantically forces herself into their bodies to try and find a future where Regina lives, where Regina will not be engaged to that crown prince, where Regina can survive and be happy.

  Only that future does not exist.

  Ava finds one life where Grandfather discovers that Ava's parents are hiding money to pay for their daughters' dowries and murders a twelve-year old Regina in front of them.

  She finds another life where Regina tries to shield Ava from the elders' attempts to murder their strange grandchild.

  Regina falls gracefully, the poisoned cup hitting the floor before her body.

  Ava spends a long time vomiting before she can look again.

  Finally, once Ava can find the courage to try another vision, there is the life where Regina survives long enough to marry some country baron who looks like a potato.

  He seems ordinary enough and while he is dull, Regina seems content with her quiet country world.

  Only then Regina has a child…

  … a child who can see the future through flower blossoms.

  Regina tries to protect her child from both her husband and the Sheridans.

  Regina dies at the hand of their Grandfather.

  Again.

  Ava sees her older self weeping at Regina's funeral.

  It should not be so hard to keep a lovable little sister alive and yet…

  Ava is running out of futures.

  Ava is running out of time.

  ~???~

  Ava is running out of ideas.

  Considering how many ideas have been forced into her head over her long-short life, this is a crisis of epic proportions.

  It is a crisis large enough to force Ava to do something she really does not want to do.

  Gritting her teeth, Ava finds the smartest, most evil duck she knows and asks him how she can save Regina's life.

  Sir Fishstomper is kind of mean, and does not like the name she gave him, but Ava knows what his silence means anyways.

  Are you saying, says Ava, that my sister is doomed to die?

  Sir Fishstomper finally speaks and it brings Ava no joy at all.

  "Time," says Sir Fishstomper, as he veers over the blasted shell of yet another village, "is the parent of destruction."

  Ava does not understand him, but Ava does understand parents.

  Parents cannot help you.

  So Ava is… going to have to save her family on her own.

  Nobody is going to give her ideas… or help.

  ***

  Despite all that has happened to Ava, she loves her family.

  She loves her mother, as irritable as she can be, and knows her mother practices slashing the throats of the elders in case she ever needs to defend her children.

  She loves her father, though he can seem cold and removed, and knows that he places every penny he possibly can into his daughters' dowries in the hopes of buying them safety.

  Most of all, Ava loves Regina, who is the only part of Ava's waking life that is vivid and bright and kind.

  Ava does not want to believe the visions that only show Regina dying.

  Those are not the only possible futures for Regina.

  She will find futures where Regina is safe.

  She will make sure her little sister grows up and is happy.

  After all, the fact that there are different futures means that futures can be changed.

  Ava goes to sleep with Regina's fingers in her hair and Ava's arms around her sister's shoulders.

  She goes to sleep determined to alter time itself, to create the truth that must be real.

  ~???~

  Ava tries, for the first time, to find a future where she strikes at the root of the problem.

  After all, if it is her Grandfather and the elders that murder Regina time and again, can she not find a path that removes them?

  It is then that Ava learns that there is no easy way to rip out the rot within the Sheridans.

  The elders in her family are old and canny and they know how many enemies they have courted. They move throughout their days with meticulous care and Ava learns that even if she could use her knowledge of them and the judicious application of poison or a duck-based accident to destroy her Grandfather and a few others…

  The remaining elders – and there are always remaining elders – will use their own and their children's powers to find who wishes to harm them.

  As much as she loathes the elders, Ava has no desire to explore a future where she, her sister, and her parents are tortured to death.

  In the futures where she asks her parents for help, it is almost worse.

  On their own, her parents cannot overtake the elders… and when her parents enlist other younger Sheridans for support, it leads to a familial civil war that leaves the Sheridans so weak that other noble families come to prey on them.

  Ava has no desire to see a future where she and Regina are forcibly separated and become the broodmare 'brides' of other noble families.

  Regina dies in those timelines too, once her magic fails to manifest and her husbands decide she is too weak to bear their noble heirs.

  Ava searches and seeks but all she finds are funerals for her sister.

  It is not good enough.

  Ava will not accept it.

  For the first time, Ava looks deep into her mind, beyond the ducks, beyond what the world is content to show her.

  She searches for the threads that bind those futures together and she pulls.

  Then, grasping the threads as they unravel, Ava finds a duck and flies.

  ~???~

  There are so many ducks. Ava has never been in a place with this many ducks in a single pond and her current duck, Miss Webbedfootofchewing, is one of the most placid ducks Ava has ever met.

  She herself is nearly lulled into sleep by the quiet mind before, with great effort, she swims to the edge of the waters towards a strange blonde man with two small children beside him.

  Ava is almost certain she has seen this man before, but she is distracted when he begins to speak.

  "You must always," says the man solemnly, "treat ducks with the greatest respect. Do you understand, Arthur and Henry?"

  "No," says a dry voice behind him, "they do not understand and will continue to pull the ducks' feathers out if you are not supervising them. You might rule Carcosa, but you cannot rule little boys."

  It is Regina.

  It is Regina as a woman with children, with a man, a king, who reaches towards her with such joy that-

  "Artem," says Regina, laughter in her voice. "Not in front of the ducks."

  Ava's eyes open.

  "Artem," she says and wraps another thread around her mind. "King Artem."

  She is not a duck, not a lady, but she understands how other people can make you do what needs to be done.

  ~???~

  Ava is not necessarily happy that the only way for Regina to survive is for her to be Queen.

  She has seen much of the Alpins in her visions and even if Crown Prince Aaron had not sent Regina to her death, they do not seem as if they are kind to anybody.

  She wants to hope that this Artem will be much kinder than the rest of his family… but she cannot trust without information.

  Luckily, a family of fortune tellers has its uses… if you know how to ask them.

  Ava corners a loose-lipped cousin who will not live long enough to betray her and asks him if he knows of an Artem Alpin.

  "You mean," says Cousin Ronald, who will be dead in either three years or three months or three hundred years, "the youngest prince? The silly fool who had the most magical power the testing stone ever showed but only dances around with flowers in his hands?"

  Well, thinks Ava, Artem might be an Alpin, but a man with flowers and power sounds promising.

  So how does his future with Regina happen?

  Luckily, if the only vision of Regina surviving was as a Queen, then Ava knows exactly who she needs to seek.

  ~???~

  Ava goes looking for Regina's future king, the flower prince.

  She finds him in a garden, killing an assassin.

  He is a very small child.

  It is not, Ava thinks, a promising beginning.

  It gets worse.

  The flower prince lets go of his bloodied blade and puts his hand to his side, the fabric there already stained with red.

  "Mother," he says and oh, things get so much worse.

  The woman standing in front of Artem Alpin must be the queen but she is not like any queen in the stories Ava reads.

  Some people might call her beautiful but she is not beautiful.

  She is red, and terrible, and red.

  When she sees her son with blood spreading across his body, she sighs.

  "You cannot be careless, Artem," she says. "You know enough to dodge that knife."

  "Sorry, Mother," Artem says. "I… I will do better next time."

  "Do so," she says, "or you will die."

  When she leaves, Ava sees tears rise in the boy's eyes before he quickly wipes them away.

  "I wish," the flower prince says, "that just this once, I would not need to dodge. I wish… just once… that someone would try to he-"

  Ava wakes and she knows.

  This boy…

  This boy's tears…

  They are the key to Regina's future.

  If Regina can give this boy, this man, this future king what he needs…

  …He can marry Regina.

  He can help Regina survive.

  He can go from being a powerless child to being a king that will make Regina his beloved and powerful queen.

  Ava does not yet know the steps to this future, but now she knows it is possible.

  It is a start.

  ~???~

  Unfortunately, it is also an ending.

  No matter how hard Ava tries, she cannot see how Regina becomes Queen.

  Ava hurls her into ducks, trying desperately to find the path to the future where her sister lives.

  She looks and she sees…

  She sees her sister being happy.

  Regina touches her bleeding hand to that of her new husband as she says her wedding vows, the love on her face so bright that she is glowing.

  Regina holds her husband's hand to her slightly rounded belly, only to laugh as he almost faints with joy from the news she is sharing.

  Regina nurses her newborn son even as she stares at the paperwork cousin Henrietta brought her, her eyes as fiery and determined as when she defended Ava from the rest of the family.

  Regina personally takes a sledgehammer to the decrepit orphanage she has saved children from, even as they cheer at her vow to rebuild a free school for them and other commoner children where it was standing.

  Regina stands to dispense justice at the front of the court, even as her husband looks on with pride as she forces nobles to treat commoners fairly.

  Regina puts her white head on her husband's shoulder and sighs as she watches her grandchildren run around the palace garden, their screams both delightful and piercing.

  Regina is happy.

  When Regina weds Artem Alpin, she is happy.

  Yet no matter where Ava searches, she cannot see how Regina weds Artem Alpin.

  She sees their mutual happiness, their golden reign, even their beautiful children and grandchildren.

  No matter how hard she looks, Ava cannot see how they will marry.

  Ava can influence Artem.

  He arrives at the Sheridan manor briefly as a child and Ava has told him the same story in her visions so many times that it is burned into her blood.

  Making Artem want Regina is never the problem.

  The problem is everything else.

  By the time Artem is finally able to meet Regina…

  …Regina is not able to wed him.

  They cannot meet until they are adults but Regina will never be available to wed once they meet.

  Regina is always engaged, either to Artem's older brother or to some potato baron.

  Regina is always engaged to some other man and would never seek a relationship outside her engagement.

  This is noble.

  This is terrible.

  Loyal, devoted Regina always dies.

  Ava has, she realizes, taken for granted the power that takes the thread of her mind and life and wraps it around a thousand futures that will and will not be.

  She has taken for granted that she can dive amongst her visions. She has taken for granted that she can find what she seeks as easily as she can take to the air with her newfound wings as someone who is both duck and woman.

  Yet no matter how hard Ava tries, she cannot discover how her beautiful and brilliant little sister can marry the flower prince.

  Why, says Ava, at the limit of her patience with yet another duck who is not showing her the path to the future where her sister survives, will you not show me Regina and the life she needs to live to marry Artem Alpin?

  Well, says Madame Webfoot, if the great skies will not show you the mountains you seek… maybe you can find the mountains beside them?

  Oh, thinks Ava, as she nearly sends her duckwoman body tumbling through the air, OH!

  If the threads will not show her Regina's path… maybe she can find Regina's path by looking at her own?

  This is the worst decision Ava ever makes.

  This is the best decision Ava ever makes.

  Ava stares down the single, slender thread that contains the future she has sought so desperately.

  Well, she thinks, her vision blurring strangely through the tears, it is not as if I wanted to live forever anyway.