Prophecy and fate play a crucial role in The Knight and the Moth. Six’s role as a Diviner makes her a prophetess; she drowns and dreams in the spring, seeing signs from the Omens that supposedly tell the future. At the beginning of the novel, Six believes that it is her fate to be the tool of prophecy, regardless of the pain it causes her—she believes in the higher purpose of what she’s doing. The invented history of Traum reinforces Six’s belief in her fate, as she recalls that the first Diviner was a foundling child “like [she]’d been when [she]’d come to Aisling Cathedral, lying in dark water before transfixed onlookers. It ma[kes] [her] proud that a foundling—like [her]—should be the most important figure in Traum’s most sanctified story. Even if that child didn’t have a name” (17). Like the original foundling child, Six has no name, and she follows in the supposedly hallowed footsteps of this nameless child. The abbess’s false historical narrative cements Six’s belief that her role as a Diviner is her Omens-given fate and that the prophecies she divines are real. However, over the course of the novel, she realizes that the concept of fate has been used as a manipulation by the abbess to control the Diviners and the residents of Traum and finds equal power in the use of her free will.

Six’s struggles with the unpleasant business of divination illustrate the power of the abbess’s manipulations. Though Six frequently chooses the short straw intentionally to spare her fellow Diviners the pain, she is often scared of the process: “I was good at reading the signs. Which was why it shamed me, after all this time, that I should be so loath to do it. That I should still be afraid to dream” (24). Six is the best Diviner that the abbess has, but even she finds drowning and dreaming in the dark to be frightening. Still, Six views it as her fate to give of herself, to offer prophecies to the people of the Traum at her own expense, a sacrifice that she is destined for. The abbess’s manipulations are so powerful that she even gives up her name, despite the fact that she swore to herself that she’d remember who she was before Aisling Cathedral: “Again and again, I drowned and dreamed. And in all that dreaming, in all the holy things that came of it, I broke my promise. I forgot all about Sybil Delling” (27). The powerful invocation of fate is strong enough to cause Six to leave even her identity behind. 

However, as Six and her group travel throughout Traum, the truth of the extent of the abbess’s manipulations are revealed. When Six finds out the truth about the Omens, she realizes that her fate was invented; she was simply a sick girl who was kidnapped, drowned, and given false dreams from a false god that were wrongly dubbed to be prophecies. No longer willing to drown and dream, Six embraces free will, dismantling Aisling Cathedral and the abbess with the very hammer and chisel that the abbess used to create the five stone objects and the cathedral itself. In doing so, she gains back her identity, reembracing her original name, and secures not only her own freedom but also that of the residents of Traum. The novel highlights the potent lure of the concept of fate as well as the power of free will.