The Skrayling Tree

EPILOGUE

And so another episode in the eternal struggle for the Balance was completed and resolution achieved. How human endeavor has the power to create and make real its most significant symbols I do not know, but I do know that a logical creator might build such a self-sustaining system. In spite of my adventures, my belief in a supreme spirit remains.

Ayanawatta believed strongly in his dream, somehow reinforced rather than contradicted by the Longfellow account, and went on to found the Iroquois Confederacy, a model for the federal system of the United States. Ulric and I worked first for the UN and later for Womankind Worldwide, whose work becomes increasingly important.

Passing without incident from one realm to another, Ulric, Prince Lobkowitz and I returned, traveling chiefly by rail, from Lake Huron to the Nova Scotian coast.

As dreamers, we both experience dreams and we create them. The experience brings us wisdom, which is why such dreams are coveted by dreamthieves. But they place equal value on creative dreams. These can be more volatile and hard to negotiate, let alone control. In the so-called Ghost Worlds, where everything is malleable, one learns to value the power of supernatural logic.

Ulric and I were to know only one more unusual adventure together, but there is no question that our relationship had altered. Our love, our understanding of the value of our public work, was deeper, yet there was an uneasy, rarely mentioned memory. Ulric had, indeed, killed me as I tried to help him in my assumed shape of White Buffalo. And he did almost destroy the Skrayling Tree as a result. These thoughts continue to burden him.

He has other dreams. We do not live in a linear multiverse.

We do not tell a simple history with a beginning, middle and end. We weave instead a tapestry. We depend upon repetition but not upon imitation, which is mere corruption, confirming nothing. Each strand must be new, though the pattern might be familiar.

Gunnar's expedition to America left little to show for itself, unless the destruction of Kakatanawa was an achievement. But a few legends were made and others confirmed. As for Gaynor, we would meet him again in a final adventure.

The strange mathematics of the multiverse, which orders the weft and woof of the great tapestries, is the means by which we order Chaos. But the strict formality of the design demands an adherence to ritual similarly found, for instance, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Every word uttered, every step on the destined path must be exact, or that destiny will change. The choreography for such actions is the special skill of Prince Lobkowitz and Lord Sepiriz.

As for Elric of Melnibone, he lived out his dream of a thousand years. How that dream ended and its effect on the von Bek family is the last story still to be told.

Oona, Countess of Bek, Sporting Club Square, London, S.W.