The Skrayling Tree (8 page)

Clearly there was a connection with the events Ulric and I had experienced earlier, but it was a subtle one. This battle for
the Balance never ended. For it to end would probably be a contradiction in terms. Upon the Balance depended the central paradox
of all existence. Without life there is no death. Without death there is no
life. Without Law, no Chaos. Without Chaos, no Law. And the balance was maintained by the tensions between the two forces.
Without those tensions, without the Balance, we should know only a moment’s consciousness as we faced oblivion. Time would
die. We would live that unimaginably terrible final moment for eternity. Those were the stakes in the Game of Time. Law or
Chaos. Life or Death. Good and evil were secondary qualities, often reflecting the vast variety of values by which conscious
creatures conduct their affairs across the multiverse. Yet a system which accepted so many differing values, such a wealth
of altering realities, could not exist without morality, and it was the learning of those ethics and values which concerned
an apprentice mukhamirim. Until it was possible to look beyond any system to the individual, the would-be adept remained blind
to the supernatural and generally at its mercy.

I was also beginning to realize very rapidly that these events were all connected with the ongoing struggle we wanted to think
finished when the war against Hitler was won.

“Do you journey back to your people?” I asked.

“I must not return empty-handed,” he told me, and changed the subject, pointing and laughing with joy at a flight of geese
settling in the shadowy shallows of the river. “Did you know you are being observed?” he asked almost absently as he admired
the geese, graceful now in the water.

A whoop from the trees, and Ayanawatta, holding a couple of birds aloft in one hand and his bow in the
other, called his pleasure. His friend could join us for breakfast.

The two men embraced. Again I was impressed by their magnetism. I congratulated myself that I was blessed with the best allies
a woman could hope for. As long as their interests and mine were the same, I could do no better than go with them in what
they were confident was their preordained destiny.

I waited impatiently in the hope that White Crow would again raise the subject of our being watched. Eventually, when the
two had finished their manly exchanges, he pointed across the river to the north. “I myself have known you were on the river
since I took the shortcut, yonder.” He pointed back to where the river had meandered on its way to this spot. “They have made
camp, so it is clear they follow you and no doubt wait to ambush you. It is their usual way with our people. A Pukawatchi
war party. Seventeen of them. My enemies. They were chasing me, but I thought they had given up.”

Ayanawatta shrugged. “We’ll have a look at them later. They will not attack until they are certain of overwhelming us.”

White Crow expertly plucked and cleaned the birds while I drew up the fire. Ayanawatta washed himself thoroughly in the river,
singing a song which I understood to be one of thanks for the game he had shot. He also sang a snatch or two of what was evidently
a war-song. I could almost hear the drums beginning their distinctive warnings. I noticed that he kept a sideways eye on the
northern horizon. Evidently the Pukawatchi were an enemy tribe.

I asked White Crow, as subtly I could, if he had ever been to an island house with two stories and had a vision there. I was
trying to discover if he remembered me or Ulric. He regretted, he said, that he was completely ignorant of the events I described.
Had they happened recently? He had been in the south for some while.

I told him that the events still felt very recent to me. Since there was no way of pursuing the subject, I determined to waste
no more time on it. I hoped more would come clear as we traveled.

I had begun to enjoy Ayanawatta’s songs and rituals. They were among the only constants in this strange world which seemed
to hover at the edges of its own history. I became increasingly tolerant of his somewhat noisy habits, because I knew that
in the forest he could be as quiet as a cat. As he was a naturally sociable and loquacious man, his celebratory mood was understandable.

My new friends added their share of herbs and berries to the slowly cooked meat, basting with a touch of wild honey, until
it had all the subtle flavors of the best French kitchen. Like me, they knew that the secret of living in the wild was not
to rough it, but to refine one’s pleasures and find pleasure in the few discomforts. Ironically, if one wished to live such
a life, one had to be able to kill. Ayanawatta and White Crow regarded the dealing of death as an art and a responsibility.
A respected animal you killed quickly without pain. A respected enemy might suffer an altogether different fate.

I was glad to be back in the forest, even if my errand was a desperate one. A properly relaxed body needs
warmth but no special softness to rest well, and cold river water is exquisite for drinking and washing, while the flavors
and scents of the woods present an incredible sensory vocabulary. Already my own senses and body were adapting to a way of
life I had learned to prefer as a girl, before I had become what dream-thieves call a mukhamirin, before going the way of
the Great Game or making my vows of marriage and motherhood.

The multiverse depended upon chance and malleable realities. Those who explored it developed a means of manipulating those
realities. They were natural gamblers, and many, in other lives, played games of skill and chance for their daily bread. I
was a player in the Eternal Struggle fought between Law and Chaos and, as a “Knight of the Balance,” was dedicated to maintaining
the two forces in harmony.

All this I had explained as best I could to my now missing husband, whose love for me was unquestioning but whose ability
to grasp the complexity and simplicity of the multiverse was limited. Because I loved him, I had chosen to accept his realities
and took great pleasure from them. I added my strength to his and to that of an invisible army of individuals like us who
worked throughout the multiverse to achieve the harmony which only the profoundly mad did not yearn for.

There was no doubt I felt once more in my natural element. Though fraught with anxiety for Ulric’s well-being and my own ability
to save him, at least for a time I knew a kind of freedom I had never dared hope to enjoy again.

Soon we were once more on the move, but this time Ayanawatta and I joined White Crow upon Bes the mammoth, with the canoe
safely strapped across her broad back. There was more than enough room on her saddle, which was so full of tiny cupboards
and niches that I began to realize this was almost a traveling house. As he rode, White Crow busied himself with rearranging
his goods, reordering and storing. I, on the other hand, was lazily relishing the novelty of the ride. Bes’s hair was like
the knotted coat of a hardy hill-sheep, thick and black. Should you fall from her saddle, it would be easy to cling to her
snarled coat, which gave off an acrid, wild smell, a little like the smell of the boars who had lived around the cottage of
my youth.

White Crow dismounted, preferring, he said, to stretch his legs. He had been riding for too long. He and Ayanawatta did their
best not to exclude me from their conversations, but they were forced to speak cryptically and do all they could, in their
own eyes, not to disturb the destiny God had chosen for them. Their magical methods were not unlike different engineering
systems designed to achieve the same end and had strict internal logic in order to work at all.

While White Crow ran to spy on whoever was following us, we continued to rest on the back of the rolling monster. Ayanawatta
told me that the Kakatanawa prince had been adopted into the tribe but was playing out a traditional apprenticeship. His people
and theirs had long practiced this custom. It was mutually advantageous. Because he was not of their blood,
White Crow could do things which they could not and visit worlds forbidden or untraversable by them.

As we moved through those lush grasslands growing on the edge of the forest, Ayanawatta spoke at length of how he wanted to
serve the needs of all people, since even the stupidest human creature sought harmony yet so rarely achieved it. His quick
brain, however, soon understood that he might be tiring me, and he stopped abruptly, asking if I would like to hear his flute.

Of course, I told him, but first perhaps he would listen to me sing a song of my own. I suggested we enjoy the tranquil river
and the forest’s whispering music, let the sounds and smells engulf us, carry us on our fateful dream-quest, and like the
gentle river’s rushing, draw us to the distant mountains and beyond them to that long-house, lost among the icy wastelands
where the Kakatanawa ruled. And I sang a song known as the Song of the Undying, to which he responded, echoing my melody,
letting me know his quest was noble, not for self, or tribe or nation, but for the very race of Man. In his dreams the tree
of all creation was threatened by a venomous dragon, waiting in angry torment, his tears destroying every root. Too sick to
move, the dying dragon had lost his skefla’a and thus lost his power to rise and fly.

He said the Kakatanawa protected some central mystery. He had only hints of what that mystery was and most of that from myth
and song. He knew that they had sent their most valued warriors out to seek what they had lost and what they needed. Where
they had failed, White Crow had succeeded.

Continuing in grim reflection, he told me how his story was already written, how important to his own quest it was that he
return to Kakatanawa, seek their longhouse and their people, bring back the objects they called holy, perform the ritual of
restoration, restore reality to the dream. In that final restoration he would at last unite the nations, at last be worthy
of his name. His dream-name was Onatona. In his language that meant Peacemaker. The power of his dream, his vision of the
future, informed everything he did. It was his duty to follow the story and resolve each thread with his own deeds. I was
in some awe of him. I felt as if I had been allowed to witness the beginning of a powerful epic, one which would resonate
around the world.

I agreed his task was mighty. “Unlike you I have no dream-story to live. If I have I’m unconscious of it. All I know is that
I seek a husband and father I would like to return to his home and his children. I, too, work to unite the nations. I long
to bring peace and stable justice to a world roaring and ranting and shouting as if to drown all sense. I’ll help you willingly
in your quest, but I expect you in turn to help me. Like you, I have a destiny.”

I told Ayanawatta how in my training as a mukhamirim my mother had taught me all my secrets, how some of these secrets must
be kept to myself, even from my own husband and children. But I did not need to remind him. “I am in no doubt of the power
or destiny of White Buffalo Woman. I am glad you elected to act her story. You complete the circle of magic which
will arm us against the greater enemies and monsters we are yet to face.”

The line of thick forest moved back from the river, making our way easier. Ahead lay rolling meadows stretching into infinity.
Gentle, grassy drumlins gave this landscape a deceptively peaceful air, like an English shire extended forever. I had enjoyed
far more bizarre experiences, but nothing quite like holding a conversation about the socioeconomics of dream-visions on the
rolling back of a gigantic pachyderm with a mythological hero who had enjoyed the privilege of seeing his own future epic
and was now bound to live it.

“There are bargains one strikes,” said Ayanawatta with a certain self-mockery, “whose terms only become clear later. It taught
me why so few adepts venture into their own futures. There’s a certain psychological problem, to say the least.”

I began to take more than a casual interest in our conversation, which showed how close to my training Ayanawatta’s was. Like
the dreamthieves, I had a rather reckless attitude towards my own future and spawned fresh versions without a thought. A more
puritanical moonbeam walker took such responsibilities seriously. We were disapproved of by many. They said too many of our
futures died and came to nothing. We argued that to control too much was to control nothing. In our own community Law and
Chaos both remained well represented.

A sharp, rapid cawing came from our right, where the forest was still dense and deep. Someone had disturbed a bird. We saw
White Crow running out of the
trees. I was again struck by his likeness to my father, my husband and myself. Every movement was familiar. I realized that
I took almost a mother’s pleasure in him. It was difficult to believe we were not in some way related.

White Crow’s moccasins and leggings were thick with mud. He was carrying his longest spear with a shaft some five feet long
and a dull metal blade at least three feet long. In the same hand was a straight stick. He had been running hard. Bes stopped
the moment she saw him, her trunk affectionately curling around his waist and shoulders.

He grinned up at me as he rose into the air and patted his beast’s forehead. “Here’s your bow, my lady Buffalo!” He threw
the staff to me and I caught it, admiring it. It was a strong piece of yew wood, ready-made for a new weapon. I was delighted
and thanked him. He drew a slender cord from his side-bag and handed that up. I felt complete. I had a new bow. I had left
my old bow, whose properties were not entirely natural, in my mother’s cottage when I closed it up, thinking I would have
no further need of it in twentieth-century Britain.

“They are following us without doubt,” said White Crow, slipping down to the ground, his face just below my feet. He spoke
softly. “About half a mile behind us. They hide easily in the long grasses.”

“Are you certain they mean us harm?” Ayanawatta asked him.

White Crow was certain. “I know that they are armed and painted for war. Save for me, they have no other enemies
in these parts. They are a thousand miles at least from their own hunting grounds. What magic helped them leave their normal
boundaries? The little devils will probably try for us tonight. I don’t believe they realize we know they are there, so they’ll
be expecting to surprise us. They fear Bes’s tusks and feet more than they fear your arrows, Ayanawatta.”