Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and the Men of Letters 18/18
Previous | Master Post
Epilogue
Mysteries Revealed
“It’s what?” Zeetha asked Violetta on the way to Gil’s office on Castle Wulfenbach two days later. Gil wasn’t there, she knew, but that was one reason she was going now.
“Morganatic,” Violetta repeated. “Gil’s keeping his titles, but the land goes to Agatha, and all their children will be Heterodynes rather than Wulfenbachs. Pretty brilliant, if you ask me, even though it was a dirty trick to get her away from Tarvek.”
“What about Skifander?”
“Oh, good heavens, no. Skifander’s yours. But it would be anyway, right? Isn’t your society matriarchal?”
“Well, yes, but... if anything did happen to me....”
Violetta put a hand on Zeetha’s arm. “Make sure it doesn’t.”
Zeetha wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just smiled.
Violetta squeezed her arm and let go as they walked into the empty office. “So what are you looking for in here, anyway?”
“Barry’s journal. Sam said Cas brought a copy and it got left with Gil somehow, and it sounds like part of it’s in Skiff. So... well, I’m curious, that’s all. Mother said she knew him.” She’d said more than that, in fact, but most of what she had said was cryptic, and Zeetha hadn’t understood any of it until she’d gotten here and learned about the war with The Other. Now she hoped this journal would make sense of the rest.
“Oh! All right. Say, if we’re all going to Skifander after the wedding, do you think you could teach me some of the language?”
“Sure! I need to teach at least Agatha and Gil anyway, so you’d be welcome to join us.”
Violetta smiled. “Thanks! Well, I’ll let you get on with your reading and go see what kind of trouble the Winchesters are getting Tarvek into.”
Zeetha laughed, and Violetta left. Then Zeetha made her way to the shelf where Gil had told her the journal would be. As she pulled the small volume off the shelf and examined it, she realized that it was probably the original version, not a copy Cas or Kevin had made. The paper smelled old, though it wasn’t as fragile with age as she might have thought, and the Skiff at the beginning was written with the speed and ease of someone who knew the letters and the language, not the caution of someone copying unfamiliar shapes. Her curiosity piqued further by the first few lines, she found a chair and sat down to read, deciding to focus only on the parts written in her native language.
I can’t find Bill, Barry began. Lucrezia did something just as he shot her, threw him through some kind of portal-but I haven’t been able to find where it led. The gateway to the land of the Geisterdamen is destroyed. If he’s in Skifander, Zantabraxus hasn’t seen him. If he’s in Europa, the trail is too long cold... though I don’t know why he wouldn’t have tried to find Agatha and me.
Poor Agatha. I hated leaving her behind with Punch and Judy, especially with the locket suppressing her Spark, but I had no choice. Klaus cannot be allowed to find her too soon... especially after what I saw in the Geisters’ mirror. But her accession will not go smoothly-she’s going to need both Bill and me one day. And if what Zantabraxus told me about her twins is true, so will Klaus’ boy.
So I’ve been searching other worlds. It may be a vain hope, since there are countless possible universes out there, but I have to try. There has to be some way for me to thwart the disasters I saw. Yet so far, nothing has turned up that would give me even a clue as to where Bill might be. What’s strange is the effect of the Spark in these places. It’s often diminished, which I suppose is to be expected, but usually I still have my accustomed range of scientific gifts-and nothing more. Here... here I have visions.
By the Lion, I wish I knew what I’m doing here.
I’ve been captured, that much I know, and turned over to a man called Eliot Ness. He tells me I’m in America (how?), that the year is 1945, and that America and its allies have just fought a great war with Germany and Japan. So I’m trying to school myself to speak English with a Mechanicsburg accent to hide my education and not lapse into German if I can help it. Herr Ness thinks I’m psychic and is going to take me to a friend who can at least get me new clothes. She might also be able to help me in my search for Bill or explain the visions I’ve had. In the meantime, he has given me this journal so that I can record my thoughts-not for the Bureau of Investigation he serves, but for what he calls “hunters,” since he said that what Bill and I have done to keep peace in Europa is much like what these hunters have done to keep peace in this world. They hunt monsters, it seems, and ghosts and demons.
Yet I cannot afford to trust Herr Ness completely, not until I know for certain that Lucrezia has never influenced this world. So for now I write in Skiff. If and when that changes, so will my choice of language.
No hope of seeing Thundering Engine Woman again, I suppose. It seems Europans here drove out the natives long ago, or rather confined them to territory far from here. A shame.
August 18, 1945
Canton, Ohio, United States of America
Horseless carriages are very different in this world-all carriage and no horse, not even a mechanical one. And they run on petrol, apparently, not coal. I told Herr Ness that I’d like to take one apart and see how it works, and he laughed and said I might get the chance before I go. If he finds that the search for information will take a great deal of time, he will place me in “witness protection” (!) to give me a cover identity and a job. That’s an improvement over Rivendell, of course, where there was never anything I could take apart, but it doesn’t quite scratch the itch yet.
Ezra Moore must be a spark, whatever that designation translates to in this world. She’s kitted me out like a mechanic, the better (she says) to convince people that I’m from Mechanicsburg, but she’s also given me a handsome suit in case certain people she knows wish to meet with me. She thinks they will, and Herr Ness agrees with her that I should look like royalty for that meeting. She’s even agreed to have a jeweler friend make me a Heterodyne tie tack. I offered to pay, but even gold would raise too many questions, as Europan history is too different and my coins would not be recognized as legitimate currency. We can discuss barter later, they say.
Frau Moore has not been able to help me make sense of my visions; when first I described them to her, she said they sound to her like the future of my Europa, not this world. But then she told me of another stranger who visited her last autumn, and though he didn’t sound much like Bill, she thought perhaps I might be able to receive visions of him from contact with the few things he left behind. I agreed to the experiment... and ah, the visions that came! I almost wish I hadn’t
He was a spark, a strong spark-not Bill, indeed, but he could have been the scion of one of the great houses in our world. His name was Dean... Dean W . The last name escapes me now. He had a brother named Sam, also a spark but in a different mode. So was their father, whose character seemed to have been formed from equal parts of Bill and Klaus. They were hunters-and more. I dare not set down all I saw, for much of it was terrible, but... for all that, Sam and Dean were very much like Bill and me.
Were? Will be. For Dean was brought here from the future by a monster and returned thence, thanks to Sam.
Perhaps, if I can’t find Bill, these two will be the answer.
No more for now. The experiment left me deeply weary, and Frau Moore insists that I rest tonight while she contacts her friends. I must try, of course. But I fear what tidings my dreams will bring.
August 20
Canton, Ohio
This morning Herr Ness has allowed me to repair one of his automobiles (“car” for short-very common, but they don’t seem to have any other kind of transport clanks apart from armored “tanks” used for war and flying machines called “airplanes”; there have been too many airship disasters in the last few years for their use to be continued). But it seems the chance to indulge my Spark may already be at an end. Herr Ness and I leave after an early lunch for the requested meeting with Frau Moore’s contacts.
August 21
Normal, Illinois, United States of America
Thundering Engine Woman’s clanks might have been more exciting, but roads in this world are greatly improved over the America we knew. Herr Ness and I left Canton at noon, stopped only for food and fuel, and arrived here shortly before midnight-and I know he was not driving the car at top speed.
The real shock, however, was meeting Frau Moore’s contacts, the Men of Letters-specifically a man named Winchester whose son, Henry, is of an age with Agatha in the visions and looks strikingly like Bill. He isn’t, of course, nor is his father, nor is his parentage in doubt. They have no evidence that Bill has been here. But they are sparks, and I know, even without having visions to confirm it, that this is the family from whom Sam and Dean will spring.
The Men of Letters have offered an exchange: everything I know about my world for all the aid they can give, protection as well as a worldwide search for Bill. I have accepted, even though the likelihood of finding Bill here seems small. I need to get to know these Winchesters.
Agatha needs Sam and Dean.
September 20 (I think)
Men of Letters Stronghold, Lebanon, Kansas, United States of America
My dreams are troubled lately. I still believe Sam and Dean will be the solution to the problems I have seen, and I will continue to tell the Men of Letters that some of their number will be needed to help Agatha.
But what if she’s not the one who needs the help?
Agatha is a Heterodyne. She will take Mechanicsburg, of that I am sure. I’ve never been the most religious man, but even the fact that Bill and I were able to find her among the Geisters and return her to Europa before Lucrezia could corrupt her suggests that God, or some other higher power, is looking out for her.
But from all I’ve seen, she and Klaus’ son Gil seem destined for each other. And that’s worrying. Gil will have the might of the empire to work for him, but what of that? Those forces aren’t as loyal to Klaus as Mechanicsburg will be to Agatha. The Jägers will help him only so far. Castle Wulfenbach is no Castle Heterodyne. And Klaus... well, even if I’m wrong, Klaus isn’t Bill. Or Punch, for that matter.
I can’t risk sending Sam and Dean through the cathedral mirror. I had trouble enough getting in to use it myself without alerting the abbess-Bill wasn’t aware of it, but she’s a Storm King loyalist, sent by the archbishop specifically to aid whatever false Heterodyne heir the Order can wrangle. It’s a wonder she hadn’t turned against us sooner, though that might have been Lucrezia’s doing. She’ll turn against Agatha given half a chance.
The longer I stay here, the harder it is for me to be sure of anything I’ve seen. I know both too much and too little. Even my sense of time is confused; the sanctuary the Men of Letters have granted me is in an underground fortress, and it’s been days since last I saw the sun. And I can’t stay for much longer-the more I hesitate in any one world, the lower my chances of finding Bill become, especially if he’s looking for me or moving through other worlds trying to find the portal that leads home.
So I’m building a fail-safe into the portal-forming device that will bring Sam and Dean to the children. If they are in fact sparks, the device will bring their clank(s) with them, but no other technology that would not belong in our world. But when it asks their identity, it will say first that it does not recognize whatever they tell it and prompt them again. If they say only that they are hunters, or only that they are Men of Letters, it may be Agatha who needs them-either for their fighting skill or for their Spark, for the two domains appear not to overlap here as things stand now. If so, the portal will open at Castle Heterodyne; Agatha will be there and will know where best to employ them. But if they claim both, it may be Gil who needs them. Gkika will know, so the portal will open at her bar. Sinclair has also found a spell to place on the portal so that anyone who passes through it will be able to understand, and be understood by, anyone speaking German or Romanian. We dare not expand the parameters beyond that, but Agatha knows English already, and even in Paris, translators should be easy to come by if the Winchesters don’t speak French.
Sinclair calls for me. I must go-and pray God the Spark does not kill them all.
Zeetha gently closed the book. “Thank you, Barry,” she whispered in Skiff. “Mother was right. You did save us in the end. And so did Sam and Dean.”
Dean poked his head in the office door just then. “Hey, Zeetha, Tarvek’s about to propose to Charlie to try to get out of marrying Urania. You want to come watch the fireworks?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she replied, sliding the book back onto the shelf-with no intention of revealing the contents of the Skiff sections to anyone.
And hidden from mortal sight, a certain Trickster archangel who had accompanied Castiel and Kevin through the wormhole to ensure their safe arrival unwrapped a lollipop and followed Zeetha out of the library, chuckling to himself in anticipation. These kids were fun.
Epilogue
Mysteries Revealed
“It’s what?” Zeetha asked Violetta on the way to Gil’s office on Castle Wulfenbach two days later. Gil wasn’t there, she knew, but that was one reason she was going now.
“Morganatic,” Violetta repeated. “Gil’s keeping his titles, but the land goes to Agatha, and all their children will be Heterodynes rather than Wulfenbachs. Pretty brilliant, if you ask me, even though it was a dirty trick to get her away from Tarvek.”
“What about Skifander?”
“Oh, good heavens, no. Skifander’s yours. But it would be anyway, right? Isn’t your society matriarchal?”
“Well, yes, but... if anything did happen to me....”
Violetta put a hand on Zeetha’s arm. “Make sure it doesn’t.”
Zeetha wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just smiled.
Violetta squeezed her arm and let go as they walked into the empty office. “So what are you looking for in here, anyway?”
“Barry’s journal. Sam said Cas brought a copy and it got left with Gil somehow, and it sounds like part of it’s in Skiff. So... well, I’m curious, that’s all. Mother said she knew him.” She’d said more than that, in fact, but most of what she had said was cryptic, and Zeetha hadn’t understood any of it until she’d gotten here and learned about the war with The Other. Now she hoped this journal would make sense of the rest.
“Oh! All right. Say, if we’re all going to Skifander after the wedding, do you think you could teach me some of the language?”
“Sure! I need to teach at least Agatha and Gil anyway, so you’d be welcome to join us.”
Violetta smiled. “Thanks! Well, I’ll let you get on with your reading and go see what kind of trouble the Winchesters are getting Tarvek into.”
Zeetha laughed, and Violetta left. Then Zeetha made her way to the shelf where Gil had told her the journal would be. As she pulled the small volume off the shelf and examined it, she realized that it was probably the original version, not a copy Cas or Kevin had made. The paper smelled old, though it wasn’t as fragile with age as she might have thought, and the Skiff at the beginning was written with the speed and ease of someone who knew the letters and the language, not the caution of someone copying unfamiliar shapes. Her curiosity piqued further by the first few lines, she found a chair and sat down to read, deciding to focus only on the parts written in her native language.
I can’t find Bill, Barry began. Lucrezia did something just as he shot her, threw him through some kind of portal-but I haven’t been able to find where it led. The gateway to the land of the Geisterdamen is destroyed. If he’s in Skifander, Zantabraxus hasn’t seen him. If he’s in Europa, the trail is too long cold... though I don’t know why he wouldn’t have tried to find Agatha and me.
Poor Agatha. I hated leaving her behind with Punch and Judy, especially with the locket suppressing her Spark, but I had no choice. Klaus cannot be allowed to find her too soon... especially after what I saw in the Geisters’ mirror. But her accession will not go smoothly-she’s going to need both Bill and me one day. And if what Zantabraxus told me about her twins is true, so will Klaus’ boy.
So I’ve been searching other worlds. It may be a vain hope, since there are countless possible universes out there, but I have to try. There has to be some way for me to thwart the disasters I saw. Yet so far, nothing has turned up that would give me even a clue as to where Bill might be. What’s strange is the effect of the Spark in these places. It’s often diminished, which I suppose is to be expected, but usually I still have my accustomed range of scientific gifts-and nothing more. Here... here I have visions.
By the Lion, I wish I knew what I’m doing here.
I’ve been captured, that much I know, and turned over to a man called Eliot Ness. He tells me I’m in America (how?), that the year is 1945, and that America and its allies have just fought a great war with Germany and Japan. So I’m trying to school myself to speak English with a Mechanicsburg accent to hide my education and not lapse into German if I can help it. Herr Ness thinks I’m psychic and is going to take me to a friend who can at least get me new clothes. She might also be able to help me in my search for Bill or explain the visions I’ve had. In the meantime, he has given me this journal so that I can record my thoughts-not for the Bureau of Investigation he serves, but for what he calls “hunters,” since he said that what Bill and I have done to keep peace in Europa is much like what these hunters have done to keep peace in this world. They hunt monsters, it seems, and ghosts and demons.
Yet I cannot afford to trust Herr Ness completely, not until I know for certain that Lucrezia has never influenced this world. So for now I write in Skiff. If and when that changes, so will my choice of language.
No hope of seeing Thundering Engine Woman again, I suppose. It seems Europans here drove out the natives long ago, or rather confined them to territory far from here. A shame.
August 18, 1945
Canton, Ohio, United States of America
Horseless carriages are very different in this world-all carriage and no horse, not even a mechanical one. And they run on petrol, apparently, not coal. I told Herr Ness that I’d like to take one apart and see how it works, and he laughed and said I might get the chance before I go. If he finds that the search for information will take a great deal of time, he will place me in “witness protection” (!) to give me a cover identity and a job. That’s an improvement over Rivendell, of course, where there was never anything I could take apart, but it doesn’t quite scratch the itch yet.
Ezra Moore must be a spark, whatever that designation translates to in this world. She’s kitted me out like a mechanic, the better (she says) to convince people that I’m from Mechanicsburg, but she’s also given me a handsome suit in case certain people she knows wish to meet with me. She thinks they will, and Herr Ness agrees with her that I should look like royalty for that meeting. She’s even agreed to have a jeweler friend make me a Heterodyne tie tack. I offered to pay, but even gold would raise too many questions, as Europan history is too different and my coins would not be recognized as legitimate currency. We can discuss barter later, they say.
Frau Moore has not been able to help me make sense of my visions; when first I described them to her, she said they sound to her like the future of my Europa, not this world. But then she told me of another stranger who visited her last autumn, and though he didn’t sound much like Bill, she thought perhaps I might be able to receive visions of him from contact with the few things he left behind. I agreed to the experiment... and ah, the visions that came! I almost wish I hadn’t
He was a spark, a strong spark-not Bill, indeed, but he could have been the scion of one of the great houses in our world. His name was Dean... Dean W . The last name escapes me now. He had a brother named Sam, also a spark but in a different mode. So was their father, whose character seemed to have been formed from equal parts of Bill and Klaus. They were hunters-and more. I dare not set down all I saw, for much of it was terrible, but... for all that, Sam and Dean were very much like Bill and me.
Were? Will be. For Dean was brought here from the future by a monster and returned thence, thanks to Sam.
Perhaps, if I can’t find Bill, these two will be the answer.
No more for now. The experiment left me deeply weary, and Frau Moore insists that I rest tonight while she contacts her friends. I must try, of course. But I fear what tidings my dreams will bring.
August 20
Canton, Ohio
This morning Herr Ness has allowed me to repair one of his automobiles (“car” for short-very common, but they don’t seem to have any other kind of transport clanks apart from armored “tanks” used for war and flying machines called “airplanes”; there have been too many airship disasters in the last few years for their use to be continued). But it seems the chance to indulge my Spark may already be at an end. Herr Ness and I leave after an early lunch for the requested meeting with Frau Moore’s contacts.
August 21
Normal, Illinois, United States of America
Thundering Engine Woman’s clanks might have been more exciting, but roads in this world are greatly improved over the America we knew. Herr Ness and I left Canton at noon, stopped only for food and fuel, and arrived here shortly before midnight-and I know he was not driving the car at top speed.
The real shock, however, was meeting Frau Moore’s contacts, the Men of Letters-specifically a man named Winchester whose son, Henry, is of an age with Agatha in the visions and looks strikingly like Bill. He isn’t, of course, nor is his father, nor is his parentage in doubt. They have no evidence that Bill has been here. But they are sparks, and I know, even without having visions to confirm it, that this is the family from whom Sam and Dean will spring.
The Men of Letters have offered an exchange: everything I know about my world for all the aid they can give, protection as well as a worldwide search for Bill. I have accepted, even though the likelihood of finding Bill here seems small. I need to get to know these Winchesters.
Agatha needs Sam and Dean.
September 20 (I think)
Men of Letters Stronghold, Lebanon, Kansas, United States of America
My dreams are troubled lately. I still believe Sam and Dean will be the solution to the problems I have seen, and I will continue to tell the Men of Letters that some of their number will be needed to help Agatha.
But what if she’s not the one who needs the help?
Agatha is a Heterodyne. She will take Mechanicsburg, of that I am sure. I’ve never been the most religious man, but even the fact that Bill and I were able to find her among the Geisters and return her to Europa before Lucrezia could corrupt her suggests that God, or some other higher power, is looking out for her.
But from all I’ve seen, she and Klaus’ son Gil seem destined for each other. And that’s worrying. Gil will have the might of the empire to work for him, but what of that? Those forces aren’t as loyal to Klaus as Mechanicsburg will be to Agatha. The Jägers will help him only so far. Castle Wulfenbach is no Castle Heterodyne. And Klaus... well, even if I’m wrong, Klaus isn’t Bill. Or Punch, for that matter.
I can’t risk sending Sam and Dean through the cathedral mirror. I had trouble enough getting in to use it myself without alerting the abbess-Bill wasn’t aware of it, but she’s a Storm King loyalist, sent by the archbishop specifically to aid whatever false Heterodyne heir the Order can wrangle. It’s a wonder she hadn’t turned against us sooner, though that might have been Lucrezia’s doing. She’ll turn against Agatha given half a chance.
The longer I stay here, the harder it is for me to be sure of anything I’ve seen. I know both too much and too little. Even my sense of time is confused; the sanctuary the Men of Letters have granted me is in an underground fortress, and it’s been days since last I saw the sun. And I can’t stay for much longer-the more I hesitate in any one world, the lower my chances of finding Bill become, especially if he’s looking for me or moving through other worlds trying to find the portal that leads home.
So I’m building a fail-safe into the portal-forming device that will bring Sam and Dean to the children. If they are in fact sparks, the device will bring their clank(s) with them, but no other technology that would not belong in our world. But when it asks their identity, it will say first that it does not recognize whatever they tell it and prompt them again. If they say only that they are hunters, or only that they are Men of Letters, it may be Agatha who needs them-either for their fighting skill or for their Spark, for the two domains appear not to overlap here as things stand now. If so, the portal will open at Castle Heterodyne; Agatha will be there and will know where best to employ them. But if they claim both, it may be Gil who needs them. Gkika will know, so the portal will open at her bar. Sinclair has also found a spell to place on the portal so that anyone who passes through it will be able to understand, and be understood by, anyone speaking German or Romanian. We dare not expand the parameters beyond that, but Agatha knows English already, and even in Paris, translators should be easy to come by if the Winchesters don’t speak French.
Sinclair calls for me. I must go-and pray God the Spark does not kill them all.
Zeetha gently closed the book. “Thank you, Barry,” she whispered in Skiff. “Mother was right. You did save us in the end. And so did Sam and Dean.”
Dean poked his head in the office door just then. “Hey, Zeetha, Tarvek’s about to propose to Charlie to try to get out of marrying Urania. You want to come watch the fireworks?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” she replied, sliding the book back onto the shelf-with no intention of revealing the contents of the Skiff sections to anyone.
And hidden from mortal sight, a certain Trickster archangel who had accompanied Castiel and Kevin through the wormhole to ensure their safe arrival unwrapped a lollipop and followed Zeetha out of the library, chuckling to himself in anticipation. These kids were fun.