10. Epilogue

Dear Chimp, you are hereby invited to celebrate the birth of my child Amowe. I live on the hill, near the Wise Sea. Greetings, the lion king.

Didrik held the letter as if it were a hot flame. “But he doesn’t know Chimp at all! We changed the timeline. They never served in the army together.”

“That’s why! A new life is the perfect moment for meetings. Can you help for a sec?”

Jacintah stretched out her arm and Didrik suddenly stood in the jungle. He wasn’t nauseous anymore after teleporting and immediately climbed the tree.

A chimpanzee looked up in surprise. “Here, a letter from Viowe.”

He quickly handed over the parchment. Jacintah brought him home in the blink of an eye. The apes had given them the castle as a second home, as thanks for their warning. “Here, the final letter.”

“For whom?”

“The foxes.”

“I’ll take that one,” said Ismaraldah as she walked into the dining hall. “I still need to thank one of them.”

Jacintah and Ismaraldah disappeared in a red light and came back almost immediately.

“Was that the last? What about that jackal?”

“Oh, he was invited long ago. Had to be on time, because he’d never leave his beloved Floria just like that.”

“On to the lion!”

“But the child isn’t born yet?”

The sisters looked at each other. “We might be able to … steal some time. Fun!”

Ismaraldah pulled the wooden clock out from under the table. They all jumped in and departed. Once there, they immediately looked through a little window that Didrik installed.

“Yes! Spot on, first try!”

They walked to a wooden cottage on the hill. A green cloth served as the front door. Didrik knocked on the wood, until a lion head pushed aside the cloth.

“Congratulations!”

“Oh, uh, thanks? How did you know—?”

“We got a letter.”

“You too? I really need to ask my wife if she did that. Come in, come in.”

The living room was noisy. They walked through a wide wooden corridor and had to push aside a purple cloth.

There they all sat—the wolves, the foxes, the jackal, the chimpanzees. Everyone had come and chatted with wild gestures and stories.

A large bed with many blankets stood against the wall. Ismaraldah immediately ran toward it and stared at the sleeping Amowe, making endless “aaaah” and “ooooh” noises.

Didrik stood beside her and kissed her cheek. He turned to the lion and handed over a shiny piece of wood. When the lion touched it, a few flashes sparked from it.

“It’s gorgeous. Where did you find this? I thought all Dragontimber had disappeared?”

“We have our—erm—connections.”

The chimpanzee stood in the middle of the room and looked cheerfully at everyone.

“So, who’s up for a game of Coconut Soccer?”

The whole group laughed.

“You realize we can’t stand on two legs?” said the jackal. “I have a better idea. In Floria we often play Disc Hockey. It’s very easy. Take a flat wooden disk. Each team gets their own square area. Take the disk under your paws and slide it into the goal area of the opponent!”

Everyone nodded. The jackal rummaged in a worn bag, first accidentally grabbing a compass, then a rope, then a disk. He pushed aside a yellow cloth and the group walked up the hill as if participating in the Elephantic Games.

Didrik hugged Ismaraldah. “I told you we’d make it work, right?”

It seemed, dear reader, as if the war was averted. But they didn’t yet know the real consequences of their actions. Moving eggs, stopping gunpowder long ago, helping one side gain a great victory—you can’t just do that. Fixed points are fixed points. And sometimes you accidentally shift them to an earlier moment.

“We have to move on,” said Ismaraldah. “We have so little time together.”

“No, no, stay a while. I think they’re still looking for more hockey players.”

He pushed Ismaraldah ahead of him, until Jacintah pulled her outside.

Viowe rubbed his thick manes along Didrik’s side. “I know who you are. You’re one of the Comrades without King.”

“I didn’t do it alone. Those two pandas over there used their magical powers.”

“Time travel, right?”

“That was supposed to stay secret.”

“You’re heroes in all the history books. Although I don’t know why. Couldn’t you have prevented the bloody revolution in Elwar? Or those nasty pirates at sea? Or the Franberri who lost it and beheaded nobles?”

Those were events of which Didrik had never heard.

He’d been naïve. Of course tons had changed! Every time he stepped out of that time machine, the world was different in all kinds of ways compared to before. Sometimes small, sometimes gigantic. It was a miracle they didn’t break the entire world with every time trip.

“That’s also how I know … what you feel for that panda.” Didrik turned to the lion in surprise, but said nothing. “Isn’t it hard? Isn’t it annoying that you can never really go with her or share her life?”

“It’s awful. I still have to convince Ismaraldah every day not to run off, abandoning me forever, because she thinks everything can only end badly. But we may have found a way so I can time travel with her.”

Viowe raised an eyebrow. “How?”

Didrik shook his head. He couldn’t wait to try; at the same time he was scared to death of the consequences. “By making a big sacrifice.”

Then he heard the starting shot for the disc hockey match, coming from a small rifle in the hand of the Chimpanzee.

And so it was that life continued …