Free The Skrayling Tree by Michael Moorcock

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 needswarmth 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