The Ireem Chronicles

To the friends of Anneliese Wolfenhaut:

My mother wrote to me often, telling me stories of Ireem. She loved this place, and loved many of the people here, at least the ones she'd killed and turned Undead.

Before she boarded her little raft, she asked me to explain her actions. She'd grown corrupted inside - even for an undead. Something had changed in her, slowly rotted, and she tried to cure the sickness for a long, long time.

Eventually she realized that some illnesses cannot be cured.

My mother piled driftwood high on the little raft, then climbed aboard. She drifted out to sea and after a long time, when she'd neared the horizon, I saw the smoke and flames. She'd spoken to me of suttee - the Indian practice of widows being set afire, so they might join their husbands in the afterlife.

In this case, my mother was never wed, and the man she loved yet lives, or so she thought. But the pain of losing him would fester in her soul, and she would never heal. She was rotten inside, she'd said. Death - a true death, one that even a succubus could not survive - was the only cure.

I had just returned from Avalon, the home of my father, and had no real chance to get to know my mother. But I believe what she said - there was something very ill in her, something that seemed to be incurable.

I believe she has found peace now, in that eternal silence that awaits us all.

She said her friends would understand. I hope those same friends will welcome me now.

Yours sincerely,
Melanthe Faerye
daughter of Anneliese