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Call me Dandelion. I’ve always admired those cheeky rabble rousers, dandelions-- they grow where nothing ought to, hoisting their saucy little flags among rubble. Like them, I’m an obnoxiously omnipresent puffball. And like them, I live where nothing should: in the fractures between scenes, a splay of sunshine in the cracks.
That comes off as insufferably and needlessly metaphorical, doesn’t it? Apologies, I must entertain myself somehow. What I meant to say is: greetings, wonderful to meet you, I’ll be your Narrator this morning / afternoon / evening. Today / Tonight I shall bridge the gaps between vignettes, add distracting flair where the seams show, and voila: ladies, gentlemen, and other esteemed personages, we shall achieve coherence.
Thus is my function. I natter on from my disembodied vantage point and explain pieces of the Great Arc to the oohs, aahhs, and sage nods of our illustrious guests. The Great Arc? You know it. It’s the momentum of the story, the headlining attraction, the setting of expectations and the achievement of closure. The sword displayed on the wall in Act I and the jilted lover grabbing it to behead the cuckolded husband in Act III. The hero fleeing the first battle and defeating the opposition’s most feared enemy in the last. Or, less cheerful, the once-powerful king, wealthy and proud in those wide-lens opening shots, toddling toward the credits blinded and half-mad in penance for his hamartia. The arc is the measurement of change over time. While standing outside of time, I describe that majestic ascent, crescendo, and descent with the loving attention of a phone sex operator unable to reach out and touch.
Ah, well. At least no one can boo me up here. Try landing a rotten tomato on my forehead, dear reader.
So then! Let’s choose from today’s options, shall we? We’ll need a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The beginning’s predetermined: there’s a man with viper eyes, bone-white hair, and two swords, and he is a witcher. Follow the arc’s ascent with me now. Our melanin-impaired hero encounters many odd and endearing personalities, pursues adventures with varying degrees of seriousness and sense, obtains lovers and a daughter, and then--
And then! What then? We’ve set expectations. What form shall our closure take? Come, come, this is an audience participation show. What kind of ending shall we aim for?
Anonymous shouter in the back, thank you for your contribution! The happy ending, you say. A splendid narrowing rubric. It’ll do as well as any.
I’m happy to provide a selection of options. Choose a preferred ending according to your proclivities, or choose them all, with the possibility of multiple universes. I’m a promiscuous storyteller-- I don’t narrate and tell.
Option A: Geralt & Yennefer
Solid selection! This one’s the easiest to pull off. It has twenty years of buildup.
Geralt takes over the vineyard in Toussaint. It is not the site of an ancient Elven burial ground in which some nefarious long-ago landlord moved the grave markers but not the bodies, the soil’s well-aerated, the weather mild, the neighbors largely jovial and prone to sharing wholesome and delicious fare with viper-eyed dinner guests. B.B. is a dedicated and attentive steward, Marlene a marvelous and enthusiastic cook, and when she arrives, Yennefer remains as always the culmination of Geralt’s dreams: tempestuous yet devoted, potent yet grounded, his and also her own, self-possessed. The most important moment comes and goes in a flash. They both say yes.
They’ve worked hard to find peace in this world. Now they can build a home together. It isn’t quite what he dreamed for them on Thanedd, and for that they’re both thankful. After all, Geralt doesn’t know how to build a house with his own hands. Where would he have learned? Imagine the roof on a rainy night. No, no. They let proper carpenters finish the renovations for them, nodding at the words pitch and caulk and signing their names and giving over crowns as required. The estate grows verdant and luscious again. They eat rich Toussaintois food and drink vast quantities of Toussaintois wine, growing happy and plump together. The bones of Geralt’s shoulders no longer dig into Yennefer’s cheek when they cuddle.
If any of Kaer Morhen’s original mages had survived, they would have died again for the privilege of learning what Geralt and Yennefer find out: how long a witcher might actually live when allowed to die of natural causes. The answer for this particular specimen is 542 years. The culprit: indigestion. To be slightly more scientific, one night Geralt’s aged metabolism gurgles its last and proves incapable of digesting his usual draught of Gull-enhanced wine. He hasn’t brewed potions in decades and nothing else can stop the alcohol poisoning in time. Yen, having watched her witcher age over the centuries and come to terms with the ephemerality of life, has the courage to find the gentle humor in it. Hearsay tells that she stops taking the potion that grants sorceresses their tediously long lifespan and slips into a peaceful, painless sleep among the nuns of an order that’s younger than she is.
There go Geralt and Yennefer.
Option B: Geralt & Jaskier
Ah, universe-hopping, are we? Variety is the spice of the multiverse, as no one says.
You’re familiar with the incident on the mountain, I presume. Let us take that melancholy occasion as our starting point. Jaskier is sad, Geralt pretends not to be. They wander their separate ways, trudging tearfully about, when what should happen but-- hm-- something profoundly apropos-- ahh, yes, Geralt has his voice stolen. He may not use it that much, but he depends on the gravelly worn thing, so he has no choice but to scamper around on various sidequests attempting to restore it. After assorted mishaps and misadventures, he discovers to his chagrin that, mes dieux, only true love can break the curse. What’s a monosyllabic himbo to do?
Why, he must track down his illustrious and ever-faithful bard, of course! Off he sets on his perilous journey, and after many hilarious miscommunications, he eventually discovers that Jaskier has been taken hostage by nefarious forces bent on… hm, I seem to have forgotten what. It doesn’t matter. The forces are nefarious, their aims malevolent, their means unpleasant, and their faces either literally hideous or strikingly attractive if not for the glint of ill intent. Geralt hurls himself into the midst of them, silver sword swinging, for these are not earthly forces bent on the corruption of our endearingly verbose bard. One by one they fall to the schwink schwank schwonk of his flashing blade, until only he and the bard remain standing on the field of battle. They stare at one another. Slowly, they close the distance between them. After an excruciatingly long pause they kiss, and the love of Jaskier alights on him, and the voice of Jaskier restores him, and swept away in the relief and gratitude and celebration of that kiss, Geralt utters a moan-- the first sound he’s produced in weeks.
Unable to avoid the feelings between them any longer, Geralt and Jaskier head to the coast in fulfillment of all their half-made promises. It is as beautiful as a bard’s song might tell. They come together in a catharsis of longing vanquished and passion fulfilled. After some weeks or months, though, the coin runs out, and they must return to their itinerants’ path of witcher contracts and bardic busking. They sing and slay, they make and spend coin, and they do it all together. There are far worse lives to live.
Years later, Jaskier dies of a wasting disease that no healer can cure. (It’s cancer, difficult to detect, much less treat in this era.) He is sixty-four years old. Geralt lives on, slaying monsters and making and spending coin alone. Personally I believe that he’s eventually killed by a pogrom quite similar to the one that kills him in a timeline far from our happy endings, except this time there is no Yennefer or Ciri to save him. But if you’d prefer, make his exit long, wistful, and bittersweet, with snatches of half-remembered melodies in the breeze.
There go Geralt and Jaskier.
Option C: Geralt & Eskel
Ah, my audacious friend! I applaud the brazenness of your choice. Are you testing the boundaries of happy endings? These two aren’t naturally suited to such things, wouldn’t you say?
It does take a little imagination, some slight bending of the rules.
So let us exercise our flexibility. Foundation principles to start. A number of factors must align:
First, Geralt does not meet Yennefer, or he does and he falls out of love with her, or they never fall in love at all. Or she dies, but that seems unnecessarily grim.
Second, the matter of Jaskier, or Dandelion (a most worthy gentleman), or Buttercup. You know, The Bard. In most cases, he’s a dear friend. For this scenario, he must remain so. Or I suppose you can kill him off, too, you bloodthirsty maniac.
Third, one or the other must speak his mind. Neither is inclined to do so. Geralt likes to pretend that he doesn’t have emotions. He is so caught up in the pride of his difference that he cannot imagine his commonality with all other human beings, mutated or not: his vulnerability, his fear of that vulnerability, his aching desire for connection, his anger that the pursuit of connection requires such uncertainty and terror. Yes, Geralt, for you and all the rest of us. Eskel-- assuming a post-Deirdre Eskel, which for the sake of coherence, we shall assume-- is a bit wiser. He hates himself for what he failed to do, and each aspect of his being has become proof of his failure, his unworthiness. They love each other, these more-than-brothers, for decades and decades, and yet the gulf between them yawns wider every year.
How to cross it? Consider your options.
Crisis seems the easiest answer. One of them is near death, or thought to have crossed it, and the other in his inconsolable grief must finally name what he has lost. The would-be corpse revives and reciprocates the emotion that the other had voiced in desperation. Aww.
Another option: they receive outside assistance. A wise observer sighs and through manipulation or less skullduggerous means leads the two would-be lovers towards one another.
A third narrative device, more realistic if less dramatic: time. This happens on occasion. One day, one of them realizes that he is aging and even for a witcher, life’s possibilities are finite. He would rather take the wild risk of professing his possibly unrequited love than die with his heart unvoiced.
All of these solutions lead to the same moment. A question is asked or an offer made; the other considers the question or offer, the risk, the possibilities; and there is an answer of a kiss. They come together at last!
Having accomplished their union, possibilities for the ultimate ending are depressingly plentiful. Two witchers, each a member of a death-prone species-- that multiplies the potential for tragedy, no?
You might imagine them dying on separate contracts. Or together, against some truly awe-full beast soon to wreak havoc across the Continent. Or imagine them slaying many and living long, until nearly all the monsters are dead and after many penniless years, they retire to a cottage together. Perhaps they even acquire the vineyard from Option A, which proceeds without much change except we may now observe two witcher specimens in old age. Geralt still lasts 542 years; Eskel lasts 543. Eskel might have lived longer, but-- have you ever seen two dogs raised together all their lives, and then one dies? Two gerbils? Two intertwined trees?
Don’t dwell on it. They lived long and were happy.
There go Geralt and Eskel.
Option D: Geralt shows no particular romantic interest in anyone, or his commitment(s) is/are half-hearted at best. Instead, he reserves the largest part of his heart for his daughter Ciri. She blossoms into a rakish witcheress who roams about the Continent claiming trophies and hearts alike. With no Kaer Morhen to return to, she winters in a cozier locale: her father’s home, which he keeps clean and faultlessly maintained at all times in anticipation of her return. She matures into a dauntless warrior the likes of which the Continent has never seen. Powerful as she is, alas, Ciri remains human. She grows; she matures; she ages; and eventually she dies, perhaps in her father’s arms as he would prefer, perhaps in the arms of a lover who begins a letter to Geralt in the very hour that she passes. Perhaps alone, on the Path, in the claws of some beast.
We aren’t sure what happens to our protagonist after that. The greatest part of Geralt passes with his daughter. The rest is shadows, and it passes as shadows pass: unremarked.
Do you begin to see my meaning?
Other happy endings exist, naturally. Many. But the main point having been established, we need only consider a handful more, at a brisker pace.
Option E: All four of the Wolf School witchers survive the Path’s many dangers for consecutive centuries. Eventually, all monsters are driven to either extinction or harmless obscurity. Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, and Vesemir convert Kaer Morhen into a comfortable retirement home with a finally-patched roof, a stocked larder, and wondrous if inexplicable hot springs. Add or subtract romantic combinations as you please. They all live long lives that extend beyond the mathematics of my reckoning, as they take care of each other.
Option F: Hard rains come, bringing dangerous mudslides that block the road to Kaer Morhen. Visenna turns from the Witcher’s keep and instead gives her child Geralt to the Temple of Melitele, where he is raised to become a priest. Showing no propensity for a life of quiet contemplation, he sneaks off to join a troupe of traveling players and manages to win the heart and hand of a mischief-eyed noblewoman. He uses her considerable wealth to finance wild hedonistic adventures around the Continent. Against expectation, he and she make a lively and devoted pair. Eventually they settle down to a life of high-stakes Gwent gambling, horse racing, and amateur swashbuckling, breeding the occasional prize-winning hound. Geralt dies sometime in his fifties from a combination of diabetes and heart disease, owing to his rich diet. His wife genuinely mourns his passing before marrying a twentysomething lord with excellent cheekbones.
Option G: Visenna was never able to have children. She’s a sorceress; why should she be able to? She wanders about pursuing hobbies that a sorceress would find fulfilling and lives a happy and productive life.
Option H: Through a blip in the grand universal mechanism, the Conjunction of the Spheres never occurs. The worlds do not align, creatures remain obliviously in whatever realm to which they are native. The Continent never knows the presence of humankind. Dryads inherit— well, continue to rule the earth. They get rather fat and lazy with not much to do, but they’re happy.
Option-- No, enough. By now, darling, you understand.
It’s about-- what?
Fulfillment. Arcs. Beginnings, the questions they pose, and the answers contained within them like unhatched eggs.
It was never about the ultimate ending, that point at which the arc slouches to the dirt in a final earthward heave.
No, there’s a point in the plot arc that matters more-- the utmost point in the arch, where it soars closest to the airy ethereal realms-- the peak at which our man perceives the question that his experience has repeatedly asked him and realizes he can make of his life an answer, and chooses to do so, and his answer is yes--
--and that yes delivers him. It supersedes life and death and obliterates in one motion the ash heap of decades. The question of the beginning arcs all the time toward that answer: the earned, ringing yes. And that is transcendence, to hear the question of life clarified, to listen and not turn away, and to live in resounding answer. That is joy.
Geralt, abandoned as a child, rendered freakish among freaks by his mutations, knows his question: can he bear to love & be loved? All those happy endings will do; the precise outcome doesn't matter. It’s about their common apex, the moment he answers yes. After that point, his ultimate demise ceases to matter. He’s won.
Hubris, isn’t it, the telling of such a simplistic story (though all stories are simplistic at heart-- Mr. Booker claims that for our millions of stories, there are only seven plots, recycled, renewed and repeated throughout time)? Especially in our confused times. We recognize our arcing questions too late, lead meandering lives that arc nowhere and answer nothing. Resignation seems inevitable. Yet a story such as this asks us to believe otherwise, in other, harder possibilities.
Who is brave enough to claim such happiness? Who would dare name it, believe it-- or, Melitele have mercy, attempt it?
There’s nothing more here; there is no plot left to tell. And so this is where my role as Narrator ends, my gracious and long-suffering reader, and yours begins.
What is the question posed in your beginning? Are you arcing toward a culmination, an answer? Will you answer yes?
Go on, then. Your Narrator awaits.
Show, and I shall tell.