A Flight of Fancy with "The Shepherd's Crown"

Allow me a slight flight of fancy.

While the elves are the lurking menace in Terry Pratchett's last novel, "The Shepherd's Crown," and while they show up at the end, the real menace in the book is menace itself.

The elves eject their queen. The elves spoil the beer. The elves raid, the elves feint, almost always offscreen, out of sight of the eyes telling the story, but always in the back of the mind of those reading the story.

Much like the Alzheimer's that claimed Terry Pratchett's life shortly after this book was written.

And maybe that's a stretch. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I feel like it's a possibility. Pratchett may indeed have written more of this book as it is claimed. But maybe just the presence of the "menace" of the elves -- which we know in a foregone conclusion will be defeated -- represents what Pratchett felt about the Alzheimer's destroying his brain. Maybe he wrote the rote happy ending to this novel of menace knowing such a happy ending wouldn't come in his own life. Pratchett is certainly a clever enough writer to pull this off. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into what happens in the book, paralleling what was happening in his own life at the time.

But it's possible.

And I wonder, what is he thinking now?

Yes, he was an avowed atheist. But even atheists go to heaven when they die. That is my belief. And I wish him no disrespect by writing this. But surely a fantasist of his caliber might welcome the real presence of other realms, other planes of existence, similar to what he wrote of in his novels.

I'm glad the rumored ending, as reported by Neil Gaiman, didn't come to pass. That's too neat of an ending, too rote. Because Esme Weatherwax, of all the characters Pratchett created, would certainly know that death, even an anticipated one, does not arrive on "one's own terms." Whether it comes after a long life of peace and loveliness or after a shorter life of violence and woe, it comes. The roteness of happy endings might have left Pratchett and others cynical about the thought of life after death, but I find weariness in the thought that this life is all there is, whether happy or sad. After we live, we live again on our own terms, but not before. Life after this, that is the flight of fancy we prepare for.