Sylviana wept silently, recalling images of the Holocaust, set against memories of German families she had known, so loving, nurturing, hard working. 'How horrible.'

'Yes. As it's been said many times, we must learn from the mistakes of history, or we're doomed to repeat them. We must all realize what we're capable of, when we close our hearts, and allow our minds to justify such brutal and inhuman acts. Or we DON'T learn, until it's too late.' He gave a bitter sigh. 'Until it comes to this.'

Needing perhaps some escape from the relentless intensity of these truths, her eyes took in the map before her: the northern Atlantic. The altered North American coast formed one boundary, the European the other. She studied the latter quietly, not wanting to look too closely at the plunder of her native America.

The European main did not at first look radically different, her eyes readily identifying Italy, though the boot' had been rounded off, and Spain, similarly worn so that the strait of Gibraltar was now broad enough to pass a small country through. But as her gaze continued toward France and the Netherlands….. Something was missing. NO. It couldn't be.

'Where are the British Isles?' The home of her deepest ancestors.
A last, disbelieving hope. 'Or haven't you drawn them yet?'

'They're gone,' he said somberly, 'Along with all of Scandinavia, my home….. A huge rift opened between them and the mainland, here, and swallowed them like Atlantis. I watched it happen, day by day, year by year. And Sweden. It was one of the saddest experiences of my life. To watch the destruction of that beautiful land, from which my ancestors set out in many-oared galleys, practically rowing themselves, when the winds weren't favorable, all the way to northern Canada, centuries before Columbus. When I think of the courage and determination that must have taken, to brave the storms and chilling waters. All lost, the chain of humanity broken forever, ending with me, in the grim twilight of a futile existence.'

He forgot his own emotions as he found the young girl collapsed upon his chest, sobbing like a frightened child. After a moment's hesitation, in which he saw that restraint would be tantamount to cruelty, he put his arm around her and brought her close, kissed her forehead and said gently. 'Don't cry, little Sylvie (the name he had heard her father use those many years before). It's over now.'

'But it's not over,' she said wretchedly. 'It's not.
And if you only knew what I was going to do. You'd hate me.
You'd never speak to me again. It's too awful….. And I
don't WANT to. I don't want to.'

He waited for her to become quieter. 'The only thing I couldn't forgive, and that I don't understand, is why you keep punishing yourself. The way you've withdrawn, and won't let anyone close to you. Especially Kalus.' He knew from the hurt look she gave him that he had struck upon the heart of her unhappiness. 'Or is it him you're trying to punish?'

'You don't understand,' she said weakly. And she would have told him, and perhaps have found in his wisdom a way to let go, and renounce the evil thing that she proposed. But at that moment she heard a voice outside the open door.