{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1711",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1711,
    "subject": "Hethor's Slug",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-07-15T14:18:45+00:00",
    "last": "1999-07-15T14:18:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0001@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-07-15T14:18:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Hethor's Slug",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Shortly after Severian arrives in Saltus, he's taken to the house of\nBarnoch the bandit, the door and single window of which have been sealed\nwith rough masonry. According to the alcalde who accompanies Severian, this\nform of punishment--entombing someone in his or her own house--is\ntraditional in Saltus. The alcalde then relates a tale about another\nmiscreant so entombed. \"A woman. I've forgotten her name, but we called her\nMother Pyrexia. The stones were put on her, just like what you see here,\nfor it's largely the same ones doing it, and they did it in the same way.\"\nBut when it comes time to unseal the house next year, the alcalde tells\nSev, much to everyone's surprise, they do not find Mother Pyrexia dead.\nExplains the alcalde: \"A woman sealed in the dark long enough can become\nsomething very strange, just like the strange things you find in rotted\nwood, back among the big trees. We're miners, mostly, here in Saltus, and\nused to things found underground, but we took to our heels and came back\nwith torches. It didn't like the light, or the fire either.\" The alcalde\nnever claims the creature is actually destroyed--hence I'd like to quibble\nwith Mother Pyrexia's entry in LEX-URTH (\"She had changed into something\nvery strange when the house was opened, a noctural creature, and was\nquickly killed\"), arguing that she may well have lived, taking to the woods\nabout Salthus until Hethor arrives. (He's in the crowd at Morweena's\nexecution.) Somehow, beastmaster Hethor is able to enlist/compell her aid\nand I believe it's the transmogrified Mother Pyrexia who attacks Severian\nin the antechamber and underground cell of the Magician's Academy (both\nplaces are dark)--not some giant interstellar slug. \n\nIt might also be possible that Mother Pyrexia's real name is Febronus.\nThere's a saint by that name, and pyrex means \"fever\" in Greek the same way\nfebrus does in Latin. \n\nAnd lastly, anyone interested in reading my theory about the mandragora\nshould pick up the latest issue of THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION\n(July, 1999 #131), wherein I have an essay entitled, \"Thinking about the\nMandragora in Wolfe's CITADEL.\" Sometimes it's nice having your fan fiction\npublished professionally, eh? <g>\n\nRobert Borski"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}