Alas, my memory was faulty. Mary, not Barbara, is Eleanor's sister-in-law's name. I wonder if Barbara Bold is named for anyone in Trollope or Dickens? The PEACE hypothesis is under work--since it may be quite a while (moving in and getting used to grad school is taking a lot of time...) for me to polish it, some of the major points are:
-- The motif of the skulls--and the connection between Weer's skull (also a kind of memory palace) and the skull the picnic party sees in the cave--especially in light of Olivia's comments about how mankind will one day vanish...
-- The "dream walk" Weer takes by the river
-- The story of the Sidhe
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." John 8:32
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce