Subject: (urth) "Tracking Song" notes

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 16:45:30 +0000

Re. Robert Borski's theory that Cutthroat is somehow Cain:

Robert didn't bring this up, but it would explain Cutthroat's otherwise
puzzling lack of concern for his wound. When he first reported the wound he
"felt somehow that no serious harm had been done", and was more concerned
about the cold and freezing to death. Again, after he was in the cavern, he
said: "I feel sure now that the wound in my chest will not kill me, though
it is more painful than ever, and the feeling contradicts the plain
reasoning of my mind." Yet between those two statements he states that he is
weak and is afraid he will be unable to rise again if he stops moving. He
worries about death from the cold, but not from the wound, which Mantru took
one look at and pronounced fatal. Is his lack of concern for the wound due
to a belief that he cannot or will not die from injury inflicted by men? Of
course it wasn't given by Men, but by Min.

We are given no hint of any physical injury, no head trauma, to account for
Cutthroat's amnesia. I suggest that his memory loss is due to a
psychological blow incurred when cast off from the Great Sleigh for the
murder of the Sleigh's equivalent of Abel. I also suggest that the unnamed
"you" he refers to on the Sleigh, after he discovers that the recorder is
also a communicator, is Abel, not God. He said: "I hear your breathing as
well, though you are far ahead in the Great Sleigh, and I wonder why it is
you cannot speak." "Cannot" wouldn't apply to God, but it does to the dead.
Cutthroat continues: "Am I being tested? If I pass, do the right thing, if
only once, will you talk to me then?" This echoes Gen.4:7, where God said to
Cain, after spurning his offering, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted?"

When Cutthroat made the choice to search for Cim Glowing rather than pursue
the Sleigh, and when he tried to defend her, he made moral choices he hoped
would earn him redemption. It is also why he said to Ketin: "I am prouder of
not having killed you thus far." When, at the end, he says: "I am going to
talk to you face to face. Who is that tall man with you? I think he has . .
. wings?", he means that he is going to die (the tall man with wings is the
Angel of Death), and that in death he will see his brother once more.

I agree that Ketin is Adam; Ketin is depicted much as the Adam-like tall man
at the end of "Copperhead".

I can't help but think that the term "Sleigh" is intended somehow as a pun
on "slay".

-Roy

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