Drunken Jahlee

Iirc, Chenille was drunk only once in the seven volumes. That was when she and Silk went to Lake Limna. They had separated, with Silk going out to the shrine. It was Auk who later found her drunk. Afaik, Silk never saw or heard her drunk. Nevertheless, you are right about something of the essence of Chenille being in Jahlee's "soul". I don't know how it got there, but it's there. The brief conversation Silkhorn had with Silk-in-Pig (RTTW, 174) contains an otherwise pointless discussion about voice and spirit, and even mentions Chenille. Also, after Silkhorn dug her up and her feet first touched stone after feeding on that cow, the inhuma that was Jahlee looked to him like a woman, "an emaciated woman with burning eyes whose hairless skull somehow conveyed the impression of lank reddish hair." (OBW, 314) This was before Silkhorn knew anything at all about Jahlee, who had been buried for an unknown number of years. This complicates Silk's theoretical relationship to his sister-in-a-sense Chenille and his "daughter"-in-a-sense Jahlee. -Roy

On Sat, 06 Aug 2005 23:58:26 -0700 "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: <Interesting things about Jahlee and Chenille, snipped> What were Jahlee's origins? She bites baby Sinew pretty soon after the first colonists arrive on Blue. She tells of her childhood before then, striving to become strong enough to leave Green. I don't think that "wild" inhumi would have that striving to go to Blue; Jahlee was surely sentient at the time. In my opinion, inhumi only get to be sentient if they are born to a human-blood-drinking parent. So my conclusion is that at least one of Jahlee's parents drank someone's blood. If this happened on Green, the timing is very tight. The parent needs to drink the blood of some human, give birth to Jahlee, and Jahlee needs to build up her strength, fly to Blue and find Sinew, all in the time between the first humans leaving the Whorl and Sinew reaching some age which leaves him still an infant. It wouldn't be very surprising to find that the victim was Chenille, one of the first batch of colonists. (If the blood-drinking didn't happen on Green, it must have happened on the Whorl, and the parent must have been one of the inhumi the Neighbors placed there. Further, the Neighbors must have brought the parent back to Green. Why they would do that, I don't know.)

This brings up an important point that bears repeating: Nothing in any of these books can be 100% reliably attributed to Silk. Horn and Nettle wrote the BotLS, there's no guarantee that Silk's spirit is in the narrator's body in SS and the last part of SS is written by what's her name that's married to Hoof or Hide. The only reason we can even surmise Silk was a "real" person is that there are people alive in the narrative who claim to have known him. If it weren't so brilliant a device it'd be damned annoying. Don