{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1259",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1259,
    "subject": "Merryn",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-03-10T14:42:50+00:00",
    "last": "2001-03-10T14:42:50+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0421@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-03-10T14:42:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: Merryn",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "BMeyer having pondered twicely:\n\n<I asked once before, but received no responses. What happened on p. 266-67\nwith Merryn and the dog? Jahlee says \"Merryn had trouble with animals, too.\"\nThen on the next page SilkHorn hears Severian say he wanted to show them his\ndog. Jahlee goes out. Silk/Horn says \"I followed her in time to see the\nwitch's gaping mouth and the utter blankness of her large dark eyes.\" Huh?\nHe then says \"I must remember to ask Jahlee the secret.\" Is that The Secret,\nor some other secret?>\n\nMerryn's surprise--the gaping mouth and utter blankness of her eyes--appears\ndue to the fact that Jahlee has just walked _through_ a solid door. (Note\nthat Severian locks the door behind him, but Jahlee \"steps\" through it\nseconds later.) Previously, however, Merryn has told Horn that \"She has no\npowers.\" So obviously if Jahlee can walk through solids, she is not as\npowerless as Merryn alleges. Hence the look of surprise.\n\nAs for the \"Merryn had troubles with animals too\" claim, what are we told\nover and over and over again by Horn in the SHORT SUN series? That animals\nare afraid of the inhumi, because they can detect their alien nature. For\nyears now I have been claiming that Merryn is the daughter of the Cumaean\nand Father Inire; this, of course, makes her an alien, and thus explains her\ndifficulty with animals, who can detect her otherness.\n\nThe \"secret\" you mention probably involves Merryn's clandestine nature;\nJahlee has spent time alone with Merryn, and Horn apparently believes she\nknows that Merryn is an alien (she is, after all, the source of  the\n\"problems with animals too\" quote), although from context (\"I cannot reveal\nit to Nettle\") he appears to think she's an inhuma.\n\nThis vitiates, of course, the generally held theory that Merryn and\nSeverian's long-lost sister, Severa, are one and the same, but then I've\nalso been scornful of this notion from the very beginning.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}