{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/966", "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": 966, "subject": "Neighborly Inhumi; Oreb as God-Mount", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-08-22T13:34:19+00:00", "last": "2000-08-22T13:34:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at charter.net" }, "date": "2000-08-22T13:34:19+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Neighborly Inhumi; Oreb as God-Mount", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nick Gevers having wondered:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Did the\noriginal \"Neighborly inhumi\" survive in some other\nguise? Specifically, are the Neighbors Horn encounters\nnot perhaps inhumi themselves?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Couple of thoughts here.\n\nWhen Horn first meets up with the Neighbors on Shadelow, he writes: \"There\nwere more shadowy figures seated around [the fire]; they wore dark cloaks\n(or so it seemed to me at the time) and soft-looking hats with wide brims\nand low crowns.\" (OBW, 268) At the time I wondered could what *seem* to be\ndark cloaks actually be wings?\n\nThe other passage is even more oblique. Horn, introducing himself, offers\nhis hand to a Neighbor to shake, writing, \"He took it, and this time I felt\nhis hand and remembered it. It was hard, and seemed to be covered with\nshort, stiff hairs. Beyond that I will not say.\" (269) Horn here is\ndeliberately not telling us something--just as Wolfe is obscuring the\nNeighbors' facial features for some reason--but perhaps either one or the\nother relates to your theory.\n\nMy biggest problem with the the inhumi-as-Neighbors postulation, however,\ninvolves its sustainability. The vampiric Neighborly inhumi surely would\nstill need blood, but if all the real Neighbors have left for parts unknown,\nhow are they able to maintain their Neighborly guise--especially if they're\nsupping at other non-Neighbor fonts? Recall Fava's difficulties retaining\nher youthful composure after dining with Salica.\n\nAlex David Groce then having asked:\n\n\n\nVery much so. Not that I believe you need the story to make the Oreb-Scylla\nconnection since I believe Wolfe establishes this very well in both Blue\nbooks to date. But here are a couple of quotes from \"The Night Chough\" to\nprove my point.\n\nOreb, at the story's beginning, sees several images reflected back to him\nfrom the waters of a pool; the first is his own, the second is the face of a\nmurdered young woman, Lily. And then:\n\n\"Already a third countenance was forming, a young woman's snarling face\nframed by floating tendrils of dark hair. This new young woman had a\nprofusion of arms, some with two elbows and some with three--some, even,\nthat required no elbows at all, arms without hands, as sinuous as serpents,\nmouthing angry phrases without sound.\" (THE CROW: SHATTERED LIVES & BROKEN\nDREAMS, 64.)\n\nLater, when Oreb encounters Starling, who's searching for Lily's body, he\nrefers to seeing both faces as a vision, but seems to believe that Starling\nis actually looking for Scylla.\n\n\"Girl here,\" it declared. \"Find girl.\" Again, it recalled its vision. \"Big\nwet. Have arms.\" (66)\n\nAs if for emphasis, Oreb repeats the \"Have arms\" line two more times.\n\nStarling soon encounters a character named Moonrat, who agrees to lead him\nto Lily's body. On their way back to the pond, Moonrat indicates he wants to\nask Starling a question.\n\n\"I--I've been following you. Not ever since I gave you my gun, I went away\nthen. I didn't want him to see me. But I started back when I heard the shot.\n\n\"I understand.\"\n\n\"You were gone by then, and your bird was pecking at Bushdog's...at his\nface. So I was sure you were going to Serval's, so I ran down the steet to\ncatch up to you. Maybe you didn't hear me, because of the storm.\"\n\n\"I didn't,\" the young man said.\n\n\"Then your bird flew past and lit on your shoulder, and a girl was with you,\nwalking beside you. The--your bird had brought her. That was what it seemed\nlike.\"\n\n\"Lily's ghost?\" The young man was silent, pensive.\n\n\"I don't think so.\" Moonrat's voice quavered. \"I've seen Lily, you know?\nAround town sometimes with you. It didn't look like her. Not--not at all\nlike Lily.\"\n\n\"I wish I'd seen her.\" The young man might not have heard him.\n\n\"You had to. She was right besides you. In the, you know, the lightning\nflashes. I could see her better than I can see you right now. I wanted to\nask who she was.\"\n\n\"Scylla.\" That was the bird. And not the bird. (p. 74)\n\nThere are a couple of other passages I could cite you, but if the above\ndoesn't convince you neither will they. And so to recapitulate: Oreb is\nbeing ridden by Scylla--aka \"Big wet\" and quite probably \"The Mother\"--who's\nattempting to contact Horn, but surreptitiously so, in all likelihood\nfearing for her life, especially since Pas has already killed the ringleader\nof their earlier attempted coup. (\"Echidna tried to kill Pas, so was killed\nby him for that.\") Quite possibly \"The Night Chough\" takes place during\nOreb's year-long absence from Horn and Gaon; it's hard to tell whether the\ntale takes place on Blue or the Whorl, but my sense of it is that Oreb is\nwith Scylla in one place or the other, and that relationship carries over\ninto the Short Sun series.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }