Shadow IDs

adam louis stephanides · 02 Jun 1998, 17:49 · from urth-v0012.mbox · original

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From: adam louis stephanides <astephan at students.uiuc.edu>
Subject: (urth) Shadow IDs
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 17:49:41
Message-ID: <urth-v0012-0066 at digest.urth.net>
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On Tue, 2 Jun 1998 mantis wrote:

> Please correct me.

Wolf is the name for one Shadow child--he says so explicitly (140, Ace
edition in which "A Story" runs from 83-146).  The names for three Shadow
children are Foxfire, Swan and Whistler (137), so the names do change
completely at each stage.  Two of the names for five are Hatcher and
Hunter (136).  There are names for seven,too, but we don't know them.

This leaves some questions unanswered:

1) Wolf refers to names for seven, five, three and one, but says nothing
about two, four or six.  Does he leave them out because Sandwalker never
encountered groups of those sizes, or do no such names exist?

2) Wolf's statement is most naturally interpreted as you read it, that any
lone Shadow child is named Wolf, every group of three is named Foxfire,
Swan and Whistler, etc.  But it's also possible, I think, to read it as
saying that *each group* of Shadow children has its own names for seven,
five, etc.

And of course we should keep in mind that this is all a work of fiction by
V.R.T.  I don't recall if V.R.T. even claims to have ever seen a Shadow
child, much less what reliable information he would have about their
naming habits (in the story, Sandwalker is surprised to learn that they
even have names.

--Adam

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