YetAnotherDeadWoman

m.driussi · 10 Jul 1998, 21:05 · from urth-v0016.mbox · original

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From: m.driussi at genie.com
Subject: (urth) YetAnotherDeadWoman
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 98 21:05:00 GMT
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Mark Millman,

Ah, but the dead woman in the water of "The Map" isn't Maxellindis,
is it?  It is the second girlfriend =3Dafter=3D Maxellindis, an
adventuress named "Syntyche."  (The first girlfriend after
Maxellindis was out in the Xanthic Lands--she was killed by soldiers
in a food riot.)

Maxellindis (who was about his age and first shows up in CITADEL)
died first, years before.  Eata says they were smuggling stuff and
were caught--she jumped overboard and was never seen again (since
she was a good swimmer, Eata wonders if she was pulled down by a
nixie); he would've jumped but they got him with the foot tangler.

In the course of "The Map," Eata curses another map of the dead city
(his own) as being a waste of his life and that of Maxellindis's too.
So in addition to smuggling, they were apparently pouring all their
money and energy into scavenging the ruins--all for nothing.  And
when he returned from Xanthic Lands, he fell back into the old quest,
with the same old map but now with his new young girlfriend Syntyche
and a young boatman named Laetus.

Said second enterprise came to an end the night before "The Map"
begins: Eata had set it up so they could steal the map from him and
run away while he was sleeping; being young and dumb they broke the
lock and had to fight him.  But Eata didn't anticipate that Laetus
would kill Syntyche shortly thereafter.

It is Syntyche's body they find, freshly dead, watched over by
manatees (link to the Lake of Birds).  And then Simulato sleeps in
the dead woman's bunk, which she had feigned sleep in the night
before, and smells her perfume, and dreams of her, and dreams of
home (which is a spooky link to all sorts of places).

So the parallel situation would be,

 Valeria : Severian :: Syntyche : Eata

And =3Dmaybe=3D,

 Dorcas : Severian :: Maxellindis : Eata

=3Dmantis=3D

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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