On dream travelers

Roy C. Lackey · 16 Feb 2011, 19:23 · from 2011-February.txt.gz
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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:23:27 -0600
Subject: (urth) On dream travelers
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Message-ID: <002001cbce0f$00e91e20$92d14a0c@rclackey>

James Wynn wrote:
[snip]
> 1) Jahlee doesn't say she's hungry in dream-travel IIRC. She only says
> that the inhumi bring her food that she can't eat. Now that doesn't mean
> that she isn't "starving" anyway. Still, it could be that astral bodies
> starve but don't feel hunger.
>
> 2) If an astral body can "starve to death" it has to be different from
> merely being killed in astral travel. Fava is able to enter people's
> dreams. No one else who dies seems to be able to do that.

The case of Fava is different from Jahlee (and Juganu) because her natural
body died during dream travel, but it does shed some light on the issue,
however darkly. That is, she *did* feel hunger *after* she died. More below.

[snip]
> HOWEVER:
> What happens to Fava is still mysterious whether one believes she
> "starved" or if one believes she could not. I've assumed that her astral
> body is not destroyed instantly when her corporeal body dies, but do we
> really know? In that case, "astral starving" is really not the issue.
> Her astral body is destroyed and she is left in the Limbo-world of
> dreams. That would explain what the Rajan's warning to Juganu meant. But
> would that be worse from the perspective of an inhumi than being stuck
> as a monster?

After the Battle of Blanko, Mora and Eco met up with Silkhorn at that
farmhouse Jahlee had taken over. She (Mora) recounted to him what had
happened to her since they last met. (This farmhouse meeting was right
before the Rigoglio group warped to Urth.) She also consulted with Silkhorn
about the dreams she began having on her wedding night, and had been having
every night since. Those dreams were of herself and Fava as little girls,
playing with dolls and things. In her dreams Fava was a human girl, not an
inhuma.

The dreams were pleasant, but since she knew Fava was in fact an inhuma and
the dreams were persistent, she thought "something must be wrong." (IGJ,
304) (Bear in mind that at this point she didn't know that Fava had died in
the snow.)  Silkhorn responded, "I believe that something must be right,
Mora." In fact, he envied her, wishing himself to be a small boy again in
his dreams. He then asked her if she would like for him to put a stop to the
dreams, but warned her that if he did so, he would be unable to restore them
again, that they would be gone forever. He also warned her "that these
dreams may cease sometime of their own accord." (305) She said that if the
dreams weren't dangerous she wanted to keep having them as long as she
could.

He replied: "That's wise, I believe. You had a very short childhood, and you
were eager to leave it behind you, I know. I'm happy to see that the
Outsider, who is far wiser than either of us, has found a way to prolong
it." He then told her, "You will never see her again, outside dreams." He
then told her Fava was dead. Mora said, "This is crazy. I was playing dolls
with her last night." He nodded. "Was I really? Was it true?" (306) He
responded:

"I think so. It's the interior person that survives death, Mora. Fava was an
inhuma, as we both know. We both know, also, that her interior person, her
spirit, was not. When you yourself die -- and we all die -- you will be the
interior person, and there will be no other. To put it a bit more
accurately, that interior person will be the only _you_ in existence."
(ibid) He then gives her a little sermon to the effect that everyone should
try to be good, because everyone is stuck with their interior person, and
that gets harder and harder to do with age.

Fava's human *spirit* lived on after her natural body died, but could
manifest itself only in dreams. Silkhorn's spin on it is that, for Mora, it
is a gift from the Outsider, a prolongation of Mora's unhappy, lonely
childhood, but bettered by the addition of a cherished playmate. But what
did Fava get out of it? In the middle of all this stuff I have described and
quoted, Silkhorn spoke of the Outsider having arranged a sort of cosmic
balance "with gain involving loss, and loss, gain." I think that when Fava's
natural body died, her good fortune was that her spirit was out of her body,
in dream travel.

It is not dream travel that bestows a human spirit or soul; it is the
drinking of human blood. When Jahlee died, she still had a human spirit,
evil as she and all inhumi may be (just as with humans); what became of that
spirit after the death of her natural body is between her and the Outsider,
and I will not speculate. But Fava's spirit (soul), whatever its ultimate
fate, was not immediately harvested or otherwise dealt with by the Outsider.
She ended up in a sort of limbo or other plain of existence, such as is
commonly believed to be inhabited by ghosts.

I don't know what Silkhorn thought he could do to put an end to Mora's
dreams of Fava, but he also thought they might cease anyway. Maybe he meant
only that Mora would outgrow childish things, as people usually do when they
lose their childhood sense of wonder. But he may have meant that Fava's
existence as a spirit was of limited duration.

Now back to Fava's hunger.

In the scene where she and Mora possess Vadsig, it isn't hard to tell who
said what, even in the same paragraph of dialogue. It is mentioned twice
that the possession will end when Onorifica wakes Mora for breakfast. Fava
says, "That's the good thing about this. I can eat." (RTTW, 178) By "good
thing about this" she means, of course, the possession of Vadsig. Mora is
asleep and cannot eat, and Fava comes to her in dreams. Hide is pissed about
the possession of his girl and wants them to leave her. After Silkhorn
identifies the possessors, Hide mentions that Fava is really dead. Silkhorn
says, "Death isn't a hard and fast line like the edge of a table. It is a
process, and it can be a long time before the dead person is entirely
gone -- indeed, it may not end in total dissolution at all." I take that
last bit for the usual human religious belief that there is a life after
death.

He goes on to say "and if Fava wants to eat and Vadsig allows it, I'll have
to arrange for food--" Further along he addresses Vadsig, "Fava -- I believe
it's Fava -- would like you to eat. I may be mistaken, but I think she'll
make you eat voraciously. Is that all right?" Vadsig agreed and Fava said,
"But I won't make her hurt herself or drink blood like I used to, Incanto."
In the same paragraph Mora said, "I won't let Fava make her sick." Food was
arranged for.

The point is that Fava had a helluva appetite that Mora obviously couldn't
assuage, and what good could eating vicariously through possession of Vadsig
really do for a spirit, with or without a spirit body? If Fava had a spirit
body, and could eat, she could have fed herself. Since I think Fava lost her
spirit body when her natural body died, I think her desire to eat was just
for the vicarious thrill she got out of it, the chance to do, in a way, what
she didn't get a chance to do when she briefly had a human spirit body.

No matter how you cut it, that girl was hungry -- or thought she was.

-Roy
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