Like a good Neighbor

Gerry Quinn · 21 Nov 2011, 01:29 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:29:29 -0000
Subject: (urth) Like a good Neighbor
In-Reply-To: <4EC99908.2050002 at gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <CBD3CB6B352E4006B1E1B032B57E2E61@Rover>

From: James Wynn 

> Antonio:
> > All drowned ones. No, if you want to take as evidence any character's 
> > impression on this, I don't think Seawrack cuts it. But maybe Babbie 
> > does on account of his psychicness - the same that makes it odd that a 
> > Neighbour should be out of touch with other Neighbours. . And there's 
> > the issue of whether he could have physically survived the fall.

> Well, Babbie agreed with Seawrack. If you want to argue that it is 
> impossible for a Neighbor to be out of touch with other Neighbors, fine. 
> I don't see it, but have at it. Horns death and resurrection is a 
> mystery in the novel. But whether it happened is not.
Babbie got it wrong, unless he died at a very specific time:
***********************************************************
Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie?s familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone.

I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty. It was as if my spirit had gone and left my body unoccupied as it did on Green; but in this case it had returned, and my memories (such as they were) were those of the body and not those of the spirit. It was day again, perhaps mid afternoon. I was sitting among earth and fallen leaves in a pit about twelve cubits deep.
***********************************************************

Now you will say that the second paragraph even talks about his spirit going!  But there?s a problem.  When the long-nose man bent over him, he was already suffering thirst, so if he died then it happened *after* this time, in which case Babbie saw him alive.

How do you make sense of that?  The long-nose man bends over a Neighbour?  Who and why?

When does Horn die?

- Gerry Quinn

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