Urth Digest, Vol 111, Issue 17

Andrew Mason · 01 Dec 2013, 23:01 · from 2013-December.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2013 23:01:52 +0000
Subject: (urth) Urth Digest, Vol 111, Issue 17
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1385503999.5257.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.1.1385503999.5257.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <CAM3O41JRJFfOCVjE8enHht_GZW_fMBmnaVYy6a91G9TJYAgwrQ at mail.gmail.com>

Lee wrote:

Great question! One I think Marc would have no trouble answering as he
> feels Silkhorn is fully Silk by the end. I think he is still partially
> Horn but ties in nicely with Andrew's recent question and Dan'l's answer.
>
> I think there is a small amount of Horn still left in SilkHorn for Seawrack
> to attach to. But in regard to Andrew's question about what new love the
> narrator will find to fulfill the prophecy, I agree with Dan'l.
>
> It is Seawrack.
>
> For the Silk part of silkHorn, she is a new love. Given her spiritual
> connection to Hyacinth and Kypris (discussed in another post), I think
> Silk can find much to love in Seawrack, physical differernces aside.
>
>
That's certainly possible, though it would be tricksy - the 'return to your
sons' native place as a stranger' bit would seem to fit only Horn, while
'find new love' can apply only to Silk. Though one might argue that Hoof
and Hide are Silk's sons in a way, by adoption, since they call the Rajan
'Father' although, as becomes clear, they don't really think of him as
Horn.

The Rajan says towards the end that he asked Greater Scylla how to contact
the Mother, so he could find Seawrack again, but 'would never have used it
while Nettle was alive'. Yet at the end, though Nettle is alive, he does
use it - I would take  it because he no longer sees himself as Horn and
therefore no longer considers himself married to Nettle. That would support
the idea that it is as Silk that he finally makes contact with Seawrack.

Regarding the Mother: at one point Horn speculates that she is in some way
the same person as Scylla, but decides that she is not - they fulfil the
same function, that of a water-goddess, but it makes sense to have
different people doing this on different worlds. However, later events
illuminate this a bit more; the Mother turns out to be in some sense the
sister of Greater Scylla on Urth, and the Whorl goddess took her name from
Greater Scylla, to whom she had dedicated herself. So, even without a
genetic connection between the two, the link between Scylla and the Mother
is not a pure coincidence. As for how the Mother and Greater Scylla can be
sisters, there are some hints in _New Sun_ that the monsters came from
space - so they may either have come from Blue, or come to both Blue and
Urth from their original home.

I agree that Seawrack is in some way like Juturna, but Juturna's own status
is a bit unclear.  At one point she insists that she is human. Greater
Scylla produces images of women to speak to the Rajan and Whorl Scylla, but
later he seems to say that the undines are something else: 'There are women
in that river, women who swim up from the sea. I do not speak of the
feignings of the sea goddess, but of real women.' I would take it that the
undines are descended form women of the drowned cities, taken prisoner by
the sea-monsters - so this might actually support Seawrack's story of
shipwreck.

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