I am aware of how
My world is shrinking, how
The walls between which l
I run my daily course
Grow higher
Not because more bricks have mounted them, but
Because I have been sinking deeper into ruts
Carved by my staying on my single path, and
Strong as legs may be that drag me sullenly forward,
Plow tilling a sterile furrow,
I ain’t got shit for upper body strength
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Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.
This chapter contains sexual violence.
After an excerpt from Bee’s dream journal, “Parting Ways” begins with Bee musing on changes among her abductors in the wake of Vindeliar’s suborning. The Chalcedeans’ ingratiation with Vindeliar is tracked as they test his abilities and begin to exploit them for themselves, and the threat under which Bee and the others operate with Dwalia out of power is made clear. Within Bee, the echo of Nighteyes she carries urges caution and calm, and she observes as the Chalcedeans fall once again into depravity. Dwalia attempts to redeem her people, but the Chalcedeans refuse, and amid the ensuing fracas, Bee and Shun attempt escape.
The present chapter is another relatively brief one, some ten pages in the edition of the novel I am reading, and I once again think I need to see about looking at a cohesive printing of the Elderlings corpus to see if there is, in fact, some pattern at work. I know I keep mentioning it, and there is a part of me that longs to simply spend the money on it…but I think it might be better either to visit a library or make an arrangement with a bookstore to so such a thing than to buy another sixteen novels that I already own. As it is, I have multiple copies of some of the works, and there’s at least one other that I’d like to buy, correcting a mistake I had the opportunity not to make. I am not so well funded as I might like (although, if you’d like to help, there’s a link below you can use for that purpose), so I would have to do some working-around to make that kind of thing happen.
As far as the content of the present chapter goes, though, I do not know that I can say much. If there is, as I have suggested might be the case, some reference going on to a real-world Odessa, I am not sure what to make of it at this point. It cannot be a pleasant one, given what befalls the thus-named character in the text, and I do not feel at ease explicating the violence being worked out upon her, even if it is somewhat “off-screen,” noted as occurring but not explicitly depicted. Hobb does not shy away from overt presentations of violence elsewhere in her work, as I well know, and she has been direct in presenting sexual violence elsewhere in the Elderlings corpus; Kennit’s violation of Althea comes to mind as one example, but it is not the only one. So I am uncertain what the import of the specific presentation of violence here is, although I expect there has to be one. As others have pointed out with great eloquence, and as I recall telling my students in those receding days when I had them, every word on the page is placed deliberately, and it is placed with the knowledge and consent of several people by the very nature of publishing. Something is at work, even if I and others cannot necessarily say what it is at any given moment…
More scholarly somedays, I suppose.
I’m happy to keep this going; put my pen to work so I can do more of it!
They beckon to me
The harbor and the shore
Saying I should see them once again
If in another guise than I knew them before
Once not seldom visitor
Greeting them gladly under bright skies
And I know I should answer
Say my yes and go to them
Sink into their willing salt wetness
But my heart might as well be that bird
Not the pheasant but the other one
For I have worked to build the walls and shut the door
And I no longer know that I can see in strong light
It won’t just be this month that I’m happy to write to order for you!
Cracked white rapping
A brief shimmer of glissando on the black metal
Shining steel pressing until
Just before it burns
And what might have been a life
Made for a death and plucking away
Is brought into another life
Between how the children of grass’s descent
Were crushed to dust
Their bodies mixed together
And cut apart again
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The blind old uncle, singing smoky,
Lauds the sweet clarity of pine-filtered moonlight,
But seeing Selene’s castings dappled by gnarled oaks,
I think I have had the better view.
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The clock read 3:27,
And since I use the 24-hour kind of time
I knew it was the morning,
Earlier even than I usually make me wake up,
So I tried to go back to sleep,
But I remembered the dream
As I rarely,
Rarely,
Do–
So much so that I have thought
I have lost the ability to dream–
So I tried to write it down,
Myself as a landlord,
Living in the building whose pieces I rent,
Trying to keep everything together and moving,
Not entirely succeeding
Even though the residents seemed to appreciate
The work I did to keep them happy
It seemed
It would be a good thing to write,
A source for several stories in diverse styles,
Something of an anthology although following one line,
But it vanishes even as I put pixel to page,
And only these lines remain of it.
That there is
Some suitcase overstuffed or steamer trunk whose hinges and latches strain
I’m sure
But an armoire into which to unpack is less certain.
Do you know anyone who makes furniture?
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I squeeze the bottle again and again
The honey burbling as another drop struggles to fall
And I have to wonder once more if
It is worth it to struggle so for
Just one more small taste of sweetness
Get yourself a little something–or maybe get something for your sweetie!
The day, at last, has come that I have sought;
The joy its coming brings, I’d near forgot
As I by reams of paper have been caught.
But soon, I shall have leave to go and play
At being young again while the bright day
Shines out across the hills. I seldom say
Such things, of course, since I my work must do,
But seldom saying does not make untrue
What is thus said, and joy does now me woo.
It beckons from outside the window’s pane,
Makes its intentions for me clear and plain,
Suggests that soon I’ll find some ease for pain
I took these several months to figures run–
Perhaps this time I may well have some fun!
If it’s not too taxing, maybe hire me to write for you?
The string has to be taut for the bow to pull sweet sounds from it,
And a sure hand has to be had for so much to be true,
But it is all too easy, when trying to tune,
To make something snap, and there is no fixing it after
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Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.
An extended commentary on a fragmentary Skill-scroll precedes “Bonds and Ties,” which opens with Fitz enjoying riding a new horse and not enjoying the attempt by the same–Fleeter–to Wit-bond with him. Fitz assesses his combat capabilities as Fleeter presses upon him, and Fitz’s name in the Wit, Changer, comes to attention again as Lant and Perseverance join them. Fitz also does not enjoy the added company and attempts to get the others to leave, but they refuse and determine to accompany him despite his urgency. Nor yet is he thrilled that Motley joins and decides to like Perseverance, nor yet when Riddle later joins the growing throng–although Riddle, at least, seems aware of the complications the expanding group presents.
With warning that they will not wait for the others, Fitz and Riddle press ahead, Fitz settling into the saddle atop Fleeter and acknowledging her quality as a mount; Perseverance does a decent job of keeping up, and Lant lags behind. At the end of the day, the group chance upon a barn and make use of it, conferring as they tend to themselves and their animals. Fitz surreptitiously doses the group’s tea with a soporific, apologizing for doing so as they fall asleep, and after a brief rest of his own, he doses himself and Fleeter with carris seed, musing on what he has seen of its perils. After ensuring that his erstwhile companions will be well, Fitz also doses himself with delvenbark, and he and Fleeter proceed into the dark.
The prefatory materials once again catch my interest. Describing a damaged manuscript and the circumstances of its damage, the prefatory materials bring to my medievalist-trained mind the various manuscripts of the Cotton Library, damaged by flame and thrown out into the snow–those that were not lost, entirely. Even now, some of those manuscripts continue to degrade from the effects of the flames, chemical changes to their materials put into motion and ongoing, unstoppable, ultimately irredeemable. Knowing as I do about some of what survived, I have to wonder what was lost and will now never be found again, and a great sorrow wells up within me at the works of scribal hands and cunning minds lost to chance and misfortune. How much worse must it be to contemplate deliberate destruction!
But it’s not like that kind of thing happens anymore, right?
In the chapter, itself, I note with some appreciation the juxtaposition of Fitz’s recognition of his (physical) deconditioning and his seemingly easy resumption of his assassin’s tricks; he notes the fatigue he feels after a single day of hard riding, when he had before gone days or weeks in the wild with relative ease, and he has little hesitation about drugging his comrades–and does so without being noticed by someone also trained to stealth and skullduggery (Riddle being long implied to have some such schooling). Something about old age and treachery comes to mind, and, as I feel my (fewer than Fitz’s) years while I’m writing this, there is some comfort in it for me.
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Elliott RWI 