(urth) Witch spirit and Tales of Silk and Horn

[Adam Stephanides]

on 1/5/05 11:14 PM, aramini1 at cox.net at aramini1 at cox.net wrote:

> Then, the quest to find Silk actually ENDS when Horn gives his (ok, Silk's)
> eye to Pig, allowing Silver Silk, who is a download of Silk from the mainframe
> into Pig, to re-enter the body of Silk by escaping Pig's eye , creating
> Silk+Horn.

I won't rehearse my disagreement with the "PigSilkHorn" scenario again, but
I did want to mention something that I just noticed (if this has been noted
already, I apologize). When precisely is "Silver Silk" downloaded into
"Horn"? Twice, in the scene in Pig's hospital room, it is stated that Horn
looks into a glass (371-2), and I've seen it suggested that it is at one of
these moments. But this won't work, for two reasons. First, both these times
are before the bandage has been removed from Pig's eye, so Silk cannot have
left Pig yet. Second, Silk is still present in Pig during Pig's last
conversation with Horn (374). If Silk's soul does go from Pig to Horn, it
must be offstage, in the gap on the page between the last reported words
spoken by "Pig" and Hari Mau speaking to Horn in the lander.


> Silver Silk, who was never the real Silk, takes up the
> tale of Horn and his death at the beginning of In Green's Jungles, but denies
> that he is Silk until he is forced into it, so that in the text, Silk admits
> that he is in fact Silk at about the same place that Silver Silk is freed from
> Pig and placed in Silk's body.

But neither of these passages were written by Silkhorn; the juxtaposition of
the two is the editors' work.

--Adam