(urth) Abaia and the undines
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Mon Dec 8 21:13:15 PST 2008
Thomas Bitterman wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 6:12 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net
> <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>> wrote:
>
> I don't recall reading anything about the origin of Abaia and the
> undines. Does anyone "know" or care to guess?
Abaia could be an enormous, ageless leviathan grown from some earlier
epoch's premiere thaumaturgist, like Baldanders begins to be during
Severian's reign, or it could be something else but still seems to
include gigantified beings descended of human stock among its "undine"
henchmen.
My pet theory is that Ouen's side of the family has undines in the
driftwoodpile; this explains several mysteries of the book: Dorcas'
awakening when buried underwater, where Severian's sister is (she's
Jolenta), Severian's unfailing ability to survive water when his other
powers are hit and miss, the ambiguous agression of the undines against
the New Sun (they want to turn Severian instead of "wasting" an
irreplaceable double agent, they "save" him from Gyoll instead of
letting him stay tangled long enough to make it obvious he's an
undine-bred), and so forth.
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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