(urth) AEG: Margaret

[Roy C. Lackey]

I wrote:
> After Gideon aided Cassie to bring out her "star" power, it is implied
that
> she was then elevated, transformed "up", to a state higher than normal for
> humans. The text even suggests that her heightened state was somewhat
> angelic, though not, I believe, angelic in the usual religious sense.
Cassie
> was certainly no angel.

That's not right. What Gid did for Cassie to bring out her star quality was
to enhance what was already there. That is not the same thing as
shape-shifting as defined by Gid. (99-100) Cassie still looked like Cassie,
only better and more charming. To shape-shift is to morph into another
physical form that is different from the original.

It is true that Cassie is no angel;there are none in the story. The only
person in the story to be called an angel is Wally Rosenquist, and that
usage by India is a theater term for a financial backer with deep pockets.
Still, one has to account for Gid's warning to Cassie about how hard it is
for humans to transform up and how easy it is for shape-shifters to
transform down. There should be someone in the story who has been
transformed up (probably with "expert assistance").

Gid may be talking to Cassie in oblique terms about Margaret-as-werewolf, if
he believes that she is one, but even then, he cannot mean Margaret as an
example of a human who has transformed up. As Gid explains it, "It is so
easy to go down that werewolves have trouble maintaining their human forms
at times." (100) That statement suggests that the animal state is the normal
state for a werewolf, the state that they will revert to when they lose
control. In the only example we see in the book, the large wolf that
accosted Scott was all animal, not some hairy-man form like we see in movies
that looks neither quite like a man nor a wolf.

Cassie asked about humans who have transformed up, "Do they become angels?
Or--or . . ." Whatever she meant by "or", who in the story has been
transformed up?

-Roy