(urth) TSH: Ted, rings, ghosts

[Roy C. Lackey]

By the time Bax was beaten by Ieuan, he had both the opal ring from the fish
and Ted's ring. At that point he knew nothing at all about any hypothetical
previous owner of the opal ring, and only what little Doris had told him
about Ted. He didn't know then what Ted looked like. When writing about it,
Bax decided that the big man who came between him and Ieuan must have been
the boy's father, but that is not what he thought at the time of the
beating: "At the time, because of his ring, I thought him something else; .
. ." (50)

That "something else" must have been a ghost. It must have been that the big
man was wearing a ring identical to the one on Bax's finger, the ring Doris
had given him that had belonged to her dead husband.

Bax, at least, did not believe that a ghost could leave behind real,
tangible objects. In talking to Doris, who had asked if he had seen any
ghosts, he mentioned his first encounter with Emlyn. "I didn't make it up,
and he wasn't a ghost. I know he wasn't because he dropped things. Real
things. I still have them." (36) He meant, of course, the triannulus and
"longlight".

Now a digression to an earlier topic. The text makes clear that Ted was a
big man, taller and heavier than average Bax, and Black/Skotos was a small
man, shorter than Bax. However, in later conversation with Emlyn, the boy
asked Bax if he might be his father in disguise. Bax said no and asked if
his father could disguise himself that well, and the boy said yes (161).

And that brings me back to Doris's bedroom and her visit by Ted. According
to her, Ted's apparition had left behind an unspecified tangible object,
with his initials in a corner of it. I think someone wondered earlier if the
object might have been the triannulus. It seems doubtful, yet I can't rule
it out. And if Zwart could really have disguised himself to look like Bax,
then he might as easily have disguised himself to look like anyone, even
Ted. And that opens up a whole can of worms.

Doris might not have said what the wet item was because she didn't know
what it was. And the Ted she saw might not have been a ghost. Winkle/Winker
and old Nick seemed to come and go as if by magic, as well as other figures
from faerie.

Neither does any of this preclude Ted from somehow being Goldwurm.

If it seems as though I am pointing in different directions at the same
time, it is because I am. I'm just trying to make sense of what there is to
deal with.

-Roy