<br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 4:57 AM, Roy C. Lackey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rclackey@stic.net" target="_blank">rclackey@stic.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">By the time Bax was beaten by Ieuan, he had both the opal ring from the fish<br>and Ted's ring. At that point he knew nothing at all about any hypothetical<br>
previous owner of the opal ring, and only what little Doris had told him<br>about Ted. He didn't know then what Ted looked like. When writing about it,<br>Bax decided that the big man who came between him and Ieuan must have been<br>
the boy's father, but that is not what he thought at the time of the<br>beating: "At the time, because of his ring, I thought him something else; .<br>. ." (50)<br><br>That "something else" must have been a ghost. It must have been that the big<br>
man was wearing a ring identical to the one on Bax's finger, the ring Doris<br>had given him that had belonged to her dead husband.<br><br></blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>That's certainly the way I understood it.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Bax, at least, did not believe that a ghost could leave behind real,<br>tangible objects. In talking to Doris, who had asked if he had seen any<br>
ghosts, he mentioned his first encounter with Emlyn. "I didn't make it up,<br>and he wasn't a ghost. I know he wasn't because he dropped things. Real<br>things. I still have them." (36) He meant, of course, the triannulus and<br>
"longlight".<br><br></blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Note how the ring gets introduced in this first conversation with Doris. She wants to hear any ghost stories Bax might have; he tells her about his encounter with Emlyn and Emlyn's dropping stuff; she asks whether Bax's opal ring was one of those things; just after this, she gives Bax Ted's ring, after ascertaINING that he's not married.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I think Doris knows some "stuff" and she is actively fishing for information here. She's really interested in that opal ring; hence my little theory about why she gave Ted's ring to Bax: she wants Bax to give her the other one (I guess a wedding ring). </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Recall also that on the scary ride to the same restaurant later on, she says that of everybody she can think, she wishes Ted was with them - because, I think, she knows that Ted was involved with this "stuff" and would know how to handle it.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>As to what the wet initialled object might have been at the end: perhaps Ted's shroud? Would that be monogrammed? </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Now a digression to an earlier topic. The text makes clear that Ted was a<br>big man, taller and heavier than average Bax, and Black/Skotos was a small<br>
man, shorter than Bax. However, in later conversation with Emlyn, the boy<br>asked Bax if he might be his father in disguise. Bax said no and asked if<br>his father could disguise himself that well, and the boy said yes (161).<br>
<br>And that brings me back to Doris's bedroom and her visit by Ted. According<br>to her, Ted's apparition had left behind an unspecified tangible object,<br>with his initials in a corner of it. I think someone wondered earlier if the<br>
object might have been the triannulus. It seems doubtful, yet I can't rule<br>it out. And if Zwart could really have disguised himself to look like Bax,<br>then he might as easily have disguised himself to look like anyone, even<br>
Ted. And that opens up a whole can of worms.<br><br>Doris might not have said what the wet item was because she didn't know<br>what it was. And the Ted she saw might not have been a ghost. Winkle/Winker<br>and old Nick seemed to come and go as if by magic, as well as other figures<br>
from faerie.<br><br>Neither does any of this preclude Ted from somehow being Goldwurm.<br><br>If it seems as though I am pointing in different directions at the same<br>time, it is because I am. I'm just trying to make sense of what there is to<br>
deal with.<br><br>-Roy<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Urth Mailing List<br>To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br>Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net/" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br>