Aurelia’s Curse Chapters 5-6: Fathers; Brothers

The next couple of chapters continue to explore the lives of the families of dragons, humans, and homunculi – and the mysterious threat that Barnabas and Kahurangi were discussing in the opening chapters.  Barnabas and Guinever arrive in the Rim of Heaven, and meet Lung’s children: Schuppe (Scale) and his ‘twin sister’ Mondtanz (Moon-Dance), and Stachelschwanz (Spike-Tail), their three-minutes-younger brother.  Since they all appear to be from the same hatching, I’m not sure what makes Schuppe and Mondtanz twins and Stachelschwanz not.  After all, considering that Schuppe and Mondtanz are different sexes, it seems highly unlikely that they were hatched from the same egg – though as this report shows, human ‘semi-identical’ twins are occasionally conceived from a single egg, and can be different sexes.

Ben passes on to his family the (incomprehensible to him) message that Freddie and Fliegenbein had given him: that there has been ‘a comparable occurrence’ on the Sea of Okhotsk.  Barnabas is filled with a mixture of incredulity, hope, anticipation, and fear – and is still being infuriatingly cryptic about what is actually going on.  Even Schwefelfell shows concern, admitting that no matter how annoying the baby dragons are, she wants to know if a monster is after them.  Barnabas replies, ‘I wouldn’t call her a monster exactly,’ – which, as Guinever reflects, implies that they are dealing with something very like a monster.

Back home, Fliegenbein is searching the internet for any information on seabirds forming flower-like patterns, and finding nothing – just as Johann in Drachenerwachen can’t find information on treatment for a sick dragon.  Being much older than Johann, and used to old-fashioned ways of doing things, Fliegenbein reflects that it just goes to show that computers are rubbish for research compared to books.

One detail I like here is that, just as Schwefelfell (being a kobold with an insatiable craving for mushrooms) uses the names of poisonous toadstools as swearwords, and Hothbrodd the fjord-troll, being Norwegian, sometimes uses exclamations referring to Norse mythology (‘by Odin’s raven!) and sometimes mutters in Norwegian when he doesn’t want the reader to know what he’s saying (though he is also perfectly capable of being rude in plain German), so Fliegenbein, being the creation of an alchemist, sometimes uses the names of poisonous chemical substances as expletives (‘Quicksilver and brimstone!’).

He’s having a frustrating time.  He misses Ben desperately, and had stayed home only because he was concerned that Freddie might need his support while adjusting to using a prosthetic leg (Freddie’s original right leg had been bitten off by Nesselbrand, centuries earlier).  But by now, Freddie is happily tap-dancing around the library, and Fliegenbein (who has hypersensitive hearing anyway) has to resort to earplugs just to get enough peace and quiet to be able to get on with his research. 

The brothers bicker constantly over everything – though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  It reminds me of Lung reminding Ben, at the end of the first book, that humans need to be with other humans, just as dragons need dragons and kobolds need kobolds, even if kobolds mostly prefer to quarrel with each other.  In fairness, Freddie does care about Fliegenbein – enough that, despite his unconquerable optimism, he worries as much as everyone else does about Fliegenbein’s safety in climbing up bookshelves to carry down books bigger than himself.

Amongst other irritants, while Fliegenbein’s experience of spending centuries as Nesselbrand’s slave, with no real friends, had trained him to be servile and deferential, Freddie’s experience of having to fend for himself in that same time had taught him to be feral.  Fliegenbein, as someone who loves and reveres books, is horrified when he sees Freddie dragging a notebook along the floor by means of something tied round it – and even more indignant when (a) he realises that the thing tied round it is one of Barnabas’s neckties and (b) Freddie casually mentions that he had gone into Barnabas’s bedroom and helped himself to the book without asking.

The book turns out to be an old notebook which had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson, describing his time in Samoa, where he lived for the last five years of his life.  Fliegenbein, tired and irritated after hours of fruitless research, snaps that Stevenson was a novelist and they’re investigating things that have actually happened. 

Undeterred, Freddie reads out the relevant passage, in which Stevenson explains that his new home of Samoa and his home country of Scotland share the legend of a gigantic sea-monster, female, whose coming is presaged by seabirds forming flower-like circles – the shape of the creature – in four places.  You can find out where she will rise by drawing lines on the globe, as she will appear at the place where the lines between those four circles cross.

Uh – really?  If I were Fliegenbein, I’d be more sceptical about this than about the mere fact that it’s in a notebook by an author of fiction.  After all, if you draw crossed lines between four points,

then the lines would continue to form another cross on the other side of the world

– and that’s even assuming that you had drawn lines between the correct two points in the first place.

At any rate, the creature, when she rises, will bring four valuable seed-capsules, which must be received by four fabulous beings who embody the four elements.  Presumably ‘embody’ means ‘represents’ in the sense of being a creature who has an affinity with Earth, Air, Fire, or Water.  After all, everyone is mostly made of Water mixed with some other minerals (Earth), nearly everyone breaths oxygen in some form (Air), and everyone is given life by energy ultimately coming from either the sun’s rays or the heat of the Earth’s core (Fire).

Fliegenbein knows that he should be glad that Freddie has solved the mystery, but instead he feels envious – and then guilty about feeling jealous.  He reflects that, after all these centuries of isolation, he doesn’t know how to be a good brother any more.

At this point, they are interrupted by Vita, who explains that one of the mushroom-folk had woken her up to tell her that the lights in the library were still on, late into the night, and that she was worried about whether the homunculi are all right.  So now, while Freddie excitedly explains what they have found out, Fliegenbein also feels guilty and ashamed about being the cause of disturbing Vita’s sleep. 

Vita really does seem to be like a mother to Fliegenbein, and by extension to Freddie, even beyond MÍMAMEIÐR’s role of protecting fantastic beings in general.  After all, as she says, since Fliegenbein is her adopted son’s best friend, that makes him and Freddie part of the Wiesengrund family.  Fliegenbein, again like Mark Vorkosigan, still really isn’t used to being part of a family, and is constantly amazed to be reminded that anyone could see him that way.  (And, of course, it just reminds him how much he misses Ben.)

To show them that they aren’t excluded, Vita explains to the homunculi – and thus, finally, to the reader – about the mysterious sea-creature, the Aurelia.  Apparently, the Aurelia is a gigantic jellyfish who will arise from the depths of the ocean and bring with her capsules containing the seeds of new life.  However, if she feels threatened or meets with violence, then the ocean will burn and all the fabulous beings of the world will cease to exist.

Which, obviously, is a horrifying prospect for fantastic beings and their friends – especially when an idiot like Cadoc Aalstrom could all too easily decide to try to capture Aurelia.  Yet at the same time, as the narrator notes, most humans wouldn’t even notice the difference if creatures they had never believed existed, suddenly didn’t.  After all, human activity is already killing vast numbers even of the creatures we do know about, not to mention the non-magical plants and animals that we haven’t yet identified and named.

But this brings up other resonances apart from ecological ones.  I haven’t actually read any of H. P. Lovecraft, but I can’t avoid knowing something about his works from my friends Dungeon Master and Doom Metal Singer, so – a huge, ancient and terrifyingly powerful being, sleeping beneath the waves, who will wake and may bring terrible danger?  And has lots of tentacles?  The Aurelia is starting to sound like a prettier (if you like giant jellyfish) and slightly less evil version of Cthulu – but for kids!

Back in December, Doom Metal Singer, PDB11 and I were listening to a collection of spoof Christmas carols set in the Cthulu mythos, including a jolly number called ‘Death to the World’.  I couldn’t wholly enjoy it, as I have a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with Christianity and in my more paranoid moments I sometimes worry that the return of Jesus will be like the arrival of Cthulu.  And the Aurelia’s arrival seems equally ominous.

By the end of the chapter, Lola Grauschwanz, MÍMAMEIÐR’s daring rat pilot and spy, calls in to report that the remaining two circles of seabirds have appeared, in Newfoundland and Chile.  What is more, Cadoc Aalstrom knows about them.