Der Fluch der Aurelia Chapters 13-14: The Song in the Depths; Encounters on the Beach

Now we cut back to Lizzie, listening to the Aurelia’s song in the ocean trench.  She, like Ben, is wondering whether the Aurelia will bring back vanished species such as unicorns or three-headed dragons.  There is a three-headed dragon in another of Cornelia Funke’s novels, Igraine Ohnefurcht (Igraine the Brave), who appears to be a related species to Lung, since she too lives on moonlight.  However, it hadn’t been confirmed whether they existed in the Drachenreiter universe – though, as PDB11 complains, part of what he finds implausible about the Drachenreiter series is that it is so thick with fantastic beings and yet hardly anyone notices their existence.

However, I’m still wondering about the chronology of unicorn extinction here.  Lizzie remembers discussing with Barnabas (which must have been more than twenty years ago) whether the Aurelia might bring unicorns back, which implies that they were already considered extinct by then.  But in Drachenreiter, Barnabas and Vita had been following unicorn tracks only a few years ago which had distracted them from trying to find the Rim of Heaven – which suggests that the tracks had looked fresh enough to be worth following.

I suppose the explanation is that in conservation, as endangered creatures become rarer and rarer, you never know when the last one might have disappeared.  Barnabas hadn’t expected to find that there were still real live dragons around, until he met Lung.  In real life, the last thylacine that we know of died in Hobart Zoo, Tasmania, in 1936, but there have been reported sightings since then of thylacines in Tasmania, in mainland Australia (where they are supposed to have been extinct for 2000 years) and even in New Guinea.

In chapter 14, we return to dry land, or at least the California beach where Ben, Vita and Fliegenbein are still struggling not to think of the thought that if they fail, in just seven days Fliegenbein, Lung, Hothbrodd, talking animals like Lola, and all other fabulous beings in the world will cease to exist.  As Hothbrodd has commented, he doesn’t envy the humans who will be left behind in such a boring world!

Ben and Vita discuss Lizzie Persimmons’ ‘death’, and only we the readers know better.  But as Ben examines the animals in the rock-pools, he reflects that one of the normal-looking, unremarkable starfish might be Elewese, the man-starfish they had met earlier, although there is no sign of this.  So not only does Ben have a reminder that apparently ‘drowned’ people can be miraculously saved by transformation into sea-creatures, but we learn that transformation is not always one-way – Elewese, having originally been changed from a man into a starfish, is apparently able to turn into a man-sized, part-human starfish when he wants to talk to humans, and then transform back.

Fliegenbein, who had been hiding in Ben’s pocket both from hungry pelicans and from dog-walkers who might notice him, excitedly points out a group of mussels as ‘the Ears of the Ocean’.  Apparently they are a species who are not normally found in this region, who carry messages across the world – and who open like flowers if someone hums to them.

Vita asks Fliegenbein whether he can translate between the humans and the mussels.  Fliegenbein explains that he is only fluent in ten mussel-dialects, but will do his best.  A nice touch of realism in these books is that Fliegenbein, who has a superhuman command of a vast range of human and nonhuman languages that almost rivals that of C3PO, is intelligent enough to be aware of how many more he doesn’t speak.  There isn’t one single animal language, or even only ten mussel languages.

Other traits which Fliegenbein has in common with C3PO include extreme timidity (justified considering how many creatures are capable of eating him), but Vita assures him that these mussels don’t eat anything larger than sand-fleas.  At any rate, he knows how to flatter mussels by addressing them with appropriately flowery language, and they are pleased enough with him to pass on the message: Naia to Fufluns.  She sings where Momi sleeps.  Direction Hikina.

This message means nothing to any of the group except Vita, who recognises that ‘Naia’ was Lizzie Persimmons’ nickname at school, and ‘Fufluns’ was Barnabas’s.  She explains that Fufluns was ‘a Roman god’ of plants.  I didn’t think I remembered him from studying classical civilisation at school and university, so I looked him up, and, to be more precise, he was the Etruscan god of plant life and wine.  I felt disappointed that my education had not included Etruscan religion, but Funke is impressively widely-read in world mythology.

At any rate, this doesn’t explain how someone who died years ago could be sending a message to Barnabas now.  After repeatedly getting Fliegenbein to ask the mussels to repeat the message, Vita just concludes that Barnabas might be able to explain more when they tell him about the message.

A scornful voice comments that only idiots believe what a mussel tells them.  We have now met another strange sea-creature – nixies!  Incidentally, the mythology blog I have linked to comments that

 

In recent times such creatures [nixies] have usually been depicted as human in shape (albeit in many cases shapeshifting). However, the English Knucker is generally depicted as a wyrm or dragon, thus attesting to the survival of the other usage as any "water-being" rather than an exclusively humanoid creature.

 

and the website  Dragons & Serpents In Sussex speculates that

 

The word Knucker can be traced back to the Saxon word "Nicor" which means "A Water Monster" and can be found in the poem Beowulf. The term can also be seen in the word "Nixie", which usually refers to some form of water spirit and perhaps "Old Nick", a euphemism for the Devil. In European cultures such as Iceland, the word "Nykur" means a water horse and the German "Nickel" is a form of goblin found underground in German mines. A similar creature, though more friendly, could be found in Cornish mines and was known as the "Knocker".

 

I suspect that the names are related because the myths are related.  If so, many of the fantastic beings we meet in the Drachenreiter universe, whether dragons, kobolds, kelpies, fossegrims, merfolk or nixies, are probably more closely related to each other, in spite of their very different appearance, than to the non-magical animals or humans they resemble.  This would make it horrifyingly easy for a single act of magic to destroy all of them.

There is a simple reason why these particular nixies appear to be shapeshifters: what looks like a mermaid’s tail is actually a plait of numerous scaly limbs (just as a sea-anemone can look like a blob when exposed to the air, but is revealed as a many-tentacled creature when underwater).  They are small creatures, scarcely bigger than Fliegenbein, but aggressive enough that the timid homunculus quickly retreats into Ben’s pocket.

Ben wishes he could take a photograph of the nixies to show Guinever, but documenting the existence of fabulous beings is strictly forbidden, and Ben has never even had a chance to see his father’s notebooks, as Barnabas had burnt all of them that remained after Cadoc Aalstrom’s theft.  As I said in my previous post, this all seems inconsistent with Barnabas carrying a notebook around, and taking a photograph of Lung, in Drachenreiter.  It looks as though Funke has retconned the series as she became more aware of the security risks in letting people know of the existence of magical creatures.  Admittedly, she had already been aware of the problem in Kleiner Werwolf, written before Drachenreiter, in which the villain attempts to photograph the hero turning into a werewolf.

Continuing the theme of most people never having seen a homunculus and not being sure what Fliegenbein is, the nixies ask why he doesn’t have scales.  He never ceases to get annoyed by people’s wrong guesses – a robot, an elf, a jenglot, an avocado-sprite, and now a nixie.  A leprechaun who turns up shortly afterwards asks, ‘Is he a Dark Gnome?  I didn’t think there were any of those in this so-called “New World”,’ to which Ben replies shortly, ‘You’re right.  He isn’t.’

Over the past year or so, I have encountered leprechauns in several stories set in America: Mad Sweeney in American Gods is an ancient god who had been demoted to leprechaun, and then brought to America by Irish immigrants who believed in him.  The hero of The Case of the Toxic Spelldump is an environmental officer whose duties include writing a report on whether introducing leprechauns for the sake of Irish-Americans will have an adverse effect on American supernatural beings.

The leprechaun in this book, Derog Shortsleeves, was emphatically not brought across by humans.  Ben and Vita are uncomfortable about seeing him here, since, in their experience, leprechauns aren’t nice people – although MÍMAMEIĐR is committed to caring for all fantasy beings, and there is at least one resident leprechaun, Gryfydd Langzeh (an interesting name in itself, since the first name sounds more Welsh than Irish) living there.  Since Gryfydd had tried to trick the MÍMAMEIĐR cook into putting some sleeping mushroom-folk into the stew, Ben and Vita aren’t inclined to trust any leprechaun.

I think this is worryingly racist.  After all, as we saw in Die Feder eines Greifs, just because most gryphons (for example) are cruel, selfish and greedy doesn’t mean that they all are, and the same is likely to be true of leprechauns.  Derog is himself a conservationist, working to protect seals and sealions and, particularly, selkies, who, like himself, are creatures of Celtic mythology whom you wouldn’t normally expect to find in America.  (You wouldn’t normally expect to find gryphons in Indonesian jungle, for that matter!)

Vita avoids giving her real surname, and when Ben asks whether Derog knows about the Aurelia, she replies, ‘I hope not.’  In their opinion, a leprechaun would only think about how much gold he could get for the Aurelia’s seed-capsules.

I think they are making a mistake in not confiding in Derog.  For one thing, it is wrong to stereotype someone because of his species.  But more importantly, Derog is clearly not stupid (unlike, for example, Cadoc Aalstrom), and even if he had been planning to rob the Aurelia, he would soon realise that angering a creature who can cause him to cease to exist would be a very, very bad idea.

In any case, while Derog shares the nixies’ low opinion of mussels as reporters, this is because, as he explains, he gets his information from more reliable sources, such as selkies and merfolk.  I suspect that the news of the Aurelia has been spreading among them as well – in which case he probably already knows, and is likely to feel insulted that the humans didn’t trust him enough to discuss the subject with him.  At any rate, I expect we will see him again.