Linking Volumes

One way to link sequel back to prequel is to make their events overlap. Two early chapters in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol novel, The Shield Of Time, retroactively describe interludes between events in what should have been the concluding two stories of his omnibus collection, Time Patrol. (I say "should have been" because the publishers have not rearranged the stories into an appropriate reading order.)

Chapter I, section 1, of Poul and Karen Anderson's The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989) re-presents an event already described near the end of the previous volume Dahut (London, 1989) but from an alternative perspective. In Dahut, we read how Gratillonius' fingers momentarily "...forgot..." his daughter Dahut who was then torn from his grasp and swept away by the current. (pp. 462-463)

In Dog, we read what Dahut saw and felt as her father's hand grasped her arm but then:

"The fingers slackened. A surge tore her from them." (p. 23)

We then accompany Dahut on a strange journey. Swept along by the sea, she breathes when above the surface and holds her breath when below it. Back on the surface after sinking deep, she swims towards floating timber but a wave sends it from her. Among the skerries, billows strike her and:

"...she did not know the last of them for what it was." (p. 24)

I don't either. This is where something supernatural starts to happen. In the dark, she sinks, breathes sea, experiences pain but only remotely and briefly, descends through an endless keening whiteness and enters some other place or space, "...somewhere outside all bounds...," where she is awaited and transfigured. (p. 24)

This is all a bit too eerie and mysterious for my liking. I would like to know whether the "Someone..." who awaited Dahut is demonic as Christians believe or neutral as Pagans would have believed (p. 24).