"Dahut raised herself to a sitting position, rising from the blankets like a mermaid from the sea." (p. 282)
I illustrated a previous post (also here) with a picture of the legendary Dahut as a mermaid. Is that what she becomes at the end of The King Of Ys Tetralogy? She does not become half fish but "merpeople," meaning simply "sea people," can be aquatic bipeds, as in another historical fantasy by Poul Anderson.
The Anderson's "...synopsis of the basic medieval story..." has Dahut becoming "...a siren, haunting the coast, luring sailors to shipwreck among the many rocks..." (The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989), pp. 529-530). As far as I remember, not having reread that far yet, that is what she does in The Dog And The Wolf, whereas the half-fish mermaids were supposed, I think, to pull individual sailors under the water.
In any case, the Andersons' Dahut becomes something that lives in the sea and that is prefigured when, in the previous volume, she rises from her lover's bed like a mermaid.
4 comments:
"sea people," can be aquatic bipeds, as in another historical fantasy by Poul Anderson.
Or in the Science Fiction story "Horn of Time the Hunter"
Kaor, Jim!
I think you meant THE MERMAN'S CHILDREN? Yes, that was historical fiction with a dash of fantasy.
Ad astra! Sean
No
"Horn of Time the Hunter"
One of the 'Kith' stories.
The narrators have been on a *long* relativistic STL trip & come back to humanly occupied space & find an *old* human colony where the descendants of the settlers have evolved into semi-aquatic species.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, but THE MERMAN'S CHILDREN shows us sea people who are aquatic bipeds, so I thought you meant that story as well as "The Horn of Time the Hunter."
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment