Of the Cloud People, Red Wolf, Running Fox, Snowstrider, Broken Blade, Horsecatcher and Caribou Antler walk along a, to them unfamiliar, ocean beach:
"Seal clamored and cormorants spread their wings on crowded skerries. Otter and sea cow rode the waves." (p. 155)
That reminded me of Poul Anderson's mythologized account of a similar scene:
"By day Niaerdh roamed among the seals and whales and fish she had made."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT I, p. 467.
When Frae calls Niaerdh:
"Only the surf gave answer. He put the horn Gatherer to his lips and blew. Cormorants flew shrieking from the skerries." (ibid.)
The Cloud People have not yet developed a rich mythology of the sea.
When they re-encounter Aryuk who is no longer accompanied by Wanda Tamberly:
"'Where is your protector today?' Red Wolf jeered. Only the wind replied." (p. 157)
Yet again, Anderson writes as if the wind is a party to the conversation.
Great events are beginning.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And one of the things that stuck with me about the "Beringia" section of THE SHIELD OF TIME was of Anderson using the hypothesis that N. America already had a few archaic Caucasian inhabitants before the Paleo-Indians arrived. Albeit, the Tula people were so primitive they had not achieved even an Old Stone Age level of technology. I had not realized, before reading SHIELD, there might have been some humans in the Americas before the Indians. I remember thinking that was a very UN-Politically Correct suggestion by Anderson!
Ad astra! Sean
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