Every part of a dead merman returns to nature where it wanders widely at one with the world. His spirit goes into sunlight, spindrift and sea-surge, his flesh into fleetness of fish and fowl, his bone and blood-salt back to the Bearer. I am paraphrasing a song of farewell that ends:
"The sky take you.
"The sea take you.
"And we will remember you in the wind." (p. 60)
At an Ythrian funeral, a Wyvan speaks the words of the New Faith which end:
"'Go hence now, that which [God's] talents left, be water and leaves, arise in the wind; and spirit, be always remembered."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT X, p. 559.
Two intelligent species on two planets in two timelines in one author's imagination.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
No, this is mere sentimentality. If the mer-folk have no souls all that happens is simply the decomposition of their bodies. It's the survivors which remembers them.
Ad astra! Sean
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