What is it like to haunt the lake where you drowned? Poul Anderson imagines even this. Winter is lonely. Fish, never good company, grow sluggish and lose:
"...their gleaming summer grace." (p. 206)
Sleeping frogs no longer croak. Migrators have left. The remaining waterfowl neither swim nor dive and call but thinly over the bare trees and snow.
For months, Nada floats and drifts, neither blinking nor breathing. She is scarcely there, as Homer imagines the shades in Hades.
Then the Christianized merman, Vanimen, threatens this inoffensive being with endless burning. Nice one, Vanimen! (I don't think.)
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteSomething similar happened to Dahut in THE KING OF YS, where she was far more malign and menacing.
And did Anderson, perhaps unintentionally, take Nada's name from H. Rider Haggard's novel NADA THE LILY? Which I loved reading!
Ad astra! Sean
Dahut had to be exorcised but hopefully was then released.
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