(Following up on recent posts, Lancaster has a Golden Lion pub, a Duke of Lancaster pub and a Duke's Playhouse.)
Alianora is a swan may. She wears a magical tunic of white feathers that enables her to change between human and swan forms. When making the latter transformation, the body lengthens, the neck shrinks, the wings narrow and a woman appears. Sometimes, she transforms to human in midair and falls nearly to the ground before changing back.
Maybe Alianora warrants a post unto herself but I mention her here for the sake of yet another Anderson-Gaiman parallel:
"Even Dream's former lover Alianora is hard to pin down - in chapter 2 of Brief Lives she's referred to as Eleanora, and in part 12 of The Kindly Ones as Alianore; i.e., her name is spelled a little differently every time it appears."
-Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion (London, 2000), 7, p. 116.
For previous blog references to Alianora, see here. (Scroll down.)
7 comments:
She gets to sky-dive!
I wouldn't!
I realize that.
I'd enjoy it if I could turn into a bird.
Kaor, to Both!
As long as no one tampers with the controlling the 'chutes in sky diving.
Maybe I've read too many mysteries or watched too many police shows on TV?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: or it can just malfunction.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, accidents and malfunctions can and do happen. And I was reminded of how Solzhenitsyn wrote in THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO of how he met a Romanian spy in a transit camp. This Romanian told Solzhenitsyn that one thing he was trained in was how to rapidly/inconspicuously sabotage the control cords of parachutes. While undercover in the USSR during WW II he was let into a warehouse full of parachutes, and sabotaged 2,000 'chutes in one night, destroying an entire Soviet division!
What struck me was how Solzhenitsyn was not angry with this Romanian, who was only doing his duty to his own country. He was more interested in wondering who the Russian was who let the Romanian into the warehouse and why he had done that.
Ad astra! Sean
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