October 24: A Night in the Lonesome October-fest

We get some more of the usual (Jack and Snuff chatting, catching up with Larry, the Great Detective doing his thing), but the meat of this chapter deals with all the Things escaping at once and the consequences.

When all hell breaks loose in our vicinity, it does it with style. I was awakened by an enormous thunderclap, sounding as if it had occurred just overhead; and the brightness of the lightning stroke had been visible through my closed eyelids. Suddenly, I was on my feet in the front hall, not certain how I had gotten there. Along with the echoes of the crash, however, my mind held memory of the sounds of breaking glass. 

The mirror had shattered. The Things were slithering out. 

I began barking immediately.

Snuff and Jack work together as a team to dispatch or trap the Things.

I pulled myself to my feet, preparing to face it as it thrust the reeling one aside and came on. Instead, though, the dying one seemed to take its descent as another attack, swung toward it, and raked it with its talons. The Thing from the Attic seized it, snarling, and bit at its twisted face. At my back, I could hear Jack moving about, bottling slitherers. A moment later, the banister gave way, and the pair on the stair were in the air.

That last line always made me laugh. Genre works take themselves so dreadfully seriously so much of the time, and it's this kind of thing that makes the story so much fun.

As I watched the Thing from the Circle finally fall, following a masterful upstroke, I turned my stronger emotions toward the perpetrator of the onslaught which had caused their release. It was more than merely annoying, having had to put up with them all these weeks and then to lose them this way before they could fulfill their function. Under the proper constraints, they had been intended as the bodyguard for our retreat, should one be necessary, following the events of the final night, after which they would have had their freedom in some isolated locale, obtaining the opportunity to add to the world's folklore of a darker nature. Now, ruined, the buffer plan. They weren't essential, but they might have proved useful should we have to exit pursued by Furies.

Hey, Sandor Sandor, Benedick Benedict and Lynx Links all gotta make a living somehow...

When the business was done, Jack traced pentagrams with his blade, calling upon the powers that would cleanse the place. With the first one, the green glow faded; with the second, the house stopped its shuddering; with the third, the thunder and lightning went away; with the fourth, the rain ceased.

My friend Frederick pointed this out, and I'm embarrassed I never noticed it myself. Snuff sees the world in full color, but dogs see the world in greens, blues and yellows and can't perceive oranges or reds like a human.

I actually consider Snuff's full color vision evidence in support of the theory that he might be something that only looks like a dog. He's certainly an unusual dog, but seems to have nothing more than sensory apparatus with which dogs are usually equipped.

Before I started looking into this, I knew dogs had limited color vision, but I thought they were red-green color blind. Most of the colors Snuff describes are colors that dogs actually perceive. The only exceptions that leap to mind are the captured starlight in the beginning (Immediately, the liquid in the container began to glow with a reddish light; and somewhere in the distance a howling rose up) the glowing rocks before they're sucked into the Dreamlands. ("Then I drew back, for they began to glow with a faint red light.") and the rose crystal palace in the Dreamlands itself. I'm doubtless overlooking a few, too.

It's possible that Snuff may have been augmented to perceive certain supernatural workings on a channel which dogs can't normally see, (I'm imagining that red jacket from Schindler's List) but I don't like that explanation, because it requires too many assumptions.

It's an interesting  area on which to speculate, though and cataloguing this will give me something to look for on my next read through.

"Good show, Snuff," he said then. 

There came a knocking on the back door. We both headed in that direction, the blade vanishing and Jack's hair and clothing getting rearranged along the way.

I like the passive voice and the ambiguity. Did Jack run a hand through his hair or did it supernaturally rearrange itself?

He opens the door to find Jill and Graymalk (whose name I always want to spell with a letter "E"), who were concerned when they couldn't see the house.

"What prompts your visit?" he asked.

"I hadn't seen you in over an hour," she replied, taking a small sip of sherry.

"That is true," he answered, sipping his own. "But it is often that way with us. Every day, in fact. Still. . . ."

"I refer to your house as well as your person. I heard a small sound earlier, as of the tinkling of a crystal bell, from this direction. When I looked this way I saw nothing but a well of impenetrable darkness."

"Ah, the old crystal bell effect," he mused. "Haven't seen that one since Alexandria. So you didn't hear any thunder, see any lightning?"
"I hadn't seen you in over an hour," she replied, taking a small sip of sherry. 

"That is true," he answered, sipping his own. "But it is often that way with us. Every day, in fact. Still. . . ." 

"I refer to your house as well as your person. I heard a small sound earlier, as of the tinkling of a crystal bell, from this direction. When I looked this way I saw nothing but a well of impenetrable darkness." 

"Ah, the old crystal bell effect," he mused. "Haven't seen that one since Alexandria. So you didn't hear any thunder, see any lightning?"

Alexandria still exists as a city, and it remains one of the largest in Egypt. I like to think this is a reference to the burning of the Library of Alexandria, however.

"He sent those creatures after you?" She gestured toward the hall.

"No," he replied. "They were my own. They got loose during the attack. It must have involved a general manumission spell. Pity. I had better use for the fellows than this."

"Manumission" is the act of freeing a slave. There you go. Something from a Zelazny word-a-day calendar.

They try to decide what to do with the bodies, now that they are in need of disposal.

She set down her glass, rose, visited the hall, and inspected them. She returned a little later. 

"Impressive," she said. "What they are, and what got done to them." She seated herself again. "What I'm wondering most, though, is what you're going to do with them now."

"Hm," he said, toying with his glass. "It's rather far to the river."

I nodded vigorously.

Heh heh.

Snuff suggests taking the remains over to Owen's place, sticking them into the wicker baskets, hauling them up to the oak tree and lightning them on fire. I like the idea behind the plan, but it doesn't strike me as especially practical. Jack goes for it, however.

The humans bought my idea; and we went out to do it. And ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, they gave a lovely light. 

Snuff's observation is from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "First Fig" featured in her collection a A Few Figs From Thistles

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

It gives a lovely light!

It's interesting, because while it's not uncommon for a Zelazny character to offer a quotation from literature, that can't be what Snuff is doing here, as the collection hadn't yet been written at the point the story was set. It seems to call back to the final line of October 23rd: (I wondered what sort of light they would give), and it seems like that observation would make more sense if it had come after the bit with the wicker baskets. Any thoughts?