I followed a link from MetaFilter to the Introduction page, so I hadn't seen the mention of Baba Yaga in the first sentence on the main page. But I recognized the walking house and knew who it belonged to.

I read Chapter 2 last night. I sympathize with Summer's inability to identify her heart's desire. I'm 62, not 11, and I still don't have a firm grasp on my heart's desire.

One of my top 5 favorite Bujold quotes is from Miles in Memory: "You can trade anything for your heart's desire except your heart."

Cadbury (stoutly[1] resisting the temptation to post to DFD threads.)

[1] Yes, I do need to lose weight, the ITLAPD phrase that best sums it up is: "Avast Behind!".

That said, offering someone their heart's desire, when they don't actually know what that is... that's not particularly good, either. Possibly she is "fey" -- unconstrained by our notions of morality, but perhaps bound by her own strictures.

(CAN the knocker be trusted....?)

(I thought it was an old saying, but googling tells me that it's from Game of Thrones. It just SOUNDS like an old saying....)

Is the child Summer a summer child, in that sense? And will she be, by the end of the story....?

@Nancy Lebovitz: Thank you for the MetaFilter link.

I wonder whether part of the "ambiguity" of Baba Yaga is that the cultures that produced the folklore (and for that matter, our current mainstream culture too!) are unsettled by the idea of a woman with power. A king who might kill you if you displease him isn't "ambiguous"; he's just powerful.

Through forest's dark and midnight's deep,
I seek the bird of fire
that none can tame and none may keep,
that sings of heart's desire.

A feather glowing warm with flame
I keep as proof of one unseen
who hides from sight, however keen,
and, out of shadow, calls my name.

Through forest's dark and midnight's deep,
I seek the bird of fire
that none can tame and none may keep,
that sings of heart's desire,

and glimpsed afar, whose burning wings
haunt all my sleep, fill all my dreams,
who is far more than what she seems,
who knows more than she sings.

And to behold her eyes of gold
is to be nevermore the same,
to leave behind your life, your name,
and to forget all other things.

Through forest's dark and midnight's deep,
I seek the bird of fire
that none can tame and none may keep,
that sings of heart's desire.

From my POV in late middle age it occurs to me that "if you don't know what your heart desires, you'd better find out before it's too late" is one possible direction this might be going.

On chicken feet, the lesser house
Prowls through suburban cul-de-sac;
Observed by only child and mouse,
The paved road is just one more track.

We ask you, as you take your ease,
To give us solely what we're due:
That if our words your spirits please
You give us gold and silver true.

(It's from one of her non-People stories, "The Anything Box" in the collection of the same name. I'm quoting from memory, so it may be inexact.)

Don, #17: Nice! Is that yours, and is there music for it?

Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two

Fragano Ledgister @20: I thought you were going a particular way from that first line, but you didn’t, so I had to.

On birdlike claw, to Summer’s heart they steal;
In alleys tread, and vacant lots they kneel.
No sound at all! Her mother’s hold deferred.
Her heart’s desire soon to be conferred …

There ought be a verse for each chapter, but that’s all the muse has bitten me with tonight.

All the poetry so far has been fantastic. Looking forward to the inevitable more.

I *loved* the stained glass "flipbook". With the triumphant saint (and angel! Was the angel only chasing the saint to make Summer pay attention?) at the end, that we get to see but Summer does not.

Interesting that she picked a frog over a unicorn. Unicorns are fantastical and unreal and powerful and vulnerable. Frogs are about as down-to-earth.... erm, pond... as you get. But frogs... have transformed. They've become very different than the tadpole they hatched as. They're free to leave the pond. Is Summer's heart's desire growth, change, and freedom?

And a weasel companion. Weasels are vicious predators... but they're also small and vulnerable. Not the worst mentor for a girl on her own. Weasels know when to fight and when to hide.

Yes, the frog suggests a much more pragmatic orientation than the unicorn. I hadn't thought about the transformation aspect, but that's interesting.

Chapter Three

My cat Dante is not QUITE as helpful as a pair of weasels, but apparently every project from hemming a pair of slacks to fixing the inlet pump of the dishwasher is improved by a feline nose. Right in the middle of things. At all times.

Re weasels: Clearly this story was written especially for Jacque.

This pair of paragraphs rung particularly true for me:

And at that point, Summer said to herself, I shall be in so much trouble that it will not actually be possible for me to get in any more trouble, so it doesn’t really matter how long it takes.

There is something very freeing about knowing that you are in the worst possible trouble that you can be in. No matter what you do, it cannot possibly get any worse. Summer would get home and be grounded until she was eighteen, and even if she dyed her hair pink and got her ears pierced while in Fairyland (somehow she didn’t think they did that sort of thing in Narnia) she couldn’t be grounded any longer than that.

I loved the first part when I saw it on Ursula's LJ years ago, and I'm enjoying it even more now. I'm already champing at the bit for more to read, and we're barely into it yet.

Bruce H. @ 33:

Summer has been trained very well not to ask for what she wants, yes. Setting that (and the author's own love of frogs) aside, there are some other interesting things about the choice, too. If she'd picked the unicorn because that really was the best choice for her, she wouldn't need to go on this journey, although maybe another one would be indicated. If she'd picked the unicorn because she thought she was super special (but wasn't), her bones might make for a charming towel rack. A frog is, on the one hand, very down-to-earth and ordinary. On the other hand, frogs are a symbol of change and transformation. This might well be reinforced with the frog tree and the tadpole acorn. We'll see!

Elliott Mason @ 34:

I giggled at the line about pink hair and pierced ears not being done in Narnia. I'm not sure if that would get you kicked out with Susan, but it would probably put you somewhere similar.

Perhaps she assumes that, by the usual nature of portal stories, she'll end up going home by a different route anyway?

And, anyway, Baba Yaga's house had vanished, so knowing where the hallway was isn't likely to help her get home.

It just gave me a reaction like wanting to yell at the character in the horror movie, "No! Don't go in the basement!"

Keith S. @36: Thank you!

A friendly lock, a talking weasel, a magic acorn... "what have you got in your pocketses", indeed?

They cleaned the supper dishes but Summer only has had tea? Or is this "tea" in the British sense, which can include food?

It's not one of the stories that are usually told to kids, and I doubt Disney will be making a movie about her, princess or not... <wry>

"I was a chieftain's daughter" subtly suggests to me that Bearskin, Boarskin, and Donkeyskin come from different versions of the story told in different ages or places, sort of the way in _Mythago Wood_ and its related books the same archetype appears in multiple forms.

And it also strikes me how delicately their stories are suggested with:
"Apparently it could have been a great deal worse, if these women had to put on animal skins and flee into the desert."
Younger readers who don't need to understand that will likely go right on past. Adult readers and others who need to can take something away from those words.

One was about Donkeyskin, and has been covered already.

The other, on an entirely different note, was to wonder if the Waystation is by the sea. Because if it is, and for some reason its staff or its usual clientele are cetaceans, it would be a Whale Waystation.

I'd been wondering about Bearskin, because I know a Bearskin fairy tale as well, but it's about a dude who makes a bet with the devil, and doesn't fit this Bearskin.

(It's an interesting example of the "bet with the devil" genre, because the dude wins the bet and gets worldly success without losing his soul, but the devil still comes out ahead of the game.)

* It doesn't say so, but you will not convince me that it wasn't a magic ring -- nor that Cinderella's shoe wasn't magic either. There's just not that much variation in the human phenotype; without some sort of magic involved, there would certainly have been at least one other woman who the ring/shoe would have fit.

And the Grimms' version, linked at the bottom of that page, has the heroine going incognito to a ball at the palace.

Incidentally, the tale was adapted for television as part of Jim Henson's The Storyteller, under the title "Sapsorrow". (Sapsorrow is the name given to the princess.) As I recall, it moves swiftly over Sapsorrow's reasons for leaving home and concentrates on what happened to her afterward.

And the Grimms' version, linked at the bottom of that page, has the heroine going incognito to a ball at the palace.

Incidentally, the tale was adapted for television as part of Jim Henson's The Storyteller, under the title "Sapsorrow". (Sapsorrow is the name given to the princess.) As I recall, it moves swiftly over Sapsorrow's reasons for leaving home and concentrates on what happened to her afterward.

“Go quickly or slowly, near or far, in fear or courage—but come back to us.”

That has a touch of the numinous for me. It reminds me of The Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf sends Bill the pony home before the Fellowship enters Moria, saying "Go with words of guard and guiding on you."

Lilah @63: What a lovely observation.

I’m being stupid. It was beautiful when I didn’t know what it was.

That is a piece of amazing truth, and I want to hold its jewel in my palm and think about it a while.

He's not even British (not that that stopped me; used bookstores meant my Grandfather could source me hand-me-down copies of Canadian editions of Penguin kid novels).

I adore the ambition of the weasel. :->

Also, since I seem to have beaten everyone else to it,

Chapter 6

I cannot help but thinking of the witch from Brave, and her shop full of bear-themed wood carvings. If you're not doing magic anymore, might as well do a strongly themed shop!

2. Thirded and agreed on weasel ambitions.

3. What a place to end Chapter 6.

On the other hand, I don't know how to connect with people through their dreams, but it might be worth working on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzVTJwpUrHM

*that might be a really cool premise for a story

Just a caveat for anyone off to look for his stuff expecting to see more work that's like Summer in Orcus.

Or science experiments.

(Although Digger maybe has a touch of resemblance to Pinkwater, what with the oracular slugs and all. Hmmm.)

When I was binging on T. Kingfisher's other books last week, I was actually thinking that something about them strongly reminded me of Peter Beagle, particularly Bryony and Roses. Summer in Orcus, not so much, at least thus far. Probably I should just appreciate them as Kingfisher.

There's something interesting going on here that I can't quite put my finger on. I want to say it's a reflection on the different forms abuse can take.

Summer hasn't had any physical abuse to deal with, but she's been emotionally manipulated by her mother for her entire life. The Wheymaster, on the other hand, has to deal with physical threats. Even Grub seems somewhere on that spectrum. He's clearly a bully, but I'm also reading (possibly imaginary) hints that he gets it from above.

For all that he acts cowed for Grub, it's clear from the last chapter that the Wheymaster really is downtrodden and just trying to make do. Summer and the Wheymaster, in their own ways, help each other to start the journey of their own healing.

On an unrelated note, brief mention of clockwork bees!

In this story, Ursula's keeping the perspective very tightly bound to Summer's thoughts and perceptions.

And HOW is she going to get out of the cave? Lunge for the rings? And if she manages to do that, it's harder to go up than down over a cliffside. Is she going to climb down somehow? The cave is deep enough to sit in, but there's no hint that it's got a tunnel to leave through....

I expect there will be a flash of a blue something that will lead her in the right direction.

As for "grace", the more I think about it, the more intrigued I am to see how that comes out in the story. Does it mean "grace" as in "graceful", smooth in movement and word, not clumsy, or does it mean "grace" as in "get to heaven by works or by grace"? Or other?

My own personal guess is, rather than the overtly physical meaning of grace, or the overtly spiritual meaning of grace, it's this third grace that will become important in the story. I could, of course, be entirely wrong.

I don't necessarily think Ursula will shy away from the spiritual meaning; she had an angel giving hints to Summer earlier, after all. And swinging on those rings to get to the cave might take a certain amount of physical grace.

But the Wheymaster/Waymaster helped her from kindness and care. And that, I think, will become the theme of the book.

Independently, noting Baba Yaga's comment in chapter 1, which I forgot to call out before: “Besides, it’s not strangers you need to worry about—it’s the ones you know that get you.” All too often.

I hope we find out who milkes mantichores-- Vernon's take on the subject should be reasonable, peculiar, and not obvious.

This is not that book, and a very different something happened, but I feel like maybe the resonance with the other scene it superficially resembles is not entirely accidental. This book is very much in conversation with Narnia.

Speaking of which, rereading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland... and its sequels while having Summer in Orcus in my head made me delightfully aware of parallels and echoes and resonances. (It seems that upon first arriving in the otherworld, it is common to meet with a Mythic Threesome who will point out your initial direction and/or mission.)

Unions are very rare in fantasy-- a large topic in itself. I don't think it's (just?) anti-union sentiment because a lot of modern large-scale organization is rare.

I'm imagining the work being done by something/someone which can control a mantichore and/or domesticated mantichores. Or maybe trade with mantichores in exchange for milking.

See also Tomjon's encounters with the three humble old ladies gathering firewood in Wyrd Sisters.

Nicole #102: yes, there's nods to the pattern, but then we have Summer's own genre-savviness, contrasted with the locals' sardonicism about prophecies.

Heh.

Is it just me (because of our discussion upthread), or with Reginald is Ursula playing a bit with the concept of grace? He dances... and he offers help, unconditionally. Two types of grace, there.

(Hoopoes dancing doesn't seem to be a natural history thing; just a Reginald thing. I looked for videos to see if they (like many birds) did a courtship dance, but all I find are males feeding females. Which I think we can disregard, because Summer isn't a hoopoe...)

Reginald reminds me more of Georgette Heyer than of Wodehouse, though of course there's no reason he couldn't partake of both.

What caught my eye was the valet finches disapproving of the wrong color waistcoat, which I've seen more than a few times in the Jeeves stories.

*I could have sworn I'd seen a second one, but I can't find it just now.

And hey, there's a disapproving valet mentioned in one of the excerpts.

Summer is showing wisdom beyond her years: Although Reginald clearly wasn’t a child, he also wasn’t quite a grown-up as Summer understood it. Summer was pretty sure that real grown-ups weren’t supposed to run away into the country to hide instead of paying their bills.

Cassy B. #122: Indeed -- also, she is still eleven years old.

Hmm. Just noticed that Ursula is actually doing SiO under her alias of T. Kingfisher.

Yes. I take that as another sign that this story is going to get considerably darker before it's over, as the introduction warned. The blighted and corrupted wheat seems to be the latest pointer in that direction.

A rather entertaining character, this one. But I have to wonder, what happens if the travellers are still inside at dawn?

The question of what happens if they are still inside at dawn had not occurred to me.

Nine would already be unwieldy (see: ideal team sizes), but it would be even more interesting if the group grew to thirteen.

But the part of me that's read a lot of trashy fantasy is aware that that boat's well and truly sailed.

Now, though, I'm reminded of the houses in Kaye Bellot's Green Year Dragonfly, which involves a different kind of househunter.

I can't help but wonder if the house-hunter idea came from a child's overhearing adults without the usual context and imagining a, well, hunter of houses (scary music).

I wonder if animal houses are going to be a thing in this story? Baba Yaga's hut has chicken feet and can lay eggs, after all.

shadowsong @136: Good question! Maybe BY's house was a chicken that turned into a house at night (or some other magically significant time) and got trapped in a silver cage. Maybe that's why the wolves are acquainted with her. If BY's house retains some features of chickenness while it's a house, maybe the wolf will also. If Summer could turn into a house at night, she might suffer less from the cold and the dew.

—and then she stopped as if she had run into an iron bar herself, because it was exactly what her mother would have done.

Perhaps because "not turning into my mother" has long been a feature of my heart's desire.

Or perhaps I am just weepy and vulnerable; I quit my job today because I could not keep it and also live with myself.

"You can trade anything for your heart's desire, except your heart." (Bujold)

Take care of yourself. Doing the right thing is sometimes very hard.

Yup. That was it exactly. 'Cept my brother left off the "carrying wood" part.

And Lila, hugs (if wanted) and sympathies.

I'm giving myself this evening to wallow in misery and then I start applying for fellowships and getting the novel in shape to submit (NaNoEditMo?). My student loans, alas, have no sympathy with my ethical scrupulosity.

The treatise on dew felt much in the spirit of Pratchett, especially when writing from the POV of Susan Sto Helitt.

The line "There’s too little courage in the world to go eating it up" hit me hard and made me linger over its loveliness.

I offer virtual hugs, and also both condolences and congratulations. It can be hard and painful to do right in this world, but I hope that in time you will also receive the rewards thereof.

And the author answers my #127 with a figurative "You're overthinking this". ;-) There was actually a hint back when the wulf-hus was introduced, and told us that even transforming within the cage would have damaged, but presumably not destroyed, him.

(Also, when Glorious suddenly leaps off to hide from the (presumably) hunters), it's really nice that Summer wasn't prepared and nearly fell off. Scratching one's nose is not something that one normally sees in novels... and it's such an ORDINARY thing.)

I'm not going to shake the mental image of the Sleipnirians for a while ...

Grub is seen and confirmed as monstrous, but there's something odd about that other leader, who might be the Houndbreaker. He seems to be keeping Grub's rougher behavior in check....

Maybe not keeping Grub's behavior in check as much as exerting his own authority?

Then Grub would be not only as vicious when released (or more) but grateful?

On another note, I am always grateful for characters who say a well deserved "bullshit!" to the idea that, if the villain hurts someone, it's your fault because you didn't do what they wanted you do (submit, surrender, stop fighting, stop protecting others from them, stop existing). I'm revisiting Diane Duane's Young Wizards series (via the videos at MarkReads.net), and there's a part towards the end of High Wizardry that hits that particular sweet spot for me too.

“Our sun doesn’t have a shadow,” said Summer.

“Everything has a shadow,” said Glorious. “Perhaps your sun simply keeps it somewhere else.”

(I have been thinking lately about my own shadow; to be less oblique, thinking about what aspects of myself and my own behavior I may be blind to, as well as those I know I keep hidden from others.)

The Queen In Chains. Is it the Queen that is the problem.... or the chains? (Or, of course, it could be something else, but we are up to chapter 15 now; a little late to introduce a new antagonist....)

They all said, from the heart, that they knew, knew, that NOTHING would ever keep their kids safe. In sight, and even better, physically touching was the only thing that eased off their anxiety.

We can infer that Summer's mother is learning to cope with an overwhelming trauma. That she's eased up enough to let Summer out of her sight has to be seen as a major step.

Summer is doing the best she can with hugs and reassurance.

If this were the mother's story, Summer's heart's desire might be getting her mom past that pain.

I particularly liked this bit from Chapter 17:

“Now,” said the Forester. “Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.”

I needed to hear that today.

(Apparently I cannot spell "abscess" without outside intervention. Is this one in your demonic spelling test? Or maybe I'm not as good a speller as I think I am.)

I managed not to sit around watching the results come in last night mainly because I was at my roller derby league's board of directors meeting, being the secretary and getting utterly exhausted at the gumbo ya-ya multithreaded style of discussion going on there. Then I came home and found my husband had the scotch out on the table and clearly not just because he likes scotch. It was that bad. I took a look at the latest on Five Thirty Eight, then went back out into the living room, said, "I need a hug," and spent the next five minutes just weeping into his T-shirt.

Then I thought something along the lines of, "Damn this, I'm going to do good work now, they can't take that away from me," and spent the next couple hours getting my meeting notes presentable.

I didn't want to get up and see the official announcement this morning. Have been crying off and on. But have also been spending the day in that same spirit of "they can't take this away from me" protest: Doing the good work of daily writing, doing dinner-anna-movie with my husband, focusing really hard on how the weather's still beautiful and the leaves are still doing the autumn thing and the sun indeed rose upon the world despite everything.

A dear friend and teammate posted to our league's facebook group that she's so glad she spent election night at practice, doing ridiculous and scary and bad-ass things on skates, and how nothing about how the election turned out can take the joy of that away.

I really appreciate all the hopeful and determined things people are posting, about being kind to each other, about the quiet importance of telling stories and doing good work, about fighting every step of the way against those who would do harm.

So. Onward, I guess.

"Tell me about your journey, and start a little before the beginning, because we are usually wrong about where things begin."

I read that line, and wanted to steal it for the intro page to a story.

Very much so. See my post at #177.

That was one of two thoughts I had.

The other is that perhaps the Queen must be freed from her Chains to heal Orcus. The meeting with Glorious might foreshadow that.

Of course, both ideas could be true.

J Homes.

But I'm not as sure about the Queen being a stand-in for Summer's mother, because that implies a much more, mm, destructive sort of abuse than the problem her mother has. The active murder and casual violence doled out by the Houndbreaker, the wasps of the Queen, all seem the opposite of Summer's mother, who wants to protect and swaddle and keep things locked in safely.

If anything, the stand-in for Summer's mother is, well, Summer. Who has to learn to not become her mother in turn to her friends, even when the dangers are REAL and IMMINENT, not just imaginary or potential.

Pout.

Then a few lines down Glorious says, "But I smell her [Baba Yaga] even under this. Like clean stone under rotten meat." Well, OK, this is not the Baba Yaga I'm acquainted with.

Chapter 19!

I must say, I really like the Hoopoe's house from the standpoint of thinking through the consequences of worldbuilding. When you can fly and perch, it opens up far different options for house layout.

No, this is Baba Yaga as seen by a moderately-powerful native and quite magical native of the world... definitely a hint that there is more to her than her appearance.

The Birds' Ball is utterly fascinating. And I think the goose guards like Summer.

And Matron Sophia is wonderful.

Also: the trouble with being an artist and a writer is that when you write something like this:

"A band played in one corner, consisting of an enormous quantity of guineafowl, sometimes two or three to an instrument."

...people like me are seized with a desperate desire to have it illustrated.

(Particularly since we kept guineafowl for a while in my youth.)

But my favorite line out of Chapter 20 is “Are the cheeses very fierce in your world?”

...

(And with a little bit of Googling, I discover some references to the story of Vasilissa the Beautiful, a kind of cross between Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, where after Vasilissa completes Baba Yaga's tasks, she saves Vasilissa by giving her a magic skull lantern which burns up the evil stepmother and the stepsisters - simultaneously helpful and vicious.)

Kindness is sometimes cruel. Justice is sometimes mean. There's a phrase I've read that goes something like "an old testament man/sense of justice". My memory indicates it's in Westerns and was equated with Frontier Justice equated with lynch mobs, posses and other forms of DIY law keeping. See also: "tough, but fair" and "rough justice."

So far, "Summer in Orcas" has put Baba Yaga firmly in the "tough, but fair" category.

Lila: I, too, would like to see an illustration of the guinea fowl orchestra.

*I should probably remedy that at some point.

I had thought of her as a distant evil ruler, like the White Witch, and him as her evil henchman, but if he's in control and she's his weapon, that's a very different story, and maybe calls for a different kind of resolution.

How long will her friends wait outside before they realize she's been betrayed?

I had been somewhat suspicious of the Priestess in the last chapter, then went to thinking she must be OK, as Summer did, and then...

It occurs to me that it's pretty rare for the experience of a concussion to be accurately described in a book. Even a mild bang on the head can be, well, like that. Lots of books, like nearly all movies and TV shows, indulge the conceit that people can be hit hard on the head without consequence other than a plot-convenient length of unconsciousness. The reality is that most people hit hard enough to experience more than a few seconds of unconsciousness would take weeks or months to make a recovery, some of them would be permanently impaired, and some of them would die.

(Let's not even get into the scale of PTSD which most fantasy heroes and heroines should have from their travails.)

Clifton @ 213:

I think that's a pretty fair assessment of what chapter 23 did to me too. But if chapter 23 was a shock to me, chapter 24 is the one that rearranged the world. We finally get to meet Zultan, who is not what I would have expected. And we find out a bit more about Grub, who I now exceedingly strongly suspect is a parasitized actual grub.

Also, mysterious antelope woman.

I also think that it might be interesting and worthwhile to compare and contrast elements of Summer in Orcus and Black Dogs once we get a bit farther in. I heartily recommend the latter by the way, too.

And yes, totally what KeithS said: this chapter seriously rearranges things.

By a wasp, perhaps?

1. Don’t worry about things that you cannot fix.
2. Antelope women are not to be trusted.
3. You cannot change essential nature with magic.

We've also seen the third piece of advice, too. Glorious is still very much a wolf, and the Forester is very much a dragon.

That line made me flinch, both for all the times I've felt like that, and the times I've seen others unable to stomach any hint of forgiveness or mercy. This is the chapter that's hit me the hardest so far.

The antelope woman's telling of the Orcus foundation myth is a stupendous piece of writing.

More exploration of Antelope Woman.

I also note that the ((temporarily?) divided) company now numbers seven; Summer, the weasel, Reginald, Glorious, Ankh, Ounk, and the unnamed antelope woman. Two more to go?

I've lost track of the weasel. Is he still in Summer's pocket?

The weasel is still at the pipes with Reginald and Glorious. He was allergic to the incense and left before the priestess betrayed Summer.

Or something even more complicated than that....

Yes, it is.
------
Also, Ursula mentioned else-web (I think in her LJ) that she is planning to double up the chapter-posting the end of December so that she can finish it this year instead of the first week of January.

SiO still seems to be a textually short work; I haven't been keeping track of wordcount, but I suspect it might end up about novella size.

And, of course, the author has been distinctly cagey about exactly what the Queen-In-Chains is; Chekhov's Gun would suggest the "girl who became a dragon" (which could be a story in itself), but I can't see how those wasps fit into that.

The wasps of our world don't have queens, but of course Orcus isn't our world... and on the gripping hand, why are the wasps doing what they are doing? Does some benefit accrue to their controller, or for that matter to the wasps? If they're doing it to reproduce, are they actually being controlled by anyone, or just another species that's wandered into Orcus? I still suspect that Grub is a big piece of that puzzle, but don't yet know what he connects to.

Re the antelope woman, Ursula tweeted a cover design yesterday that implies an important role.

Well, they have a direction to go to find the queen-in-chains. That makes me think the road trip will end soon. We have about eight installments left and Summer just found her inner power when rescuing Glorious.

I suspect it's time for the final confrontation.

Knowing Ursula's writing in general, I expect the climax will be suitably impressive even if we know it's not that far away now. On a meta, and purely speculative level, since Summer in Orcus is response to a lot of other portal fantasies, I wonder if Summer will manage to accomplish anything massively politically changing for Orcus or not. I'll be quite interested to see how it turns out.

And, despite what Ursula has said on the matter, this is definitely Hugo-worthy already.

It occurs to me that we still don't know what Summer's "heart's desire" actually is... or if she's already receved it! If it was to be strong enough to stand up to her mother, or just to see outside the walls her mother has put around her....

I suspect Summer's heart's desire is to be able to stand up to her mother or manage her mother or get breathing space from her mother. Or just some level of independence/adulthood/authority - which involves standing up to her mother and managing the fall out from it. This is based on the fact that Summer used good business practices and the Antelope Woman's demeanor to thwart the house hunters.

Which brings me to something else. I suspect Summer's mother is an Antelope Woman, too, (or some mix of Antelope Woman and Hound Breaker) but Summer is not. Which is where the ice in her heart came from when she realized the Antelope Woman had betrayed them. Summer had thought Antelope Woman might act better/less chaotic if she'd been treated better/been included more.

I expressed myself badly. Let's see if I can tease out my thoughts.

In a stereotypical portal fantasy, the child protagonist winds up in a fantasy world, gets caught up in The Biggest Socio-Political Problem of the World, and, with the support of the locals, learns and trains and saves the world. Becoming royalty is optional. Summer in Orcus has a bit of that, certainly, but also subverts that.

Yes, she is, essentially, the head of a small band of local Orcusians, however she's not looking to Save the World, so much as she is to help her new friends and help the Frog Tree. In another story, she would have been the one to orchestrate the capture of the wasp, even if she didn't personally accomplish it. In this story, it was the valet birds, off screen. While the wasp capture was going on, she escaped from the clutches of Zultan. In another story, she would have found a way to subvert one of the guards, or take advantage of a weakness. In this story, she escapes with the help of the antelope woman, who has her own reasons.

However the story ends, I know I'll be happy with it. But, because of all this, I wonder if the end result will be that only a part of the regime is changed. Even if it's the case that the big bad is defeated, castles don't immediately come crashing down, and life doesn't instantly change for everyone. There are others who are positioned to move into a power vacuum. And, even if she facilitates a massive change, she may not, personally, accomplish it. (Although she might. One of the joys of serialized storytelling is suspense. Suspense and speculation. Two of the joys of serialized storytelling are suspense and speculation. I'll come in again.)

What she can and almost certainly will do, though, is at least make the world a little better — hopefully better enough for the Frog Tree's tadpole — and gain her heart's desire, which, like Lila, I think is effective personal agency.

And I think perhaps her Heart's Desire is to see her mother recovering and able to better care for herself and better do for herself.

KeithS #252: I think a lot of that is down to her not being a Big Damn Hero or even a Magical Prodigy. Re: Clifton #253, she is certainly, a disruptive element intruding from outside Orcus, which was likely part of Baba Yaga's intention (and a couple of in-world characters have said as much). Even if she's not saving the world single-handedly, she's still driving the plot, and this wasp thing actually does seem to be a major threat to Orcus, so dealing with that would reasonably qualify as "saving the world" for the moment. As for Zoltan -- Summer's just told the people of Orcus exactly what he is -- he might well be dealt with by someone else, or the wasps might be necessary to his survival.

If she succeeds, indeed castles won't automatically come down, and neither will the City of Dogs be easily rebuilt.¹ Some of the marvels will be lost forever... but others will recover or be remade, and new marvels will arise in time. But comments from the natives makes clear that Orcus has seen empires rise and fall before. And that there are plenty of species (and powerful individuals) around, who'd be happy to start hunting spider-horse riders if they didn't have to worry about Zoltan bringing the QiC in for large-scale destruction. And then they'd start rebuilding things, once the current crop of marauders has been neutralized.

Re Chapter 28: Well, it didn't take long at all for the antelope woman's other shoe to drop. Of course, she may yet come back and stir things up again.

¹ That said, I can believe there might be refugee Dogs that the Houndbreaker missed. I find myself wondering what would happen to dogs of our world who were brought to Orcus.

Of course, Glorious likely has a major role to play at the climax, so as well Summer did save him. It also seems likely that the Antelope Woman still has a part to play, and possibly the fact that she did not betray the party in general will be important in enabling her to play it.

J Homes

Also, it seems Grub wasn't directly linked to the wasps after all, but to a separate abomination entirely.

I also had a moment of recognition.

“Do you wish us to fight?” asked Ounk, as calmly as if she were asking the time of day, and not do you wish us to die?

The geese are Marines.

I think perhaps that this chapter is missing its italics; in several places we hear Summer's thoughts but they're not marked out in any way.

And I really like the thought that the geese are Marines.

You're right. I think I was taking the idea of non-traditional hero and ending a little too far in my thoughts.

And now we know what Grub is. I'm not sure how that managed to be worse than I was thinking, but it was. Neat!

Cassy B. @ 262:

Looks like all the formatting of the second half of the chapter is borked (paragraph spacing, too, not just italics). So many good bits of insight from Summer tucked away in there, though.

She was told to come alone, and the wasps made clear that the geese, Glorious, Reginald, and the valet flock were not welcome.

But the weasel came, and the wasps accepted that.

The weasel is a part of Summer, she only thinks it came from Baba Yaga.

Ouch.

What that reminded me of was how, after my cat Genevieve died, it took me nearly a year to stop looking for her in her favorite spot by the foot of the bed, where she'd spent her last few years. She was badly arthritic, and we got her a nice soft pad to lay on, and she pretty much stayed there except for eating, drinking, and using the litterbox. And every time I looked and she wasn't there, it hurt all over again.

That line gave me exactly the same feeling. Poor Ounk.

So, was the weasel's ambition vis a vis the egg just part of the cover story, or is the outsized ambition also part of Summer?

You beat me to it. I wonder if Randall is a fan of Ursula.

This might be foreshadowing something about the Queen-in-Chains.

It might also be saying something about Summer's relationship with her mother.

The thing is, most things in this story happen quickly, with significant points or character developments found in nearly every scene. Here we have Ankh's death -- but even before that, consider this: Summer was in position to slash its wings, because she was already attacking the molting Grub -- not just reacting to incoming attacks. No, not a Big Damn Hero, but still taking initiative in the fight.

Ursula's handling of the episodic format is giving me serious lessons in pacing and "moving the story".

I do hope that was Reginald she saw. And that a hoopoe is strong enough to slow her fall...

You know, that's actually a pretty powerful ability. And easily overlooked.

I wonder if it was her heart's desire to really understand and believe that she was very good at something...?

Also, Ursula posted on LiveJournal that she's posting the next chapter today. It wasn't up yet when I checked a few minutes ago.

And I'm relieved; in the hiatus before Chapter 33 was posted I had remembered that the weasel was with Summer, and thought he might attach Zultan, and feared he would be lost.

Rereading the thread, I note this prior comment of yours:

Cassy B. #96: There's another definition of grace: I think of it as... well, kindness. Care. Mindfulness. Generosity. Helpfulness.

By now we have seen the Grace in action, and it was the key to the very climax of the story. I suspect that this may also be the heart's desire that Summer was promised: The power to comfort her mother, to ease the distress that drives her.

Hmm. She started the tale by picking up three things: First the lock, which proved key to the tale's climax. Lastly the tadpole seed, which fulfilled her first goal within Orcus. The weasel saved her life afterwards, but it was not lost; I wonder what will happen to it (did we ever learn the weasel's gender?) as Summer returns to her world.

"It would be a good day for the world if I could not find a child who knew terrible adult things."

"Hearts are complicated. Hardly anybody wants just one thing."

I'm not sad for the textbook salesman. I think more pushy salesmen ought to be eaten.

What a satisfying end to a very satisfying story. Ursula, if you read this... thank you. (And is this a novel or a novella? Why? Oh, no reason. Just wondering....) <gazing speculatively at Hugo ballot>

The NEXT button was meant to lead to the Author's Note, which is now live.

And while I think you are very optimistic (though I am enormously flattered!) it runs almost exactly 90K.

I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how much Summer was changed by her quest, the world she has to live in did not change at all and she still has to live there. At least for a few more years.

I don't mind Summer lying to her mother at all, because it was the right thing to do.

The climax being quiet dialog and compassion, rather than being a big action scene worked very well for me. Compassion and humanity are far more important, in the end, than waving a sword around. Tolkien would be proud.

The ending was a very good ending, and a very right ending to the story. Summer's confidence has grown, which has honed the tools she uses to cope with her mother and the world in general.

I don't see any answer she could give to any of these that isn't a lie, which would not have immediately gotten her accused of lying or worse. It's like in Every Heart a Doorway -- when children go thru a portal and come back and try to tell anyone what happened to them, they are not believed.

Lila, #297: I agree with Dave about this, although for a different reason. Irrationality on a single topic is not the same thing as mental illness. We all have things about which we are irrational; sometimes we recognize it, sometimes we don't, but outside of that we're perfectly functional. The problem comes in when one's irrationality is affecting someone else's life in a negative way.

I've seen it on both the Amazon (Kindle) and B&N (Nook) sites.

It's the joke that just keeps on giving, with the househunter and real estate corollaries ...

In no way your standard portal fantasy. Chock-full of bizarre originality.