Reading from pages 141-146 of Shadow & Claw

Hildegrin

A fully fleshed out supporting character, in the person of a ditcher poling a raft about the watery necropolis, appears like one of the author’s dead end rabbit holes into the human condition and then serves to bring together some of the loosely hanging narrative threads of the story. The big man serves his dual narrative purpose and also illuminates yet another corner of the shadow-fraught world of Urth:

“There’s a great deal said against Death. I mean by the people that has to die, drawin’ her picture like a crone with a sack, and all that. But she’s a good friend to birds, Death is. Whenever there’s dead men and quiet, you’ll find a good many birds, that’s been my experience.”

Amidst his meeting with Hildegrin, Severian becomes something of a boy again, concerning himself obsessively with the artifice of his social identity, Terminus Est, his wife as sword.

Diction of note

-angelus, angelic being

-pelycosaur, a jungle creature in the botanic gardens

-somnambulist