This chapter is filled with many things. Sadly, none of them are HATE and LIES. However, some of them are foreshadowing and our third and final speaking female (and the only other one with a name)!
We're in the home stretch now, fellas!
Someone is calling to Alex from far away. But he doesn't want to listen, because he's sitting by a wall, and is having far too much fun dreamily staring into the gray meadow on the other side.
A wall separating him from grayness. Remember all that talk from Skeld earlier about "The Wall(TM)" separating Life from Death, and how Tayo got all creeped out and doesn't like death, and how I mentioned that there was a chapter later called "The Wall?"
Smell that, kids? Smells like foreshadowing come to fruition!
For the barrier between "not dead" and "dead," it's a pretty tiny wall. Probably wouldn't keep out a dog, even. Alex wants to take a quick jaunt over, but no—a pretty glowing light calls him back. (Wait, I thought you weren't supposed to go towards the light?)
The voice wants him to open his eyes, anyway. So Alex does and—O HAI ARCONN. He's hovering like a vulture over Alex, and gingerly asks him to sit up. Arconn hefts him around, gives him some potion, and asks what happened. Well, first Alex asks, but they were hoping he could tell them.
Alex saw... Nazgul-ish things?
Yup. Nazgul-ish things.
But there's no need to be worried about them, because Alex made mincemeat out of the lot! Go almighty Alex. He explains to them what happened, and they decide they have to press on to the Dark Forest.
So what about that dark force that was following them and haunting the ruins?
Well of course it was the ringwraiths! And Alex has anticlimactically delt with them such that not only will they fail to provide any more interest to the plot, but he's elimated what's probably a centuries-old evil from the world all in one fell swoop!
Seriously, I can't be the only one wondering what they wanted with the crystal ball, am I? Why would the story tease us with something like that, only to steadfastly ensure that plot thread will never be explored and we'll never find out?
Oh. Right. It's terrible. That's why.
Point is, Alex falls asleep on horseback. Scene transition.
Guess where Alex ends up back! Special though he is, the little snuggiepie just can't seem to stop almost dying. Once again, somebody comes to the Fenced-Off-Meadow of Life and Death to pull him back. But it's not Arconn this time, oh no...
It is... a woman!
*Dra-ma STIIIIIIING!*
And not just any woman, but the most beautiful woman he's ever seen!
It's Shahree's astrally-projected form! Right? Right?
...No. Darn.
Calypso? ...No, "Calysto." Calysto. Ca-lys-to. ...You know what, screw it. I keep trying to write her name as "Calypso" anyway. She is now Calypso out of convenience to me and my fingers.
Calypso wants him to come back! Ah, but Alex doesn't want to go! All that vague, undescribed grayness on the other side of the wall looks so inviting! And darn if he's not going to RSVP.
But that is the land of Shadows, Alex! If you go there, you will never return! Because you'll be dead, idiot.
But he wants to go! Yes, folks—this pointless back-and-forth of yes-no-yes over and over again is basically another "Claudette," only with different subject matter. Only Calypso is one of the few who partially gives to Alex. He wants her to come with him to the world of shadows, since... they just met and he feels it'd be appropriate? I don't know.
...Wait a minute.
They just met. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. He automatically feels attached to her by Plot Reins, enough so for Plug N Play Friend-ship to ensure.
I've got a baaaaaaad feeling about this.
Perhaps she's been snared by Plot Reins, too. She offers to go with him to the wall, though won't follow him over. But she won't join him. But please, won't he consider coming back? He has friends! And things to do!
But he agrees because—and I quote, directly from him: "I have promises to keep."
Was the Robert Frost reference intentional, I wonder? If not: My poor little English major brain is resorting to looking for roundabout literary references in this, and that's kind of sad. But I have miles to go before I stop liveblogging, as well. But if it was: Gloo-my!
So what are you waiting for then, Alex? Wake up!
Wake up he does. And—scene transition!
Alex wakes up in bed, be-blanketed and be-weakened. And Hello Nurse! Who should be with him but Madame McGorgeous from his dreams? Apparently, she is a nurse, judging by the fact that she sat by his bed for—how long is it again, miss?
...Ah. Five days. ...If it's been five days, I don't think that that bed should be nearly so fluffy and fresh. Anyway, she's Calypso, he's in the dark woods where Arconn makes his home, and also, she's the queen of all elfkind.
...Wait, wait, WHAT?
Alex started making cutesy googoo eyes at the Elf Queen? Who is probably several thousand years old? In the immortal words of M-O, woah woah woah woah woah woah.
Not like it stops her any. She ever-so-tenderly leans over his bedside, gives him more happy potion, and all but kisses him goodnight as she wishes him... back to sleep, after he just woke up. She waves him gently off, and he lights-outs again.
He wakes up again the next day, and, oh look, there she is again, his ever-faithful bedside servant. (If you're the queen, shouldn't you be off ruling people or something? And—hey! It's Arconn! Someone else on his team cares about him, too! Calypso leaves them to talk, which is our cue for more creepy dialogue concerning the relationship between Alex and this new lady. To whit:
Alex: Dude, she's a babe.
Arconn: Dude, she is a babe.
Both: *brofist*
Only with more half-commital mopiness thrown in.
Arconn helps Alex out into the hallway, and—look! It's everybody come to greet the newly-woken Alex! He had the funniest dream! And You Were There, Dwarfbeard, and you, Tayo, and you, Auntie Scald! They thought they were going to lose him. (Yes, they even use that exact line.) Group hug!
This would probably be very touching if I cared one whit about these characters.
Truthfully, that's one of the central problems of this book (which I shall expound upon greatly in my epilogue): I just can't make myself care. The characters are all so one-dimensional, it's impossible to identify with any of them. And that one dimension is filled with annoyance, to boot. They're all stock and no soup.
Alex also recounts—again—his encounters with the ringwraiths, which isn't all that important anymore, now, is it, since Alex so handily destroyed them. Oh, I imagine they or their master (the Dark Lord Scaroune, no doubt) will be important in the sequel. But Alex completely shut them down, all of them, to the point of unhaunting the friggin' Haunted Ruins. I can't imagine them being brought back without serious contrivance.
Then he gets to being at The Wall(TM). Hey, remember Tayo's earlier vague worries? Now he gets specific! He wants to know what it was like, and, if so, if he saw anyone there! Like maybe family or friends?
No, Alex says, he only remembers the feeling of wanting to go over. But to him, the Wall didn't seem like a bad place—it seemed like a place to start a new adventure!
Uh-huh.
Albus Dumbledore wrote:
So we've got Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings, and The Wizard Of Oz. Any other mainstream fantasies left to rip off?
Either way, Tayo seems... somewhat comforted, but still unsettled.
Given this whole to-do with Tayo and death, I'm shifting my guess from Scald to him as the one most likely to take a dirt nap by the end of this story.
Now it's Arconn's turn, as the Designated Expositch, to explain what happened while Alex was sleeping! Shahreee Swootsybookums managed to keep him up (or at least, on) while Alex was asleep on her, until they rode to the Dark Forest where Calypso and her people live. Calypso took them in, but Alex was already muttering to himself in his sleep about the wall.
And Calypso, with all her might (more might than Arconn's ever seen, even,) called him back! And boy is she glad Alexflake made it!
So... if Alex was asleep with them for five days, and Calypso's been calling the whole time... exactly how long, real-time, did that little dream-interlude take? Does Time speed up around The Wall(TM)?
But Calypso is full of happy happy joy joy, and Dwarfbeard says it's a perfect reason for the elves to!... Hold. A. Feast.
Please let the elves be bad cooks; please let the elves be bad cooks, please let the elves be bad cooks...
Well, they have to bathe first. Presumably in one big, creepy room again. Then we can get to another by-the-book mouthgasm.
Calypso likes Alex so much, she even lets him sit right next to her. It's just ordinary old all the time normal affection!
Everyone eats, Alex gets his special O HAI WIZARD toast, the whole shebang. Now it's time for Calypso to invite... Alex... out... on a long... walk... through the woods... together.
...Honestly, I'm not sure whether the hilariously pederastic subtext in the White Tower or this is creepier. I mean, at least with the Ho Yay, it's probably unintentional and I can laugh all I want at the blatant slashiness of it all. With some creepiness in that most of these men are at least ten years older than him, if not more, and he's a teenager. But this has the creepiness of me wondering if Calypso isn't actually meant to be Alex's love interest, with creepy Wife Husbandry (or Husband Wifery) aspect and all. I honestly don't know, and I honestly suspect it might be so. And that's kind of unnerving.
I mean, she even takes his hand to lead him as they walk. And he notices how her face seems to glow. It's all really kind of romantic in a profoundly upsetting way.
If Alex were at least 20, I don't think I'd have a problem with this. But as it stands, he's 16. She's Really 700 Years Old at least, I'm sure.
To top off all the creepiness, Alex suddenly doesn't remember the way she called him back from The Wall(TM), even though he told his friends about it himself. This man has the memory of a goldfish. She magically restores to him the memories he had this afternoon, he apologizes for trying to get her to commit joint suicide with him, and an honest-to-god Claudette raises her ugly head.
And we end this possibly touching scene with some words from Calypso: "You are more like an elf than any human I have ever met."
"So it's totally OK for me to have the hots for you, even though you're 16!"
Creeeepy.
That's the end of that chapter, mostly, except for a bit where Alex-tachi have no clue how long they actually spend in the forest, except it's a while. 'Cuz you know, magic and all that.
But next chapter oughta be good.
It's called "Slathbog."
Do we finally get to confront our villain? Do we finally get some actual conflict? Do we get to wonder about why the seeming climax still has three more chapters after it; is the denouement really that long?
All except for the last one, I damn well hope so!
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