Spoilers after the jump, Obviously.
End interpretation
Ombria is the dream dreamt up by Faey, who is empowered by (and or the reflection of) the 'Moon' entity who is on the other side of a magical mirror, in imitation of the reflected world, which is the true reality. Because of Faey's and the Moon's power, the Dream realm becomes in a sense real. its characters, its inhabitants become real and though they are still subject to Faey's power, because she doesn't meddle and mostly sticks to herself; they lead their own lives, out of the immediate dream-orbit and influence of the dreamer.
Occasionally the dream threatens to get derailed by a recurring nightmare-idea, an entity inimical to the dream. At this time Faey or her subconscious intervenes and eliminates the malign entity in order to keep the dream active.
At this time, the true world is summoned up to give any aid necessary to the dreamworld. when the crisis is averted, the reality fades out of the dream world and is subsequently forgotten by its inhabitants.
Stray thoughts and extras
One of the problems I had in writing this interpretation down was in trying to keep things cohesive within a sequential frame.
The difficulty lies in that every element overlaps and informs each other element that it in fact becomes cyclical, a closed loop, with each element giving arguments for the rest. A framework that holds itself up only when every element is adressed simultaneously. I had to delete alot of stuff during the time I spent on this because I couldn't find any graceful way to introduce it piecemeal. Some of those writings, because I couldn't bear to delete them, I kept and put down here.
It's really more to assuage my ego then for any added benefit to the reader.
There's also numerous apparent contradictions and endless ways of interpreting them, and at one point I just have to call a halt to the analysis.
The difficulty lies in that every element overlaps and informs each other element that it in fact becomes cyclical, a closed loop, with each element giving arguments for the rest. A framework that holds itself up only when every element is adressed simultaneously. I had to delete alot of stuff during the time I spent on this because I couldn't find any graceful way to introduce it piecemeal. Some of those writings, because I couldn't bear to delete them, I kept and put down here.
It's really more to assuage my ego then for any added benefit to the reader.
There's also numerous apparent contradictions and endless ways of interpreting them, and at one point I just have to call a halt to the analysis.
---
The light of reality hits his (Ducon's Father's) world, and then hits the mirror, but it can't help but cast a shadow behind it; in the dream of Faey.
The book mentions the hindside of the moon; and identififies it, Camas erl does, as Domina Pearl. but this is a facile argument, blinkered because of the limited perspective of the inhabitants of Ombria; they can not see the full picture because they are inside of it.
now, If we take that the world on the other side of the door is the reality. the shadow behind the mirror must be inhabited by the creature governing the dreamrealm of shadow; Faey.
This is the tale of twin cities of light and dark, so the dark sorceress must have its light opposite. this entity is hinted at only once in the novel when kyel, in the final chapter, uses the puppet known as the moon. with hands in the shape of stars, and crystals for eyes.
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I could, of course, easily ascribe it all to the 'rogue dream' part. like a coma victim's lifelong accumulation of dreams slowly starting to live lives of their own. Pure creation out of and entirely inside of dreams. There's an interesting argument to be made that if this would be indeed a coma victim's dream, that Faey really is a last resort self-defense mechanism, protecting a mind unable to snap out of a potentially everlasting nightmare leading to inevitable madness
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There is a chapter called 'Time out of Mind' it is the chapter (26) that ends with Faey and Mag huddled together at the heart of the 'rewriting'. A higly suggestive title that besides implying 'since time immemorial' also implies a mind unhinged, or someone looking into the workings of a mind.
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The part in 'time out of mind' that describes the moth and how Faey turns into it is also a highly suggestive passage.
Descriptions of irridescent skin and unnaturally glowing hair could point to the fact that though Faey is indeed the shadow side of the light, she still is powered by it. like Domina Pearl and Ducon's father's sorcery is still the same The Black Pearl snapped something. An unbearable streak of silver light swung down at Ducon. Another seared below it, bore it up and out of the luminous, dazzling flood he knelt in, that was nothing he could name or understand except that it was the opposite of shadow.
It seems to point to my theory that everything, the realms and every character in them are powered by the either real or metaphorical light of the 'Moon'.
Or conversely it could point again to the opposite; that Ombria is indeed; the painted side, the side of light.
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Chapter 27, the penultimate chapter ends with Ducon and his father trying to draw Lydea and Kyel back out of the other world.
“Mag,” Ducon said. “She is watching us.” He moved to the other side of the door, where the iris still bloomed, and told his father a story of charcoal and wax while he drew out of the dark the faces of his heart and around him the world he knew drew its own conclusions.
Now, this part is rather remarkable because it seems to blow up alot of my theory. Ducon tries to draw Lydea and Kyel but draws mag instead. the she is watching implies that the use of the mirrors by Mag supersedes the imperative by Ducon to draw his family, that it is more powerful than Ducon's sorcery and that it influences it because of it.
He drew out of the dark the faces of his heart is again one of those ambiguous sentences that Mckillip is so fond of. It could mean that Ducon draws with the charcoal the faces of those he wants returned to him. Or it could mean that he literally pulls them out of the other world with his magic.
But, either way, why would Ducon's father not help with this? he is after all, the ruler of the other world, surely he has power over it?
He is the one who suggests that Ducon draw but still, this is a very circumspect way of helping.
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He didn’t speak immediately either. He took her arm again, moved her a step or two closer to the nearest spray of tapers along the wall, and studied her. “Hair,” he murmured finally. “A pile of straw and full of pins. Eyes the color of walnut shells…” His voice trailed away; he looked suddenly puzzled, as though he had remembered her from some dream, perhaps, or within a different light. She felt it too. It was what had drawn her there, that sense of recognition. “Mag,” he said finally, and she nodded. “Why do I feel I know you,” he wondered, “when I have never met you before?” “I don’t know.”
Holy shit what is this now? what am I to make of this?
There's implications pointing every which way in this short conversation. Two characters, in what we have established as being a dream, seem to recognize one another. References to other dreams and the workings of light. It's like the holy grail of suggestive information, that or a poisoned chalice that turns on the one who tries to use it.
And again here;
“Do you know who her mother is?” “I have not the slightest idea,” Faey said. “Nor have I ever been much interested in the question.” But she was now, Ducon guessed. Her brows had creased; she studied something invisible in the air between them. Then she studied him. The flare and welter of her powers transfixed him with their intensity and secret beauty; again he could not look away. “You see me,” he heard her say, “in ways no other human can. Except Mag. I have hidden such things from her since she was small, so that she would do my bidding without being distracted by them. But when I first found her, I saw the reflection of my powers in her eyes. She would try to catch the glittering in her hands. Someone left her charcoal. She saw it and connected it to you.” “What are you saying?” His own voice sounded far away, very calm. “That we are somehow kin?” “What do you think?” “I had never seen her before this morning. But when I looked at her, I thought we must have met, in some other time and place.” “Perhaps you did.” She loosed him too abruptly; he felt stranded, bewildered, a fish out of water and all her haunting currents out of reach. Her eyes held human color again. She contemplated him dispassionately, as though she were examining a crooked stitch in a vast and complex tapestry."
More than anything this points to both Mag and Ducon being enigmas to Faey herself.
This and the implications of 'that we are somewhow kin?' I choose to file under 'From the real world' heading.
I've noticed before in other novels, that there comes a point of oversaturation in how much knowledge helps underbuild a cohesive whole and then that when a certain threshold is crossed the writer stops being in complete control. Much the same like me in this 'extras' section. An inability to call a halt the underbuilding of the world that turns into something that actually starts to undermine it.
It's like that part in American Gods where Neil Gaiman just couldn't help himself; where he had to put in the joke that nobody wanted to pick up a hitchhiking Jesus on the road to Jeruzalem, because of how the times and population has changed, despite that the joke undermines his concepts involving multiple gods and the continents attached to them.
He should have adressed a Jesus in Amerika. But instead, in order to not kick against any shins; he didn't want to adress either Jahweh, the Islamic God or the Judeo-christian god, catholicism and so on and so forth... in order to make a succesful joke; as it is he only ends up implying that there's only one incarnation of Jesus, and that one back in the Old world. It shoots a big glowing hole right in the center of AG's mythological system. It's something that is already becoming apparent in the American Gods' tv-show.
But you know, there's a sequel to the book incoming, and because he hasn't actually adressed these things doesn't mean he won't. Gaiman is a cery careful writer, he can still pull his head out of the noose. In a way, if he does this right, there never even was a noose.
To keep this little diversion going, my ultimate take on AG was that it has a system that seems to have alot in common with that of his best friend's novel; Terry Pratchett's Small Gods, which Gaiman claims to have not read. Great minds think alike I suppose, or some sort of mimicry of ideas.
Oh yeah, about that quote...
I suppose what could be referenced here with a different dream or a different light is what Mag states a little further along in the chaper. That ducon has in fact already drawn her before. But as a veiled apparition in a crowded tavern.
It doesn't explain the connection that both feel. Maybe because they both have their origins in the real world they feel connected because they are both more real than the other people around them. Or of course with Ombria as the side of light and the other side the dream they both have in fact come from the dream into the real world.
Ah, I don't know. Ombria in Shadow at this time has become, in my head, a huge ball of tangled ideas with little cohesion left to it. In a way, all the different and endless possibilities have become acceptable and even the same. The contradictions have started to overlap and instead of starting to rule each other out they have become co-dependant.
Dreams, dreams, dreams. I guess it's time to move on.
Maybe I'll one day revisit it, but for now I'm done.
Alternate theories:
But of course, just in case the theory of Ombria as Dark side of the two cities isn't completely correct but still hinges on a dream explanation:
If Ombria is indeed, as Lydea points it out to be, the painted world; the world of Light. then the reflected world is the world of Dark.
Then Ducon's drawings fit as well, because the shadow city of the fan is a more magical place, which works with the obviously superior magic world of the reflected world, and on the fan it does rear up higher and mightier.
Then the opposite of Ombria is the shadow, and its name as well, is Shadow.
Then Ducon's drawings fit as well, because the shadow city of the fan is a more magical place, which works with the obviously superior magic world of the reflected world, and on the fan it does rear up higher and mightier.
Then the opposite of Ombria is the shadow, and its name as well, is Shadow.
For Ducon and mag, and Ducon's father then; maybe it is the opposite. Like salamanders in lightless caves. the other people, living in the dark, loose their pigmentation.
Then to support my theory that the climax points to Faey being (if not the subconsciousness of) the dreamer herself of the world of Light; Then the world of dark must be a dream also.
With a corresponding dreamer aswell.
Or rather a corresponding and opposite dreamer aswell.
The dark to Faey's light side of the moon.
Now I bet the first instinct is to take Domina pearl up for that position; that she somehow came from that other realm through the Dark doorway, or maybe by other means because in the novel the Pearl is without knowledge about what lies on the other side.
So this easily points to my theory of the unknown 'Moon'.
There is also of course another theory.
One that proposes that Lydea and Kyel are in fact not back in Ombria, but in the Reflected world's vision of the city of Ombria. Ducon is not Ducon, but his father.
The Pearl is then a fairy tale taken straight from the other world, maybe alive, maybe dying, maybe dead in that world.
Camas, a lie. conveniently explained by his 'indefinite travels away from Ombria'.
But where would that leave the reflected world's Lydea and Kyel?
They must exist as well, because There was A Royce Greve and a Lydea's Father.
The simply unexplainable and unknowable fact of the location of an original Lydea and Kyel leaves me to believe that this theory is unworkable and unlikely.
Also, Mag is still Mag, and with knowledge of what has come before. Ergo; Lydea and Kyel are in their original world.
So this easily points to my theory of the unknown 'Moon'.
An unworkable alternate hypothesis for the ending: Lydea and Kyel end up in another world than Ombria
There is also of course another theory.
One that proposes that Lydea and Kyel are in fact not back in Ombria, but in the Reflected world's vision of the city of Ombria. Ducon is not Ducon, but his father.
The Pearl is then a fairy tale taken straight from the other world, maybe alive, maybe dying, maybe dead in that world.
Camas, a lie. conveniently explained by his 'indefinite travels away from Ombria'.
But where would that leave the reflected world's Lydea and Kyel?
They must exist as well, because There was A Royce Greve and a Lydea's Father.
The simply unexplainable and unknowable fact of the location of an original Lydea and Kyel leaves me to believe that this theory is unworkable and unlikely.
Also, Mag is still Mag, and with knowledge of what has come before. Ergo; Lydea and Kyel are in their original world.
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