Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 26

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As Harry runs the rest of the way to the Mothers' cottage, he fills the reader in on the nature of the Nevernever, how it's not quite a place in the conventional sense, despite being somewhere you can physically go, but a malleable, magical realm, containing every otherworld, spirit world, and afterlife ever thought of by humans. Faerie is part of the Nevernever that is in some sense "close" to the mortal world, closely connected to nature and its cycles, and so it tends to have things like consistent gravity and something we'd recognize as weather, but Harry emphasizes that it's not the mortal world, and letting the similarities lull you into a false sense of security can get you dead or worse. And he's pretty sure he's right in the heart of it. 

The cottage itself stands on a low hill, surrounded by several rings of menhirs, or standing stones, some of them fallen. I initially thought this might be a direct reflection of Stonehenge, but there aren't any lintel stones, and I can't find any other European stone circles with concentric rings. Rujm el-Hiri has concentric rings, but consists of smaller rocks, not menhirs. The cottage emits the smells of baking bread and mildew, which I suppose makes sense as a reflection of the mildest and (at least in a European context) most commonplace forms of creation and destruction specific to human-built structures. It's noteworthy, actually, the of all the Queens, the Mothers seem most closely tied to the domestic (in both senses, "at home" and "intranational"), while the Ladies may be the most closely connected to nature. The Queens are sort of structural and symbolic, and perhaps in some ways as...societal as the Mothers, but it's noteworthy that they are leaders in war, which if you're doing it right (in the sense of "winning", not the sense of "behaving ethically") does not happen in your own space. Of course the Mothers are, as we discover in Cold Days, also sort of cosmic, dealing most directly with things that affect like, the nature of reality in a way the Queens and Ladies don't as much. There's a snowflake symbol on the door, matching Lloyd Slate's brand, and no visible corresponding symbol for Summer, which is interesting. Notably, with Midsummer coming up, Summer is still technically ascendant for another like, 13 hours or something, suggesting that either ownership of the cottage belongs to whichever of the Mothers is currently weaker (balance) or there are actually two cottages, and they move between them as the seasons change, which at least sometimes puts them in the home of the Mother whose court is currently subordinate. If they move, it could be that they're in the Winter cottage until tonight and then moving, that they already moved because Midsummer is nearly upon them, or that they move on the equinoxes instead of the solstices (or maybe on Samhain and Beltane), which might match better with cycles of creation and destruction in both human activity and the natural world than doing it on the solstices, but halfway between the Vernal and Autumnal equinoxes, I'd still expect us to be firmly in Summer territory, so I think in any of these scenarios except the second one (they already moved because it's about to be Winter's turn), they're in the home of the Mother whose season it isn't. This makes a certain degree of practical sense, given that Winter isn't really up to like, standing right now, but I also enjoy it as symbolism. There's the balance thing, but it's also...it's like shabbat, kinda. When its not your season, you get to stay home, you get to rest. When Harry visits the Mothers in Cold Days, he gets teleported straight to the interior, so I don't think I can readily prove or disprove the "two cottages" option. It looks the same on the inside, so far as Harry recalls from his single previous visit. When they go outside, it's into a forest of deciduous trees the size of redwoods, and there's a footpath, not just spongy grass, which may mean it's a different house or simply that it's the same house in a different place. Or, I suppose, the same house in the same place but the landscape has radically changed for some Faerie reason. In any case, Harry initially figures this is just Mother Winter's place, which is a reasonable guess under the circumstances, especially because her energy is palpable even through the walls and door. 

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Inside, the cottage pretty much looks like a cottage. Probably the most notable features are a loom, which I wish was described in like, any detail, and Mother Winter's various sets of dentures on the mantle. Puzzling, the description says they're on the "hearth", but since they're also "above the fireplace", I think we're meant to understand that what's called a "fireplace" here is, in fact, a hearth? Mother Winter herself sits in her rocking chair. She makes a remark to Summer, who either wasn't previously here or wasn't previously visible, because there's really nowhere someone can hide while dusting the shelves in a one room cottage. Summer walks right up to Harry, physically takes hold of his head, pulls up his eyelids a little, and says that he has "scars here", by which I assume she means on his soul, famously accessible through the eyes in this setting, and not on his physical eyes or eyelids. Then she has him stick out his tongue, examines it and his throat, and says he has strength, and can be clever at times. Harry, who hasn't gotten a ton of sleep recently and has largely been cooperating out of startled confusion, gets his shit together enough to greet her properly, and she introduces herself and Winter, explaining that the latter isn't getting up because it's the "wrong season". Then she tells Harry to hand her the broom. Winter says the dust will just come back, and Summer says it's the principle of the thing, and asks Harry to back her up. Which is, y'know, it may not be the best possible metaphor for what Harry does, and why he does it, but it's not a bad metaphor. He should have kept this one in mind for when he gets asked about it in Death Masks. Harry says he has questions, and the Mothers say they'll each answer one of his questions for each of theirs that he answers. Harry says he didn't come there so they could ask him questions, which is honestly both a little rude and very stupid. He's on two concussions and one missed night of sleep at this point in the book, and I'm not at all sure it justifies his being this stupid. Maybe he...forgot that he's dealing with faeries? He can't possibly have forgotten that you normally need to trade with the fae to get anything from them, not after having remembered it when talking to Lea like, three hours ago. And these two overwhelmingly, incomprehensibly powerful fae, from whom he needs answers in order to get anywhere, just named their price, unprompted, and that price is fair, safe, and comprehensible, and he's fucking arguing with them about it? The Mothers are more polite about this than I would have been, and ask if he's sure he didn't come to answer questions. He agrees, and they ask which is more important, the body or the soul. Harry's answer is basically "it depends", although he needs two tries to get that detailed enough for the Mothers' liking. When asked to explain his answer, he says it's a stupid question, it's not as simple as one or the other, and Summer says "Precisely" in a very significant way, and tells Winter that he "sees what she does not". I assume "she" is Mab here, although Harry thinks it's Maeve. 

They make Harry wait to ask his question while Summer pours tea for herself and Winter, and when he asks who killed the summer Knight, and who stole his mantle, they refuse to answer and dismiss the question as irrelevant, which like, do they get to do that? They say the important thing isn't who, but how and why, which is fair, but not an answer. Summer asks him what the theft of the mantle accomplished, and Harry thinks about how mostly it has prompted war between the Courts, to which Winter says "exactly", because apparently she can hear him thinking. I'd love to know if Summer can also hear him thinking, or if this is related to his current connection to Winter as its Emissary. Winter prompts him to think about how the theft was accomplished, which brings my count of questions they've asked him up to three. Harry talks out loud about what you can do with something that's been stolen, which wasn't really what she asked, saying that it can be hidden away, destroyed, or sold to someone else. Winter says it can't be destroyed, on account of conservation of matter and energy, so Harry revises this to "rendered valueless". I'm getting the sense here that even having made a bargain to answer Harry's questions, the Mothers are very limited in what they can say outright, but they're trying their best to get him to the right answer anyway. And Harry does get to the answer, concluding that the mantle must have been passed to a new Knight, and that the Knight must have been changed in some way, to take the mantle out of the balance of power. So he finally asks a question they'll answer: how is the mantle passed to a new Knight? They tell him it goes to the nearest vessel of Summer, and she chooses the next Knight, which seems to indicate that "vessel of Summer" here means "existing Queen". Notably this is not what "vessel" means when the Lady's mantles are moving around in Cold Days. Not sure what the deal is there. It would make sense of the Knight's mantle works differently, but using "vessel" for both things seems needlessly confusing. However, this does pretty well narrow down our potential culprits to Aurora, since the mantle would have reverted to one of the Queens as soon as Reuel died, and if Titania had it she wouldn't be going to war about it, and if Mother Summer had it she presumably wouldn't be helping Harry figure this out.

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Harry initially figures that having identified the culprit, the situation is pretty well sorted, but the Mothers make it clear that it's too late for either them or Harry to intervene with Mab and Titania, so he'll have to find another way to solve things. He asks what they can do, and Summer says she can't do anything, but Winter gives him the Unraveling. When she describes what it does, he asks if it could fix Susan, and she confirms it. She also clarifies that it's not a gift, but a necessity, and Summer says that it's his now, to do with what he will. It seems tolerably obvious that they expect him to need it to fix the mantle situation, but Harry walks out of there thinking he's gonna be able to use it for Susan, after he solves the case, although he's aware enough to realize that he's still got a decent chance of getting killed in the process. By my count, Summer still owes him two answers, and Winter three, so when we get to Cold Days we're gonna be on the lookout for information they don't make him pay for. (Although with Winter this is complicated by his status as her Knight). Before leaving, he apologizes if he harmed their unicorn, and Winter asks "What unicorn?" He figures out what this implies just in time for Elaine to lift the veil from Grum and herself so Grum can hit Harry in the head, knocking him unconscious. Concussion count: 3

Does Harry get fewer than three concussions in any of these book? I really am going to make a graph when I do the retrospective for this book, and update it for each one going forward. Hopefully I will have the next chapter done in another couple of days. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!