Can't believe I'm 10 pages into this fucking thing.
***
Page 13, Paragraph 8 (ends at the top of page 14):
I think, and there's nothing I can think of that will help me. There it stands, bigger than me, the shagfoal looking down with eyes like the sun - eyes that I can't look away from. In between her big dark forepaws, her pups crawl on their bellies, tasting and sniffing, but I can't look down from her eyes, eyes that are getting bigger and brighter; they're now so big and bright that it's like I'm surrounded by fire. They become so bright that I can't look at them - I shut my eyes now, and they're so bright that I can still see the light through my eyelids.
Page 14, Paragraph 1:
Now everything becomes strange.
Paragraph 2:
I'm not standing anymore - I'm down in the dirt behind the log, and I still see the bright light from the shagfoal's eyes through my shut eyelids. Now I open them, slowly. I'm really scared.
Paragraph 3:
The brightness is no longer from the shagfoal's eyes. The brightness is the brightness of sunrise, and I look and see that the shagfoal isn't around anymore; her pups aren't either. I stand up now, my legs all wet with piss, and walk by where I see the ghost-beasts. I bend over to look. There are no pawprints in the dirt, nor is there any other sign of them.
Showing posts with label page 13. Show all posts
Showing posts with label page 13. Show all posts
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Page 13, Paragraphs 4 - 7; Notes
Enter the shagfoal.
***
Page 13, Paragraph 4:
Now it's dark, and I'm standing up by the logs and I don't understand how it is that I'm standing there with my eyes open. I'm a little frightened as I look around, and now I hear a noise behind me, like someone walking on dry leaves. I turn to see, and now I'm more than just a little frightened.
Paragraph 5:
There is a shagfoal* standing in the grass less than a dozen feet** away from me. She looks at me - her eyes are brighter than fire and she's a big as a tree stump. I piss down my leg - it's warm, then cold.
Paragraph 6:
Around the shagfoal's feet in the dark there are little shapes moving - they are as ugly as her. They are black and eyeless - I figure out that they're shagfoal pups, crawling and scratching beneath their mother. Their tongues are long, white and worm-like, and they wave them around in front of themselves to taste and smell the air. They're silent, and I'm more afraid of them than I am of their mother.
Paragraph 7:
The shagfoal looks at me, and I have no strength to move - it's like I'm made of stone. I think hard about shagfoals, so I can think of something that'll help me. My people say that the shagfoal are big and frightening dogs, the kind that used to be around during the Ice Age, like the Urks, and now, like the Urk-kine, they've passed away. Only their ghosts walk the earth now, up this world and down the other, and where the barriers between worlds have become thin, as they are at a crossroads or a river-bridge, the shagfoal come.
*A "huge black dog", as Neil Gaiman describes it in the book's introduction - see this Wikipedia entry for more information
**i.e., less than 4 meters
Artist unknown (from es.geocities.com)
***
Page 13, Paragraph 4:
Now it's dark, and I'm standing up by the logs and I don't understand how it is that I'm standing there with my eyes open. I'm a little frightened as I look around, and now I hear a noise behind me, like someone walking on dry leaves. I turn to see, and now I'm more than just a little frightened.
Paragraph 5:
There is a shagfoal* standing in the grass less than a dozen feet** away from me. She looks at me - her eyes are brighter than fire and she's a big as a tree stump. I piss down my leg - it's warm, then cold.
Paragraph 6:
Around the shagfoal's feet in the dark there are little shapes moving - they are as ugly as her. They are black and eyeless - I figure out that they're shagfoal pups, crawling and scratching beneath their mother. Their tongues are long, white and worm-like, and they wave them around in front of themselves to taste and smell the air. They're silent, and I'm more afraid of them than I am of their mother.
Paragraph 7:
The shagfoal looks at me, and I have no strength to move - it's like I'm made of stone. I think hard about shagfoals, so I can think of something that'll help me. My people say that the shagfoal are big and frightening dogs, the kind that used to be around during the Ice Age, like the Urks, and now, like the Urk-kine, they've passed away. Only their ghosts walk the earth now, up this world and down the other, and where the barriers between worlds have become thin, as they are at a crossroads or a river-bridge, the shagfoal come.
*A "huge black dog", as Neil Gaiman describes it in the book's introduction - see this Wikipedia entry for more information
**i.e., less than 4 meters
Artist unknown (from es.geocities.com)
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Page 12, Paragraph 6; Page 13, Paragraphs 1-3; Notes
Back where we started.
***
Page 12, Paragraph 6:
My people say that there's no good in making markings. Markings take their shape from trees and dogs and so forth and say, "This is 'tree'", "This is 'dog'", yet they're nothing but markings.* If a man looks at them his thoughs all become crazy, so that he can't understand what's real and what's a marking. I've heard it said that many markings are so old that they were made by Urks and people of that kind back in the Ice Age. Now the Urk-kine are no longer in the world, yet many say their descendants** are below [at the bottom of?] the hills, deep in their caves, where they hide to catch those of us above. It's not good to look on markings.
Page 13, Paragraph 1:
I close my eyes and take another way around the open grass and the stone. I trip on a root and scratch my face on briars, but I don't open my eyes until the stone is far behind me.
Paragraph 2:
I come out of the trees, and walking up a hill with the sun like fire behind it, I see the pigs, and I run down now and the pigs become logs, and here I am now, sitting on them, with no other times to think of.
Paragraph 3:
I scratch the scab on my knee and look up in the sky. Night is coming as I sit thinking, so I can't see the sky-beasts now, yet I can see their little eyes, bright up there in the dark. I'm cold all over, and I lie behind the log, out of the wind. I shut my eyes, so that the darkness will come to me as it has come in the world.
*Ceci n'est pas une pipe, anyone?
**I think this is what he means by "little people"
***
Page 12, Paragraph 6:
My people say that there's no good in making markings. Markings take their shape from trees and dogs and so forth and say, "This is 'tree'", "This is 'dog'", yet they're nothing but markings.* If a man looks at them his thoughs all become crazy, so that he can't understand what's real and what's a marking. I've heard it said that many markings are so old that they were made by Urks and people of that kind back in the Ice Age. Now the Urk-kine are no longer in the world, yet many say their descendants** are below [at the bottom of?] the hills, deep in their caves, where they hide to catch those of us above. It's not good to look on markings.
Page 13, Paragraph 1:
I close my eyes and take another way around the open grass and the stone. I trip on a root and scratch my face on briars, but I don't open my eyes until the stone is far behind me.
Paragraph 2:
I come out of the trees, and walking up a hill with the sun like fire behind it, I see the pigs, and I run down now and the pigs become logs, and here I am now, sitting on them, with no other times to think of.
Paragraph 3:
I scratch the scab on my knee and look up in the sky. Night is coming as I sit thinking, so I can't see the sky-beasts now, yet I can see their little eyes, bright up there in the dark. I'm cold all over, and I lie behind the log, out of the wind. I shut my eyes, so that the darkness will come to me as it has come in the world.
*Ceci n'est pas une pipe, anyone?
**I think this is what he means by "little people"
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