Chapter 13: Lady Silkworm

Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!

Last time, Houck realized that nothing had happened for the past three chapters, so we're back to doing some Plot now.

It's sad that this book still has better pacing than the previous two.

Chapter Thirteen: Lady Silkworm

Kelsey goes to speak with Mr. Dixon.  Mr. Dixon is, if you've forgotten, a Jamaican accent disguised as the ship's captain.  He's still really annoying to read, and I don't think I've ever seen a Jamaican accent written this way in my life.

"Ah, hallo, Miss Kelsey.  And how are we feelin' ta'nite, eh?"

So there's that.

Kelsey tells him that she brought him up some dinner.  He comments that she's looking happier, and she says it's a combination of now dating Kishan and the fact that Randi isn't on the ship anymore.  They share some insults aimed at Randi, and Captain Dixon says that he had to physically lock her out of the wheelhouse to get away from her complaining constantly.  He says that Kelsey's welcome to join him while he eats, which means we get to hear another story that isn't relevant and doesn't accomplish anything.

Joy.

Captain Dixon says that if she looks closely at the "sea birds" around the boat, she'll sometimes see them dropping twigs into the water.  He says that once upon a time there was a girl named Jingwei who loved the ocean.

"For many years de sea accepted her, but dere was a charming sea captain, a good lookin' man, almost as handsome as meself."

He waggled his eyebrows, making me giggle.

Is...is Captain Dixon hitting on Kelsey now, too?

Jingwei fell in love with the captain, who told her that the sea was no place for a woman and that she should stay home and raise a family.  Jingwei said that if she couldn't be on the water, then neither could he, so they both settled down on land, both wishing that they could be on the water.  When Jingwei got pregnant, the sea captain, thinking Jingwei couldn't go out with him, went out to sea.  But the ocean was jealous and sunk his ship, drowning the captain.  Angry, Jingwei rowed out to sea and asked why it took her husband.  The ocean tried to sink Jingwei's boat, but Jingwei turned into a bird.  And that's why seagulls are loud because they're yelling at the ocean.  Um.  And they drop sticks into it to try to fill it up to keep other people from drowning, even though that's not how water displacement works.

Uh-huh.  I have no idea what the point of that story was.  Kelsey pointed out that the ocean stealing Jingwei's husband was like Randi trying to steal Ren/Kishan, but the ocean in the story succeeded in doing that, while Randi didn't.  And, like, I guess when Jingwei and her husband got together, they each sacrificed something they loved to stay together, which made them unhappy, but that was supposed to be a good thing, because Jingwei got mad when the ocean killed her husband?  What?  Also, the two lovers forbidding each other to do something they loved is a good thing and the basis for a healthy relationship?

Shockingly, this is a retelling of a myth in which Houck completely misses the point, adds an unnecessary romantic subplot, and makes really sexist in the process!  The actual story about Jingwei--shocker--doesn't involve a romance at all.  Nuwa, a goddess, went swimming in the Eastern Sea and was unable to return, and she drowned.  In her death, she was transformed into a bird known as Jingwei, which translates to Spirit Guardian.  In an effort to keep anyone else from drowning as she did, she drops twigs and pebbles into the sea.  This is the basis for one of the infamous four-character idioms in Chinese (also known as the bane of any English speaker trying to learn Chinese, because they're very esoteric and difficult to drop into every day speech)--精衛填海, which basically means determination and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.

So, yeah.  Absolutely nothing like what Houck described.

Kelsey goes off to find Kishan, and describes the deck as a "very romantic setting" what with the full moon and everything.

[The water] lapped softly against the ship and gently whispered secrets as the boat pressed on, slipping into her cold embrace.

Lolwat

It's very beautiful and peaceful, and Kishan starts massaging Kelsey to warm her up in the night air.  Her brain is completely used up just, uh, looking at the moon that she doesn't even notice when Kishan starts kissing her.  This girl couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.  He kisses her neck for a while (leaving some nice hickeys as a result, I assume) and slides his hands into her hair, making a joke about how there's still plenty left.

He kisses her some more, but there's absolutely no mention as to what Kelsey's doing throughout all of this except "fidget[ing] slightly," which sounds awkward as hell.

He made me feel cherished and treasured, and I enjoyed his touch.

Yay, I can use my favorite line from Futurama again!

SHOW.  DON'T.  TELL.

She does say that even though his kisses are very nice, they still don't feel right.  Kishan notices that she's not fully into it, and she sees his expression become disappointed when he sees her crying.  She's mad at herself for ruining the moment and apologizes.  He asks if she's sure about him, and Kelsey says that she is, and that it'll just take some time.  It's actually a kind of nice moment where they each understand where the other is coming from, acknowledge that it's hard right now, but that it'll improve in the future.  Almost like--gasp--a genuine human interaction!  Wow!  It only took us *checks page number* 230 pages to get here!  In the third book of the series!

Scene break!  Ren's been out of sight for a week.  Kishan hasn't tried to kiss Kelsey again, which both relieves and stresses her out.

We finally docked in Mahabalipuram, or the City of Seven Pagodas, a week later.

That highly plot-relevant sentence is just plonked down into the narrative.  Neat.

It was time to start our third quest

Hold on.  We're currently sitting at 43% of the way through the book, and it's just now time to start.  Ugh.

It was time to start our third quest, and the idea of dealing with dragons both excited and frightened me.

DON'T REMIND ME OF BETTER BOOKS, PLEASE.

Apparently it's not quite time to start the quest, though, since Kelsey helpfully tells us that she and Kishan do some sightseeing on his motorcycle and they spend the day shopping.  He buys her a fancy diamond bracelet, just in case you forgot he, too, is rich and therefore Better Than You.

Kelsey agrees to wear it as long as he lets her get him a gift in return.  She makes him wait outside while she goes shopping, and when she joins him she makes him promise to hear her out and not be offended.  

Eagerly pulling my present from the bag, he held it in the air, stared at it in confusion, and then looked at me with a raised eyebrow.  "What is this supposed to be?"

"It's a collar for a very small dog."

He dangled the black leather collar between his thumb and forefinger.  "It says Kishan on the side in gold letters."

Oooh.  Kinky.

Okay, no, it's not a sex thing.  Even though buying your boyfriend a leather collar with his name engraved in it very much sounds like a sex thing.

Kelsey says that the first time Ren changed into a man, he was wearing a collar, and used it to prove to Kelsey that he was her tiger.  He got rid of it, because it was a reminder of his captivity.  I just looked at the first book, and he was wearing a collar, but there's been absolutely no discussion of how it's ~symbolic~ of his ~angst~ because it literally isn't mentioned again after he complains about wearing it.

Kelsey says that when she met Kishan, he'd been wild and ignored the human side of himself for a very long time.  For him, the collar is a symbol of rejoining the human world and that he has a home with Kelsey.  Kishan, of course, loves it, and says that he'll treasure it forever.

They head back to the boat, where Mr. Kadam and Ren are standing on the dock.  Ren comments on Kelsey's new bracelet, and says that she looks happy.  She feels uncomfortable around Ren.

Something tangible sparked between us but only for an instant.  A tug that was there one second and gone the next.

Because never forget that they're Meant To Be and are Destined To Be Together.

They take one of the smaller boats to shore and head toward the temple.  As a precaution, Ren and Kishan are carrying their weapons.

"Mr. Kadam, why does this temple have two buildings?"

I cannot begin to express to you how much I hate reading conversations that start off with, "Mr. Kadam, why is [X]?"  They literally accomplish nothing and only give an excuse to copy-paste a Wikipedia article into the story I'm trying to enjoy, and are rarely even relevant to what's going on.  Hate.

Each building is a shrine, and there's technically a third one that they can't see from where they're standing.  Shiva is worshiped there, so there are large statues of bulls that represent Shiva's servant Nandi.  As they approach, they also see a shrine to Durga.  They explore the temple to decide what to do.  Mr. Kadam eventually calls them into the inner sanctum of the temple, known as the "womb of the temple."  This doesn't actually mean anything, and I think only exists so that Houck can say that she looked up what the temple looks like in real life on Google.

Kelsey sees something out of the corner of her eye and turns to look at it.

A beautiful woman, dressed in white with a gossamer veil over her hair, was standing on the shore.  She pressed a finger to her lips as she gazed up at me before melting into a nearby mulberry tree.

I'm spooked.  This is like something out of a horror movie.

Kelsey describes exactly what she saw to the others:

"I saw something.  A woman, she was standing there.  She was dressed all in white, and she looked Indian or maybe Asian.  She sort of disappeared by actually walking inside that mulberry tree."

Houck, we know.  We JUST READ THE EXACT SAME DESCRIPTION.  TWO SENTENCES BEFORE.

Kelsey examines the carvings again, and notices a carving of a woman at a loom with the fabric unraveled.  She follows the thread through the rest of the carvings.  It wraps around the figures in the carving, and it eventually disappears into a corner.

When I hit the corner at the end of the trail [with my thumb] something strange happened.  My thumb glowed red--only my thumb--and when I stepped back from the wall, I saw a butterfly crawl out of a crack.

I feel like I'm having a fever dream.  Is it just me, or is this really random?  Especially since butterflies have nothing to do with anything else in the book?  Yes, I know it's probably symbolic of something, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that is.

Also, I have no idea why Kelsey calls attention to the fact that just her thumb starts to glow, as if that makes any difference in how her undefined powers actually work.  How is just her thumb glowing different from her whole hand glowing?  Let me tell you, I've read this whole series, and I don't have an answer for that.  I've read the whole series and I don't have an answer for what her powers even are in the first place.

She realizes after it crawls out of the wall completely that it's actually a moth, not a butterfly.  This still means absolutely nothing the grand scheme of things because moths don't mean anything special, either.

Then Kelsey helpfully describes what a moth looks like, just in case you're an idiot and don't know what a moth is.

It was hairy, almost furry, with large black eyes and some kind of brown feathery antennae that reminded me of the teeth on a baleen whale.

I'm just surprised that apparently Kelsey is more familiar with what a baleen whale is than what a moth is.  This book is so bad.

The moth flaps its wings, and a smooth section of the wall begins to light up with threads.  Kelsey touches one, and it wraps around her hand in the design of Phet's henna tattoo.  The lines on the wall continue to move and gather together in the shape of a woman, and Kelsey finds herself drawn into the, uh, drawing of the woman until it's just the two of them standing there together on a beach.

Um.  What?

Nothing like this has happened before--any other vision is always caused directly by the MacGuffins or inhaling magical vape juice--and never happens again.  It's just another bit of weird, inconsistent worldbuilding.

Anyway, it's the same woman Kelsey saw earlier.  How was the woman floating around outside and melting into trees when she's stuck inside of a magical moth drawing inside of the temple?  Don't worry about it.

She gives Kelsey an embroidery frame that has an unfinished picture of Durga inside.  She also gives Kelsey a needle and thread and tells her to sew Durga's necklace in.  She shows her how to do the first couple and then lets Kelsey finish it.

Kelsey asks who she is, and she says that she has a lot of names, but she's normally called Lady Silkworm.  But the magical animal that she communicates through is a moth...?

What is happening.

Kelsey says that she's the woman who weaves silk from the prophecy.  She also seems to have completely forgotten that, uh, Durga told her to find Lady Silkworm when they spoke earlier.  Lady Silkworm says that she used to love to weave silk, but now it's her penance for betraying the one she loved.  So she launches into another story that's barely relevant to the quest.  I say "barely" relevant because this one's at least told by someone mentioned in the prophecy.  It still doesn't convey any useful information or anything meaningful.

She says that a long time ago women were admired for their skill in needlework, and she was the most talented embroiderer in the entire empire.  Her father rejected fifty offers of marriage by the time she was sixteen in the hopes that she could get an even better offer down the road, but she met a man when she was twenty.

His family made silk from silkworms, and sold her the thread she used for her designs.  They were especially useful in making the wedding clothes for the future bride of the emperor, who still hadn't been chosen.  She lived in the palace near the emperor as she sewed his fiancee's clothes and changed them almost every week when the emperor changed his mind.  The emperor also flirted outrageously with her, because that's what all men do in Houck's universe.  Because she kept having to change the clothes, she got to know the young man who sold her the silk very well, and she fell in love with him.  So she decided to make him a special gift and sewed him a fancy scarf.

Soon, they agreed to "secretly elope" (which is, uh, nice and redundant) and run off together after finishing the emperor's commission.  She finished the final piece--a veil--and let the emperor know that she was done, and--shock of all shocks--it turned out that she'd been the fiancee all along!  Whomp whomp!  So she said that she wanted to make him a matching kerchief to go with her veil, and while she sewed that she sent out word to her beloved about what the emperor wanted her to do.  I'm getting serious Scheherazade vibes from that--just let me sew for you/tell you a story, you can marry me/kill me in the morning. 

Her lover told her that he'd come back for her that night wearing the scarf she made for him and they could run away forever.  That night, a horse showed up with the scarf around its neck, but the man never showed up.  So she stayed with the emperor, who told her the next morning that, duh, the horse was the young man all along.  The emperor took her outside, where the young man was getting whipped.

"'Please don't hurt him,' I begged.

"'You can stop his torture whenever you wish.  Just tell me that I'm mistaken and that this young man did not come for you.  that all of this is just a simple misunderstanding. [. . .]'"

[snip]

"'This young man did not come for me, and I do not love him!  I have no wish to see him harmed!' [. . .]"

Hmm...

This bears an awfully strong resemblance to, uh, only one of the greatest movies of all time, The Princess Bride!

In relevant part:

HUMPERDINCK: Surrender!

WESTLEY: You mean you wish to surrender to me?  Very well, I accept.

HUMPERDINCK: I give you full marks for bravery.  Don't make yourself a fool.

[snip]

HUMPERDINCK: For the last time, surrender!

WESTLEY: Death first!

BUTTERCUP: Will you promise not to hurt him?

[snip]

BUTTERCUP: If we surrender, and I return with you, will you promise not to hurt this man?

[snip]

BUTTERCUP: I thought you were dead once, and it almost destroyed me.  I could not bear it if you died again, not when I could save you.

So, um.  Fucking identical to this scene.  Especially when the emperor throws him into the Pit of Despair kills him right after.

Actually this whole story bears an uncomfortable resemblance to The Princess Bride, which sucks.  Because it reminds me that I could be watching The Princess Bride right now, but instead I'm reading this.

I fell to the floor in despair while the emperor threatened, 'Remember this lesson, little bird.  I will not be made a cuckhold.'"

Hee hee

"That just makes you a beta cuck."

After the emperor left, Durga showed up and offered to help Lady Silkworm escape the emperor, with the catch that she could never return to a mortal life.  So she's stuck here in this temple for all of eternity, "[s]till wrapped in her cocoon of sorrow," "always stitching . . . to bind others" but "remain[ing] alone," which really makes me think she got the short end of the stick in this deal.  That honestly sounds like a never-ending, torturous nightmare.

"But I will tell you now, young one, without your love--life is nothing.  Without your mate, you are utterly alone."  She dropped her frame and grasped my hands.  "Above all else, I beg you to trust the one you love."

Gee, that's a great message to send to impressionable teenage girls going through tumultuous and, especially, short relationships!  If you don't find love (or, more accurately, force yourself into a relationship with your teenage crush, which is literally the advice Lady Silkworm is giving to Kelsey), you're doomed to die suffering and alone.

Wow.  I hate this book.

Lady Silkworm takes the fabric Kelsey was sewing and gives it to her to help in the future.  Then she tells Kelsey to get the hell out of her carving because it's too painful to talk about for any longer.  Kelsey's back in the temple and sees a silkworm crawl back into the crack in the wall.  Where'd the moth go?  Don't worry about it.

[Edit from the future: I'm an idiot--silkworms are caterpillars.  I explain why this still doesn't work in the next chapter.]

Closing Thoughts

Boy that sure was...random.  Literally the only point of meeting Lady Silkworm was so that Kelsey could get the absolutely stellar advice that she's nothing without a boyfriend.  And not just any boyfriend--Ren, specifically, because every time he's on screen Kelsey's like ~OH BUT I STILL LOVE HIM~ and it's really annoying.

Like, I get wanting to write about how ~love~ saves the day.  I'll readily admit that I fucking love, ha ha, stories where protagonists succeed through the power of love.  It's wholesome and it makes me feel good.  But, like, those stories tend to have a bit more nuance than just saying "date this guy or your life is pointless," you know?  The Harry Potter series is about how all kinds of love triumph over evil, whether it's romantic, platonic, or between parents and children.  There are countless other examples, but they all boil down to love being that extra something that the bad guys don't have.  Not that you're worthless without it.

Next time, Chapter 14: Of Dragons and Lost Continents!  The dragons are finally here!  Halfway through the book, but they're still here!