Tammy’s Reviews > The Horse and His Boy > Status Update

The talk of ghouls and ghosts and tombs all point to nigredo. The horses are afraid to swim with riders on their backs. Plus people on ships might see them. Shasta suggests they go past the city and cross the river where it is narrower but people might recognize Aravis and Bree, even in disguise. Hwin’s suggestion is to go through the city in disguise, but Bree is hard to disguise to anyone with an experienced eye.

Aravis calls her a tool of her stepmother. He also questions her age, but Bree points out that Tarkeenahs marry young. Then Shasta feels left out because Bree and Aravis run in the same circles and they are talking about the old associations. When Bree tells his story, Shasta feels mocked by all his falls. It wasn’t intentional but he feels hurt. Hwin is shy. Aravis completely ignores Shasta.

She is wearing her brother’s armor and has taken jewels and food. She saddles Hwin and leaves. They go to a crossroads called Azim Balda and she posts a letter from the man she’s supposed to marry to her father. It states that he met her in the woods and they decide to go ahead and get married. The letter invites the wedding party to his place with a dowry, of course. Shasta questions her about the maid (unfair).

Zardeenah is the Lady of the Night (trifold goddess of the moon, more darkness). Hwin’s description has caused Aravis to long for Narnia. She uses deceit to runaway by pretending she needs to go to make her sacrifice to Zardeenah for three days. He agrees. She goes to the slave who cared for her as a child and has him write a letter. The night before leaving, she drugs her maid and sneaks out after all are asleep.

Aravis thinks a fear of death has caused her to lose her reason, and she must be hallucinating. She makes a second attempt, but Hwin puts her head between the dagger and Aravis. Beheading? This part reminds me of the Gospel. Both horses preach the wonders of Narnia and convince them to go! They must have forgotten Aslan, but they remember Narnia. She invokes a Calormen trinity and begs to go.

This might be a twin identity quest. Aravis is betrothed to an evil man of *base* birth who is 60 yo (Babylonian ten), who has a hump on his back and looks like an ape. Her eye is darkened, and she wishes to be cut off from both heads of household (current and future). She gets her brother's dagger to kill herself. Wait, doesn't Mercury awaken the dead? Hwin begs Aravis to stop.

Ch. 3 This has a Biblical feeling in Aravis's recitation of her genealogy. I love the high storytelling here. Her family structure mirrors that of Shasta later in the book except that she is the victim of a wicked stepmother's whose child crowds out Aravis. Her mother died. Her brother died in battle, fighting people from the west. Death is black, and the sun is dark in her stepmother's eyes while she lives at home.

I wonder if the beheading is being separated from the head of the household at the beginning. Also, in stories and the Bible, the weak relies on deception in order to survive. They meet danger when between chaos (the sea) and danger (the forest). In this moment, Bree is humbled for the second time because lions terrify him. I love the wisecrack about nobody wanting to read student essays, and this is pre-5-paragraph.

They do cross water. So crossing water is the end of his old life as someone from the North and crossing water is the end of his old life as a Calormen.

Shasta asks for answers in a stable and a miracle happens. Already there are doubles: fake father and real father (we don’t know him), two horses, Shasta and the mysterious rider, two lions. Bree does treat Shasta rather harsh for being an ignorant, peasant boy, but he is willing to teach him. They fear the other pair is shadowing them so they seek more darkness (under the cover of a cloud).