Tammy’s Reviews > The Princess and the Goblin > Status Update

Grandmother takes a silver casket from an odd-looking cabinet. She takes out some ointment with an odor of roses and lilies that fills the room. She rubs the ointment on Irene’s swollen hand, driving away pain and heat. She gets out some gossamer cambric and wraps her hand. She agrees to go to bed with her grandmother who gives her three kisses (forehead, cheek, mouth).

She needs to work another week for it to be ready. The grandmother takes her to her bedroom but grabs the wrong hand. She looks at Irene’s wound GRAVELY. Her room is an image of the heavens: dome-shaped, large, lofty. A spherical lamp shines in the center. A large oval bed has a rose-colored coverlid. The velvet curtains around it are pale blue. The walls are blue spangled with silver stars.

Grandmother is spinning a very thin thread that is a silvery gray color with very mild glitter. Her pigeons bring the strong spider web material from over the sea! What an image!!!!!! Normally, a spider uses the thread to make a web to trap a victim OR to wrap the victim and suck its blood. This thread will be used against the goblins (already given a spidery image)! BOOM! She only spins it with moonlight (runes?).

Iren asks why she couldn’t find her. It’s because she didn’t believe. Even if Lootie saw the grandmother, she would rub her eyes and talk herself out of believing. Irene realizes she’s been acting like Lootie and she’s ashamed. Wait! The first time she visited her grandmother, the lady washed her face and hands. Is that a white stage? If so, then I need to look for black before that. Hmmmm.

The moonlight sines the path on the stairs. Her heart wakes up with a desire to see her. She wonders if her grandmother is a dream, she’s more likely to find her while dreaming. She walks the same path as before but with more hope: she wants to realreality-really find her grandmother. At the top of the stairs there is no moonlight, so she follows the him of a spinning wheel. A sweet voice calls her in.

She plays with an old brooch and is PRICKED by the pin. Whoa! Is it the end of paradise for her? Her thumb swells up and gives her a lot of pain. The doctor comes and cares for her and then she goes to bed and dreams all sorts of things. She wakes up in pain. Her thumb is hot and she thinks the moonlight will cool it. She gets up and goes to the room with the staircase. The moonlight illuminates it in an unusual way.

He is the impotent father, of course. Even thought he leaves six attendants, three to stand watch outside of the house every night. Something undoubtedly will happen.

It is an unusual garden because it’s cultivated but because the mountain mingles with it there is heather. It’s like the horizontal meeting the vertical!!! The king talks to her about the night they were out. He will have to talk to Lootie but Irene blames herself. She explains that Lootie has been so careful ever since. The king is worried that it only takes once. He goes and talks with Lootie who cries.

The king does not acknowledge the grandmother in the attic, no matter how carefully Irene describes her. When Irene says it must have been a dream, a white pigeon lands on her head. When her father tries to take it, it flies toward the sun and disappears in a flash. Later, when they walk, Irene invites him again and he declines for the grandmother must invite him. They sit in the garden.

Ch. 9 It is fine weather that has moved from cold and wet. Irene thinks sometimes of the goblins and always of her debt to Curdie. Her father the king pays a visit with all his soldiers and much heraldry (quicksilver). The kig has an air of Jupiter: blue eyes, nose like an eagle, long beard. The line about their hair mingling reminds me of Faramir and Eowyn. After he eats and drinks, she talks about grandmother.