In the house of the taxi driver
Enter Vertu and Cheever
In which Vertu Dysan greets the new day.
The story is subtitled “A Minor Melant’i Play for Snow Season”, which offers a hint at what it’s likely to be about. Melant’i plays involve dramatic consquences revolving around points of correct behaviour; the examples we’ve had described seem to generally end with dead bodies, and sometimes with buildings burning to the ground.
Our protagonist, it appears, is Vertu dea’San, the taxi driver who first appeared in Carpe Diem and then featured in Skyblaze. The fact that she’s listed twice in the dramatis personae, once in her melant’i as a taxi driver of Surebleak and once in her melant’i as the former Delm of Wylan, suggests that she might be involved in whatever tangle of melant’i is to be played out.
Also of interest in the dramatis personae: “Yulie Shaper, a farmer” accompanied by “Mary, his spouse”, which puts this some time after those two regularised their relationship at the conclusion of Accepting the Lance.
Speaking of relationships, I wasn’t expecting the revelation that Vertu is now going steady with Cheever McFarland. Doesn’t entirely surprise me, though.
A couple of things seem to have shifted spellings since Skyblaze, where Vertu’s partner in the taxi service was Jemie and the neighbourhood where she lives was the Hearstings (here “Jemmie” and “Hearstrings”).
Toward the end of the chapter there’s some more foreshadowing of what the story holds: Vertu pondering the problem of the empty house (which I’m pretty sure I spotted as probable foreshadowing even on the first time through) and the arrival of a spacecraft bringing new visitors (and possibly new taxi passengers) to Surebleak (which I only just now spotted, as I was typing up this entry).
I wonder if the Tommy who shows up at the end of the chapter, and who covers one wake-the-day shift per Surebleak week for the taxi service, is Tommy Lee who is employed as a driver (and other things) by Clan Korval. The dramatis personae doesn’t say.
Paul: The story is subtitled “A Minor Melant’i Play for Snow Season”
Interestingly, however, it is not written as a play. Yes we have the list of dramatis personae (with the exception of Tommy, as you note at the end) BUT the text is not written at all like a play (which would have required a lot more work on the part of the authors)—identifying each speaker in the margin, insetting all the the spoken text, using monologues instead of internal thoughts, stage directions rather than exposition, etc.
Confession: I am also annoyed about the cover. Jelaza Kazone, the house, is supposed to wrap around Jelaza Kazone, the Tree, isn’t it? We’ve already been tod that access to the Tree is only through the house, and if they’re still using their original front door, then the Tree is so huge that it stretches its branches over the house and into the front drive . . . hmmmph.
Anyway, the additional comments I had were only two:
1) Vertu and Cheever, I never would have guessed, but it makes sense
2) She is shown to be quite attached to the Tree even though she hasn’t really been close to it. I like the descriptions of her observations.
I noted the same about the front cover illustration.
Personally, after some of the chapbook covers there have been in the past, I’m inclined to count myself happy if I can look at the cover illustration and figure out what thing in the story it’s meant to be depicting, and not sweat the details.
Interestingly, however, it is not written as a play.
I’ve sometimes wondered if “melant’i play” was a deliberate play on words: both a story in play format and a story depicting the interplay between various melant’is. This story isn’t the first, but it is the second.