Does every chapter need magic? And how extensive or deep must the magic go?
Chapter Seven is mainly an action chapter: Hans, after sneaking into the Charcoal Burners’ camp, spies on Yellow Socks and Corbluncz (where does Bardelys dream up such awkward names? Names are not his strong point), is caught by the soldiers, and escapes with his life. But he sprains his ankle and hears them closing in on him in the fog-shrouded darkness…
I was about to write that there was no magic here. But there is, a little: we see for the first time some of the effectiveness of Clutchfast, the White Lady’s magical falconer’s glove. When Yellow Socks dons the glove and takes hold of Corbluncz by the collar, the Sooty Prince is made helpless, and seems to be in great pain. Yellow Socks boasts that the glove gives him, or indeed any wearer of the magical talisman, utter control over Corbluncz.
A remark here about the logic of magic. I read a great deal on fantasy-writers’ blogs about the need for a ‘logic’ or ‘rules’ of the magic in fantasy books. These rules seem to call in general for limits on the magic, as well as disadvantages in magic to counterbalance some of its advantages. Rather like the great powers of Superman must be diminished by the Achilles’ Heel of Kryptonite in its various colored forms.
It is a theory that I dislike. Its aims are surely good ones, and yet what makes magic, magic is that it does not follow rules the way science must. A flying carpet obeys your command to fly, and there is no need to expostulate on the correct weaving to be made of such a carpet, nor of any weakening of the person flying the carpet to limit its range.
Of course, here in the shadow of the Schwarzwald, Bardelys is playing games in the yard of the Brothers Grimm, and may thus escape some of the rigors that writers of High Fantasy fall prey to. Bardelys may simply invoke the fairy tale of childhood, and be judged by a different standard.
And yet it seems to me that when talesmen argue for limits and rules on magic, they betray a basic ignorance of fantasy itself. They seem to be so bound in the modern, scientific world, that they can’t escape Reason and Natural Law. And thus their work must dwindle into a sort of science-fiction lite, even as the grand traditions of science-fantasy have been shrunk to fit the small confines of ‘hard sf.’ Magic is dream-work, whether simply daydreaming, psychology (or pathology), or symbolism. To constrict it is to kill it.
And if you kill the magic you end with simple adventure, as we seem to have in this chapter.
The question then rises, How much magic need be present in any one chapter or portion or scene of a magical tale? And how deep and extensive should that magic be?
Your answer to these questions (as they pertain to Chapter Seven here) will depend on whether the action and adventure of Hans’s struggles against the ugly squat soldiers suffice for your entertainment.
(Composed on keyboard Friday 7 November 2008)
