From: "Robert Borski" <rborski@charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Brother and Sister
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 23:08:51 

Fernando Gouvea having previously written:

<Clearly the events at the very end of OBW are very important. Who are the
Brother and Sister?>

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post I'd like to suggest that Brother
may be the lost child Bricco from Fava's first story. Given how Wolfe has
previously analogized real world events in his little embedded tales I don't
think this is unreasonable.

Here are the correspondences:

1) Brother does not know his real name. ("Two children are living alone
there: they call each other Brother and Sister, and if they have ever had
other names they do not know them.")

In Fava's tale, "[The boy] didn't know his name or if he did he wouldn't
tell it."

Notice also how both Brother and Bricco begin with B-R.

2) Fava in her tale passes through "a perfectly lovely forest" the morning
before she later happens upon Bricco and his mother further up in her jaunt.

Horn discovers Brother and Sister in "a hovel in a forest."

3) It is hard to tell the ages of Brother and Sister, but from Fava's tale,
where Bricco appears to be about three years old, Brother could now easily
be five. (The tale takes place two years earlier.)

4] Bricco, allegedly, has been kidnapped by the Vanished People. ("They
said...That a highborn woman of the Vanished People had taken a fancy to him
and stolen him away.")

Brother and Sister "see the Vanished People sometimes...Sometimes the
Vanished People even help them."

In addition, we have the following admission from Fava in regards to
maintaining her youthful composure: "It's been so hard staying young for you
while I dined with your grandmother. I kept having to stop on the way to
Duko Rigoglio's palace, or on the way back, to find another child."
Certainly, Hansel and Gretel--er, Brother and Sister--would be appropriately
snackable, especially as the inhumi tend to return to previous sites to
feed, frequently victimizing the poor because they live in dilapidated
housing. From what Incanto later tells Mora, it appears that he believes
that Fava has probably killed Bricco.

As for Sister, perhaps she's even the original human Bean, whose essence
provides vampiric Fava with her identity; according to Inclito "[Fava's]
father is away," implying maybe that her mother is dead, as indeed are
Brother's and Sisters; this or Sister's indigent mother passed away, and
Fava chanced upon the orphaned child in the wilderness and decided to take
advantage of the situation, bringing Brother/Bricco to her for company.

Then again maybe none of the above is valid since as Fava tells us, "All
stories are false, and none are falser than those that are supposed to be
true."

Robert Borski








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