It occurred to me as I was driving home from the day job this evening, that the character of Stephen is problematic, not least of which because he appears to just find Fiona with no effort at all while it’s taken Rendel, a full-blooded Aelf’en, many years to find her through trial and error. Why is it that a half-blood like Stephen should be able to just waltz up to her and know who she is?
The other problem is that Fiona is in her mid-twenties and no one seems to have ever said to her, gee, your blood type is all wrong, you never get sick, and you look nothing like your father. And btw, where the hell is your father? How would she have survived such mundane things like childhood immunizations, a requirement for attending most public schools? These are things formulated for human children. And wouldn’t a blood draw of any type have shown some unusual things if we’re to believe that the cells that make her “half-blooded” are there, present in her blood the whole time?
I have already nixed the scene in which Stephen appears to have car trouble and comes into their cafe for assistance. Cliche doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s unimaginative and crap. The scene to replace it – not yet written – in which he meets with her as a vendor at an “Anachronists” event is better. But why would he know to follow her there unless he had been following her for some time and knew what she was up to? This scenario (chapter, really) replaces the scene in the basement of the church where Fiona and Sabhene find the panaten just because they read some spell out of a book. I think it’s still important to have some writing on hand, but not in the Neverending Story kind of way. I mean, what was I thinking? Two people happen to bust a hole in a sheetrock wall in the basement of a church, see stuff behind it, decide to investigate, and then just randomly do the spell they find in the book? Why would they not tell someone what they found? Hey, are you aware there’s a magic circle in your basement Mr. Pastor, sir? And that someone’s abandoned it and drywalled over it? How would your drywall installers not have noticed that there was this whole wasted bunch of space in there? Blech, yuck. Also, you would have to hit drywall pretty damn hard with your head to punch a hole in it. Ouch.
SO. So. Fiona is raised by her aunt and uncle. The blood relation is her aunt, who is Fiona’s father’s sister. Fiona’s father is Oliver. Oliver left cryptic instructions alluding to Fiona’s uber-specialness when he dumped her off on the doorstep (not literally), and it didn’t take long for the auntie and uncle to come around to understanding that Fiona probably wouldn’t do so well with traditional things like childhood immunizations and blood draws and so forth. So, they started trying to find Oliver, or one of his friends in the Anachronist’s group, and they were ultimately led to the right people who would treat Fiona with the specialness she needed. Except of course the part about telling her she was special. And so Fiona grew up thinking her aunt and uncle were simply crunchy granola hippies who didn’t like traditional western doctors or something, and only ever saw herbalists when needed. And people who would sign off on medical paperwork without actually doing the blood tests or shots.
Because there is a network of other people just like Fiona, but her aunt and uncle thought they were protecting her by not letting her in on the joke. Because Oliver instructed them to be supremely careful with whom they associated, for fear of his daughter’s life.
But as careful as people are, they can’t plan for every possibility, and Stephen ended up being one of those people they consulted with. They believed he was wearing the white hat, but he was actually wearing the black hat. And that is how he knew where to follow her. And how he came to have possession of her panaten which he then sold back to her (nice guy, huh?) at the Event.
