Songs of the Dying Earth - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора George R. R. Martin (ч. notes)

Footnotes

1

A variety of mollusc valued for their succulent flesh. It was once proposed that glace possessed a form of intelligence, this based on the fact that many who consumed them raw reported experiencing poignant emotional states and hearing what seemed to be pleas in an unknown tongue. For this reason, they are now served either fried or broiled. As to the question of their sentience, their severely depleted population prevents a comprehensive study.

2

The gid is a hybrid of man, gargoyle, whorl, and leaping insect. In their “newt” stage they are relatively harmless, yet they inspire an atavistic fear. Once they have tasted human blood a metamorphosis occurs within minutes and they acquire mental powers that permit them to dominate lesser minds with ease. The physical changes are, reputedly, also extreme, but this is unproven, since a mere handful of men and women have survived the sight of an adult gid and none have been capable of reporting coherently on the particulars. The “newt” gid is copper in color, with black facial markings. As to the adult’s coloration, we have only the word of Cotuim Justo, blind since birth, who claimed that the beast’s colors “burned my eyes.”

3

It is something of a euphemism to describe the behavior of the copiropith whelp or imp (the term more commonly used) as “gentle.” After devouring their mother and a majority of their siblings, the litter typically invade the nasal cavities of humans and attach themselves to certain nodes of the nervous system, provoking the victim to grin broadly and to hop and caper about in dervish fashion, all while experiencing terrible pain that results, after some weeks, in death. As adults, however, the whelps acquire an affectionate personality, soft, bluish gray fur, and a pleasing, cuddlesome look. In this form they are greatly prized as pets and believed by some (particularly residents of the Cloudy Isles) to house the souls of the men and women they have killed, and thus are treated as family members.