Bee Count: 1
That’s the Mystical Figure of Solomon again behind Patrick, as he drops some important Name Lore.
And with it, a misdirect that I still love: the idea that if someone did magic on Sparrow to make her a Being-whisperer, it was probably someone who knew her, so they could specifically invoke her by name.
I mean, who would guess “actually, someone did magic on a different person, not using their name, but using their relationships to other named people, and Sparrow is coincidentally the only person on Earth with exactly the same relationships to the same people”? What are the odds of that?
Loudspeaker: Attention Passengers. The next XXXX Line train to XXXX is now arriving.
Sparrow: And what if she convinces a friend to zap Patrick with magic instead, huh?
Bianca: All right . . . Patrick! Don’t take any orders from a person working with Miranda Lake either, got it?
Patrick: Woof!
Sparrow: Okay, but what if . . .
I still don’t buy that she’s not gonna find some other way to get at Patrick the second you’re out of the room.
Or cave. Or whatever it is next time.
Patrick: But Bee’s using her name!
We even got lucky — Mandy has a Contract. That means the name she used for it — Miranda Lake — is guaranteed to be a true name of hers.
Names have more power than just about anything else! There’s no way to sneak around that!
Bianca: . . . Is that why you can’t say my name? Because if you could, it would be a way to have power over me?
Patrick: Exactly!
Sparrow: So that means, if my little Being issue is from some kind of spell . . . it can’t just be an accident? It would have to be someone who deliberately used my name?
Patrick: . . . most likely, yes.
Gonna be honest: First time I read through I thought it was because her name wasn’t actually ‘Sparrow’, it was ‘Soul’ because that’s what her parents meant for the name Sparrow to represent.