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Celadon
"...Beautiful, beautiful Celadon, a young old world that was setting for the nightmare Sari Roberts made..."
Celadon is a favourite creation of mine, because it is, in its way, a creation three times over. I created this strange, mutable world as the setting for a novel, while within that novel Sari Roberts creates the idea of that world. It is left to Rosanna Hopestill, shy and tremendously powerful, to bring the world to life. It is Rosanna's perceptions which craft Celadon, and since she spends most of her time there in the guise of the were-horse, Hrosannah, Celadon becomes a miraculous place of green forests, grassy plains and mountain waterfalls.
"...
I can feel my heart beating wildly and Celadon is all around me. I can hear it in the wind blowing the catkins, and I can smell it in the sweet, fresh wildness of the grass. Grass and leaves, trees, shrubs and water, oh, Celadon is a green land, and the name Sari chose for it is absolutely right..."
"...
Celadon is a land of grass and trees, rocks and earth, catkins and rivers and mountain waterfalls. It might not always be comfortable, but what has Celadon to do with crowds, and capital cities? Celadon is green..."*******
Not all of Celadon is so beautiful. The catkin clearing is a charming place but there's also a ragged glade, and a scree... and a dark pool halfway up the mountain. Finally, there is the ruined city of Cerulean, where Sari, in her Celadon-guise of Princess Fame-Bright, plans to set up her court. Fame-Bright expects Cerulean to be a grand and prosperous city, but again it is Rosanna's thoughts which win out...
*******
"... I s’imagined a city that was part of the place, with grass growing over it and wild herbs and flowers in the brick-work - and as I remember this I realise I can smell the flowers. I smell the leaves and the herbs, and not the sour ones Lily Wisdom brews. I smell mint and sage and thyme and lemon balm.
"How very strange, I think. Sari invented Celadon, Sari came here first. Sari Translated all of us, yet my s’imagining won out in regard to the city. How strange. How very strange. And I feel proud because this is my city, this Cerulean, and I think it’s beautiful..."
*******
Rosanna's last sight of lovely Celadon is full of whirling snow which she has conjured up to save her life and that of her werewolf companion, Wolf Shield, whose realworld name is Rafe Winter....
"... I clutch the werewolf’s hand and s’imagine storms, a whirling storm of snow that blots out vision. The snow is swirling, the icy air is hard to breathe - a blizzard is screeching around my head... I can taste the snow on my lips and feel the sting of the cold in my lungs..."
*******
She sees her world just once more, in a vision of s'imagination... sees her other self with the werewolf who has come to mean so much to her...
"... Faster and faster they run, over the curve of the hill, closer and closer I see them, bearing down on me. I hold my breath in a panic, but they’re sweeping over us, over Rafe and me, and all I feel is a great explosion of hope..."
And that's what Celadon is in the end. It's the power and terror of imagination and the beauty of hope.
TRANSLATIONS IN CELADON.
The name Celadon, as Sari Roberts says, means "green". The name of Cerulean, the ruined city, means "blue". Colour, or the lack of it, runs right through this novel, from the soft dun hide of the were-horse Hrosannah to the white and whirling nothing near Lake Abyss
s.
