by Stefan Ekman
In Stardust, the entire construction of the border focuses on preventing the thinning in mundanity from spreading into Faerie. Imagination and dreams, rather than scientific rationality, are required to be admitted across the border: only “the minstrels, and the lovers, and the mad” (74 [103]) are to be let through. This allusion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes clear why these figures are allowed into Faerie. “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,” Shakespeare writes, “are of imagination all compact,”38 and such imaginative and irrational people are eminently suited to Faerie. On the whole, however, Faerie must be defended from mundane people and the thinning they could bring. That, more than anything, is why such brutal guard is kept on the border between the two domains.
Apart and Together: Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom39
The opposition between the domains of magic and technology is brought to the fore in Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series. The series consists of Sabriel and its sequels Lirael and Abhorsen. (These sequels are technically speaking a two-volume novel, with a single story running through both of them.) The events in the novella “Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case” take place six months after the events in Abhorsen. Sabriel is a story of the protagonist’s coming into her own and defeating a powerful, evil spirit. In Lirael/Abhorsen, the destructive force called the Destroyer is trying to escape from its eon-long imprisonment but is thwarted by Sabriel’s sister, Lirael, and son, Sam. The novella tells of how Sam’s friend seeks to defeat a magical monster woken up by a mad scientist.
For the border between Faerie and mundanity in Stardust, the principal question was why the border is so well-defended. The same question is resolved almost from the beginning in Nix’s books. There, both magical and nonmagical defenses have been put in place to protect the citizens of one domain from the dangers of the other. The Abhorsen series is set in the Old Kingdom, a pseudomedieval, magical realm, and its southern neighbor, Ancelstierre,40 magicless and roughly corresponding technologically and socially to Western Europe of the 1920s. The border between the countries is thus the border between the domains of magic and technology. These domains are essentially two different worlds: they have different stars and a different moon, time flows differently (although not completely unpredictably), and seasons and weather vary (something that becomes distinctly noticeable along the border). The border between these very dissimilar domains is heavily defended, but not because of any actual conflict between the two. The defenses are chiefly meant to stop magical threats from entering Ancelstierre, but also to prevent Ancelstierrans from venturing into the Old Kingdom. Among the magical dangers that may enter Ancelstierre from the north are the Dead—various beings who have been brought back from death or who have managed to return of their own accord. As Ancelstierre has no one who, like the Old Kingdom Abhorsen, can send the Dead back into death, and in general is short on mages to combat any magical threats, the Wall’s protection is necessary. It does not prevent living beings from crossing, however, and since the land north of the border is a lawless place (especially in Sabriel) where hapless Ancelstierrans would easily fall prey to necromancers or the Dead, the nonmagical defenses of Ancelstierre are required to prevent entry into the Old Kingdom.
Of the border’s two parallel lines of defense, the magical one is closely linked to the very fabric of magic in the Old Kingdom; but its distinct appearance belies the fact that the border itself is as gradual as those of Brust and Gaiman/Vess. To people who cannot see magic, the border simply looks like a forty-foot-tall, medieval wall in a state of perfect preservation; but it is actually a magical construct. It is created by, and out of, one of the five Bright Shiners, the semidivine beings that constitute the Charter, the ordering of the Old Kingdom’s magic. In this way, the Wall is intimately connected not only to the Bright Shiner of the Charter Stones but also to the Charter bloodlines created by the other three Bright Shiners: the royal bloodline, the bloodline of the Abhorsen, and the bloodline of the Clayr (see Sabriel 285, 299; Lirael 559–62; Abhorsen 28–29, 167).
This connection ties the physical defense of the border to the ordering of magic, society, knowledge, and death provided by the other parts of the Charter: Charter magic binds and orders magic; the royal family brings social stability; the Clayr collect and interpret knowledge from the past and the future; and the Abhorsen maintains the border between life and death. In other words, the Wall is not actually a line of defense—it is part of what maintains order and stability in the Old Kingdom and protects Ancelstierre. Despite being a powerful bulwark of godlike power at the edge of the magical domain, it does not completely fulfill its purpose, however. “The only reason that Ancelstierre isn’t like the Old Kingdom is the Wall,” prince Touchstone explains to Sabriel (Sabriel 447–48), although he omits to mention that the Wall is not totally successful in preventing magical influence on the southern realm. Not only does it allow living people through, it fails as a barrier to magical threats: powerful Dead and magical beings can make it to the other side. Furthermore, magic “leaks” across the border (and, as in Stardust, it is carried by the wind) into the technological domain; possibly (as is suggested in Sabriel [299]) because the Wall itself is a source of magic. As with Deathgate Falls and the Faerie Wall, what appears at first glance to be a sharply defined border turns out to be a crosshatch, where gradual change occurs from one reality to another. Nix’s is also by far the largest of the three crosshatches discussed so far: the magic might be barely perceptible to Touchstone in the Ancelstierran capital five hundred miles south of the border (Abhorsen 4), but it is strong enough to use without trouble in Sabriel’s school, some forty miles from the Wall.
The shortcomings of the Wall are one reason why Ancelstierre needs its own border defense, but this is mainly geared to prevent Ancelstierrans from venturing into the magical domain. Unlike the Wall, its Ancelstierran counterpart, the Perimeter, is a human construction, and while unable to stop magical threats, it explicitly prevents people from Ancelstierre from crossing into the Old Kingdom. The Perimeter, running along the southern side of the Wall, has the appearance of any disputed political border. Its concertina wire, trenches, and concrete strongpoints have a plainly stated purpose: to prevent transgression of the border, in either direction (see Sabriel 34; also Lirael 203). Because the Perimeter was designed in the southern parts of Ancelstierre, however, where magic is considered to be little more than superstition, it takes little account of the magical nature of incursions from the Old Kingdom:
[T]he Perimeter was much more successful at keeping people from Ancelstierre out of the Old Kingdom, than it was at preventing things from the Old Kingdom going the other way. Anything powerful enough to cross the Wall usually retained enough magic to assume the shape of a soldier; or to become invisible and simply go where it willed, regardless of barbed wire, bullets, hand grenades and mortar bombs—which often didn’t work at all, particularly when the wind was blowing from the North, out of the Old Kingdom. (Sabriel 30–31)
The Perimeter is thus no useful complement to the Wall when it comes to hindering creatures from the Old Kingdom: anything that can pass through the magical barrier can pass through the nonmagical one as well. So although its role as barrier to magical intruders is foregrounded (numerous references are made to strange things experienced by the border garrison and to previous incursions from the north), the Perimeter Zone only effectively prevents Ancelstierran people from reaching the Wall. The focus on Ancelstierrans is made evident by signs that proclaim not only that “[u]nauthorized egress from the Perimeter Zone is strictly forbidden” but also that “[a]nyone attempting to cross the Perimeter Zone will be shot without warning” (Sabriel 34; also Lirael 203; my emphasis). The signs appear when the Perimeter is approached from the Ancelstierran side, and although they make it perfectly clear that any attempt to leave the Perimeter Zone, either into Ancelstierre or into the Old Kingdom, is forbidden, their intended audience obviously comes from the south. Ancelstierre is thus only able to prevent it
s citizens from straying into danger—they have to rely on the Old Kingdom Wall to keep danger from coming to them.
Along the border, magic is presented as being stronger than technology. As can be seen from the preceding quotation, Ancelstierre’s defenses are described as ineffective against the creatures they are meant to keep out. In fact, the border between the domain of magic and the domain of technology is consistently constructed to affirm magic’s superiority over technology. This affirmation is not only a question of contrasting the near-divine Wall, a vital component of the magical domain, with the Perimeter, which is ineffectual and ill suited to at least one of its purposes. Technology is only possible in the absence of magic; it has no presence of its own. Ancelstierran mages are generally described as incompetent, and the nonmagical country is defamiliarized for the reader. Magic in the Abhorsen books has an almost fluid presence, just as Faerie magic has in Stardust. This common characteristic has not only been observed in fiction. Sir James Frazer notes that “that mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons […] is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance or fluid.”41 Why proponents of this view are supposed to be “primitive,” Frazer does not explain, but the fluidity of magic is certainly a pervasive notion in contemporary fantasy. Both Nix and Gaiman/Vess demonstrate how this fluid magic is actually stronger than supposedly more “advanced” technology. Magic that leaks or blows across the border renders technology in Ancelstierre as well as Wall useless, but technology cannot move across the border in a similar manner. Bringing technological products into the Old Kingdom quickly destroys them: paper decomposes (Lirael 339, 380), technical devices break down (e.g., Lirael 696; Abhorsen 125), and machine-made items are easily destroyed by magic (Sabriel 65). Even magic generated from a single, magical creature is sufficient to destroy electrical appliances (e.g., “Nicholas Sayre” 68, 100, 102).
Furthermore, because only small amounts of magic leak across the border, magic users in Ancelstierre are portrayed as less knowledgeable and less proficient than their northern counterparts. Although Sabriel is used to explaining necromantic matters to her magic teacher, she quickly realizes that “a First in magic from an Ancelstierran school [would not] make her a great mage in the Old Kingdom” (Sabriel 24, 110). At the border crossing, Colonel Horyse commands “a somewhat motley collection of Ancelstierrans who’ve managed to gain a Charter mark and some small knowledge of magic” (Sabriel 42). Their magic is “crude […] but strongly cast” and their weapons inscribed with “crudely written Charter symbols” (Sabriel 39–40). In the battle against the Destroyer’s Dead servants, the Charter magic of Major Greene and Lieutenant Tindall is of no use (Abhorsen 323–24). Even so, these people are portrayed as wise because of their magical learning, whereas the refusal to admit that magic exists is held up as the main weakness of Ancelstierran society—a weakness that is repeatedly pointed out in connection to the Wall and the Perimeter. In Lirael/Abhorsen, for example, the stubborn refusal of Sam’s cricket coach and, in particular, of Sam’s friend Nick to accept magic as more than superstition has near-disastrous results. Magic is constructed as the norm; technology, so unreliable at the border, is portrayed as an anomaly.
The superiority of magic is paralleled by the familiarization of the magical, and the consequent defamiliarization of the technological, domain. Instead of establishing Ancelstierre as a version of the primary world, as something familiar to the reader, it is the magical domain of the Old Kingdom that is familiarized, and this even though it is substantially different from the largely standardized worlds of Tolkien’s epigones. Especially Sabriel adheres to a traditional story arc for a portal–quest fantasy, according to which “a character leaves her familiar surroundings and passes through a portal into an unknown place” only to bring restoration to this unknown place.42 However, it quickly becomes clear that the Old Kingdom is not “unknown” to Sabriel, and since she is the focal character, it just as quickly becomes familiar to the reader. Ancelstierre, on the other hand, loses its familiar features as these are mediated by the focal character’s Old Kingdom frame of reference. The defamiliarization is further reinforced by the emphasis on the ridiculous and ineffectual aspects of the technological Perimeter. In Lirael/Abhorsen, Nick’s constant refusal to accept the magical Old Kingdom reality while it is perfectly understandable to the reader similarly establishes the magical domain as familiar, especially when Nick is contrasted with Sam, who has no problem grasping both realities.
The bias toward magic and the magical domain is undermined, however. While skepticism toward magic is ridiculed in the text, those Ancelstierrans who have accepted magic (like Colonel Horyse, Captain Tindall, and, in the novella, Nick Sayre) are valorized. The Wall fails to keep evil, magical beings from entering the technological domain, almost leading to disaster in both Sabriel and Lirael/Abhorsen. This circumstance also highlights the fact that the antagonists in all three stories have their roots in the Old Kingdom: a powerful Dead creature, a godlike force set on annihilation, and a magical being, respectively. In particular, the Destroyer demonstrates that unadulterated evil belongs to the domain of magic: its force clearly recalls a nuclear bomb, the most devastating technical device of the actual world, but it is cast in more far-reaching terms, as a powerful entity with hatred for all life. The evil that hails from the domain of magic is defeated in the technological domain, however. The heroic self-sacrifice of Ancelstierran schoolgirls and Perimeter troops in the face of incomprehensible, magical evil in Sabriel and Lirael/Abhorsen, and, in “Nicholas Sayre,” Nick’s self-sacrifice and nondefeatist attitude, make the difference between failure and happy ending. For all its supposedly quasi-divine power, the Wall is as ineffectual as the Perimeter when it comes to defeating evil. Instead, it is the valor of Ancelstierrans that allows anything of the day to be saved.
Ultimately, the border between Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom becomes a focus for courage in the face of the unknown. The unknown is always feared, which is why Ancelstierrans try so hard to defend themselves and still deny that there is anything to defend themselves against. To them, magic can do the impossible. Their attempts either to ignore or to understand this are portrayed as ridiculous, ineffective, or crude at best. The characters from the magical domain, on the other hand, need not fear what is basically only a domain of absence: the Ancelstierran technology is unable to produce anything that cannot be made by magic. At the end of the day, however, magic proves to be just as fallible as technology, and when the Wall’s attempts to protect the southern neighbor fail, it is up to the Ancelstierrans to overcome their fear. When they do that, the true heroism of these stories becomes evident: in people entering a battle against the unknown threat.
The Threshold with a Thousand Guises
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell introduces the concept of the monomyth, the mythological adventure of a hero’s journey from the everyday lands into a supernatural region and back.43 Many fantasy protagonists follow the same trajectory, crossing—like their mythological counterparts—the border between the ordinary and the unknown.44 To Campbell, the crossing of the first threshold occurs when the hero enters the unknown and moves into a realm of adventure. Looking at the examples from Brust, Gaiman/Vess, and Nix from a Campbellian perspective reveals how the borders function in what are essentially hero stories, although these stories do not necessarily follow every step of Campbell’s monomyth. He points out that “[t]he two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other.”45 In the three examples just discussed, that is how the pairs of domains are initially described: distinct from each other and with borders that give a first impression of being clear lines between two domains. In all three cases, this initial impression turns out to be erroneous. The border is fuzzy and vague, an area of transition. Waterfalls and walls appear to be sharply defined; but instead, just as Clute suggests, the threshold is a gradient. It is not possible to stand with a foot on ei
ther side, regardless of what we think at first. And even though the fantasy hero can return from the other domain, as Zerika does, the border can also be used to upset, reverse, or complicate the very worldview it seems to advance: the Dragaeran social values apparently upheld by the land of the dead and the Deathgate are subverted by the return of Vlad and his companions; the wall and its guards in Wall defend the imagination of Faerie, not the rational hegemony of mundanity; and magic’s seeming superiority is undermined and challenged by the Ancelstierrans’ courage.
Courage is vital when confronting the unknown beyond the border. “The hero,” Campbell writes, “adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure […] and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone.”46 “There and back again” is the pattern of the heroes’ adventures, not only when they are hobbits. To cross the border, the first threshold, is to enter a magical, unknown, even divine world.47 No matter if the border is part of everyday life, what lies beyond it is dangerous. “The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored,” according to Campbell.48 Venturing into Death, Faerie, or the Old Kingdom is better avoided by everyone but the heroes. In all three cases, however, the heroes cross, not because they are braver but because they have a special inheritance, are bearers of special blood. Vlad, Zerika, Tristran, and Sabriel are all born to the right to cross the border.
