Asakiyume mita

In the Empire, both in its home territories, centered on the Eternal City, and in its far-flung colonies, such as Aquacolonia, the port city across wide Oceanus on the continent to the west, some animals are Knowledgeable—meaning they can speak as humans do—and some are not.

Quintus Shu’al is a Knowledgeable fox. In fact, he is the only Knowledgeable fox. Knowledgeable animals are made, not born, and Quintus was awakened on the Silver Roads, special routes like ley lines that allow for non-Euclidean travel and which he has a unique gift for navigating.

Quintus wants nothing more than to know his origin story. The high priest of the God of the Hinge, Scipio Aemilanus, purports to have answers that he’ll supply if Quintus does his bidding. So far Quintus has, and the result was the loss of an entire expedition that Quintus had been leading along the Silver Roads to the gates of Hell. And now Scipio Aemilanus has managed to manipulate Quintus into leading a second expedition to Hell. Only this time Scipio Aemilanus is coming along. So too is the grief-stricken and angry Octavia Delfina, whose sister Cynthia was the head of the last expedition. And so is Walks Along Woman, a bison ambassador from the Great Northern Membership, a polity on this continent.

That’s the set-up for The Navigating Fox--it’s a *lot* of information, and although it takes several chapters to get there, it’s not slow and relaxed; it’s fast and full. That could be a detraction, but for me it had a rich-strangeness that was absorbing (Zootopia-like explanations for how things are set up to accommodate Knowledgeable animals of different sizes, for example), so it was a feature, not a bug.

From here on, a double story unfolds: the story of the first journey—the one where all the explorers were lost—and the second one. By the time Quintus reaches Hell for the second time, the truth about what happened to the first expedition has been revealed and people’s hidden motives have been made clear.

But the real interest, for me, was not in those plot happenings, but in the conversations people have on the journeys, how Quintus’s (and others’) expectations and views of reality are contradicted, or maybe it would be better to say, exposed and viewed from completely other angles.

Here’s one about time, from the first journey:

“How are things going down there?” Cynthia asked him.

“I do not know,” he said.

“Which side is winning?” I asked him.

“I do not know that, either, for sure,” he said. “Probably not yours, though.”

“I don’t have a side,” I said.


Blue shot a curious look at Cynthia Benedictus. “How long have you known this fox?” he asked.

“I can’t say I know him at all,” she said. “I hired him about two months ago.”

“I like that word,” Blue said. “Month. I like counting time like you do.”

I think my favorites, though, were the ones about the nature of Knowledgeable animals. I love, love, love that the story raised this question, turned it around it its hands, held it up to the sun and saw how it caught the light:( a number of quotes! they are all so good... )

I think you can enjoy The Navigating Fox for many things, but I do think if you go in expecting something definitive about Hell or even about Quintus’s origins, you will end up disoriented. I think that’s part of the point. Scipio tells Quintus at one point that Quintus has been asking the wrong question. I think this story is about the possibility of other questions. The story is making other observations.

One final, beautiful quote, from when the party’s raccoon cartographers have made a portrait of a voiceless bison named Fondness:

“What do you have there, mapmakers?” asked Walks Along Woman.

Loci held up the sheet. It was a likeness of Fondness. It was one of the most beautiful drawings I had ever seen.

“She does not interpret images the way you do,” Walks Along Woman said gently.

“We know this,” the twins said, speaking atop one another. Their manner was an echo of the gnomic pronouncements of the Membership.

“Then why did you show it to her?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Because we do not convey images the way you do,” said Loci.
Or Foci. Their scents were obscured by the mass of creatures around us.

First, have a quote from Railsea

What, above all, about wood?

That is the key mystery. Wood makes trees trees. Wood is also what makes ties--those bars crosswise between railsea rails--ties. A thing can have only one essence. How can this, then, be?

Of all the philosophers' answers, three stand out as least unlikely.

--Wood & wood are, in fact, appearances not withstanding, different things.

--Trees are creations of the devil that delights in confusing us.

--Trees are the ghosts of ties, their gnarled & twisted & dreamlike echoes born when parts of the railsea are damaged & destroyed. Transubstantiated matter.

--China Miéville, Railsea, pp. 249-50.

Now, do you see my problem? I do love Railsea, and this quote is virtuoso storytelling fun, but I'm afraid Miéville has his logic mixed up here. If wood is the essence of trees, and wood is the essence of ties, then both those things have a single essence--namely, wood. It's an essence with two manifestations. To express this elegant confusion and not fall foul of logic, he could simply have said, "How could an essence like wood have two such different manifestations?" (but in more baroque, Railsea-esque language) and then gone on with his three great possibilities.

Still loving the story, though!

And now back to work.