Reader Questions about Clare Dunkle's In the Coils of the Snake

Readers have written me to ask questions about the book. Here are some of those questions and their answers. Although I still answer reader mail about this book, I no longer add questions and answers to this page because I wrote this book over five years ago, and I no longer trust my memory about its details.

WARNING: If you have not read the book, please DO NOT read this page. The questions won't interest you, and they will ruin some of the book's best surprises.

ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE ANY MORE HOLLOW KINGDOM BOOKS?

No, I don't think so. At this point, you readers have three books in this world: The Hollow Kingdom, Close Kin, and In the Coils of the Snake. You know everything you need to know in order to make up your own stories there. I'm writing about other worlds now that you haven't had a chance to visit.

WILL THIS BOOK EVER BE A MOVIE?

I doubt it. Not every good book makes a good movie. The Hollow Kingdom books are all about ambiguity, prejudice, and perception. No one in the trilogy is completely good, and very few people are thoroughly bad, either. I wanted to make readers think about that. I didn't want to give you easy answers about who to like and who to hate.

Movies work best with simple characters and lots of action, but that isn't why I wrote the trilogy. I won't let a movie director turn my characters into something they aren't just to make a more exciting movie.

IN CLOSE KIN, CATSPAW SAID THAT HE WAS GOING TO MARRY A ELF. DID YOU KNOW AT THAT TIME THAT HE WAS GOING TO?

In fact, I did. I had already written the truce circle scene of Book III before I got very far in Close Kin. I decided that if I couldn't carry off that scene the way I wanted it, then I wouldn't bother to write a trilogy at all.

Catspaw's comment struck me as funny because no one in the room thought it would happen. But it also made a lot of sense for him to say because he was seeing an elf who wasn't his mother for the first time, and he was admiring how beautiful she was. It struck me as a good way to underscore the insensitivity of the goblins—and of the goblin King in particular—to have Catspaw declare to a nervous, newly-kidnapped elf his intention to steal again. Who would say such a heartless thing? Only a goblin.

HOW MANY CHILDREN DID THAYDAR AND IRINA HAVE?

They had four children, the number an elf woman has when she is stress-free and truly happy. You hear of only one by name in Book III: Alder, their oldest son. His daughter Trina meets the elf lord in the truce circle.

THE BOOK SAID THE ONLY REASON KATE SURVIVED WHEN SHE FLED FROM ARIANNA'S ROOM WAS BECAUSE SHE KNEW MILITARY MAGIC, BUT I THOUGHT MARAK REFUSED TO TEACH IT TO HER.

I'm being tricky here. The book doesn't actually say Kate knows military magic, it says that her magic is military—that is, her innate magical talent is always aware of the possibility of attack and the need for defense. Marak didn't train it, but then, he didn't need to—it had been guiding Kate's actions when she repeatedly escaped him in Book I and when she tried to assassinate him in Book II (a completely intuitive and pointless attempt since no single elf can kill the goblin King). His refusal to train her magic kept it somewhat at rest (there are no ugly incidents of her accidentally flaming guards), but the learning of elvish helped develop it, and so did contact with real elves. When Arianna attacked Kate, her magic knew what to do.

HOW MUCH LATER DOES THE "QUIZ" SHORT STORY TAKE PLACE AFTER THE END OF IN THE COILS OF THE SNAKE?

This story probably takes place between fifty and sixty years later, when both Catspaw and Nir have died of old age. That's why Miranda's brother is an old man.

WHAT DOES AGANIR USAN'S NAME MEAN?

Aganir Usan is the elf King named Evening. Elf names always have significance, and elf King names are always related to the time of their birth—normally either meteorological or astronomical events. These events that occur at their birth are taken to be something like an omen for their reign. "Evening" may not sound portentous to us, but to an elf it has the same kind of significance that we might find in a ruler named Dawn or New Day: a fresh start for the nocturnal elves.

DID YOU PLAN THAT MIRANDA WAS GOING TO END UP WITH NIR, OR DID YOU JUST DECIDE AS YOU WERE WRITING TOWARDS THE END OF YOUR BOOK?

To be honest, I was hoping that Nir and Miranda would wind up together, although I never know for sure until I finish a book. I had enjoyed the way things worked out with Marak and Kate, and I wondered what would happen if I reversed it—ALL of it. Instead of a strong, callous, old, ugly King confident in his powers and surrounded by the best of his culture, I created a tentative, reserved, morbidly sensitive, terribly handsome King unsure of his powers, new to his reign, and surrounded by no court or culture that he hasn't built up from the ground floor. Instead of an untrained, emotionally sensitive, nature-loving English gentlewoman, I created a sophisticated, emotionally callous girl who loves comfort and who knows all about magic and magical beings. Could the opposites of Marak and Kate still find happiness? It was worth a shot.

Besides, I wanted to emphasize that leadership is not about a personality type, like Marak's calculating genius. It's about taking responsibility, and a person can succeed at it if he or she decides to make the effort of doing it well. Nir does what he doesn't want to do, and he looks after his people at his own expense. In his own way, he is just as good a leader as Marak is.

HOW MANY CHILDREN DID MARTHA AND RICHARD HAVE?

I haven't made up their story, so I don't really know. That's one of those things I've left up to your good judgment.

WHY CAN'T THE GOBLIN OR THE ELF KING HAVE MORE THAN ONE CHILD?

The First Fathers, who set up their magical races after studying humanity, noticed all the problems and wars caused by multiple children of rulers. Accordingly, they corrected for that in their plans: one child means one ruler, and no civil wars.

WE HAVE A REQUEST TO BUY THIS BOOK ON CD. ARE THERE ANY PLANS TO RELEASE IT AS AN AUDIOBOOK?

The audio subrights have not yet sold. Recorded Books brought the other two trilogy volumes out on audiobook. If you contact them, they may be able to tell you whether or not they intend to acquire this volume, and when.

DID MARAK MEAN TO BREAK HIS PROMISE TO MIRANDA ABOUT MARRYING CATSPAW? ISN'T BREAKING PROMISES A BAD THING TO THE GOBLINS?

Yes, goblins feel that breaking a promise is wrong. Under normal circumstances, Catspaw never would have discussed marriage with Miranda until the day of the actual ceremony. In many ways, Marak's plan to raise a bride for his son turned out to be an unsuccessful experiment, causing all sorts of awkward moments and difficult episodes.

Goblins are like Vikings: they believe that promises are important, but they also admire those who can make a promise in such a way as fulfill its letter but not its spirit. This sort of tricky promising is what Marak does to Seylin in Close Kin, promising not to take elf brides but knowing perfectly well that he will decide for himself whether or not to do so, and building into the promise a way to break it. Catspaw does the same thing in promising Miranda her freedom: he intends that "freedom" to last only one day, and even though she knows how goblins' minds work, Miranda is too upset to demand the usual safeguards to secure his promise. Later, Miranda catches Catspaw making a faulty promise not to hurt Nir and demands greater safeguards, but Catspaw builds the promise in such a way that he can still break it when he wants because he knows that Nir will attack the goblins as soon as he hears of Miranda's loss. This sort of tricky promising is seen as a sign of wise leadership, as it was seen in the Viking culture, too.

WHY ARE ELVES SO INTO SINGING AND DANCING?

There are two answers to this question, one in the real world and one in my Hollow Kingdom world. In the real world, the elves—"fair folk" or "good people" or "fairy people"—are a race talked about in many folktales. The folktales are all very clear on how much the elves love to dance and to hunt, and you can read about them if you get a good collection of Irish tales, for instance. Tolkien kept to the folklore tradition in his trilogy, and so do I. In fact, my elves are even closer to their folklore roots than his. In the folktales, elves are seen only at night, and only in certain forests or places; they rely on magic rather than on human technology, and they are very beautiful. In some tales, they live in beautiful caves, and in others, they live in the forest itself, but they don't live in houses. And they have a king who rules them all. They are very dangerous to humans because they don't care much for us; only the good storytellers, the good dancers, or those who are very clever escape the elves unharmed. Beautiful humans are often kidnapped, sometimes for a few generations (which seems like a few days to them), and some, for good. The folklore elves hate "cold iron," for some reason we don't quite understand. Sometimes, when an elf girl marries a human in the folktales, she sets the condition that if he ever touches her with iron, she will leave him.

In my Hollow Kingdom world, I tried to find reasons for elves to behave like the folklore elves do. I decided that if a race were so beautiful, they wouldn't do any work—the First Fathers would have figured out that hard work beats us up and makes us ugly. But they wouldn't sit around too much, either, because sitting around lets the body get out of shape. So, when their life runs normally, my elves spend their time playing in various active ways: taking walks, hunting, playing music, singing, and dancing. They love music because music is beautiful, and dance is beautiful, too.

Maybe the folktales show the elves singing and dancing so much because it's what our ancestors would have loved to be able to do. Instead, our forefathers (and mothers) could only dance on special occasions, and the rest of the time, they had to work!

WHO IS ARIANNA'S FATHER?

I don't know much about Arianna's father besides the fact that he was the descendant of a high-ranking lord. But there were lots of those in the old days: camp lords had younger sons or daughters who went on to be advisors to other camp lords, or head musicians, or important magicians, etc. They formed an aristocracy of lords throughout the kingdom. They didn't all have their own titles, just as the younger sons and daughters of English dukes or kings didn't all inherit the dukedom or throne, but they had the same bloodlines, and lords married the relatives of other lords' families. They almost never married commoners. That's how their black eyes came to be passed down through one generation to the next.

In the old days, an elf didn't have to know who another elf was in order to give him the proper title. If that elf had black eyes, the other elves called him "Lord." If a woman had black eyes, the other elves called her "Lord's Daughter." A total stranger with black eyes could walk into camp and instantly gain the respect of the commoners. So it's not surprising or unusual that the black-eyed Nir is called Nir—or "Lord," in their speech.

WHAT IS NIR'S REAL NAME? WHY DOES HE HAVE THAT NAME? DID HE THINK HE WAS THE LAST ELF LORD OR SOMETHING?

Nir's real name is Lord Ash, and Ash means "lonely," or "unique," or "alone." He didn't name himself that, it's the name passed down to him from his father. Lords almost always pass down their names because those names have usually been given to them by some great person as a kind of gift, much the same way that Sable's name was originally given to her ancestor. You learn in the book why Nir's ancestor was called Ash, and the name came from the days when there were many elves.

Incidentally, I don't think anyone's ever asked this, but elf Kings are always named for some astronomical or meteorological condition at their birth, taken as something of an omen: hence all the weather names, like Dust Cloud and Storm Wind, and all the astronomical names, like New Moon and Saturn Rising.

HOW DID THE ELVES KEEP THEIR SLAVES? AND WERE THE SLAVES MEN AND WOMEN, OR JUST WOMEN?

The camp spell made the slaves stay where they belonged, the daylight spell kept the slaves from staying awake all day, and we know about the spell that keeps them out of the cider. Like the goblins, the elves had a spell to keep a person from hurting himself or others, but I don't think they had a spell that forced obedience. I think they just had to use the same techniques every enslaving society uses: a combination of rewards and punishments (magical or otherwise) that persuaded the person to obey.

No formal spells existed to help control slaves because human slaves weren't intended by the First Fathers to be a part of elvish society. Even the camp spell and the daylight spell were not designed specifically to keep slaves: the daylight spell was designed for the elf King's Wife, and the camp spell acted like a fence for any occasion: it kept unwanted creatures out and wanted creatures inside the boundary (for instance, elvish pets). The cider spell worked on both elves and humans.

Slaves were a sign of the decay of elvish society, and the later generations of elves enslaved both males and females for different reasons and at different times. Sable's camp, which had been well run, had probably never had slaves before the deaths of their women forced the elf lord to call for the capture of human women to raise the children. Women were the most common slaves, and a sad consequence of their slavery was often their falling in love with elf men who refused to look twice at them. But some camps captured human men and used them as guards against the goblins. All around, slavery was an ugly custom.

WAS THE SEVEN STARS SPELL USED ON THE SLAVES?

The Seven Stars Spell would seem like a perfect slavery spell, and it was there from the beginning in the planning of the First Fathers, but although it enforces obedience, it was never intended to be an enslaving spell. The elf King can only work the spell on a girl he intends to make his wife; he can't use it on multiple people for the purpose of enslaving them. The idea behind the spell was that an elf King would command only those things that would aid the health of his wife, as when Nir commands Miranda to eat, because the safety of the King's Wife was too important to be left to her own good will, and the forest presented many dangers to a suicidal or just rebellious human woman. If the elf King's Wife were protected by Charm, for instance, she could still climb a tree and refuse to come down.

Beyond that, the Seven Stars Spell reflected the downright inhuman sensitivity of the elves. They're more sensitive than the most emotional human, and (as Seylin demonstrates) rather shy and reserved about marriage. Elf Kings had trouble dealing with the shock and trauma of capturing an unwilling bride, and the spell at least gave the illusion that the new wife trusted her husband. A human wouldn't have needed this kind of emotional crutch, but then again, the elves aren't human.

DOES NIR'S MAGIC ORDER HIM AROUND BECAUSE HE DOESN'T KNOW HE'S KING?

Yes, but his magic doesn't bother to inform him that that's what it's doing, and it only intervenes in the area of royal magic. That's because Nir doesn't know how to be a King—even a bad King. Kings can make bad decisions, and their magic doesn't stop them, but they still know to do the basic things, the critical royal spells upon which their society is based. Nir's magic intervenes because he not only doesn't know to do these things, he believes that he should do things that run directly opposite to royal actions: marrying an elf, for example.

Nir's magic doesn't tell him how to handle day-to-day diplomacy, but it does teach him to perform the royal Border Spell, as he would have done during his first month of official kingship had he been a typical elf King. It doesn't tell him what to say to Catspaw, and it only arranges the bridal exchange with the goblins as a way of getting rid of Arianna, to whom Nir would otherwise be bound by contract. Nir has known all along, in his heart of hearts, that Arianna will be the victim of his diplomacy. Meanwhile, her magic has been warning her that his magic threatens her very existence. Her marriage to Catspaw saves her life. And his magic, thankful at last to have gotten rid of the various elf women to whom he was legally bound, seizes upon his chance encounter with Miranda to force him into marriage with a human. His magic would probably have paired him up with any remotely suitable girl who wandered by. It's making the best of a difficult situation.

Nir's magic tells him where to set up camp once he's in the King's Forest of his ancestors, but it doesn't tell him what to do about Sable. He handles her as an elf lord should, completely unaware of the dangerous magical consequences of his action. And his magic usually doesn't provide information, except for the occasional spell; it does something instead, or suggests a course of action. That's why Nir has been so harried and miserable all his life. His magic doesn't say, "On the other side of this hill are three elves." Instead, it says, "Walk north for two more hours." He has no idea why.

From that point of view, when Nir met Miranda, his magic didn't exactly say, "This woman will bear your son." Instead, it said, "Take this woman home, enchant her with the spell I'm relating to you, and have a son with her." No wonder Nir feels so miserable and guilty about Miranda. What a life!

WHAT DO ARIANNA AND IRINA MEAN?

These names aren't elvish (Sumerian). Although human names, they sounded "right" to elves who had lost their language (that is, they share many of the sounds found in traditional elvish names). In other words, they reflect the loss of elvish culture.

The other naming tendency among ignorant elves was to use English words that had a good meaning, such as Thorn, Rowan, or Hunter. They remembered that their names had ordinarily had meaning (such as Ash meaning "alone," or Sabul meaning "igniting the red flames"), so they reached for the language they knew (English) and abandoned the elvish names whose meaning they no longer understood.

Nir showed his good leadership and sensitivity by allowing his elves to keep their nontraditional names, even though all had to learn to speak elvish. New children born in his camp were given proper elvish names.

WHAT DO THE GOBLIN KINGS PROMISE THEIR WIVES?

Goblins are creatures of action, not like the introspective elves. Both the Binding Spell and the King's Wife Charm are spells that involve claiming your wife to be your wife before suitable witnesses—in the case of the Binding Spell, before your King, and in the case of the Charm, before all the assembled people and the King's Wife Charm itself. These spells focus on the part that the goblins consider most important, the joining of two separate inheritances of genetic material into a family, and ultimately, offspring. The goblin spells are all about parenthood.

Thus, in the Binding Spell, a hair, contributing the DNA of the spouse, meets the DNA of the other party as it lies beneath the layers of that person's skin. If a party is unfaithful to this "union," it is at this join that the trouble will start—the two separate DNA mixtures will begin to reject one another, and an allergic reaction will break out in the skin. This happens only on the guilty party. The other party has no such rash, not having rejected anyone.

The King's Wife Spell is similar, almost a surgical or laboratory operation. In taking fingernails, hair, and blood from each party, the King indicates to the Charm, "Here am I, the King: you now know me on the genetic or cellular level. Here is my new wife: you now know her in the same fashion. You are bound to serve this union of the two of us, and you can't possibly be confused from now on about which two people we are. Others may look like us, or even burn our bodies beyond recognition, but you will find us as surely as a forensics expert would."

But in performing these spells, the goblins make no promises. To a goblin, it's the reality of the union that matters: we are man and wife, and we contribute to the bloodlines. We promise one another nothing because whether we're happy or sad in our lives is largely beside the point.

None of this biological stuff matters to the elves. They are much more aware of the emotional problems the Kng's union brings about: will man and wife be happy, will they find love, will they comfort one another in a rewarding union? Since the elf Kings steal wives (although some have courted the girls first), they view this matter of happiness as an urgent problem to be solved by the good conduct of the King in the future, and thus, the Kings make promises to try to make the future better than the (probably unhappy) present. This helps the sensitive Kings deal with the current negative emotion and initial bad feelings. Nir, for example, takes comfort in the idea that his good behavior towards Miranda from his wedding day on will make up for his evil behavior in marrying her without her consent.

In general, this focus on the future parallels normal elf marriage, where the man is binding himself to a child at the engagement ceremony and thus making promises to her parents about the good care he will be giving this child. To an elf man, the marriage is not (as it is to a goblin), a question of "Man and wife standing here before you, and to heck with our feelings now or in the future." Instead, the attitude is "I will endeavor to be a good man to this child who will later find herself happy to be my wife." Humans (including me) find both attitudes somewhat lacking, as well as downright bizarre. But what can I say? My inhuman races are not human, and that's the whole idea.

The legally binding part of the normal goblin marriage is the approval of the King, signified by his working of the Binding Spell. Without royal approval, no goblin can wed. The legally binding part of the normal elf marriage is the sharing of food and tent, with clear evidence that the woman has not been forced into the arrangement: the lord of a camp can delay or forbid marriages within his own camp, but elves don't have to travel to the King's Camp to get married. Because of this, the sharing of food and tent have special significance to the elves. Nir, for instance, becomes very upset over the fact that Miranda cries when he feeds her, and he uses the occasion to beat himself up emotionally. He can't help it; even though he knows his marriage is different for some odd reason, he still attaches importance to the sharing of food.

Interestingly enough, human marriage rites around the world differ widely. Although we think of spoken vows as a natural thing, in Roman times, the key element of the marriage ceremony was the bride walking to her new home, with witnesses there to observe that she was not being abducted by force.

DO ELVES AND GOBLINS STILL EXIST IN MODERN TIMES?

I once wrote a short story about a modern-day elf King, so, yes, I think they survived. Their forest is protected well enough that it doesn't attract attention, and it's away from the industrial parts of the country. They keep the humans nearby on friendly terms with them, using the legal system and other pragmatic solutions as well as magic to aid them. Marak is smart enough to have lawyers in 1820, and his heirs are not above getting their land protected as a national park. And, as usual, they keep a low profile. What the humans don't know about, they won't mess up.

DID THE ELVES AND GOBLINS SURVIVE WORLD WAR TWO? OR WERE THE FORESTS BOMBED?

I made up a story once (but didn't write it down) about a goblin King going to the continent to look at the war carnage firsthand and finding his wife there, so I'm pretty sure the elves and goblins did survive the war. Their part of England is remote enough that it wasn't a bombing target, and when airplanes were invented, a clever elf King went aloft to apply the Border Spell to the forest from the air. That means airplanes can't fly over the elf King's Forest without getting lost unless they're at a high altitude. Map-makers find it very confusing.

IN WHAT YEAR DOES THIS BOOK TAKE PLACE?

This book takes place in the Lake District of England during the summer and fall of 1854, while Queen Victoria is on the throne.

DO ANY GOBLINS LIVE IN OTHER NATIONS, WITHOUT THEIR KING? HOW WOULD THEIR SOCIETY WORK? WOULD THEY STILL CATCH HUMANS AND USE MAGIC?

Such goblins might have gotten separated from the main band during the exodus to Great Britain that took place in ancient times. They would be in a very primitive state without the King, so they'd likely be getting by without much magic. In their ignorance and neglect, they would be savage, and while they might kidnap some human women, they probably wouldn't remember the precise reason anymore (which is to keep the magic in the line), nor would they remember the goblin custom to treat such imprisoned women well.

This could be the origin of those many, many folktales of "giants" and trolls who kidnap a human woman and then cheerfully eat those of her relatives who attempt to save her, grinding their bones to make bread.

IF ELVES HATE METAL, THEN WHY DOES SABLE'S CAMP USE IT WITHOUT CARING?

The answer is that most of the things we as a people "hate" are things we have been taught to hate, not things we know to hate by instinct. For instance, we Americans "hate" eating horses and feel as strongly about it as Seylin does. But that's learned behavior. Here in Europe, where I live, people were so hungry after World War II that they ate horses and learned to like horsemeat. They still eat horses in France, a fact that upsets us Americans when we shop in French supermarkets and see a picture of a horse on the label of a juicy steak.

Sable's elf camp has lost most of its cultural heritage because the elf women have died before they could raise their children to be like them. Bringing in human women to raise the children has meant that the children have learned to love or to hate human things, with only a few exceptions from their own culture that they still remember. These elves' idea of the goblin King, for instance, is a sort of human folktale, not a reality of elvish life as it used to be. And Irina doesn't even feel strongly about traditional elvish clothing colors.

Nir's camp in Book III, by contrast, is a properly taught elf camp. Nir has assembled elves from all over the country, and many of them have been taught their cultural heritage. Moreover, Nir knows things by magical instinct that the typical elf doesn't know. So he has reestablished the taboos and behaviors that belong to the elves from their true culture.

IS NIR CONTRADICTING THE ELVES' 18 RULE WHEN HE MARRIES MIRANDA AT THE AGE OF 17? AND IF HE IS, WHY?

Nir isn't contradicting the rule because even though he performs the marriage spell, he continues to treat Miranda like a child. It's custom to perform the Seven Stars whenever the capture takes place, even if the bride is underage, simply for the protection and control the spell provides. The "marriage" spell of the Seven Stars has often served as a kind of "engagement" spell instead (except that it's unbreakable, so the elf King can't change his mind later, as a typical fiancé can). For instance, Aganir Immir's bride ran off into a snowstorm at the age of fifteen to find him after she learned her parents were about to marry her off to someone else. Immir performed the Seven Stars immediately because of the protection it gave, particularly against goblin plots, but he looked after her as if she were a child and treated her as his fiancée for the next three years.

HOW MANY CHILDREN COULD MIRANDA AND NIR HAVE?

Miranda can only have one son, and this is the reason Nir sorrowfully tells them that his father had hoped for daughters to make his mother happy, but his mother had "only me." To an elf, it would have seemed that the one child was confirmation of the misery of the mother—normal elf women have only one child when they are bitterly unhappy in their marriage. You can tell Nir has always felt guilty for not being born a girl

DOES NIR REALLY LOVE MIRANDA OR IS HE MARRYING HER BECAUSE HIS MAGIC SAYS SO?

At the beginning of their relationship, Nir is horrified at the thought of marrying Miranda, not because she disgusts him, but because he's upset at repeating the cruelty and pain his father caused his mother. He's also very upset at the thought of how unhappy he thinks their marriage is going to be: his mother hated being in the dark, and the first thing Miranda wants him to do is let her see daylight. But Nir finds Miranda attractive, and by the second day of their relationship, he's starting to try to get to know her. This doesn't always go well because their cultures and expectations are so different.

It is pity that leads Nir to honest love of Miranda. He can see how guarded and suspicious she is, and he knows that no one her age should feel this way. Nir doesn't understand what has actually destroyed Miranda's trust and confidence (her mother's harsh treatment and Marak's techniques to separate her from the rest of her family). Being an elf, he blames Catspaw's kisses and Miranda's lack of childhood dancing. He is happy to see Miranda warm up to him and take so well to elf culture, and one of my favorite things about Nir is that he never suspects this has happened because she has fallen in love with him. He begins to depend upon her good opinion and trust her with his secrets, including the bad ones. But even then, he can't bring himself to tell her that she and he are married. Because she was so upset when he said she couldn't leave his camp and go back to human life, he's afraid she will be disgusted at the thought of marrying an elf.

WOULD THE ELVES HAVE DIED OUT IF MIRANDA MARRIED CATSPAW AND NEVER FELL IN LOVE WITH NIR?

No, if Miranda had never met Nir, Nir's magic probably would have led him to meet some other human girl, possibly one of Miranda's little sisters. It isn't lack of choice that brought the elves to the brink of disaster. What did that was Catspaw's stealing Miranda back after she was already married to Nir. Nir would not have been able to marry again as long as Miranda lived because the Seven Stars Spell, like Charm, works "till death do us part." Since Miranda is younger, she probably would have outlived him, stuck down in the goblin caves while he was outside in the forest. That would have meant Nir could never have a son, and the King's line would have died out completely. This would certainly have spelled final ruin for the elves.

HOW OLD IS NIR?

I'm not sure how old Nir is, but I believe he's about Catspaw's age, somewhere in his early- to mid-thirties.

DO EMILY AND SEYLIN'S CHILDREN LOOK ELVISH OR GOBLIN?

Seylin and Emily's children look quite elvish in various odd ways, as do Tinsel and Sable's children. Even Irina's children have turned out looking more elvish than goblin. But it only takes a little goblin deformity to mangle that elvish look, as Tattoo demonstrates with his silver skin and faint lines. Sable's oldest daughter Fay demonstrates this as well: even though Fay looks elvish, her pure white color and deep blue eyes make her look more like a ghost than an elf. And even though Emily is human, Dentwood is the only one of her children who can pass for human. The pointed ears are the only things that give him away.

CAN ELVES HAVE BROWN HAIR?

Yes, elves can have brown hair, as well as blond or black hair, and their eyes can be black, green, gray, or blue. At one point, one of the two little children who was staring at Miranda the first evening after she woke up had brown hair, but I took out his description during rewrites.

HOW LONG DO GOBLINS AND ELVES LIVE?

Goblins and elves live as long as humans do. They have a lifespan around 100 years, although many of them don't live that long. I think Marak dies at 98.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THORN AND ROWAN?

Thorn and Rowan are in Nir's camp, along with Willow. Thorn has had a rough time of it. Tinsel caught him sneaking around in the forest outside the goblin caves, trying to steal Sable back, and Tinsel enchanted him with some awful spells. One of them made Thorn afraid of everything—every little noise, everything he saw—because of what he had done to Sable. The other spell made him have nightmares all day long, every day, because Thorn had yelled at Sable for having nightmares. Marak added an additional spell to Tinsel's revenge in order to keep Thorn from hurting himself or others because otherwise Thorn would have killed Rowan and Willow out of sheer terror.

For years, Thorn barely existed, completely dependent on his friends for all his needs because his intense fear wouldn't allow him to hunt or even walk alone in the forest. Some time later, Nir found the three elves and lifted the enchantments on Thorn. Nir listened to Thorn's story and accepted him into camp, but he forbade Thorn to attempt any new engagement because he didn't think Thorn would make a good fiancé to an elf girl after his treatment of Sable. Thorn accepted this and lived quietly in camp, attempting to find his way toward being a normal elf. He no longer had the heart of a bully. The experience of living in constant fear had changed him for the better.

Then the husband of a young elf woman died. When that happens, the lord himself feeds the woman for a month, and then she has to start going up to take her food along with the little children. Thorn was friends with the young woman and felt badly for her: having to stand in line for food along with the little children is a humiliating experience for an elf. That first night, the woman didn't go up for food at all, so Thorn took two shares when it was his turn and gave one share to her.

Nir called the two elves into a meeting as soon as the meal was over. He understood Thorn's desire to spare the woman's feelings, but he told them he couldn't allow that kind of irregularity in his camp: either Thorn had to stop giving her a share of food, or the pair of them had to agree to live as a married couple. Because the widow was a grown woman, Nir left the decision up to her. He wouldn't stop the marriage if she wanted it. After a couple of days, she decided to marry Thorn.

By the time of the truce circle meeting, Thorn had a pretty happy life. He saw Sable on the other side of the circle, but Sable didn't look at him, of course. She glared at Willow, but she didn't acknowledge Thorn's existence.

HOW DID THORN FIND THE GOBLIN CAVES AND WHY DID HE WANT SABLE BACK?

Love and hate are funny things, and Thorn had loved Sable long before he hated her. He considered her his property, and he considered the goblins thieves, so he wanted her back at first just to demonstrate his claim over her. Thorn was a great hunter, so he tracked her to the goblin caves within a couple of days of the kidnapping. Since she came outside on full moon nights, and later more often than that, Thorn saw that she had been healed. He became her stalker, and he was a clever enough hunter to evade the guards. One night, when Kate and Sable were rambling together, Kate's children kicked up a fuss over some minor complaint. Thorn grabbed Sable while everyone was distracted and tried to drag her away.

HOW OLD ARE KATE AND MARAK AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS BOOK?

This book takes place about 38 years after The Hollow Kingdom, so Marak is about 98 and Kate is about 56.

IT'S PRETTY OBVIOUS CATSPAW IS A LOT MORE LIKE HIS MOM, WAS THAT THE SAME WAY WITH MARAK?

You can see the calm, patient inclinations of Marak's father Dogclaw in Marak's tidy workroom and his careful, meticulous habits there. But this is the result of long training and not Marak's own inclination. Marak has his mother's impetuous nature and love of adventure instead. As a goblin King, he can't afford to take foolish risks, as his mother did, but that adventurous streak comes out in how much Marak enjoys the fun little surprises a day holds. His sense of humor, for example, is a direct inheritance from his restless, curious mother. So, unfortunately, is his tendency to act before thinking. By the time we meet him in Book I, he has learned to control it for the most part, but it has cost him dearly: his marriage to Annie was one of his impetuous decisions. So is his decision to enchant Hugh Roberts, and the kingdom pays a high price for it.

Marak knows better than to be impetuous in his dealings with Kate, but like many "action before thought" people, once he stops to think things over, he's not sure when to step in with the action again. This means that his encounters with Kate keep dragging on and ending nowhere. Meanwhile Kate's magical abilities are training themselves against him. If he'd kept it up much longer, he might have lost her!

SINCE MIRANDA MARRIED AN ELF AND HER SISTER MARRIED A GOBLIN DO THEY EVER GET TO SEE EACH OTHER?

WHY IS TIL SO MEAN TO MIRANDA?

Til hates her foster brother Catspaw, and by extension, hates her foster father Marak for putting her in the position of giving one of her daughters to be Catspaw's bride. But little Miranda just adores Marak and always sides with this person whom she calls even in earliest childhood her guardian. You can see in the scene where Marak gives Miranda the butterfly bracelet how envious Til is of the happiness that these two share. Because of that, she develops the habit of mocking Miranda and being unfair to her. Many parents do this, unfortunately—perhaps because a child looks like the person's ex-spouse, for instance. And once a habit like that starts, it creates constant conflict in a family. Miranda never backs down, cries, or goes running to her mother. She never once says what Til probably wants to hear: "Mommy, I love you more than I love Marak." And so the battle continues until Miranda leaves, and even beyond, as Miranda carries her mother's harshness with her in the insults she imagines hearing in her head.

WHY DOES MIRANDA TELL THE ELF KING AFTER HE REMOVES HER SLEEP SPELL THAT SHE PREFERS MOONLIGHT TO SUNLIGHT?

Don't worry too much about Miranda saying she prefers the moon. Miranda always says what people want to hear; in fact, it wasn't until she met Nir that she even began to question whether she should have her own feelings at all. Saying the right thing is a useful talent for Nir's wife to have, in any case, because the man is practically a nervous wreck after the emotionally chaotic life he's lived. If Miranda had told him she preferred the sun, he'd have agonized for weeks about it, if not years. Since it's not that important to her, she doesn't worry about thinking through her true feelings on the subject, she just says what she knows he needs to hear. And in the meantime, she's learning to recognize her feelings when they do matter to her. As emotionally stunted as Miranda is (trained always thinking of duty first), it's nice that she has Nir to be an emotional barometer for her. He cares deeply about all the things she's been taught not even to think about.

AT MARAK'S FUNERAL, WHEN HE QUIETLY SPEAKS TO EVERYBODY, WHAT DOES HE SAY TO EMILY AND SEYLIN?

To be honest, I don't know. I always cried when I worked on that scene, so I didn't hang around long enough to listen. But I liked the fact that he said nothing to Kate—he'd already spoken his last words to her years ago, when he had thought he was dying in Book I. Kate knew this, and that's why she referred to them in her last words to him. And I liked that, even after thirty-eight years of marriage, each had a secret from the other at the end: Marak didn't realize how hard it was for Kate not to cry, and Kate didn't realize that Marak used his last strength protecting her with a spell. Even those closest to us don't know everything about us.

ISN'T JACK MUCH YOUNGER THAN TIL? WHY DID THEY GET MARRIED IF TIL IS SO MEAN?

Jack is a couple of years younger than Til, but that doesn't matter to either of them because he and she haven't grown up together. Jack has been raised across the valley from the palace, specifically to try to keep this sort of thing from happening. Because Til is the only human girl he has gotten to know, and because she is quite beautiful, she has a powerful appeal for him (think about all those goblin girls he sees every day!) And because he is *absolutely forbidden* to Til, he has an irresistible appeal for Til! Besides, she isn't as mean to him as she is to lots of other people. They continue to be attracted to one another for years.

SINCE TIL AND JACK WEREN'T REALLY IN LOVE WERE THEY UNHAPPY AFTER THEY GOT MARRIED OR DID THEY GROW TO LOVE EACH OTHER? HOW MANY KIDS DID THEY HAVE AND WHY COULDN'T ANY OF THEM BESIDES MIRANDA KNOW ABOUT THE GOBLINS?

Til and Jack are young lovers playing at forbidden love, so they are each other's own choice. I don't think Til is any happier or unhappier with Jack than she would be with anyone else she'd decided to marry. They have a number of children (I lost count at five). No one besides Miranda has been allowed to learn about the goblins because Marak has learned from his mistake with the sorcerer in Book I: he didn't want another sorcerer to learn about goblins from Til's family, so he keeps the existence of goblins well hidden from the children and the household staff.

The fact is, I like Til and feel bad for her, so I wanted things to work out as well as they can for her. No villain gets to be a villain without lots of help, and it's ironic that the same people who can be good to each other (Marak and Kate) wind up being bad for someone else just because of their nature. Kate is too retiring and reserved to deal with Til, and Til admires and imitates Marak's manipulative tricks without absorbing anything of his sense of responsibility to others. Besides, it must hurt to be the older sister and know that your little brother is getting everything. Till would like to run a kingdom, too.

I don't think that Til isn't loved, but she hasn't been raised that well. Unfortunately, this is one of those ways in which reality creeps into my books: people who are good at some things aren't good at everything, and those who make good friends may or may not make good parents. Kate is a wonderful woman, but she isn't a very good mother because she isn't very good at confronting people when they do the wrong thing. If she were comfortable with the culture around her, that would help, but she's having to raise Til and Catspaw in a culture that isn't hers, and that means they are getting mixed messages. For instance, when she meets Sable, we see her telling Catspaw to be a perfect gentleman as if he is an Englishman instead of a young goblin actively taking note of how to deal with prisoners of his own one day. Kate tries to do the right thing, but Til's weaknesses hit her weaknesses. This often happens with families, and that's how siblings can have completely different ideas of how they should behave—along with completely different ideas about what their parents are like.

As Kate's and Til's creator, I can't do much to change this. It would be unfair of me to meddle with them and make them act in a way that isn't true to their character; I can only tell their story honestly and see where it leads me. As I write, I try to think through what they will actually do—in this case, how a gentle, properly brought up girl like Kate will deal with a drama queen like Til who has been encouraged into loud, confrontational behavior by the callous goblin culture. Kate just can't come to grips with it, and Marak doesn't see the emotional harm in it. Both of Til's parents provide her with what she wants, more or less, but neither one is giving her what she needs.

But, in the long run, things don't work out badly for Til. She gets exactly the life she thinks she wants and has lots of fun and excitement along the way. She and Catspaw scrap at the end of Close Kin, but it's she who has really won: she's scored a hit against Catspaw's confidence that shakes him for years. And it's her daughter who really suffers for her poor upbringing, not her. Miranda is the one who carries the scars of Til's fight with her foster family.

WHAT HAPPENED TO JACK'S TWIN SISTER?

Martha grew up as one of the pages and wound up marrying Richard. Even though Richard had taken care of her when she was very little, they weren't related, and their little "family" had broken up when they came to the kingdom. But Martha and Richard were always special friends.

Martha was Til's roommate the entire time Til was a page, and this easygoing woman was one of the few people who could influence Til into acting like a better person. Martha often came to visit Til and her brother Jack at Hallow Hill after they got married. All the children knew that Aunt Martha was married, too, but only Miranda knew that she was married to a goblin. The rest just knew that Aunt Martha's husband was a military officer. In those days, the British Empire extended across the entire globe, so it wasn't unusual for an officer to be away from England for decades. No one thought that it was odd that they had never met Uncle Jack.

DID MIRANDA'S BROTHER RICHARD EVER FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?

No. The only family member who learned the truth about Miranda was her little sister Charlotte. Charlotte adored her older sister and steadfastly believed in the face of all evidence to the contrary, as little siblings will, that goblin was a real language. The lonely Miranda taught Charlotte quite a bit of goblin before she left home. It was Charlotte who missed Miranda the most and grieved, over the years, for this mysterious sister who had known such exciting things.

When Charlotte was seventeen, a young man met her in the woods at twilight and spoke goblin to her. This was Dentwood, the most normal-looking of Seylin and Emily's children. Charlotte ran away with him that very night, thrilled to discover that her older sister hadn't been mad after all and that there was much more to life than dreary Victorian society was letting on.

DID TIL KNOW THAT MARAK PLACED THE SPELL THAT MADE EVERYONE THINK THAT MIRANDA WAS DEAD OR DID SHE REALLY THINK SHE HAD DIED?

Til and Jack fell under the spell, just like everyone else. This meant that both of them completely forgot that they had been raised by goblins. Marak ordered them to believe instead "all those improbable things that you dreamed up to tell people about your childhood."

Why did Marak do this? He had learned a lesson from the sorcerer's finding out about goblins from Kate's guardian and always felt uneasy that there were humans living in the estate house who knew about his kingdom nearby. Even though he had enchanted Til and Jack not to talk about goblins, he didn't feel it was a perfect solution. Once Miranda left home, Til and Jack had no further need to know about goblins, so he took away that memory. Martha continued to visit them, but now they, too, believed that her husband was somewhere in Australia or India, just as the children had always been told.

PLEASE DON'T THINK I'M SLAMMING YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOUR BOOKS, BUT KIDNAPPING AND FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE KIDNAPPER SEEMS LIKE THE WHOLE BASIS FOR YOUR TRILOGY. IS THIS A GOOD MESSAGE TO BE SENDING KIDS?

When children are young, they need books and films that send them simple and uncomplicated messages—but they only need this because they are still undeveloped human beings. A child of six does not reason well and therefore needs to be taught rules: don't run with scissors, for example, or don't cross against the light. But I write for twelve and up, for teens and beyond. Teens do not have undeveloped reasoning powers; quite the opposite, they are thinking more deeply about the world at this age than they may ever do again. What they want to think about is not rules but complexity—shades of gray—not just the world as it should be, but the world as it actually is. They already know that heroes are good and villains are bad. What they want to understand more clearly is how villains may have reasonable justification for their wickedness, or how heroes can also have flaws. Teens know that sometimes it's necessary to cross against the light; they know that sometimes one must even run with scissors. (I did it myself as a teen to rescue a parakeet entangled in string.) So teens feel, as do the rest of us, that books and films determined to send them messages are an insult to their good judgment. Such books and films treat them as little children.

The message that kidnapping is wrong would be wholesome, but it would hardly be useful. Even tiny children know that kidnapping is wrong: they learn it as part of every child safety lecture. Every teen in America knows that kidnapping is not only wrong, but also a crime: if any teens engage in it, they do so simply because they want to, and not because they think that society will support them in their efforts. I am sure that you knew kidnapping was wrong before you read my books, and I am sure that you still know it is wrong. To write a trilogy based on the idea that kidnapping is wrong would be to pen a blinding flash of the obvious.

Unfortunately, there are books in every age that purvey blinding flashes of the obvious. These books are essentially propaganda, and they range from early American stories of little children who go fishing on Sunday and get eaten by bears to Soviet stories of the heroines promising to marry heroes only if they will help the factory exceed its goal of tractor production for the year. Such books mean well, but all right-thinking humans automatically dislike them because they attempt to intrude upon our good judgment. They often win awards during their own generation because people strongly support their message, but after their day is done, they sink into obscurity without raising a bubble. Why? Because they tell us nothing that we don't already know. They don't make us think, and they give us no useful experience. They just waste our time and insult our intelligence.

It is very interesting that you are concerned about the message I am sending to "kids." Clearly, you are exempting yourself from this number because if you had been concerned about the effect the trilogy might have upon you, you wouldn't have read beyond the first book. In other words, you don't feel that my books have done you harm, but you are worried about them doing harm to others. This is a part of our human nature that bears careful study. Invariably, those who want messages sent (and I am not including you as one of these—you have only asked about it, not insisted upon it)—those who really want clear messages sent want them sent to someone else. No one has ever written me an email saying, "Write me a propaganda story, please! I need clear guidance, a message that I can readily grasp!" No, message senders are sophisticated enough not to need any messages. It is for others that they fear, for those unsophisticated, ignorant masses who need to have a rule shoved down their throats. This worries me: it strikes me that such message senders are saying, "We have a much higher opinion of our own good judgment than we do of the judgment of others. We are more intelligent and more discerning than they are, and that is why they need our help. Otherwise, God only knows what horrible things they will do." This desire to teach others a lesson implies a basic lack of respect for those other human beings, and I respect my readers too much to participate in it.

But let us consider now the message that my trilogy does send. Would you say that I convey the idea that any and all kidnapping is fine? No: Marak, Nir, and Tinsel limit the freedom of others not to gratify personal desires but only to fulfill an important social need. Given their own choice, they would not do it; they are compelled to do it because of its importance to the community as a whole. The trilogy observes, then, that a society's leaders sometimes call for the imprisonment of members from outside groups (i.e., non-citizens) in order to guarantee the preservation and security of that society. In this observation, my books are accurately portraying how a society functions: almost certainly, every single society since the dawn of time has imprisoned or killed non-citizens over questions of security and preservation. The United States of America is doing this even as we speak: just ask the inmates at Guatanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.

Indeed, We the People of the United States of America have a particularly horrendous track record in this area. When it comes to denying members of other cultures their freedom in order to provide for our own, we started early and never looked back. We all know that Squanto taught the Puritans how to live in the New World. What our history books don't generally tell is that Squanto was enslaved by "civilized" men and dragged back to Europe in chains—not just once, according to some accounts, but THREE DIFFERENT TIMES. Our great land was founded on the slave trade, and even when We the People reluctantly gave African-Americans their freedom, we built the arrogant assumption that we were the "master race" into our laws and denied these oppressed human beings equal rights for another hundred years. Our Manifest Destiny to populate "our" beautiful continent from sea to shining sea led us to a policy of genocide towards the native societies who already lived here: We the People herded them like cattle into little camps and onto the dregs of our nation's very poorest land; We the People (that is, our local government officials, who represented us by vote) even hired bounty hunters to kill them like vermin, paying out according to the number of human ears the hunters brought back. During World War II, a race was hunted down, forced to sell or give up almost everything they owned, collected in train cars, and hauled away to concentration camps where many of them died under the adverse conditions. I'm not speaking about the European Jews, horribly mistreated by the Germans. I'm speaking of Japanese-Americans imprisoned in our own desert. Every schoolchild knows how many Jews the Nazis killed, but few textbooks give the number of citizens We the People killed in the concentration camps of Arizona. And now we're doing it again, going halfway around the world to collect political prisoners and holding them indefinitely in secretive compounds without the right to a public hearing or trial. Maybe we need to do this: maybe the danger to our security requires it. But we certainly have no right to criticize Marak or Nir when we do exactly the same thing.

If my trilogy contains a clear message about the kidnapping and imprisonment of other races, that message would have to be this: that such a course of action should be undertaken only for a reason of the utmost necessity to society as a whole, and only with the utmost respect and concern for the prisoner involved. There are many kidnapping tales in the trilogy beyond the stories of Kate, Sable, and Miranda. There is the story of New Moon's wife, for instance, and the story of the King's Wife of Saturn Rising. These are not happy stories, and they result in the devastation of the elvish society. Why? Because these prisoners are not treated as equals; they are treated as inferior beings. Marak, on the other hand, admires Kate too much to want to capture her and is thrilled when he doesn't have to. Kate comes to love him not because of a potential kidnapping, but in spite of it—because of the respect and admiration with which he treats her. Tinsel wishes he could free Sable and doesn't want to force her into marriage. Her decision to retain him as husband comes not because he steals her but because he values her good opinion. Nir is horrified that he must repeat his father's cruelty to a human, so much so that he can't even bring himself to explain to Miranda what he's done. Miranda doesn't love him because he has stolen her, but because he is the first person who has ever felt sorry for the harm that has been done to her, the first person who wishes that he could somehow make amends.

Do We the People understand this part of the imprisonment lesson? (And I do mean WE the People because every single citizen has the duty to participate in our government.) Do we make sure that our leaders take prisoners with care and concern, treat them like brothers or sisters, attempt to make them happy, and let them go absolutely as soon as they can? Or do we pile their blindfolded bodies up in pyramids and mock their beliefs? Are we lobbying Washington to make sure we find out if the rumors of torture and degradation are true? Or do we spend more time and effort in researching our next computer than we do in picking our next president? Might not this lack of respect and interest, in the long run, lead to our own society's devastation as surely as it led to the devastation of the elves?

Uma Krishnaswami, reviewing In the Coils of the Snake for Children's Literature, had this to say about the book:

Just what are the implications of the trilogy in our human reality? That We the People need to think more carefully before we break the hearts of other human beings in an eight-foot by eight-foot jail cell. One day, we just might need their help, and how they feel about us then may spell either our survival or our destruction. And that's a message I'm proud to send.

HOW MANY CHILDREN DID EMILY AND SEYLIN HAVE?

Emily and Seylin had eight children, and I don't know much about them. You only hear about two in Book III: Celia, whom Tattoo is in love with, and Dentwood, who brings his father the books in the truce circle. Dentwood later married Miranda's younger sister, Charlotte.

HOW MANY CHILDREN DID SABLE AND TINSEL HAVE?

Sable and Tinsel had three children. Their oldest, Fay, was one of the most beautiful and frightening of her generation of goblins. She looked like an elf except for her color: she had paper-white skin (slight silvery tinge) and long white hair. But her eyes were like Sable's: deep blue, the only color about her. Because she wore white, she looked like a ghost and often startled Miranda in the dim hallways of the palace. I know nothing about the middle child, and Tattoo you already know.

WHAT ARE THE RULES ABOUT ELF LORDS AND ELF KINGS AND WHO THEY CAN MARRY?

In Close Kin, we hear about the last elf King's Wife and how much her husband didn't want to marry a human, but how, just like the goblin King (who is something of a spiritual twin, considering their origin), the elf King is stuck with the problem of having to take a foreign-blooded bride. Also in Close Kin, we learn that the elf lords are completely distinct from elf Kings: because of the elves' nomadic lifestyle, they lived in a number of camps, each one controlled by an elf lord who was faithful to the King. Sable's father was an elf lord, but it's clear that he wasn't King material. In fact, Marak tells her the story of how the elf King rewarded a young noble's bravery in battle by giving him the title of Lord and the leadership of Sable's camp. Arianna is a lord's daughter, as well, but neither she nor Sable could be a King's daughter: like goblins, elf Kings have only one son apiece.

Lastly, lords never marry humans, being normal elf men. Only the elf King marries a human. Seylin tries to explain this to Rowan, who expresses a bigoted attitude toward humans by scorning the thought that his Kings might have been "half-breeds." And Marak states this rule at the end of Close Kin when he tests Seylin's blood, explaining that elves don't even marry elf-human crosses. Elf women can marry human men and have children in the marriage, although they usually don't want to: the folklore is full of elf girls finally finding their swan suits and flying away from these unhappy marriages. Elf men can't have children with human women, and therefore it's taboo for an elf man to attempt to marry a human.

WHY DOES SABLE THINK ALL ELF MEN ARE CRUEL?

Sable has known only a few elf men in her life, and we meet most of them in Close Kin: her father, Irina's father, Thorn, Willow, and Rowan. We see Thorn behaving brutally toward her, and Willow and Rowan laughing at her; memories of her father show him to be similarly harsh. It's no wonder that she would hate elf men for this and conclude that all of them must be monsters. After all, Thorn almost starved her to death and certainly would have killed her if he could have.

Because Sable is already prejudiced by her prior experiences, she doesn't give Nir a chance to demonstrate whether he is good or evil. Nir is angry about this, but it parallels his own attitude toward Catspaw: he is convinced that Catspaw is evil and won't give him a chance, either.

ARE THERE ANY SECRETS ABOUT THE TRILOGY CHARACTERS THAT YOU KNOW, OR DETAILS NOT MENTIONED IN THE BOOK?

Oh, yes! There are lots of things I know about that world that never got written down. I had to work out things in order to test world rules and get to know my characters. I know, for instance, that in the very early Middle Ages, Aganir Immir's wife ran away from Hallow Hill into a blizzard to marry him when she was only fifteen. The elf King had danced with her at a fair the year before and asked her not to let any ugly human men kiss her, so when she overheard that her parents were going to move her away and marry her to someone, she took off into the snow to find him. I know that Adele was such a thrill-seeker that she enjoyed making Charm find new ways of saving her. She once fell off a horse that was jumping a barrier (this was in the lake valley), and Charm had to turn itself into a spring to try to cushion her fall. Adele thought the whole thing was so much fun that she wanted to try again, and Charm threatened to bite her if she came near a horse for the rest of that month.

I know that Marak Whiteye's elvish bride became blind shortly before he stole her, and because he spoke elvish so well and wore elf clothing, she didn't know she'd been stolen for several hours. The goblins had raided her camp; she thought that an unknown elf from a neighboring camp was protecting her from them and that her fear sickness symptoms came from the proximity of other goblins in the forest. I know that if Marak had thought there were still elves alive before he married Kate, he'd have searched out Sable's camp and married her himself—and that the marriage would have been quite unhappy. I know that Emily got Seylin into lots of trouble when they were young because she could argue or persuade him into doing just about anything, and this helped him learn the reasoning and verbal skills that made him Chief Advisor. (This is also the reason he wants to talk to Miranda instead of letting Catspaw do it—he knows conversation with a human is tricky business.) I know that the last true elf King before the elf harrowing wars had the saddest life any elf could and that he firmly believed that the King's Wife who had named him had cursed him from birth.

None of these things are important to the trilogy, so they aren't there, and I don't have enough time to write them down. But my daughters used to come ask me if I had any more goblin stories, so I used to tell these snippets to them.

HOW DID THAYDAR DIE?

Thaydar died of old age, like Marak. He wasn't by any means young when he married Irina. He had spent his earlier life dedicated to the art of war, with no time for women and too much ambition to settle for the wrong wife. When Emily came to the kingdom, he decided to wait to try his chances with her because she was the most eligible woman in the kingdom. He died in his late seventies, so he and Irina had only thirty years together.

WILL YOU PLEASE WRITE A BUNCH OF LITTLE KING'S WIVES STORIES AND PUT THEM ONLINE?

Thanks for writing what I know a lot of readers are thinking! I do intend to put another story up under this section, but I'm working on a new book now, so I can't write any more King's Wife stories. I'm in another world, in a very different place from the Hollow Kingdom, and it's taking all of my imagination.

But, by the time you're finished with In the Coils of the Snake, you'll know everything you need to know to make up all of your own King's Wife tales. You'll have all the rest of the world rules at your fingertips. At that point, you won't need me to create those stories for you anymore: you can move your own characters into the world and just take over! That's what I've always done with my favorite books, and that's what I expect you to do.

WHY ISN'T THERE A DELETED SCENES PAGE FOR THIS BOOK?

I just didn't write any extra scenes for this book. As I write more novels, I seem to be learning which scenes to write down and which scenes to study in my own head as background material to the story.

DO THE KINGS JUST COMMIT SUICIDE WHEN THEY FIGURE THEY HAVE TO DIE? OR DO THEY JUST GIVE UP? I MEAN, ARE THEY PSYCHIC?

You find out pretty quickly in Book III how the Kings die. When they die of old age, they lose strength gradually—both magical and actual strength. At a certain point, they are alerted to the fact that their strength is almost gone. Then they can either hoard that strength by doing nothing at all for several days, or they can use it to settle their affairs, as Marak is doing. He won't be committing suicide. It's a question of using up a finite amount of resources, like gasoline in a tank.

I don't think that this is like seeing into the future, particularly since nothing alerts the Kings if they're going to die violently. There's a theory that animals in our real world sometimes have this gift, too: they often seem to know when they're running out of strength.

WHY IS THE BOOK NAMED IN THE COILS OF THE SNAKE?

This question has a simple answer and a complicated answer. The simple answer has to do with Charm, of course: every King's Wife feels trapped in those coils, at least at first. Because this book deals with the elves trying to reclaim their land and their way of life, they, too, feel trapped in the plots of the goblin King.

But there is a more complicated reason for the title, and it surprised even me. Halfway through the book, one of the characters tells another character the meaning of her name. I didn't invent this meaning. I base my fantasy languages on real languages, and my character is telling the truth—he gives a pretty good explanation of what that name might mean in Sumerian. This little bit of serendipity pleased me very much, and it cinched the title of the book.

WHO IS PICTURED ON THE BOOK COVER?

The girl with auburn hair is Miranda, the human daughter of Til (Kate and Marak's foster daughter) and Jack (one of the twins who came into the kingdom with Richard in Close Kin). The girl with black hair is an elf girl named Arianna, the fiancée of Nir, a powerful elf lord.

ARE KATE, EMILY, SABLE, AND TIL IN THIS BOOK?

In the Coils of the Snake takes place about thirty years after the end of Close Kin. Kate has an important presence in the book, although not a large one in terms of number of pages, and Emily is in just a couple of places, as well. That's because their lives are reasonably stable and happy, which means that they're less interesting for a book; but I don't want to tear up their lives again just to make them a good candidate for another story. Sable, with her unresolved feelings towards her own race, is more important to this book than they are, and she's in more scenes; one of her sons, Tattoo, is also important in the book. Til is not in the book at all, but her painful influence can be felt in the thoughts and behavior of her daughter, Miranda, who is struggling to come to terms with the traumatic upbringing she has had.

This is Miranda's book. Raised by Marak (a successful Rumpelstiltskin, one might say) to be the perfect King's Wife, Miranda is driven to succeed at a role in life that most women would find horrifying. She trusts and loves only one person in her difficult life, and that is Marak himself. But he has neglected to point out that, in order for her to become the new King's Wife, he himself will have to die. The very first thing Miranda has to face in her new world is his loss.

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