“Someday”
Metaphor become almost pure poetry in a contemplation of the philosophical nuance of the word “someday” when then narrator observes “Of all the words, none more purely distills the futility of human hope, mortal dreams.” The narrator further exemplifies the metaphorical meaning by suggesting that “someday I shall run my fingers through my lover’s hair” test the limits of optimistic certainly that one will always live to see another sunrise.
The Captain’s Introduction
Captain Isa is introduced during an extended scene showing him training the other mercenaries. His stamina seems bottomless, and his intensity is relentless. An animal simile seems appropriate and sure enough it is engaged: “In motion the captain had the look of a cheetah. Long-legged, swift, too thin.” In addition to the image of a predator at the height of its power, there is also something vaguely sensual about this comparison. It is conveyed through the perspective of Demane, but not through first-person narration. The strangeness of the intimacy of this description will later prove to have been foreshadowing.
The Voice
The Captain—the cheetah-like commander of the band of mercenaries—is afflicted with a condition in which normal speech is all but impossible, at least without supreme effort. Instead, his speech is like singing. The effort is continually being made, but “calliphony was as inseparable from the captain’s voice as blood from a living heart.” From context one can discern that “calliphony” denotes a pleasingly harmonious musical sort of sound. The comparison made through the simile suggests a preciseness of the extent of the difficulty faced by the Captain in speaking normally without his condition. One need not work too hard to imagine that such an idiosyncratic speech problem very likely has contributed to his overzealous training methods.
Foreshadowing Confirmed
Demane’s more than strictly professional relationship with the Captain is confirmed through metaphorical imagery a short time later. Thinking unspoken thoughts during a conversation with the Captain, Demand confesses to himself about the Captain that “There’d never been anyone who could knife him so with a momentary word, and then speak the wound away in the very next moment.” This confessional is immediately followed by thoughts of concern and doubt. Demane muses to himself that school-age crushes on boys was a poor training ground for something as complex as what he is feeling toward the Captain.
Grimly Fiendish
A number of different metaphors and similes have become standard usage to describe someone who appears to be on the verge of dying. The narrator adds one more to the list: “Faedou stood looking like the very next man upon whom Death must call.” This metaphor calls upon the personification of Death to make its point, but the image it subtly conveys gives it a menace that other similes lack. The suggestion is that the figure of Death is standing very near to Faedou, unseen by all, hooded and cloaked with his scythe at the ready for soul-reaping.
