Amelia Lunala
| Title | Sacred Head of Eslura |
|---|---|
| Home | The Sacred City |
| Family | Beatrice Tidal, daughter |
| Status | Accounts conflict: dead in Book 1, a prisoner at Veskadoth in Book 2 |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling, mentioned only |
Amelia Lunala is the Sacred Head of Eslura before Beatrice Tidal, chosen fourteen years earlier, and the Head who foretold that Obellius Kalaar would rise again with the power of the Book of Fire.[1] Eslura remembers her, in Alistair Archibald's view unjustly, mostly for one thing: that she failed to cast Obellius into oblivion.[1]
The two novels do not agree about what became of her. In Book 1, Ch. 8 the Rulers speak of her passing as a settled fact and Obellius as its cause.[1] In Book 2 she is alive in a Nelazgian cell beneath Veskadoth, sick and barely conscious, and names Beatrice Tidal as her daughter.[2][3] This article records both and reconciles neither.
Appearance
The woman in the Veskadoth cell is described only through Lumikki Otsby's eyes, and only in the dark. Her breathing is faint enough that Lumikki takes her at first for a body.[2] Her face is hidden under matted hair that Lumikki compares to a bird's nest, and when she finally sits up she lifts her right hand, turns it over and studies a bare wrist, and something close to a smile crosses her face.[3]
Bea's mother, whom Lumikki's account identifies as Amelia, is a different picture entirely. In the visions Bea has of her she wears a golden cloak, her long curly brown hair swirls in a wind that is not there, and her eyes are gold, which they never were on Earth.[4][5] A small mole sits under her right eye, barely noticeable to anyone but Bea.[5]
Personality
Little is recorded, and almost all of it is other people's memory of her. Alistair Archibald says she was well respected and loved by many.[1] Millennium Loftwind says she fought her final fight with more strength and courage than she has seen in any Eslurian.[1] Alpin Loomin calls her an old hag, which nobody else does.[1]
She trusted her own visions when nobody else would. Alistair says she was not clear on what her vision was telling her yet was quite adamant about it, and that Alpin found it hard to believe she would rely on one at all.[1] Obellius, in Alistair's account, held a great deal of power over her, in physical strength and emotionally as well, which is part of why Eslura concluded her mind had gone.[1]
Background
A flash of gold erupts in the sky when Eslura chooses a Sacred Head. One preceded Amelia's choosing, fourteen years before Bea's.[1] Shadow Reapers had been absent from Eslura for nearly fourteen years by the time one returned, which Alpin cites as the reason he does not believe Alistair.[1]
She lived in one room of the castle at the Sacred City, the last of a long line of Sacred Heads who each lived in that space. A stained-glass window bearing the Sacred Symbol hangs half-shattered in its wall, and The Sacred Cloak, handed down from Head to Head, was still in the wardrobe when the Nelazgians finished ransacking the city.[5]
The prophecy
Before her passing, Amelia told Alistair of a vision she had had. She was not clear on its meaning but was adamant that a hundred years would pass and Obellius would rise again with the power of the Book of Fire. She also foretold that a hundred years would pass before a new Sacred Head was chosen by Eslura.[1]
The hundred years do not fit the fourteen. Alistair sees the golden flash of Bea's choosing on the same day he learns the Book of Fire is gone, fourteen years after Amelia's own, and treats the rest of the prophecy as proven regardless.[1] Neither book addresses the gap.
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Amelia does not appear. She is spoken of in a single scene, in Alpin Loomin's library at Farenworth, and spoken of as gone. Alistair tells Alpin that she is not back and never will be, and that Obellius took care of that. Millennium Loftwind calls her last fight a true heartache to watch end so tragically. Alistair says he wanted to believe she was wrong, that he thought nothing of her warnings, and that he was the one who was wrong.[1]
Bea, who has no idea who Amelia is, sees her own mother inside the vision the Book of Land gives her: walking toward her through a white field of clouds in a golden cloak, and then lying limp on the ground beside a white-haired man with her cloak torn to shreds and her face bruised.[4]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Amelia is still the argument against Bea. A man named Bray, in the settlement living among the ruins of the Sacred City, asks why anyone should trust a little girl when Amelia could not stop Obellius, and Alistair answers him.[6] Alistair shows Bea her predecessor's old room, and Bea, wearing the Sacred Cloak in front of a half-broken mirror, sees her mother looking back at her instead of her own reflection.[5]
She is also alive. A third prisoner lies in the cave beneath Veskadoth when Lumikki wakes there, so still that Lumikki fears she has already passed. Calamity names the woman Amelia, tells Lumikki to respect her sleep, and says she needs it more than Lumikki will ever know, which at least settles for Lumikki that she is not dead.[2]
Amelia wakes once. She is sick, throws up, sits up out of it and rubs her temple, then lifts her right hand and turns it over to look at her bare wrist. She asks where she is, meaning a person and not a place, and when Lumikki guesses wrong she says plainly that she means her daughter, and gives the name Beatrice Tidal.[3] Lumikki has never heard the name and cannot place it.[7]
She falls asleep again before the escape. Remidigon judges that she will not fit through the drainage cap, and Lumikki lays a paw on her shoulder, finds it hot and sticky and trembling, and promises to come back for her. What Lumikki hears her mumble in reply sounds like Bea.[7]
The two otters leave her there. Only on reaching the Sacred City and meeting Bea does Lumikki put the pieces together: the bare wrist, the search for a symbol, the name. She tells Bea that the woman in the cell was her mother, and that she was Amelia Lunala.[8] Bea's last word on it is a question with an answer she already knows, which is that Obellius has her.[8]
Relationships
- Beatrice Tidal: her daughter by her own account in the cell, and her successor as Sacred Head. The two never meet in either book. Bea knew her mother on Earth as Celine Tidal, and had not seen her for nearly a year and a half when the first book opens; Bea's understanding is that her mother went missing on Earth, not in Eslura.[9][3][8]
- Alistair Archibald: the Ruler she brought her vision to, who did not act on it and says so.[1]
- Obellius Kalaar: her enemy, her captor in Book 2, and the man Eslura holds her responsible for failing to stop.[1][2]
- Lumikki Otsby and Remidigon Otsby: her cellmates beneath Veskadoth, and the two who carry word of her back to Eslura.[2][3]
- Millennium Loftwind: a fellow office-holder who defends her memory without qualification.[1]
Behind the scenes
Book 1, Ch. 8 treats Amelia's death as common knowledge among the Sacred Rulers and gives Obellius as the cause, and Book 2 keeps that belief in circulation: Bea thinks of the room in the Sacred City as a dead person's room, and Alistair calls the clothes in the wardrobe the late Ruler's.[1][5] Book 2, Ch. 7 and Ch. 12 nonetheless put her alive in a cell. Nothing in the published books reconciles the two accounts, and no character in them remarks on the discrepancy.
Her full name is used only twice in the prose, both times in Book 2, and everywhere else she is simply Amelia.[5][8] The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives it as Uh-me-lee-uh Loo-nah-lah.[10][8]
See also
- Sacred Head
- Beatrice Tidal
- The Sacred Cloak
- The Five-fold Symbol
- The Sacred City
- Veskadoth
- Obellius Kalaar
- Lumikki Otsby
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 Book 1, Ch. 8.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Book 2, Ch. 7.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Book 2, Ch. 12.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 1, Ch. 22.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Book 2, Ch. 9.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 5.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book 2, Ch. 15.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Book 2, Ch. 28.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 4.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 26.