Lumikki Otsby
| Also known as | Lumi |
|---|---|
| Species | Otter |
| Title | Sacred Ruler of the Book of Water |
| Affiliation | Sacred Rulers, The Council |
| Home | Ovallia Lighthouse |
| Powers | Water |
| Companions | Trelluby |
| Family | Remidigon Otsby, twin brother |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Lumikki Otsby, called Lumi by those closest to her, is the Sacred Ruler of the Book of Water and the governing Ruler of Ovallia, where she lives in the lighthouse that houses her Book.[1] A bad feeling about her twin brother Remidigon Otsby takes her out of her own city and into Morgaedion, and from there into a cell under Veskadoth that carries much of the second book.[2][3]
Appearance
Lumikki is a brown-furred otter, small enough that furniture built for humans leaves her paws dangling above the floor.[4] Alpin Loomin, describing her to strangers, gets as far as the prettiest ocean blue eyes anyone ever saw before he is interrupted.[5]
Her body is built for the sea. Submerged, her nostrils and ears close and a stream of blue light comes out of her irises and lights the water ahead of her.[2] Her whiskers touch the surface when she sinks down in her bath.[6]
She wears an ocean-themed silk robe given to her at her coronation.[6] Fire on the ground block at Morgaedion burned the tips of her brown coat black and set the robe alight, and she wakes in the dark of a Veskadoth cell without it.[7][3]
Personality
Lumikki loves being among her people, and a full schedule of obligations would ordinarily energise her.[6] She is also bad with names, and admits it to herself, and on the worst of her days she sits through an entire afternoon of Ovallian grievances only pretending to hear them.[6][7]
She acts on instinct and will not be argued out of it. Told that she cannot leave Ovallia on a hunch, she leaves anyway, and answers that she is a Sacred Ruler and will do as she pleases.[2] The same impulse turns outward in captivity: she promises a stranger in her cell that she will come back for her, and she frets about it once she is out.[8][9]
She is quick to blame herself. She counts Trelluby's capture as her own fault, and calls herself oblivious for never having known that Nelazgian Veskadoth held Eslurian captives.[10]
Background
Lumikki and Remidigon are twins, raised by a mother who knitted them blankets when they were pups.[6][11] They keep the last day of every new moon for tea together, alone, with their responsibilities left outside the room.[2]
Trelluby, a sea serpent, has been at her side since the day the Book of Water chose her, and swims up to the lighthouse window with the local gossip.[6] Her personal Sacred Guard, Harp, keeps station outside her bedroom door.[6] A Ruler's Guard is required to be present even in private quarters, which leaves her few visitors who are not on duty.[10]
She also holds an old arrangement over an Olphin child. Pemadee made a contract with her the day he found Barnaby Britto in Treenode: he could keep the boy so long as the boy never left the bookshop.[12]
The oath
Laws exist to keep the Rulers dedicated to their given roles. The day Lumikki laid her right paw on the Book of Water she swore away all hope of ever falling in love, and only afterwards learned what the oath would cost her.[2] If the wrong person overheard, she says, she would be put out of a job and Alpin would be sent to Morgaedion.[2]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
A travelling merchant claiming to live in Blighburrow presses a jar of pink and red petals and translucent green stones on Lumikki in the Ovallia market square, promising it will settle the dread she has carried all day. She notices a mark on his wrist that she has never seen before, two intersecting vertical circles pierced by what looks like a fork in a road.[6]
Her brother has missed their tea. She tips the jar into her bath, and Trelluby arrives at the window to tell her that the townspeople have noticed how distracted she is. Mid-conversation the poison takes her. Harp forces dringrys down her throat, a serum drawn from fish guts and fed to gullys before flight, and she vomits it back out along with the poison.[2]
Lumikki leaves for Morgaedion the same night, riding a tidal wave out of the window and across the sea.[2] She finds the prison gates unguarded and her brother's cabin flooded, its sink running. In his bedroom the vault is open and the giant metal S gone, which can only mean the ground block has been opened, and a half-finished letter from him lies drowned under a spilled bottle of ink.[7]
She bows to her brother's statue in the marble hall, takes its torch, and descends past charred bodies to the ground block, where she finds Remidigon cowering in a cell with his eyes gone dull. He points her to the last cell on the block. There is a hole cut deep into the floor of it, fire comes up out of the hole, and a scaly, black-eyed creature lifts her off the ground by the throat and throws her in.[7]
Her disappearance is felt before it is understood. Millennium Loftwind cannot find her in Ovallia, Harp has not seen her for days, and the gathering of Rulers at the High Moon Festival goes ahead without her.[13]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Lumikki wakes in a dark cave with Remidigon beside her, burned and ash-marked, and a woman she does not know lying nearby. Calamity comes down the stairs to gloat, and Lumikki raises a paw to draw on the Book of Water and feels nothing at all: her captors have made certain there is no water anywhere near.[3] Calamity admits to the jar and the poisoning, shifts her voice into the merchant's, and Lumikki understands that she is looking at a Shifter, a people she had read about and believed exterminated.[3]
The woman in the cell is named Amelia. She wakes long enough to turn her right hand over and study a bare wrist, then asks after her daughter and gives the name Beatrice Tidal.[14] Lumikki has never heard the name and cannot place it.[8]
Remidigon works out that the drainage cap in the corner is wide enough for two otters. They promise to come back for Amelia, drop into the sewer, and Lumikki pushes them both through the pipes on a wall of water until she blows a grate off its hinges and climbs out into a city under permanent darkness. It is Veskadoth.[8]
A crocodilian sentry catches them in an alley and is relieved of them by the commander, Ferra Ellisvat, who turns out to be an Eslurian held on the island by an enchanted necklace that will kill her if she leaves her district.[4] Hidden in Ferra's wardrobe, Lumikki hears Calamity say that a sea monster has come all the way from Ovallia to the Veskadoth port, and knows it is Trelluby.[10] Ferra leaves a hastily drawn map on her desk: tunnels reaching every kingdom and every minor town, all of them running back to the Sacred City.[10]
At the docks Lumikki calls a wave that tears the harpoons off the pier and snaps Trelluby's chains.[9] Calamity comes out of the sea in a serpentine body with a human face, coils around her and chokes her with the tip of her tail. Remidigon, launched into the air by Trelluby, digs his claws into Calamity's side and loosens the grip enough for Lumikki to work free, and Calamity breaks her arm on the way down. Falling toward the water, Lumikki fires a shot with her other paw and cuts Calamity in half through the midsection.[9] The sea closes around her broken arm and heals it.[9]
She leaves the island on Trelluby's back with Remidigon, bound for the Sacred City, resolved to come back for Ferra and for the woman in the cell.[9] She arrives to find Alistair Archibald training the new Sacred Head, recognises the name Beatrice Tidal, and tells Bea that she believes she has met her mother, and that the woman was Amelia Lunala.[15]
Relationships
- Remidigon Otsby: her twin. Lumikki goes to Morgaedion alone on nothing more than a missed tea, and the two spend the second book in the same cell and then the same escape. She tells him to stop calling himself a fool.[2][11]
- Trelluby: her closest friend, and the only person she confides the oath to. Trelluby disobeys her, follows her to Veskadoth and is chained in the harbour for it.[6][10]
- Alpin Loomin: the gopher whose letters she reads ten times over and rehearses replies to. The feeling is returned and no less carefully hidden: Alpin loses his composure entirely whenever she is missing.[6][13][5]
- Harp: her assigned Sacred Guard, who fetched the dringrys that emptied her stomach the night she was poisoned, and does not question her when she leaves.[2]
- Calamity: her poisoner, her gaoler, and the enemy she cuts in half at the Veskadoth docks.[3][9]
- Ferra Ellisvat: the Veskadoth commander who hides her, and whom she promises to free.[10]
- Barnaby Britto: the Olphin boy whose confinement to Tide Tale Alley Books is her contract. The two never meet in either book.[12]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives her name as Loo-me-key, and her nickname as Loo-me.[7][15]
See also
- Sacred Rulers
- Book of Water
- Ovallia
- Ovallia Lighthouse
- Remidigon Otsby
- Trelluby
- Alpin Loomin
- Calamity
- Veskadoth
References
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 9.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Book 1, Ch. 7.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Book 2, Ch. 7.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 2, Ch. 19.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Book 2, Ch. 21.
- ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 Book 1, Ch. 6.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Book 2, Ch. 15.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 Book 2, Ch. 25.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Book 2, Ch. 22.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Book 2, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Book 1, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Book 1, Ch. 24.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 12.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Book 2, Ch. 28.