Seed of power
This is a Maasverse post, and as such, there are spoilers for all Maas series. Proceed with caution.
In the tog series, we learn the art of shifting from Cyrene, a spider who weaves silk as colorful as the thread of Hope and devours dreams and life and joy. Manon calls Cyrene sister, as both share demon (Valg) blood, and the spider confirms that they are two faces of the same dark coin; sisters in spirit, if not in flesh (hof). Manon steals the silk for her wyvern and Cryene later tracks her down through scent alone in the form of a Crochan witch, which is how she finds herself at the mercy of Dorian’s curiosity.
She’d returned to her human form, her dark hair tangled, bundled in a Crochan cloak. As if one of them had taken pity on her. Not realizing the hunger in Cyrene’s eyes wasn’t for the goat stew.
Dorian kept his stance relaxed, even as he asked again, “Where does the shifting come from inside you?”
Cyrene angled her head as if listening to something. “It was strange, mortal king, to find that I had a new place within me with the return of magic. To find that something new had taken root.” Her small hand drifted to her middle, just above her navel. “A little seed of power. I will the shift, think of what I wish to be, and the change starts within here first. Always, the heat comes from here.” The spider settled her stare on him. “If you wish to be something, king-with-no-crown, then be it. That is the secret to the shifting. Be what you wish.” (koa)
-
Dorian put a hand on his stomach, despite the layers of clothes and cloak. Only toned muscle greeted him. “Is that what you do to summon the change: first think of what you want to become?”
“With limits. I need a clear image within my mind, or else it will not work at all.”
“So you cannot change into something you have not seen.”
“I can invent certain traits—eye color, build, hair—but not the creature itself.” A hideous smile bloomed on her mouth. “Use that lovely magic of yours. Change your pretty eyes,” the spider dared. “Change their color.” (koa)
-
Cyrene chuckled. “Do not think of the eye color so much as demand it.”
“How did you learn this without instruction?”
“The power is in me now,” the spider said simply. “I listened to it.” (koa)
This conversation between Cyrene and Dorian reminded me of the line of inquiry Elain pursues with Amren in acofas.
Mor opened her mouth, laughter dancing on her face, but Elain asked, “Could you have done it? Decided to take a male form?”
The question cut through the laughter, an arrow fired between us.
Amren studied my sister, Elain’s cheeks red from our unfiltered talk at the table. “Yes,” she said simply. “Before, in my other form, I was neither. I simply was.”
“Then why did you pick this body?” Elain asked, the faelight of the chandelier catching in the ripples of her golden-brown braid.
“I was more drawn to the female form,” Amren answered simply. “I thought it was more symmetrical. It pleased me.”
[...]
And Elain asked, “And once you were in this body, you couldn’t change?”
Amren’s eyes narrowed slightly. I straightened, glancing between them. Unusual, yes, for Elain to be so vocal, but she’d been improving. Most days she was lucid—perhaps quiet and melancholy, but aware.
Elain, to my surprise, held Amren’s gaze.
Amren said after a moment, “Are you asking out of curiosity for my past, or your own future?”
The question left me too stunned to even reprimand Amren. The others, too.
Elain’s brow furrowed before I could leap in. “What do you mean?”
“There’s no going back to being human, girl,” Amren said, perhaps a tad gently. (acofas)
There’s no going back to being human unless Elain possesses the power to walk in another’s skin, to shape-shift, like Cyrene. Two key parts of Cyrene’s explanation stood out to me–she relies on her sight as inspiration for shifting and she learned the power that she received in a trade by listening to it. Curiously, those two senses are key parts of Elain’s powers:
Elain cocked her head, as if listening to some inner voice. “Yes.”
Lucien just stared and stared at my sister, as if he’d never seen her before. (acowar)
-
Elain had been told—by Amren. She now sat at the table, more straight-backed and clear-eyed than I’d seen her. Had she beheld this, in whatever wanderings that new, inner sight granted her? Had the Cauldron whispered of it while we’d been away? I hadn’t the heart to ask her. (acowar)
Could Elain have learned how to wield her powers from the Cauldron’s whisperings? She is as curious as Dorian and often asks questions, learning without formal training. Could she even possess raw magic, the ability to shape her own magic and destiny? The Cauldron did give her such powers:
The Cauldron seemed to realize what she’d done, too, as his head thumped onto the mossy ground. That Elain … Elain had defended this thief. Elain, who it had gifted with such powers, found her so lovely it had wanted to give her something… It would not harm Elain, even in its hunt to reclaim what had been taken. (acowar)
And rather than referring to these powers as “Sight,” Amren is also strangely vague about the nature and extent of Elain’s powers.
“And do not forget that Nesta herself—and Elain, with whatever powers she has—is here. Feyre is here. All three sisters blessed by fate and gifted with powers to match your own.” (acosf)
If Nesta and Amren shared otherworldly eyes, might Elain and Amren share otherworldly forms as their parallel dinner conversation suggests? Rhys conveniently draws the connection between them for us again:
“Some were as lovely as you, Elain,” Rhys said from beside Feyre, “from the outside. But once they set foot into the arena of battle, they became as bloodthirsty as Amren.” (acosf)
We see Amren’s bloodthirsty form unleashed on the battlefield, drinking in the deaths of those who run from her.
She exploded from that mortal shell, light blinding us. Light and fire.
She was roaring—in victory and rage and pain. And I could have sworn I saw great, burning wings, each feather a simmering ember, spread wide. Could have sworn a crown of incandescent light floated just above her flaming hair.
She spread those wings, flame and light rippling to encompass her, no more than a burning behemoth that swept down upon Hybern’s armies. They began running.
Amren came down on them like a hammer, raining fire and brimstone.
She swept through them, burning them, drinking in their death. Some died at the mere whisper of her passing. (acowar)
Amren behaves like an otherworldly bird of prey, and since running activates a predator’s hunting instincts, Rhys tells allies not to run. Like Amren, Elain may also transform into a flying predator (owl, witch, Illyrian, sphinx…if she’s a full-powered shape-shifter, the sky is the limit…or is it? More on that in Groundings.)
@truthflower19 suggested that Elain’s powers could also be connected to Ragana, a witch in Baltic mythology with the power of Sight and shape-shifting abilities. It seems like Ragana was conflated with Laima, or Laumé, at some point, and referred to as laumé-ragana. Laumé were woodland fairies (or maybe even a benevolent deity) who were associated with pregnant women, birth, and fate; they could take different forms or change others into different forms. Laumé were also associated with domesticity and had a talent for weaving, which brings us back to shapeshifting.
His magic could leap between one element and another, yet the ability to shift lay within something else entirely. Lay within a part of him that had always yearned for one thing above all others: to let go. To be free. As Temis, Goddess of Wild Things, was free—uncaged. As he had once wished to be, when he had been little more than a reckless, idealistic prince.
It was the magic’s sole command: let go. Let go of who and what he’d become since that collar and emerge into something new, something different.
[...]
“What are you trying to turn into, exactly? Or who?”
The opposite of what he was. The opposite of the man who’d overlooked Sorscha’s presence for years. And offered her only death in the end. He’d be glad to let go of it, if only the magic would allow him.
“Nothing,” he said. Many of the Thirteen and Crochans went back to their meager meals at his dull response. “I just want to see if it’s possible, for someone with my manner of magic. To even change small features.” Not a lie, not entirely.
Manon frowned, as if trying to work out some puzzle she couldn’t quite grasp.
“But were you to succeed,” Glennis pressed, “who would you wish to be?”
He didn’t know. Couldn’t conjure an image beyond empty darkness. Damaris, at his side, would have no answer, either.
Dorian peered inward, feeling the sea of magic that roiled inside him. He traced its shape with careful, invisible hands. Followed a thread within himself not to his gut, but to his still-cracked heart. Who do you wish to be? There, like the seed of power that Cyrene had stolen, it lay—the little snarl in his magic. Not a snarl, but a knot—a knot in a tapestry. One that he might weave.
One he might fashion into something if he dared.
Who do you wish to be? he asked the barely woven tapestry within himself. Let the threads and knots take form, crafting the picture within his mind. Starting small.
Glennis chuckled. “Your eyes are green now, king.” Dorian started, heart thundering. The others again halted their lunches, gaping, some leaning in to peer at him more closely. But he fed his magic into the loom within himself, adding to the emerging picture.
“Och, golden hair does not suit you at all.” Asterin grimaced. “You look sickly.”
Who did he wish to be? Anyone but himself. But what he’d become. (koa)
Dorian wishes to become something different. In order to change his outward appearance, he peers inward and weaves a picture in his mind. Rhysand uses similar language to consider the possibility of Elain’s transformation:
He surveyed the study as he thought. “But I wonder if everyone has spent so long assuming Elain is sweet and innocent that she felt she had to be that way or else she’d disappoint you all.” He sighed toward the ceiling. “With time and safety, perhaps we’ll see a different side of her emerge.” (Feysand bonus)
It’s interesting that her physical appearance is emphasized and remarked upon repeatedly, including the scene in which she is Made.
More water than seemed possible dumped out in a cascade. Black, smoke-coated water. And Elain, as if she’d been thrown by a wave, washed onto the stones facedown.
Her legs were so pale—so delicate. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them bare.
The queens pushed forward. Alive, she had to be alive, had to have wanted to live—
Elain sucked in a breath, her fine-boned back rising, her wet nightgown nearly sheer. And as she rose from the ground onto her elbows, the gag in place, as she twisted to look at me— Nesta began roaring again.
Pale skin started to glow. Her face had somehow become more beautiful—infinitely beautiful, and her ears … Elain’s ears were now pointed beneath her sodden hair. (acomaf)
Elain’s primary asset, as a proper lady, is her beauty, and it has functioned as a cage of sorts, which is why it’s interesting her mother says this:
Elain is pleasant to look at, her mother had once mused while Nesta sat beside her dressing table, a servant silently brushing her mother’s gold-brown hair, but she has no ambition. She does not dream beyond her garden and pretty clothes. She will be an asset on the marriage market for us one day, if that beauty holds, but it will be our own maneuverings, Nesta, not hers, that win us an advantageous match. (acofas)
This statement is ominous, but it follows the ponderings of Rhys and Feyre in their bonus chapter. We will see a different side (or form?) emerge and it won’t be as innocent or sweet as expected.
Dorian references the Goddess of Wild Things in his thoughts about shape-shifting. As @psychologynerd and I discussed, Temis is an interesting word choice on Sarah’s part. Themis is the Greek goddess of law and order, and she is associated with oracles and prophecies. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that many of those with Sight navigate different forms. They are connected to the gods, whose own forms are fluid. Elain’s Sight could certainly help her shape-shift, providing many images from which she can weave a new form.
The use of weaving in Dorian’s informal lesson reminds me of Elain’s presence in the weaver scene with Feyre in acofas. She is openly curious about the weaver’s ability to create Void (darkness) and Hope (iridescent light). @silverlinedeyes wondered a long time ago if Elain could use this woven Void to shadow walk in her story, and I have a few related ideas on how it might be wielded. The first relates to shifting form, and the second involves moving like a force as Urd does (more on the latter in the Song of the wind and Groundings). If Elain can weave a new form, like the goddess of fate, how might this power manifest? Is she a full-powered shape-shifter?
For a breath she wished for a shape-shifter’s heart so she could shed her skin and weave herself into something else, the music or the wind, and blow across the world. (hof)
Full-powered shape-shifters can replicate someone’s form, making it an incredibly powerful ability. Shape-shifters are spies and thieves and assassins.
A sly cat’s glance in Aelin’s direction. Rowan, seated on Aedion’s right, cocked his head to the side. “Do you need an introduction?” Lysandra’s smile grew. “I like your fangs,” she said sweetly. Aelin choked on her grape. Of course Lysandra did. Rowan gave a little grin that usually sent Aelin running. “Are you studying them so you can replicate them when you take my form, shape-shifter?” Aelin’s fork froze in midair. “Bullshit,” Aedion said. All amusement had vanished from the courtesan’s face. Shape-shifter.
Holy gods. What was fire magic, or wind and ice, compared to shape-shifting? Shifters: spies and thieves and assassins able to demand any price for their services; the bane of courts across the world, so feared that they’d been hunted nearly to extinction even before Adarlan had banned magic. (qos)
Lysandra, a full-powered shape-shifter, used her gift to survive and found that things came easier to her when she wore more beautiful faces.
“I used my abilities. Sometimes I was human; sometimes I wore the skins of other street children with high standing in their packs; sometimes I became an alley cat or a rat or a gull. And then I learned that if I made myself prettier—if I made myself beautiful—when I begged for money, it came far faster. I was wearing one of those beautiful faces the day magic fell. And I’ve been stuck in it ever since.” (qos)
Lysandra’s loss of her true form is an echo of the Hind’s tale of a witch who loses sight of her true self and her true form. Shifting relies on an image in the mind, a memory. And if it is lost–or taken–so is one’s true form.
That was the danger of shifting—that you would forget your real form, because it’s the memory of it that guides the shifting.” (qos)
We have already seen Elain alter her appearance strategically at least once (and likely more than once, as many have theorized) to help others. As someone who is deeply connected to the land, and consistently compared to animals, it would make sense for her to weave a fanged beast form. And this beast form might still love the sun and plants, just like everyone’s favorite flower-smelling wyvern.
Next: Herbs she planted, or how herbs link Elain to witches.
Series: seer. wise woman. witch.