#If kilmeny's a changeling then margaret is a witch

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

From here on out, just assume a running content warning for ableism and racism/eugenics. I will flag anything new or out of the ordinary, but this is a book about ableism and eugenics, so those threads pop up everywhere.

Okay, we're back at it. We pick back up with chapter 8, when Eric and Kilmeny have their arranged meeting. Kilmeny is still being described as a child every other sentence. This is a thing LMM does when she wants to convey ~innocence~. Cecilia Gay (you know, a 26-year-old woman who'd had a child) was also constantly described as childlike and innocent. It grates on my more modern sensibilities, but it does feel more like literary shorthand than like LMM literally saying Kilmeny is a kid.

We waste no time re-establishing Eric as a jerk. "Somehow Eric did not like her references to Neil. The idea of that handsome, low-born boy seeing Kilmeny every day..." Neil, of course, has committed the dastardly crime of having the Wrong Parents. Eric can't just be jealous of Neil because he has a crush on Kilmeny and so is jealous of every single man who sees her (already an unpleasant character trait), Eric has to be superior and condescending about how Neil is the Wrong kind of people to breathe Kilmeny's air. 

Anyway, so Kilmeny is magic:

"What divine music she lured out of the old violin—merry and sad, gay and sorrowful by turns, music such as the stars of morning might have made singing together, music that the fairies might have danced to in their revels among the green hills or on yellow sands, music that might have mourned over the grave of a dead hope. Then she drifted into a still sweeter strain. As he listened to it he realized that the whole soul and nature of the girl were revealing themselves to him through her music—the beauty and purity of her thoughts, her childhood dreams and her maiden reveries. There was no thought of concealment about her; she could not help the revelation she was unconscious of making."

Kilmeny is entirely self-taught -- she said previously that Neil taught her how to hold a bow but everything else she figured out on her own. Given that the violin is one of her primary methods of communication, it does make sense that she would have figured out how to convey meaning through the music. It's less logical that Eric, who doesn't know her, would immediately pick up on the nuances of that communication instead of having to get to know her better, but it's a romance novel so fine. Whatever. Eric and Kilmeny have a spiritual magical connection and understand each other instinctively.

We learn that Kilmeny can laugh aloud, even if she can't speak. Eric asks about it, and she says that she can only make sounds when she's not thinking about it. When she is caught up in the moment she can laugh or make noises of fear or surprise, but if she tries to make sounds on purpose she can't. She also says this: " I asked mother once and she told me it was a judgment on her for a great sin she had committed."

Kilmeny doesn't notice that Eric only sees her as an extension of himself because all her life she has only ever been seen as an extension of her mother. She has been punished for Margaret's sin. (And, by the by, why is it Margaret who is being punished when it's Ronald who lied to her? Kilmeny said last chapter that on her deathbed Margaret regretted never forgiving Ronald or believing him when he said he didn't know his first wife was alive. Is that her sin?

Ew. I just realized. Margaret's sin is pride and her punishment for that sin is having born a disabled child. I hate it.)

Eric does have a good moment when he asks Kilmeny's permission to ask her about her muteness. As ever, Eric is poisoned by the fact that we can see his thoughts.

" Do not look so sorry, my friend. I am very happy and I do not mind so very much not being able to speak—only sometimes when I have so many thoughts and it seems so slow to write them out, some of them get away from me."

Kilmeny has the most healthy attitude on her disability we have seen thus far: it isn't hurting her, it is sometimes kind of annoying, but mostly she just lives her life. It's other people who make a big deal about it.

So Eric wishes that his friend, who conveniently is a nationally renowned throat specialist, could examine Kilmeny. On the one hand, sure. On the other, I wish he could take her at her word that she doesn't particularly mind and leave it alone. He's not doing it because he thinks it will make her happy, he's doing it because he thinks she is defective.

Ew.

(Also, as a sidenote, it's been a minute since we heard anything about Eric's students. The man is definitely not cut out to be a teacher, is all I'll say.)