woodwardiocom

-So, there we are at Jen/

anotherjen's friends house. I'm reading one of the kids' books that's lying around, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. And suddenly, all is made clear to me:

"Wait a minute. Mulligan and Mary Anne dig faster the more people are watching. Obviously this is some sort of technomagical ritual, where he gets energy from the observers-as-participants. Then the forces of technology threaten to make him obsolete, so he has to go out to the pastoral country, where belief in magic is still alive. He digs this cellar in one day, but ends up trapped underground, where he and Mary Anne become the hidden source of power beneath Town Hall -- and, wait, he's smoking a pipe, a wizardly symbol! Mike Mulligan is actually Merlin, and getting stuck underground is a re-enactment of what Nimue did to him! The clues are there, 'MARy ANne, MER-LIN,' it's so obvious!"

-At this point Jen pipes up, "So the woman who runs the phones is the Lady in the Lake?"

(This is part of why I love her, of course.)

-And she may be right, too, since the phone operator is the one who invited all the folk from the other towns to join the ritual, thus empowering Merlin even further... Hmm, I may have to write this up as an Amazon.com review (companion to my TMATEOTB review).