BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 32: Jane Says

Oy, what a messy chapter. You can tell we're wrapping up, but S. Meyer suddenly throws a bunch of new balls into the air. It's hard to blame her; where the fuck are we going to go from here? In the first book of this series we met three villains. In the first book James died, in the second book Laurent died, and now Victoria is dead. And there's still another book coming. What do we do about that? S. Meyer's solution seems to be to try a few things all at once. A plot line about the arrival of the Volturi keeps crashing into a plot line about problems with Jacob, and I kept thinking about that episode of The Simpsons where Homer was trying to mash two mismatched puzzle pieces together. It's not going to work!

Chapter 25: Mirror

Bella stands there shocked, trying not to stare at Victoria's DECAPITATED FUCKING HEAD on the ground in front of her; Victoria's red hair is still blowing in the wind. We're really getting a look at S. Meyer's sadistic side in these chapters, and it's kind of great:

Swiftly and coolly businesslike, [Edward] dismembered the headless corpse.

The dark tone is infectious, and since I've recently given up on moral outrage the timing is especially perfect. Bring on the weird shit, S. Meyer! I'm ready. Bella gives Edward the up and the down to make sure he's okay – she can't even see a tear in his clothes. That's too bad, S. Meyer missed an opportunity to get real harlequin on us; “Edward's shirt had been torn down the front, exposing his smooth marble chest,” and so on. He piles up the “quivering, twitching limbs” (yes!) and covers them in pine needles. I don't feel like that alone is going to get much of a fire going. Gather some kindling, maybe? Edward heads into the woods and for a moment I thought that was really what he was doing, but he comes back with “arms full of Riley” instead. Seth follows with Riley's torso in his mouth (even more yes!). They start the fire (pine needles do the job after all) and thick purple smoke (vampire ghosts, I guess) start climbing toward the sky. Edward extends a fist to Seth and the wolf bumps his teeth against it. Hahahaha wait a second, really? I had to read that a few times to make sure it was real.

“Thug life!” Edward said.

Edward finally turns to Bella, approaching her slowly like she's got a bomb strapped to her chest and he's here to work out the terms of a hostage release. For one thing, she's still got the sharp rock in her hand, but for another Edward is worried she'll be horrified by him. When she doesn't seem to be, he's confused.

“I just beheaded and dismembered a sentient creature not twenty yards from you. That doesn't bother you?”

(He was twenty yards away?) What's weird about this scene is that Bella is simultaneously shell-shocked and trying to convince Edward that she's okay – she's not afraid of him and seems to want him to understand that, but she's also shaken by the events of the last chapter, and thus struggling to keep her head. The problem is, if that is what is happening, it is not made sufficiently clear. Trying to introduce both ideas at once reads like Bella actually is afraid of Edward and is trying to lie about it. Every time she denies that he is a scary murderer there is a little narrative aside that undermines it. Like this:

“Seriously?” I finally asked. “You...what? Thought you'd scared me off?” I snorted. Snorting was good; a voice couldn't tremble or break during a snort. It sounded impressively offhand.

What the hell is that? Is this scene supposed to play like Bella finds it funny that Edward would think she'd be afraid of him? Is she afraid of him? I really can't tell. Combine this section with the whole “I didn't know I loved Jacob” storyline of the last few chapters and it seems like S. Meyer is losing her grip on Bella as a character. How is she feeling right now? I have no idea. She talks about being “confused” by Edward's fear and relieved when she realizes Victoria is never coming back, but then only lines later she is forcing herself to seem “blasé” while talking to Edward. Huh?

The relief (such as it is) of having defeated Victoria is short lived, as multiple vague obstacles appear on pages 560-561. It happens very quickly, like S. Meyer realized how incoherent the first few pages of this chapter were and wanted to distract us before we noticed. Bella asks about Edward's cryptic comment earlier (as in before the fight – for someone in shock she has a pretty good memory) about having to “nail down an schedule” on something. He says it's "nothing." She doesn't get a chance to press him further, because suddenly Edward drifts into the pack mind and something terrible happens.

And then Edward gasped, “No!” and one of his hands flew out as if to grab something that I couldn't see. “Don't –!”
A spasm rocked through Seth's body, and a howl, blistering with agony, ripped from his lungs.

Guys, what the fuck? Edward drops to his knees and Bella follows him down.

I screamed once in bewildered terror.

As opposed to twice? Edward starts speaking in pack-mind form – Sam is helping whoever was hurt. That's all the news we get for a while. So now we have two vague terrible things hanging in the air, which even turn out to be totally unrelated. Edward tells Seth to go straight home, and puts Bella on his back and starts running. She starts pestering him with questions, and he admits that the Volturi had decided to do away with the newborns themselves and are thus en route. They seem to have been hanging back on purpose, and Edward assumes it's because they were hoping a few of the Cullens would die.

Alice can apparently see that everything will be fine though, so as always with the Volturi it's a little unclear why anyone is all that stressed out. Bella realizes that Edward still hasn't explained why he was on his knees screaming a minute ago, and realizes he was “distracting” her with the Volturi talk. Sort of like how S. Meyer was distracting us with the screaming! We're paying it forward! I feel like I should go off on a needless digression right now, and then you should open another tab and read something else for a few minutes, just to extend this chain as far as we can.

Hey do you think there's a really twisted dude out there who totally misunderstood the point of Pay It Forward and went out in the world doing good deeds because he knew it would kick start a chain of events that would kill a kid?

ANYWAY what happened was there was a newborn hiding because the werewolves didn't take inventory (stupid lazy werewolves!), and it attacked Leah, and Jacob stepped in and almost got killed. Edward implies that he is very badly hurt, and then Bella faints. She metaphorically slips off a cliff she was standing on in her mind (I don't even – there was a motif back there I mostly ignored) or something, but do you think she also fell off of Edward's back while he was running? I'm entertaining myself with that visual. Edward's running and running and Bella just DROPS. THUD. Hahahaha. Anyway.

Bella wakes up in the clearing next to a pile of burning vampire bodies, an image that should be treated as darker than it is. The Cullens are all there, and Alice sounds “brightly chipper” as she informs them that the Volturi will be arriving in a few minutes, and Bella will be awake in “thirty-seven seconds.” I understand the cheery voice for the second part, but what about the first part? (I have a theory, but I'll explain it in a bit.) Jasper is standing by the pile of burning bodies (natch) rubbing his arm – he was bitten. Edward explains that Jasper got hurt trying to do too much at once, “trying to make sure Alice had nothing to do, actually.”

Alice grimaced toward her true love. “Overprotective fool.”

That's too bad, Alice missed an opportunity to get real harlequin on us; “Oh, my shirt got torn off my the newborns! Also my bra!” and so on. Jasper's hovering over what turns out to be a young girl – a newborn who surrendered to the Cullens. She's thrashing around in the dirt and starts loudly complaining about how badly she wants Bella. Bella looks at the wild eyes of the newborn vampire and, well, you know.

I stared at her, mesmerized, wondering if I were looking into a mirror of my future.

I feel like we could make this more obvious, if we wanted to. What if the girl's name is Swella Ban? That would be so great. Then the Volturi come striding into the clearing. Well, a few of them. Jane is the only notable presence. One dude who I should probably remember but don't (Felix) winks at Bella. Am I the only person who likes the Volturi? Regardless of what Edward seems to think, they aren't particularly evil. They're dicks, but they're such gleeful dicks that their dickishness is endearing. I find myself breathless in anticipation of every casually bitchy word out of Jane's mouth. She seems to plan on showing no mercy to the Cullen's prisoner of war. YES. Kill that kid, Jane! The Victoria scene has filled me with literary bloodlust.

Is it possible that Alice is excited too? Recall that a few minutes ago (told you I'd come back to this) her voice was “chipper” when she said the Volturi were minutes away. Did she see this was going to end with some child-murdering? Jasper used to kill newborns all the time, after all! Could it be she has a really weird fetish? It would explain her lack of the reproductive anxiety suffered by Esme and Rosalie! I'm going to go out on a limb here and say yes, that is exactly it.

Edward talks to Jane for a while explaining everything that happened. Can't we skip some of this, S. Meyer? Jane turns to the newborn girl and asks her name. When she doesn't answer, Jane goes all CRUCIO STARE on her ass. The girl screams and writhes and Bella feels sick. She looks to Esme and Alice, who both have blank faces. Vampires can be so cold! Get it? Cold? (Esme is masking her pain, but I think Alice is masking her enjoyment.)

“She'll tell you anything you want to know,” Edward said through his teeth. “You don't have to do that.”
“Oh, I know,” [Jane] said to Edward, grinning at him before she turned back to the young vampire.

Jane is so great. Bree is the girls name, as in Bree Tanner, as in S. Meyer's novella. And Bree recaps for Jane what is probably the plot of that novella, the way Riley transformed them and told them that the Cullens were coming to get them, the way he kept Victoria's identity secret. When Jane hears that Victoria's efforts were motivated by Bella, she laughs.

“This one seems to bring out bizarrely strong reactions in our kind,” she observed, smiling directly at me, her face beatific.
Edward stiffened... “Would you please not do that?” he asked in a tight voice.
Jane laughed again lightly. “Just checking. No harm done, apparently.”

Jane is the greatest! I'm wondering how much Dakota Fanning's deadpan turn in New Moon is impacting my goodwill toward her. My guess is “a lot.” Jane indicates that it is time to kill Bree and leave, and Edward says the Cullens would take responsibility for the girl. He's looking at Carlisle while he talks – it's possible that he's channeling Carlisle's thoughts and his dad is just too much of a pussy to speak up for himself. He offers to take Bree in, but Jane is like “nope” and Bella looks away and Felix goes over to Bree and then it's SCREAM CRUNCH SNAP. Yeah! So concludes the Brief Wondrous Life of Bree Wao or whatever! Thanks for stopping by, little girl!

Am I supposed to find this horrifying and not awesome? I hope not. It would be weird if S. Meyer expected us to feel much of anything for a character she literally just introduced and transparently linked to Bella since, you know, we barely care about Bella.