CCFF99: siblings to utopia via the labyrinth: 04/26/19

The next way to utopia for siblings is via the labyrinth. It's another twisty path, like the maze, but one with little to no obstruction. The path might be confusing but it is reliable.

For this stop in the road narrative spectrum, I have one exemplar: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the second of the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire. It's the tale of Jack and Jill and how they got to their world after their parents systematically dismantled their reality as identical twins.

Sibling travelers are brothers and sisters — or just brothers or just sisters — who are separated from the remainder of their family on their travels. They can be adults like the Winchesters or they can be children as is the case for Jack and Jill. They don't have to be blood relatives, although most of my examples so far, are.

Utopia is a no place. It can be a eutopia (a good place) or a dystopia (a bad place) but it doesn't have to be. It is a place that isn't on conventional maps. It might not even be in the same dimension that the travelers are from. It is somewhere else — somewhere undefinable or unknowable. In

In Jack and Jill's case, their utopia borders on dystopia, though its badness is related to the monsters and mad scientists who inhabit it. Many of these so called bad people though, were recruited through doors just as Jack and Jill were, and they have managed to follow the rules.

The route to utopia this time is the labyrinth. Labyrinth is a catch-all term for any twisty route that appears constructed and isn't rife with blind alleys, traps, and dangers like the maze. It is a route that can appear dangerous or can appear complex but ends up being a fairly straightforward, single track to the destination.

For Jack and Jill the path is an impossible staircase that appears in their house. As it's a journey downwards until they go well beyond the bounds of the house and end up in their new land, it's also a metaphorical linking to the Labyrinth of Minos.

The labyrinth could be an actual spiral labyrinth. It could be one in a garden that appears normal until the center reveals a portal to another world.

On the inverse, the tale could be of some unknown force from an unknown world coming through the garden labyrinth to invade the mundane world. In this example, the siblings would be the ones who drive the invader back through the labyrinth to utopia.

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