Midwinterblood Memory and the Past Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

Someone has left him a jar of that tea, and he decides the best thing to do is have a drink, to think about whatever it is he's supposed to be thinking about.

He brews the tea, not really noticing that it has a slightly different taste, that it has become a little stronger.

And so he drinks, and the forgetting begins again. (1.10.56-58)

Memory is a powerful thing. Tor wants to block Eric from remembering his past. Why? So he doesn't see the grisly end coming? Or does he just want to stop Eric from making a connection to Merle? Good luck with that, Tor.

Quote #5

Is it this living nightmare, or is it whatever he was forced to drink in his sleep, that triggers a flood of memories, memories from long ago, of other nightmares?

Nightmares that terrified not just him, but his devout and strict parents, too. Blood-soaked dreams that came night after night as a teenager, dreams that upon waking seem more real than the drab surroundings of his mundane room, his gray house, his ever more distant mother and father. His life.

Blood-soaked nightmares. Of another time. Of another place. Another life. (1.12.15-17)

Eric has had hints that his past is more complicated than he realizes—he's dreamed of living other lives, of being other people, of his deaths and sacrifices. His memories are trying to poke through but just can't quite make it out yet.

Quote #6

They have found a pile of stones, the sort of thing that does not seem very exciting to anyone but an archaeologist.

A pile of stones, but a particular sort of pile, a cairn, and Edward knows that it is very likely that there is a find underneath the cairn.

He has seen one before, and he is impatient. But these things have to be done properly. First the last of the soil must be removed from around the stones, and then the stones must be photographed, and drawn on grid paper, and only then will they be able to lift them, and find out for sure if what they have found is what Edward thinks it is: a Viking burial.

He has a doubt. He has a doubt because the cairn is small, much smaller than the burial sites he has seen before. He worked on one once that was vast. Beneath the stones lay the remains of a Viking longboat, most of the wood long rotted away, but obvious to the expert eye, nevertheless. (2.5.20-23)

Edward is an archeologist so his whole career is basically rooted in the past. Here he's carefully uncovering memories of another time, trying to piece together what has happened. But of course, the real story is much more complicated and freaky than he can imagine.