The Girl from the Other Side 5

 
 
The Girl from the Other Side 5

Siuil, a Run

by Nagabe
Seven Seas

2018

 

 

In the previous volume of The Girl from the Other Side, Shiva was reunited with her aunt, Shiva's aunt turned into an Outsider, Shiva and her aunt briefly lived together with Teacher, and then one of the Outsiders from the forest brought Shiva and Teacher the aunt's severed head.

 
In volume 5, the first thing we learn is that Shiva's aunt isn't dead exactly, she's turned into a living tree, and shed her Outsider skin during the transformation. Apparently this happens to everyone who is Cursed, sometime after they lose all their memories, which also always happens. Teacher wonders why he's lasted so much longer than the aunt did. The forest outsider also says some more cryptic things about how Shiva is a soul and how the other Outsiders want to retrieve souls and bring them to their Mother.

 
Shiva gets mad at teacher and they have a fight. He knew the aunt was losing her memories and didn't warn Shiva.

 
After the fight, Teacher goes off into the woods alone. He meets another soldier from Inside who's trying to retrieve Shiva. The soldier has become an Outsider, and nearly succeeds in chopping up Teacher with his sword. The soldier says the king wants to get Shiva back so she can be sacrificed and her soul can be consecrated to their god. (The imagery showing the soldier's plan is particularly grotesque.) Some Outsiders from the forest intervene and Teacher escapes.

 
He rushes back to the abandoned house he and Shiva have been living in. They fight again, then talk, then kind of make up. They also find a map Shiva's aunt left that shows another village further out. Teacher thinks they should walk there to get away from the soldier. On the walk, he tries to understand all the things he's heard about Shiva and souls and the Curse, but he can't. (I don't understand it yet either!) This book ends with Shiva and Teacher arriving at a new village.

 
By this point, unanswered questions and cryptic, incomplete answers are both starting to pile up. One of the Outsiders seems to have implied that the Curse came from Inside, somehow, and maybe that all Insiders (that is, the humans living in towns and villages inside the wall that separates them from the forest) have souls stolen from the Mother of the Outsiders. The Insiders' god is also called a Father, so I feel like this is all related to some original divine couple, but I can't quite make out what happened in the past or how all the pieces fit together. Hopefully volume 6 will provide a few more answers!