*SPOILERS THROUGH THE WAKE #8*

So, it's not much of a secret—read: not a secret at all—that Governess Vivienne is probably The Wake's single biggest threat to its heroine Leeward and whatever remains of humanity clinging to the shrinking fringes of land. She's ruthless, dictatorial and in some kind of active conspiracy to keep the search for the "signal," presumed to be instructions on how to counteract or defeat the mer-creatures, from achieving fruition. So far, her motives have been obscure, especially since she so often speaks in anecdotes and parables. But I wonder if the fantastically trippy and wildly disorienting hallucinations of General Marlow in The Wake #8 might frame her as an even more considerable threat.

1. Though just who is "in charge" of the hallucination content when a human is exposed to mer-venom has never seemed fixed, Vivienne seems to control, at least somewhat, Marlow's vision. However, it is possible that the shape the vision takes is more a key to understanding Vivienne than her enigmatic stories of lullabies and vanishing children. It is undoubtedly a watery context—maybe also snowy/icy—in which a mostly naked and younger Vivienne is at home among a menagerie of vascular animals.

2. Marlow abruptly snaps out of his hallucination after being kissed by Vivienne. Like his bite, mer-venom is known to be transmitted through saliva. It also seems to have different effects from different individual mers or mer-types, such as Captain Mary's toothless mer who sedates its victims.

3. Vivienne's only adornment in Marlow's vision is the strange neck-piece she's worn throughout The Wake, which resembles mer-anatomy in design, including the vaguely bioluminescent nodule at the suprasternal notch. And in his hallucination, it spills over with water. Likewise her features are sleek and not entirely unlike the facial structure of the mers, and her skin tone is bluish-white to the point of appearing inhuman, especially next to the sun-baked tones of everyone else.

4. According to Captain Mary, some humans—the natural explorers, I suppose—are more or less accepted by mers. In other words, the relationship between species isn't always antagonistic.

5. While we've yet to see the pirates engaged in such activities, there are rumors of procreation with mers creating hybrids.


Given such information, I'm beginning to think that Vivienne herself may be such a creature, or that she is in some way in league with the mer-creatures—or some of the mer-creatures—not only strategically but biologically and anatomically. And I'm beginning to think Marlow might be picking up on it.

So, yes? No? Some other explanation for The Wake #8's hallucination sequence? Just WHAT is Vivienne?