Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Törzs includes imagery of the sky frequently throughout Ink Blood Sister Scribe, including its opening line: “Abe Kalotay died in his front yard in late February, beneath a sky so pale it seemed infected” (1), and the passage that immediately precedes its conclusion: “The thrum of magic filled the air: the endless sugar of a hot blue sky, the beat of a thousand gossamer wings, a wind that moved everything on earth that could be moved, which was everything” (403). Vivid descriptions of the color of the sky recur often, from different characters’ perspectives. Esther notes it changing “from robin’s egg to cerulean to a calm, luminous azure” (5), and Nicholas sees it as “a luminous mother-of-pearl” (96).

The sky motif has several functions throughout the novel. First, it serves to connect the protagonists before they are in the same location, as Esther, Joanna, and Nicholas’s perspectives each include such depictions. The sky is also associated with transition, since Esther notices the sky while she sits on the plane waiting to depart Antarctica, when the sky glows “pink with incipient sun” as dawn breaks (220). Similarly, when Esther and Joanna are on the plane to London near the conclusion of the novel, the “Clouds looked different from above.