This is my discussion post for chapters 1-4 of Hallowed by Cynthia Hand. WARNING: There are spoilers for the first four chapters of Hallowed and for all of Unearthly in this post.
School starts five days after the fire. Clara’s hair, now golden blonde instead of orange, draws a lot of unwanted attention.
Clara is still having dreams about Christian, but now Jeffrey is in them too. Things with Christian are awkward since the fire. She avoids his calls at first but can’t help seeing him at school. Tucker and Christian are both in Clara’s AP Government class. When Clara and Tucker are joking around in front of Christian, she can feel his frustration. It’s empathy, a rare trait in angel-bloods.
Now that Angela knows Christian is an angel-blood, she starts Angel Club and invites Clara, Christian, and Jeffrey so they can learn as much as they can about angel-bloods. She’s been doing some research (as always) and has discovered that Samjeeza, the Black Wing who attacked Clara and her mom, is the leader of the Watchers group of Black Wings. They seduce human women and produce as many angel-bloods as possible.
Angela also wants to use Angel Club to figure out their purposes, since Clara and Christian failed theirs and she and Jeffrey haven’t had theirs yet. Jeffrey doesn’t want to talk about purposes and makes excuses to leave.
Clara is afraid her mom is disappointed in her for not fulfilling her purpose. She asks her mom what’s going to happen about that. Clara’s mom explains that some purposes are a single event and some involve more. Clara’s mom’s purpose lasted more than a hundred years.
Tucker still wants to know what happened with Clara the night of the fire, but she doesn’t really want to talk about it. She tells him instead that Angela and Christian are angel-bloods. He’s not very happy to hear that about Christian. Clara tells him she’s moved on from Christian.
Jeffrey’s worried about their mom. He knows something happened to her in the confrontation with Samjeeza, but Clara won’t go into details about how injured their mom was or that her glory healed her mom. She asks Jeffrey where he was that day. He tells her what he told her before, that he was in the woods looking for her.
Angela and Clara hang out on Saturday night, and as they’re leaving a restaurant, Clara senses a Black Wing. They can’t see him anywhere so they get in the car and call Clara’s mom for help. She meets them a few minutes later at the school. They wait there awhile but Samjeeza never shows up. Clara’s mom says that Clara needs to be prepared, because eventually he is going to come for them. Clara needs to learn to control glory.
That’s something she practices at Angel Club. Angela tells Christian that Clara is having new visions and asks if he is. He denies it. That night he visits Clara and tells her that the location she described in her vision is the cemetery where his mom is buried. Clara realizes that she’s not feeling a Black Wing’s sorrow in her vision. It’s her own sorrow. Someone she loves is going to die.
Black Wings take longer to heal than angel-bloods because of the way time works in hell. “A day is a thousand years, a thousand years a day, something like that.” I think this knowledge will probably come in handy later.
I’m telling you, Jeffrey has the potential to be a Black Wing. I’m glad Clara is starting to have some suspicious about his activities too. I’d like to get this story moving along.
I don’t think Watchers is a very good name for Samjeeza’s group. If they’re impregnating women, there’s a whole lot more than watching going on.
What do you think Clara’s mom’s purpose was? I think part of it involved preparing Clara for her purpose.
This is where everything happened, pressed against Bluebell’s beat-up, musty seats. This is where I fell in love.
First rule of Angel Club, you do not talk about Angel Club.
Hahaha! I have never seen Fight Club, but every time I hear someone quote this, I want to. But it’s never on cable when I think about it and want to see it.
After dinner I fly over to the Lazy Dog to see Tucker.
I love how she says that as if it’s perfectly normal. She just flies on over, like taking a stroll.
“This isn’t going to become one of those creepy situations where you show up at all hours of the night to watch me sleep, is it?” he asks playfully.
Someone’s been reading (or watching) Twilight!
That’s it for today. I think we’re off to a good start so far. Read chapters 5-8 today and post your discussion tomorrow.
