Patience Smith is a soulless ship’s carpenter who reverses the polarity of curses and feeds on corpses. His surname, in Antiterra, also belongs to several who opened the territory.
| Type | Character |
| Spanish entry | Patience Smith |
Description
A carpenter by trade, he “knows how to work the inverse polarity of curses”: he turns them around rather than dissolving or expelling them. He learned this from his nanny, Nancy. On board he repairs both the hull and whatever is cast on it; every curse passes through his hands, as no one else has the skill.
The hunger
He is “soulless”, with a corrupt hunger for corpses that stays hidden until pressure breaks it. “Patience was fighting the hunger he usually has”; when forced to reveal himself, he was seen “feeding on the corpse” of a three-headed creature. His exposure changes the situation of everyone around him. One phrase is recorded, his own or quoted: “death is my companion.”
The Smiths of the ship
Anker Smith is the boatswain; Neil is “the young Smith”. A “triple row of teeth like a shark” is said of the boatswain, though the passage names a “Julián”. A body “inlaid with some gems, gold nuggets”, in skin or teeth, belongs either to Patience or to Neil.
The Smiths of the land
In Antiterra’s history the surname marks first times:
- John Smith, a Christian missionary who approached Rebeca, was “one of the first” to say one must “know how to expand and do things right”.
- George Smith left his name on the coast: “the place where George Smith arrived”.
- Jedediah Smith, a trapper, was “the first white man to reach California by land, crossing the Sierra Nevada”.
No kinship between these and the ship’s Smiths is recorded.
Open questions
- Whether Patience and Anker are one person, and whether “Julián” is Anker or someone else.
- His appearance beyond the act of eating; the cost and limits of the “inverse polarity”, and what happens when it fails.
- Whether soullessness causes or follows the hunger, is reversible, or afflicts others.
- Who Nancy was and what she taught; where the ship sails.
- Whether the gems are ornament, payment, mark of trade or effect of the corruption.