Duncan's wooden carvings

Duncan's wooden carvings begin as small, handmade figures that seem almost absurdly harmless, but they become the instruments of his power when he animates and enlarges them into life-size golems. Their progression from a fox that fits in a palm to creatures fighting in a battle makes Duncan's patient whittling an early, understated sign of a capacity much greater than the other characters initially see.

Making and Material

Duncan whittles while the group waits for Venus to call. As Les considers what the group can do next, Duncan agrees that they cannot plan until they hear from her, yet his fingers continue shaping wood. He has a bin beside his chair from which he takes another piece when he sets one carving aside. The work proceeds alongside urgent discussion rather than interrupting it: Duncan keeps making figures while others wait for information and try to devise a response.

The carvings are visibly wooden, not merely figures that resemble animals. At one point Duncan sets down a tiny fox, and later he adds a hulking bear to the objects on the table. Their different sizes make his steady production conspicuous, but at first their material and scale suggest ornaments rather than weapons. The fox is small enough to fit in a hand; the bear is larger, though still only a carving when Duncan places it beside the first figure.

The Figures on the Table

The small fox alters the atmosphere around the table in a way its size does not seem to justify. The hares eye it warily and lean away, as if it might leap down and attack. The narrator finds their caution faintly comic: even if Duncan could bring the fox to life, it seems too small to do much harm. The scene places an unrecognized possibility inside a joke. The fox is treated as a carved object, while the group's wary response hints at an animal danger that the figure's actual dimensions do not explain.

Duncan's continuing work also becomes a point of friction for the narrator. While Venus's next move remains unknown, another small creation seems to offer no immediate help. The contrast is between the group's need to act and Duncan's quiet, repetitive craft; at this stage, no one can tell from the figures alone how relevant that craft will become. When Bianca explains that she can use a caul to disguise more than one sense, Duncan sets down his newest carving, the bear, beside the fox and responds that he has seen bearers use a caul but never one that tricks more than one sense. The figures remain present through a conversation about abilities and their usefulness, though their own purpose has not yet been demonstrated.

From Carvings to Golems

That purpose becomes unmistakable during the fighting. A man charges toward the narrator, but a bear knocks him down before he can reach her. Its color seems odd in the low light; on closer inspection, the narrator sees the swirl and grain of wood. This is not an ordinary bear but one of Duncan's creations, now large and active enough to intervene in combat.

Duncan is in the middle of the fighting, throwing his carvings into the air. They expand as they unfold, and by the time they strike the ground they have become life-size. The transformation gives the earlier tabletop objects a new meaning: their smallness was not a limit on what they could do, but the state in which Duncan carried and handled them before releasing their full scale. The narrator had seen Duncan bring carvings to life before, but had not known that he could make them bigger. Animation alone had not disclosed the extent of his ability.

The bear is not the only figure to become a force on the battlefield. A wooden lumberjack passes through the fighting, its axe cleaving chunks out of people as it moves. The animal and human-shaped creations make the same wooden material legible in two different ways: the bear acts as a defender against an immediate attacker, while the lumberjack advances with an axe. Once enlarged, the carvings are no longer curiosities or symbols of Duncan's private pastime; they are combatants whose bodies and actions directly change the danger around them.

Power and Strategic Meaning

The battle reveals that Duncan is the only golem maker the narrator has ever met and that his ability is formidable. The revelation changes the earlier scenes retrospectively. His repeated carving while the others wait can look like distraction or habit, but the figures he produces are also potential fighting forces. The group has seen the objects before; what it had not seen was how rapidly they could become life-size and enter a fight.

The ability also helps explain why Venus is drawn to firebugs. The narrator recognizes that firebugs could protect Venus from someone able to send deadly wooden golems against her, especially someone like Duncan. The danger is not limited to the creatures already seen: the narrator considers the possibility that Duncan could make a figure that shoots large wooden stakes, a threat for which there is no ward. This is speculation about what his skill might permit, not an additional attack shown in the battle, but it makes clear why the power has strategic consequences beyond the immediate encounter.

Duncan's carvings therefore connect an intimate, repetitive act with a public display of force. The fox and bear first appear amid waiting, uneasy conversation, and the attempt to assess what different abilities can contribute. In battle, their rapid enlargement exposes how badly appearances can underestimate Duncan: the harmless-looking wooden figures are the portable beginnings of life-size golems, and the maker's apparent refusal of power does not make him powerless.