Keeper of the Lost Cities #9.5 Unraveled Part 4 Ethan Benedict Wright II

This post contains MAJOR SPOILERS from late in the set.  Do not read this post unless you've read ALL of the books that have been published.  You've been warned.

I read this book twice immediately after it was released.  I was very confused about Ethan and Eleanor, although I did draw a few conclusions.  I deliberately kept away from the book for a month to distance myself.  I noticed so much about the Forgotten Secrets when I revisited them months later, and I wanted to create a similar situation for this book so that I would gain perspective.  I am making progress on Ethan and Eleanor, although I'm not there yet.

Ethan and Eleanor are ostensibly a human man and his human daughter.  Eleanor is alive, and according to her, Ethan is dead.  But we really don't know.  Let's go through what we know for sure, and what we don't know.

In Book 8, Mr. Forkle says that Ethan and Eleanor's deaths occurred in a gap in the Black Swan's surveillance.  Mr. Forkle agrees with the kids that it's odd.  

It cannot be a coincidence that the fake accident occurred where there was no surveillance.  Someone helped Ethan fake his and his daughter's deaths, and that person had to have been an elf who knew where the Black Swan's surveillance was located.

Since Ethan and Eleanor's deaths were faked to trick Lady Gisela, we can conclude that the Neverseen were not involved.  The only logical conclusion is that an elf associated with the Black Swan was involved.  Since that elf was hindering Lady Gisela and helping the two humans, I believe we can also conclude that this elf wasn't a traitor to the Black Swan. 

Page 356  "Three days later a stranger showed up at our door and told me my dad was dead and I had to leave because I needed people to think I was dead too... they had a letter from my dad.  Apparently he'd given it to them in case something like that happened... he'd made all these arrangements.  Obituaries.  Graves.  A new name.  New guardian.  A bank account."

Most likely, the elf involved was Forkle.  Since Forkle is the leader of the Black Swan and since Livvy once made a statement about the Collective going along with whatever Forkle wants, it's unlikely that Black Swan members would be involved in something like this without Forkle's knowledge.  

Page 168   And while Ethan Benedict Wright II had been called "prominent" in that obituary, Keefe had yet to find a single reference to his work.

Page 224  The only slightly interesting thing he'd found was a brief article that mentioned the "groundbreaking work of Dr. Ethan Benedict Wright II in the search for alternative energy sources."

Page 225  And yet, all of Ethan Benedict Wright II's obituaries had left off his title.

Ethan's work was "groundbreaking," yet there's very little information available for Keefe to find.  It sounds like very basic information was placed in a few articles to give Ethan a plausible backstory so that Lady Gisela would approach him.  The obituaries must have been hastily created, since they leave off Ethan's title.

We know that Forkle has the knowledge to create fake articles for human newspapers, since he did exactly that back in Book 1 when he replaced an article about the San Diego fires with the article he wrote about the "child prodigy."  My guess is that Forkle was involved with the Ethan backstory and obituaries.

In fact, Keefe tells Eleanor that he learned the location of Ethan and Eleanor's deaths from the newspaper obituary.  Whoever wrote the obituary knew that particular location was not covered by the Black Swan's surveillance.  Eleanor said that Ethan wrote the obituary.  This means we can conclude that Ethan knew that the Black Swan's surveillance did not cover that particular location.  Ethan had to be part of the Black Swan or in contact with someone from the Black Swan.  This points to Forkle as the contact.

When Forkle shows up to present the obituary to Sophie and Keefe, he acts nervous.  He must have known all about Ethan, since Ethan knew about the Black Swan's surveillance.  Forkle only supplied the article, since he had to give Sophie and Keefe something, but he knows more.

As I've written in my previous posts, I believe that Councillor Kenric faked his death and that he is Forkle.  Here is how Kenric is described:

Book 1, Page 57   Kenric was built like a football player, with wild red hair and a big, toothy grin.

And now, Ethan Benedict Wright II:

Book 8, Page 78   A really nerdy-looking guy.  Between the tweed blazer and the bow tie and the ruddy cheeks and the wild hair, he looked like some sort of professor stereotype.

Book 8, Page 78   and someone with deep smile lines and strands of gray peppered through his messy red hair.

Book 8, Page 80   And the man that Keefe had drawn was a pretty generic-looking British guy—from his bright ginger hair down to the elbow patches on his blazer.

Book 9.5, Page 163   Ethan Benedict Wright II looked exactly like Keefe had drawn him, with his wild hair, tweed jacket, and crooked bow tie. 

Kenric and Ethan both have red hair that is wild.  Ethan has "deep smile lines," and Kenric is always grinning.  What's interesting is how Shannon doles out the information about Ethan.  She separates it so that we don't put "wild" and "red" together.  She mentions Ethan's wild hair when she doesn't mention the color.  Other times, she mentions the color and not that the hair is wild.  Kenric, though, is stated to have "wild red hair."

I'm less sure about the anagram that I found in Ethan's name.  It could be a coincidence, but "Ethan Benedict Wright II" can be rearranged to form "grin teach tweed inhibit."  "Inhibit" is what I think Ethan was doing with Lady Gisela.  "Tweed" is part of Ethan's description.  "Grin" and "teach" are words that I pulled from the anagram I found in Kenric's name.  "Kenric Elgar Fathdon" rearranges to form the phrase "Forkle grin and teach."  It is all very curious.

Oh, yes—and the name Eleanor Olivia Wright rearranges to form the phrase "love Oralie with a grin."  Most curious.

Book 7, Page 431   Shockingly enough, he wove her hair into the most intricate braid she'd ever seen.  "Do I want to know why you know how to do this?" she asked.  "Of course—but that's a story for another day."

Ever since the first time I read through Book 7, I've wondered why Forkle knows how to weave an intricate braid in a girl's hair.  It's strange, and it's odd that Shannon mentions it.  If Forkle is Ethan, then he could very well have had practice braiding Eleanor's hair.

Book 9.5, Pages 355-356  "My dad was always paranoid.  Always preparing me for something he seemed afraid would happen.  But he got much weirder toward the end.  Started shutting himself in his office for days at a time.  Wandering around the house muttering under his breath about power sources and how he should've spent more time studying geology... he grabbed my arms and told me he'd made a huge mistake, and the only way to fix it was for us to disappear."

We know that Lady Gisela was attempting to recruit Ethan for a side project.  Since Lady Gisela knows about Elysian and since Ethan's research had to do with alternate power sources, then we can assume that Lady Gisela's side project had to do with power sources.  

Who all knows about Elysian?  By my count, as of the time when Lady Gisela tried to recruit Ethan, the only people who knew about Elysian were Fintan, Lady Gisela, and Kenric.  Apparently, Prentice also had information about Elysian via memories implanted by Forkle, but he likely didn't know that information was in his mind, so I'm not counting Prentice.  And yes, Forkle also knew, but I believe he's Kenric.

Fintan, Lady Gisela, and Kenric had all been to Elysian at one time or another.  I think it probable that Ethan is Forkle/Kenric.  Ethan certainly wasn't with the Neverseen, since he and Eleanor disappeared to trick Lady Gisela, which leaves Kenric as the remaining person who knew about Elysian.  If the anagram in Ethan's name is real, then Ethan was deliberately messing with Lady Gisela, trying to "inhibit" her scheme.

I also wonder about the timing.  When did Ethan say that he had made a mistake?  If he's Kenric, could it have been around the time that Kenric probed Fintan's mind and learned about Elysian?  When Kenric spoke to Oralie about Elysian, he said that the information needed to stay fragmented.  He was frightened.  It sounds like Ethan was frightened as well.

The problem with all of this is that Eleanor is very much real and alive, and not only that, she's a human.  At least, we think Eleanor is a human.  How can Ethan possibly be Forkle if he was a human with a human daughter? 

There's a lot we don't know.  Is Eleanor Ethan's biological daughter, or was she adopted?  She calls Ethan her father, but that doesn't tell us whether she always lived with him.  We don't know if Forkle washed some of Eleanor's memories or implanted memories.  Eleanor is evasive when she talks to Keefe, so we don't have the pieces to put the puzzle together.  

My next post focuses on Eleanor.

All of my past Keeper posts are linked from this page:

Keeper of the Lost Cities Summaries, Reviews, and Theories