Sandman: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman

They've been called the Eumenides, the Erinyes, the érénï, the Infernal Goddesses, the Dirae, the Furies and the Kindly Ones. We've seen them before in the Sandman series. They were listening in Hades when Orpheus sang his song. They reacted in a frenzy once he'd made them cry.

The legendary tale of the Kindly Ones emerges in sections throughout the panels of their eponymous graphic novel, and The Furies that followed. But it's a story already thousands of years old, hence there's no spoiler in repeating it here.

To the Greeks, the first living entity was Gaea. In the empty void, She gave birth to Uranus, who promptly turned upon Her - fresh from the womb - and forced Her begetting of the Titans. Uranus feasted upon His children, until Gaea was able to save one. She armed Her son Cronus, who killed His father-brother.

In the drops of blood which fell to the ground during this primeval crime, the Furies sprang fully formed. Their function was inherent from the start. They would avenge all broken oaths, and utterly destroy those who slaughtered blood kin.

Run and call them the Kindly Ones all you want. If you've given false oath or killed a family member, they are relentless. They will tear down all you love and cherish; annihilate your life's work; drive you mad; and then they'll take revenge.

And Morpheus once did just that. Now his mercy killing has evoked those merciless Ladies.

Nominally, the ninth Sandman graphic novel is all about Hippolyta Hall. She was the young woman trapped for years in a dream, as told in The Doll's House. Throughout that time, Lyta Hall was pregnant - an embryonic child gestating in dreams - but she's since actually given birth.

Morpheus once said that he'd come for the baby one day. So when Daniel Hall goes missing, it's understandable that Lyta would suspect the Prince of Stories. Her waiting hunt owes more to Delirium than Dream, until she receives confirmation of her toddler's demise. Then she's after vengeance. Then she will bring the Furies into the heart of the Dreaming.

I've read The Kindly Ones many times, but on this occasion I really took it slowly.

There were so many tiny details in which to delight, that I'd never noticed before. The tiniest of them can lead your mind into wondrous flights of fancy, if you pause to muse upon them. Like the title of a book glimpsed buried inside a single pane, halfway through the graphic novel, which read: When Real Things Happen to Imaginary People.

I sat for a good five minutes pondering that one. A small daydream captured amidst several layers of dreams within dreams.

Better still I saw the beautiful symmetry in the over-riding story. The beginning and the ending like mirror images of themselves. The tying in of loose threads and random people from other Sandman tales. The realization that Neil Gaiman must have had some elements of this planned from the start, or else became really clever with reinterpreting story seeds left scattered in the past.

Moreover, I discerned the underlying themes inherent in Sandman's The Kindly Ones.

There is no negotiation with those set so rigidly upon their course. No way to alter destiny. Those bound by a primal directive to act as they do are not moved by emotion, nor swayed by begging, bribery and blackmail. They cannot be fought. They cannot be persuaded. They cannot be tricked. Because they lack the ability to change.

So far they sound like the Furies in another guise. It feels like fore-shadowing, which it is, but not in the obvious way.

If anything, these scenes recall the Furies from Fables and Reflections. Which, in itself, holds many clues for that which is to come in The Kindly Ones. Perhaps that is the true prologue.

Yet we do well to remember that the faceless frenzied women are creatures of Dream. They feast upon the Dreamer, who returns time and time again to become consumed by them, until he stops. He wakes up. He goes back to sleep. He finds himself safe within the Dreaming, cosseted within its heart. You get the feeling that now he's made that change, he will never again meet the rule constrained nightmares so previously recurring.

The scene is fore-shadowing but not of the Kindly Ones. We'll meet Them in Their true aspect next. These Furies are Dream himself, perhaps testing out the scenario that he knows must come and finding the solution therein.

Perhaps understanding completely that those who cannot change will never avoid the frenzy. They will be torn apart and devoured by their recurring rigidity. They will have no defense against ancient laws, as long as they adhere so completely to them.

The Castle (Prologue) seems like such a strange, out of place story with which to start. It's only afterwards that we realize it told us everything.

But most of all we follow the Three-in-One, the Triple Goddess, who switch aspect between practically every panel. Each time we encounter them, they are wearing another guise.

They begin with the Moirai, Fates or Norns, the Ladies of destiny setting a life in motion, weaving/knitting its form, then cutting the thread to end it. We revisit Them in this aspect at the end, when it seems that They controlled the yarn throughout. But yarn is just another name for stories, and They are not its Prince.

Eventually They will become the seemingly inflexible Kindly Ones. Unable to stop within that function, the Erinyes relentlessly pursue Their prey. But does no-one think it strange that They - with such an ancient law to be fulfilled - waited until Lyta Hall turned up to set Them on Their path? It seems that even such a primal force, unleashed at the dawn of time, has choices.

The Furies chose to sit back spinning, stitching, severing, until They were called into play.

Or else taking some other aspect. We see them as Hope, Faith and Charity, on a tavern sign; or three old ladies telling tales to Rose Walker. Lyta Hall finds them as the Weird Sisters of legend, dropping dread items into a bubbling cauldron. Look for Them in the sub-plots and fine details, and the Three are everywhere!

Nor do They even have to be Three. At one point, the Kindly Ones pass over Eve, as that solitary lady is just another aspect of Them. Neither can it be forgotten that in classical legend, from which all of their divine vengeance names are borrowed, the Eumenides weren't a trio. They were many.