The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

Of all words, none more purely distills the futility of human hope, mortal dreams. Did we but know the end is foreordained and soon, who could go on making such tender plans—someday I shall run my fingers through my lover’s hair—when the very next step we take shall pitch us into the sinkhole, there to be crushed to nothingness, smothered in an instant, by a thousand tonnes of earth? “Someday.” Ha!

There’d never been anyone who could knife him so with a momentary word, and then speak the wound away in the very next moment. If all those little boyhood heartbreaks had been supposed to make him ready for this, Demane wasn’t.

They would all reach the next wells alive, said Master Suresh, so long as grown men didn’t sit and weep, boo hoo hoo like some sad whore, her six best boys lost this week to marriage. We must do now as she did then: dry the tears, and hustle!

Not piece by piece, all at once: metamorphosis is like death, as he welcomed the change he’d fought off since crossing over into the Wildeeps in that it ruptures mind from body. By grace of the blood, though, your consciousness can cohere into flesh and bone after transformation. If you’re strong enough, if you don’t vanish into the void. Only you can judge whether the gods’ heritage is enough expressed in you to bring you back past throwing off human shape. No one can tell you that; only you will know. For a talisman, gather thoughts of what matters most to you.

For the body tells all to him who knows the language, and doesn’t lie.

The deeply secretive cannot grasp that protecting your secret too fiercely exposes it.

Demane: "Gods could only carry away Homo celestialis with them, you see, because the angels had already learned to make their bodies light. But most sapiens—even those of us with fully expressed theogenetica—haven’t yet attained the psionic phylogeny necessary to sublimnify the organism.” "Do doubt," Comalo nodded mellowly. "No doubt. I'd always maybe thought it was something like that.

gods could only carry away Homo celestialis with them, you see, because the angels had already learned to make their bodies light. But most sapiens—even those of us with fully expressed theogenetica—haven’t yet attained the psionic phylogeny necessary to sublimnify the organism.

You almost got him! That was gold, my nigga. Not fake, not fool’s, not dross: GOLD. Nigga, it was some official shit you just did, almost beating the captain like that! That, my nigga, was straight up gold-plated LIKE SHIT.

Aunty used to say that whatever you skip learning is the one thing you’ll end up needing to know most later.

(for the deeply secretive cannot grasp that protecting your secret too fiercely exposes it).

Such eagerness to create space between present self and past sins obliges adults in the room to wonder whether callow youth has really wised up. “What

Trust you to come at me with a story like that.” The cool dismissal stabbed right into the heart of any sense that they endured this ordeal together, as one. Did the captain have no confidence in Demane’s expertise, did all the faith flow only one way? It hurt in the belly and chest to be brushed off so. Demane couldn’t have guessed his own expression.

But more forthcoming than anything a man can ever say aloud—whether you may care for his wounds, whether you may watch over his sleep—is the silent testimony of his bearing and demeanor. For the body tells all to him who knows the language, and doesn’t lie. The

he swooped in, with the same acts dealing death and deliverance. The point and edge of his spear opened red lips in one bandit’s throat. Lifesblood

Which one worse: armpits or breath? Surely, the latter; but the unwashed inferno of his crotch and ass stank worst of all. “Y’all