On Blue's Waters

would lead three towns not my own to victory, would be tried for my life, would return as a stranger to my sons’ native place, find new love, and so on and so forth.

The whorl to him and to all the inhumi is the airless starlit plain we saw when poor Mamelta led us to the belly of the Whorl. Small wonder then that the inhumi are so wretched, so cruel, and so hungry for warmth.

“Paradoxes explain everything,” he told me. “Since they do, they can’t be explained.”

but I cannot sleep. Somewhere very far away, Seawrack is singing to her waves.

I cannot forget how I hated the bars on the windows of my manse.

Throughout my life I have done my best to imitate Silk (as I am doing here in Gaon),

Love is a wonder, a magic potion, an act of theurgy or even a continuing theophany. No word is too strong, and in fact no word is really strong enough.

Silk (I mean the real Silk)

and if I were not killed a second time,