Inhumi secret and horn/silk/inhumi related?
The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 19 Aug 2000
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/953

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David Lomax — 19 Aug 2000, 03:25

All,

What about this?  The inhumi secret could be that, since they take some
of the essence of the person with the blood, the best thing to defeat
them is to actually offer one's blood to them.  That way, since one has
made a generous offer and gift, a giving of the self, perhaps the
inhuma/u would be unable to kill one.  In fact, if one offered enough of
oneself, could not one transfer one's whole essence to the inhumu?
Remember that when Horn was transported, he was told that he was being
transported to a body whose spirit was dying.  Could it be somehow that
Silk discovered the inhumi secret and gave himself entirely over to an
inhumu, so that his entire essence ended up in the inhumu body?  COuld
it then be that Silk's essence was dying in the inhumu body and that
Horn's soul was needed to bolster it?

The thing is, we're all accustomed by now to the fact that often in
Wolfe's books, things are neither entirely one way or entirely the
other.  Would this solution allow the Horn/Silk inhumu to be something
other than a regular inhumu?  Might we call the new thing a New Inhumu,
one in which the essences of human and inhumu are equally mixed, one
which might be palatable to Oreb and be capable of using tools?

I'm not much more satisfied with this explanation of things than I was
with the straight "maybe he's an inhumu" thing.  But it's fun to think
about.

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

David Lomax


*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

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