Season of Wonder [S.S. Ant.] by Various (Guran Paula - Ed.)

Author:Various (Guran, Paula - Ed.) [Various (Guran, Paula - Ed.)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies (various), Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781607013761
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2012-10-11T06:00:00+00:00

Translated literally from the original Greek, the Gospel of Matthew relates how magi (the plural of a word most commonly translated as magician, although the meaning would have also included practitioners of astrology, alchemy, and those with other forms of esoteric knowledge) from the rising [of the sun]—showed up in Jerusalem seeking a child who had been born King of the Jews. In Orson Scott Card’s story we find—among other things—they may have come from very far away, indeed, and why they choose to make gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Wise Men

Orson Scott Card

I got control of Lytrotis, a half-Greek adviser to King Herod of Judea, in the year 734 of the Roman Republic. It was the 27th year of the Peace of Augustus. It was the last year of Herod’s life.

My control over Lytrotis was complete. He had thought I was a god, and that I would make him great—never guessing that the only power I had was the power to take control of his body, shunting him aside.

He discovered how I had lied to him within moments of my taking possession, but it was too late for him then. I was too strong for him, too experienced. He screamed with all his might, he wrestled with me day and night, and to me his screams were the bleating of a lamb, and his writhing was the fluttering of a moth.

Eloi, my enemy, had given poor Lytrotis what he had denied to me: a featherless biped body to dwell in, with all its pleasures and pains, with those clever little hands, with eyes that saw so clearly and yet saw nothing at all, and with a mouth to speak . . . so that lies could be told.

Lies! Ah, how sweet to tell lies again. During my time between bodies I felt like a prisoner, able to communicate only as we evyonim do in our bodiless state, showing memories to each other, utter truth, so that we stand exposed before each other, all our memories and motives known.

As I stood exposed before Eloi on that terrible day six thousand years before, when he cast us down into the Earth. The featherless bipeds had already spread themselves throughout the world, had already acquired the rudiments of language and the making of tools. They were ripe to be possessed by us, the evyonim, the massless wanderers through the darkness of spacetime, but Eloi had a plan to make these bipeds immortal, the bonds between beast and evyon permanent.

“They are not to be exploited,” he said, “they are to be elevated. Your bodiless aeons are over. It is time for you to become like me, if you can—tied to the physical world again, yet masters of all things. If you can.”

His plan was a foolish one. Full of chances for failure. The bodies were too delicious. Once we had tasted them, we would not want to let them go. Yet most of us would lose them. I had seen it before, hadn’t

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