I asked Lucien to make a solemn vow not to repeat a shred of what he had just told me to another living soul. When we finally turned in for the night, I could barely close my eyes. I rose from my bed and went walking in the moonlight. I was deeply troubled by what Lucien had told me—by the prospect of Mehevi, of Joubert’s soul, unleashed upon the world. For I knew that Mehevi must have crossed with someone—someone in the habit of peppering his speech with the word sacrilège. But why?

When I had arrived on the island, and for most of the two decades I had lived upon it, I had been quite certain that I would die there, that there would be no more crossings for me. I had tasted enough of life’s bitter fruit. I had caused too much harm. I had lost too much. But Lucien’s appearance dashed all of these notions. More than dread, I felt a great mischief might be unleashed upon the world—a mischief for which I was responsible. What if the Law had been right after all—only not in the manner I had expected? What if, when I had crossed with Joubert more than a century ago, I had indeed planted the seed of the world’s destruction, precisely as the Law had prophesied? What if Mehevi was the evil flower of my sin—a soul with no conscience, only rage, an adept of the most esoteric forms of crossing, roaming free in the world, motivated by terrible, unknowable desires? And what if I was the only person in the world with the power to curb his vengeance?

So it was that, several days after our encounter at the waterfall, after farewells marked by sorrow, we descended from the mountains to the lowlands and I returned to Louisville for the first time in nineteen years. As we journeyed, I turned the conversation back to the subject with which I was most preoccupied: Mehevi’s crossing. I asked Lucien to cast his mind back to his arrival. Had he met anyone, in Oaeetee or on the ship on which he had sailed here, who habitually exclaimed sacrilège? After a moment of remembrance he replied: “I well remember the captain of the ship that brought me here. His blasphemies were a running joke among the ship’s crew, and the passengers too. All day long one heard him shout, ‘Sacrilège! Sacrilège!’” Lucien looked at me. “Do you think this is related to the King’s condition?”