“There’s no waste of the life wholly given to the King. Our friend has lost the life no man can keep. He has gained the life no man can lose. Weep for us, yes, but do not weep for Quon—he is immersed in pleasures beyond our wildest imagination.”

Smelling pine and herbs I stared at the fire, then felt a hand on my right shoulder.

“Get your hand off me,” I screamed, jumping up and pointing my finger at Shad. “You pushed him into it! You egged him on to preach at them and make them mad. You figured you were safe, right? That they wouldn’t beat up a crazy old man. You should have known what would happen to Quon! You think you know so much—why didn’t you know that? Or maybe you did and you let him die anyway!”

Shad slunk down onto the ground, as though I’d hit him with a baseball bat. He lay in the dirt and sobbed.

“Will we die like that too?” Malaiki whispered, drawing close to Shad.

“I … don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

I saw the pain in his eyes. But I didn’t care. I was furious. I heard in the distance the terrible roar of a lion. I shivered, partly from fear, the rest from rage.

I stood up and walked away. I didn’t want to hear one more empty reassurance. I retreated again under the two brooding old willows whose branches overlapped. It wasn’t just the travelers I was angry at—it was the King. I stayed there in the shelter, hiding from the light.

After burying Quon in a meadow and piling on gray rocks from a nearby quarry, we sat on a hillside, looking at grand vistas across the open country ahead, between us and the looming Mount Peirasmos. We talked about Quon and what he meant to us.

“He reminded me of my son,” I said, choking on my tears. My fellow travelers embraced me. On earth I couldn’t ever remember crying in front of a group—or being hugged by one.

We staged a dinner in Quon’s honor, taking the light metal pans from his backpack and cooking some wild geese he’d bagged just that morning, along with some mushrooms he’d picked. Malaiki made his favorite cornbread, and we drank gallons of senaba juice—I polished off a half-gallon myself. We talked about Quon and remembered his love for the King.

David sat next to me, shaking his head.

“What?” I asked.

“If only Quon hadn’t been so pushy, so zealous. He didn’t have to make them so angry.”

“Zeal for the Woodsman consumed him,” Shad said. “But the King honors such zeal.”

“Right,” David said. “No doubt Quon felt honored to be hit with those stones.”

“And what would you have had young Quon do differently?”