I could hear nothing except the quiet of the gentle breeze caressing the valley, the road, and the mountains beyond. I inhaled deeply for the smells. Nothing. I rolled my tongue, searching for the tastes. Nothing. I felt as if I stood in a bland sterile waiting room, a nondescript hallway world between two real worlds.

What seemed undeniably real a few moments earlier had vanished, and the present reality—though beautiful in its own right—seemed empty and lifeless by comparison.

Am I going crazy?

I fell to the ground and started crying. I was as frightened and frustrated by my tears as by whatever was causing them. Nick Seagrave crying?

I felt terrified by something I’d never before considered—the picture of myself teetering on the edge of eternity. Dizzy and unbalanced, I wavered between two worlds I could neither see nor touch but which I’d just heard and smelled and tasted.

Had I always lived on the in-between, sandwiched by two universes as incompatible as water and fire, yet each only a shifting of the wind away, each so close as to soak my hair or singe my eyebrows? Was all my life only a split second removed from the long tomorrow, a heartbeat away from the great beyond?

I drove away the questions and forced myself to stop crying. I would not bend to the insanity that pressed upon me.

I stood again, readied myself. If this was a game, I would play it hard until I won. I’d find my way out of here, back to a reality I could take charge of. The business at hand was to get somewhere. But where? I thought of the triangle on the cave wall. “Forward.” I wasn’t used to taking directions from writing on walls—it could be a trick, leading to a trap or ambush. But I was ready to push on, and the road of red dust stretched out before me. Roads led to people, houses, cities—and other roads. I’d go forward and find my way … somewhere.

While I scoped out the terrain, I carefully removed my shirtsleeve bandage, starched with dry blood, then gently massaged my neck.

From where I stood facing the valley, the red road appeared to slope down from a narrow, shadowed canyon behind me to my right, then skim across the valley floor spread before me. A river snaked alongside much of this stretch of road—at least I wouldn’t die of thirst. Up ahead, just before the road began ascending the far mountainside, it curved around a small, thick grove of oaks. Beyond this shady bend the road was hidden for a while, then reappeared higher up the slope. Whatever lay beyond that, I would soon discover.

Curiously, a long shadow fell across the land, roughly pointing the direction of the red road, but though I turned this way and that, I couldn’t identify its source.