“Well, yes, I suppose. Lap dogs don’t roar and chase you and scare you to death.”

“Neither do they create you and cross the chasm for you and go to war for you,” Shad said. “But, still, the GuideBook says there is another lion, a pretend king, one who prowls about seeking to devour us. I’m not sure which …”

Then came another roar, even louder, this time from behind me.

“Move it!” I yelled, pushing against Gordy, hitting my head on a sack of his stones. Before I knew it, we’d scrambled and regained the sixty feet and maybe another sixty. We sat again, catching our breath, listening. I tried to breathe more softly but couldn’t. I heard my chest pounding and put my hand on it. Then I reached to my knife, wondering if it would do the slightest good against … against what?

“Is there one beast or two?” I asked, gasping in the oxygen-deficient air. “And if one, how could he be on both sides of us?”

No one offered an answer, not even Shad. I rubbed my skinned knuckles and bruised shins, wondering which way we would have to shuffle next and what beast sat watching us in the dark. We waited silently a long time, not knowing what to do now. Go backward? Forward? Stay where we were? I didn’t have a clue. I smelled hot terror in the air. Frodo whined.

Finally I heard a soft voice like the fluttering of a hummingbird. It grew louder. Malaiki sang, “Architect of the cosmos, Builder of worlds; you became Road-Hiker, then Tree-Walker, making the road red with your heart.”

I started singing too. Then Shad. Gordy sang, “The abyss is vast, but the tree bigger; the Chasm-Crosser is greater than the chasm; the amount due greater than men imagine, but the price paid greater still.”

Victoria joined us. “How high and how wide, how deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love; how lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord.”

“World-Maker became World-Saver,” I sang. “Sky-Walker became Tree-Walker. The eternally old became eternally young. And we will never be the same, no never again the same.”

For the first time, I smiled in the darkness, buoyed by the songs. I’d been paralyzed by the roars, tired of the dark, sick of the tunnel—I would have taken any ticket out in a heartbeat. Yet here I was, uncertain which way to even move, yet smiling—not because I knew I wouldn’t die, but because I knew if I did die the best part of my life would be just beginning.