I looked at where shadow and road both pointed, to the City of Light. I was captivated by Charis. I wanted to step forth as Columbus or Magellan on new ground. I yearned to meet its inhabitants. I longed to be lost in the new world … and to be found there.

I saw smoke ahead, and when I arrived back at the red road, I found three of my companions waiting there, sitting by a fire, clothes covered with mud.

“Nick! Malaiki!” Gordy shouted, popping up from the south side. “Shad! Victoria! You won’t believe what happened and who I saw!”

We all told our stories, much the same, yet each unique.

“I’d asked the King to remove a great burden from me,” Malaiki said. “I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t answered. He showed me that what I had asked him to take away was exactly what he’d given to make me more like him.”

She laughed delightfully, her voice sounding like the whispers in the wind from the City of Light. I loved her as if she were my own little sister.

Shad told more stories around the fire, wonderful tales of those who had served the King in many times and lands. “They walked the red road long ago and paved the way for us. We have followed in their footsteps as others follow in ours. Perhaps, someday, those who come behind us will sit at a fire and tell stories of us.”

Even though it was in the west and the sun had set hours before, the city glowed in the night like the breaking of dawn.

“You can almost reach out and touch it,” Gordy said. “It can’t be more than a day’s walk.”

“It’s the world I’ve lived for,” Shad said. “Charis has been my beacon through so many dark and stormy years.” Tears streamed from his eyes. “Lonely years.”

Malaiki put her arm around him, and I squeezed his hand.

“Why not just walk through the night?” I asked, so eager to enter the city I couldn’t imagine stopping now.

“If we have a full day’s journey left,” Shad said, “we must renew our strength with one last night’s sleep in Thuros.”

We lay down. But with visions of the city in our minds and sounds from the city in our ears, how could we sleep? I peeked through the tent opening, chin on the ground, staring at the city, Frodo’s head beside mine. When I finally dozed off, hours after midnight, Charis invaded my dreams as it had my whole life without my knowing it.

But now I knew where the dreams had come from. And I knew I was a day’s journey from what my empty soul had always longed for.