My friends looked like miners rescued from a collapsed cavern and emerging to well-wishers in the land of the living.

Malaiki’s eyes glowed wonder and delight. She turned circles, dancing with the King and then with Shad and Gordy and Victoria.

“What’s it like?” I cried out to them, standing on my tiptoes just outside the gate, feeling thrilled and left out at the same time, eager to enter but sharing in their joy.

“I’ve been born,” Shad cried, arms flailing. “All my life on Earth and on Thuros was but a series of labor pains preparing me for this.”

“This is it,” Malaiki shouted. “The country for which I was made!”

“At last,” Victoria said, voice trembling. “The real world!”

“What were circles before are now spheres,” Gordy cried. “Squares have become cubes and triangles pyramids!”

“This is joy itself,” Shad said. “Every foretaste of joy in the Shadowlands was but the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing for this place!”

“The TravelGuide was right,” Gordy called. “We were aliens and strangers and pilgrims. We lived in temporary quarters, on borrowed time. How could anyone be satisfied with less than this?”

“The best reason for loving the old world,” Malaiki said, “was that sometimes, in its grandest moments, it seemed just a little like this one.”

I stared at them, filled with wonder and envy. Even Frodo, at my feet, gazed in respectful silence at what he seemed to realize intuitively was the cosmic center, the core of all that mattered.

I knew then that if the atmosphere of Earth is nitrogen and oxygen, and the atmosphere of Erebus sulfur and acid, then the atmosphere of Charis is joy and delight.

I looked at Marcus, my eyes begging him to take me into Charis.

“Be patient,” he said. He pointed, and I saw across a broad expanse a blue-green planet I recognized as Earth.

“The people there live between Eden, a world that has ended, and Jerusalem, a world that hasn’t yet begun,” Marcus said. “Earth is the walkway between two kingdoms. Its most horrible nightmares are of Erebus. Its most wondrous dreams are of Charis. Erebus is the worst of Earth multiplied a thousand times; Charis, the best of Earth multiplied a million times. Earth is a place to preview both, to sample each, to make the final unalterable choice between them.”

A vast fabric stretched across the sky. Bending back my head, I saw on the fabric countless lumps and knots, like thick, rough yarn with frayed strings.