I fell at his feet and covered my face. “Please. How can I go back to the Shadowlands when Charis is so close? How can I live without being able to see and touch you? And how could I ever face the disasters I created there?”

“What you’ve seen in Thuros will equip you to face what you’ve done on Earth. I send you back for the short today; we will meet again in the long tomorrow. I give you, Nick, the second chance you long for. A chance to enter Charis after serving me faithfully on Earth. A chance to hear me say, ‘Well done.’ To rewrite your obituary, to give your family not just an inheritance but a heritage. Each day I grant you is a gift of grace, a window of opportunity. Use it wisely. Pick up the stones, even when you don’t understand why.”

“Yes, my King,” I said, both thrilled and terrified.

“You cannot, must not try to walk the road alone. To walk with me you must walk alongside my people. Find them. Join them. Walk with them.”

I nodded, for the first time truly understanding.

His voice roared thunderously. I groveled before him, afraid of his anger. He pulled me up with one hand and looked into my eyes, smiling. “You must learn to recognize my laughter, Nick. My roar is not always anger, you know!”

He roared again, and it was laughter indeed, so powerful, so grabbing that it evoked my own laughter, sounding light and frail beside his, but growing stronger by the moment. He laughed at my laughter, and I at his. Frodo jumped up and down at our feet, doing the doggy dance of joy. The Woodsman picked him up and held him, roaring when he saw the lips curl back and the toothy smile emerge. He put Frodo down and embraced me tightly, a bear hug.

I had always ached for something more, something better. But all along it had never been something, it had always been someone—the one who now embraced me. He held my shoulders and my eyes locked into his.

“Charis is a trillion different colors, Nick, Erebus only the eternal gray. All in Charis are wonderfully different, united by their differentness. All in Erebus are horribly alike, divided by their sameness. Charis is an unending story, each chapter more wondrous than the one before. Your time in the Shadowlands is the first paragraph of chapter 1. Every day there you will move people toward me or away from me, toward Charis or toward Erebus. Your life in that world is but a dot. From it extends a line that will never end. So, Nick, will you live for the dot or for the line?”

“For the line,” I wanted to say but was afraid to.