On the roads I could see tiny dots I supposed were people or groups of people. Having been on the roads, I could see that they wound around so much that when viewed from the flatlands below they gave the illusion of progress and afforded no view of the chasm. But from here, above, the picture was radically different.

“If the red road goes to the chasm like all the other roads,” I said, “why should we walk it instead of them?”

“Because the red road takes you to the chasm before you die, not after. You will see. That is, if you choose to go there with me.”

I considered my options. I stared down at the winding roads below, the cul-de-sacs, the figure eights, the circles—all going nowhere. Okay, heading toward a chasm didn’t appear to make sense—but I refused to go back to where I’d been. Maybe it was true, not all was as it appeared. The writing on the cave wall, what had it said? “Red road home.” I looked at the shining city on the mountain beyond the chasm. Was Charis the home I’d never known but always longed for?

Perhaps it made no sense to walk toward this chasm—then so be it. If a thousand things that made sense to me had turned out wrong, perhaps this thing that didn’t make sense would turn out right. If the only way to cross this country was to walk the floor of a chasm, that’s exactly what Nick Seagrave would do. Because that shimmering vision beyond the chasm, that place called Charis, was where I wanted to go.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m walking the red road.”

Shad smiled broadly, a lopsided grin that drooped on one corner of his mouth. He looked just wacky enough to make me wonder why I’d stopped questioning his sanity.

As I walked behind Shad, I heard a clanging in my left pocket. Frodo looked up curiously. Something told me just to keep ignoring the sound. I did.

It took us most of the day to descend the mountain. At its base, with only a few hours’ transition, it became barren desert. It turned arid so rapidly that my nose felt raw just from breathing. The desert was nothing but rock, sand, and salt flats. It was too dry here for clouds to form. The harsh landscape was unforgiving and unsoftened by rains or vegetation—nothing but pitted rocks, sandblasted and wasted. I fingered a few cactuses that had been cut wide open, robbed of their water stores by thirsty travelers. They were hard as truck tires.