Seeing the stars now was like rereading a book after meeting the author—it seemed like the very first time. I’d lived an unconnected life. But I was connected now, to the King, to his creation, and to my traveling companions.

I’d grown bone-weary of playing God. It was a big job, and I’d finally discovered I was too small to pull it off. It was hard to abdicate the throne—but what a relief now that I had.

I saw Malaiki, twenty feet from me, on her knees, close to the fire, gazing back across the chasm. She wiped her eyes. I guessed she was thinking about Salama.

Shadrach stood on my other side, looking into the night as if looking into the eyes of his beloved. He was speaking. I got up and moved toward him so I could hear his creaky voice.

“Cosmos-Maker, you who live beyond the realm where stars are born and quasars sing and the great wind blows the silent stars in the vast explosion of your creation.” He paused, then sang. “Architect of the cosmos, Builder of worlds; you became Road-Hiker, then Tree-Walker, making the road red with your heart. You are the Crosser of the Chasm.”

Malaiki and Quon and I joined him, though the tune and words were new to me. When I mouthed them, they became more than words. As they formed in my mouth, I felt them take shape in my heart. Quon smiled broadly and looked at me like a child at Christmas dinner.

“The Potter became the vessel that gave its own clay to remake broken vessels, that they might leak no longer and hold at last the eternal waters of their hidden hopes and deepest dreams.”

Other chasm-crossers joined us, people I hadn’t met, but who I felt closer to than next-door neighbors and coworkers I’d known for years. They opened big bottles of senaba juice, and we took off our shoes and walked barefoot in the long, soft, cushy grass, which cooled and soothed my feet that ached from all the long days in hiking boots. We sat down and drank the juice and shared fresh-baked bread together. Nothing had ever tasted so good. No companionship had ever been truer. The connection warmed my insides in ways I couldn’t begin to describe.

One of the women sang, “The abyss is vast, but the tree bigger; the Crosser is greater than the chasm; the amount due greater than men imagine, but the price paid greater still.”

I put one arm around Quon, the other around Malaiki. Another traveler began a lively, contagious song: “Tree-walker stared down death and did not blink.” People clapped and sang, and soon Malaiki was dancing, and Quon and I, not too great at the dancing, joined in.

The songs went on for hours. I never tired of them.