What was that?

“You’ll never get home,” whispered the voice again, cold and bloodless. “Never.”

I lay still, chilled to the bone, numb. I’d thought I’d left behind forever the dark night of my soul, back on the other side of the chasm. But already, even my first night after crossing, I was gripped by a fear and loneliness I’d expected never to know again.

The next morning I got up bleary-eyed. I sat by the fire, not eating much of the bean soup and wild rice, which didn’t qualify as breakfast anyway. I kept thinking of waffles and maple syrup and cheddar-cheese omelets with sautéed mushrooms, onions, and green peppers.

“Quon’s still hunting,” Victoria said, looking at my unfinished breakfast. “He might come back with something yet.”

The prospect of varmint-of-the-day didn’t ring my bell. I nodded to Victoria and said, “The soup’s fine.”

I jiggled my tarnished tin cup, swishing coffee around and watching the grounds circle into a pattern, too weary to get up for a refill. I tasted the cold dregs again, remembering why that wasn’t such a good idea.

On the other side of the fire, Malaiki asked Shad something I’d been wondering. “How were you able to come to the other side of the chasm when you’d already crossed it?”

“Not all is as it appears,” Shad said. “Once you cross the chasm, you cannot return, for it is the Woodsman who carries us, and he will not carry us backward. But he wants us to help those who haven’t crossed. So chasm-crossers still share the same ground with the unchanged.”

Shad must have read the confusion in my bloodshot eyes.

“There is one chasm,” he said to me, “yet each person crosses his own chasm. Before you crossed yours, you met some who’d already crossed theirs. You will meet some on this side who haven’t crossed it at all. It seems strange, I know, but so do many things that are true. Some people can’t even see the chasm.”

“How is that possible?” Quon asked. “How can anyone fail to see that gargantuan abyss?”

“The same way you failed at first to see it.”

Quon nodded with the look of a student.

“Will I see Salama again?” Malaiki asked, voice wavering.

“Perhaps … perhaps not,” Shad said. “Salama resents that her sister has chosen someone above her. But unless Salama makes the same choice, the two of you will remain on separate paths that end in separate worlds.”

I saw the mist in Malaiki’s eyes and put my hand on her shoulder.

We packed up and traveled the red road, cutting through richly flowered meadows sloping down from green hills. Soon we came to an intersection of several paths, smaller roads leading off both to the north and south.