Has it? Or have you just forgotten who you are? Can the light be threatened? Another small question, followed by another automatic answer.

I’m not the light of the world. I was wrong. He was wrong.

Then who are you? This time the thought was stronger, stirring something in my chest.

I’m just a girl.

Who were you before you were born a girl?

I ignored that question.

“I’m just a worthless girl who killed her mother,” I whispered.

Who was she before she was born a girl and became a mother?

I didn’t know how to answer such a strange question.

She is the light of her Father’s eternal light. Death has no power over her.

“You’re wrong,” I said louder. “I watched her die.”

What is death?

The thoughts were materializing, growing in volume and power. Taking on a familiar tone. I sniffed in the darkness, overcome by how real the conversation felt, even though I knew I was only talking with myself.

“I don’t care what death is,” I whimpered. “My mother’s gone.”

“She’s always with you, more alive than she ever knew she could be. And now she knows love without fear in the same way I do.”

The voice had taken form now. Whether it came from inside or outside of me, it filled my ears and disturbed the silence in the prison basement. I knew Eli’s voice well. But it couldn’t be the boy, because he was dead too.

I looked in either direction but saw only darkness. My heart started to pick up speed. All this time alone with my grief was messing with my mind.

“Careful, Grace,” another familiar voice said behind me. I turned to see Bobbie sitting, legs crossed, on the wooden bench in my cell. “Remember the consequences of forgetting wisdom.”

“The wisdom of the world dresses up as helpful protection while binding you to fear,” the boy’s voice said. I couldn’t see him, but it was as though he was sitting beside me.

“Don’t be foolish,” Bobbie said. “He’s dead.”

Eli’s voice answered. “Death is only a shadow. Is a shadow real? Can you pick it up?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the cell beyond the bars. I squinted, then gasped.

His blue eyes were bright, his round face and short stature clear. I scooted back, stunned as Eli stood before me, hands easy at his sides, watching me with a smile. Only a line of steel bars separated us.

I stared, unable to conceive of what I was seeing, strung between fear and hope. Fear, because people didn’t come back from the dead. He could be a perversion of what he’d once been, a Fury manipulating me again. Hope, because my heart longed for the peace he’d shown me.