The shaman lights a torch from a glowing ember in the fire pit and walks over. In the flickering light I see the face of the corpse clearly. It’s a small face, desiccated and mummylike. He looks like he could have been lying here for a thousand years. Eko, it’s Kidah, right?

She looks too shocked to respond telepathically. She just gives a tiny nod, and sinks to one knee beside him.

I glance back, and see that the chief and the other elders of the tribe are watching carefully.

I guess we got here too late, Eko, I say.

She’s kneeling before Kidah, all her attention focused on him. In the torchlight, I see that even though he has the face of a mummy, and his limbs are as stiff and wooden as the lodge poles, his chest is moving shallowly up and down. He’s still alive!

Eko touches his face. She spreads her hands wide and assumes the tense, meditative pose of a priestess in a deep trance. A strange keening sound breaks from her lips and repeats itself, over and over again. It’s not a word, nor a tune from a song. It’s an ululation. An urgent appeal from some mysterious place deep inside her.

I’m positive that the shaman has never heard anything like this supplication from a thousand years in the future, but he seems to understand Eko’s behavior in a way that I don’t. He gives an answering chant in his own language, and the chant is taken up by the warriors standing around.

I recognize the singsong chant I heard in my dream.

Eko’s arms are spread wide over the wizard. I can feel her reaching out to him on a deep telepathic level.

Suddenly the warriors gasp and their chanting falters as a nimbus of lambent silvery energy kindles around Eko. It lights her beautiful face and sparks outward from her extended fingers, till it flows from her to Kidah. The birds, insects, and animals shrink away from this mysterious flame.

Bathed from head to foot in the silvery radiance, the sleeping wizard reacts. He stirs slightly and his eyelids flutter. I half expect him to sit up in bed, like Sleeping Beauty awakening in the fairy tale. But Kidah doesn’t wake, or even yawn or roll over. His eyelids close again, and his body becomes rigid once more.

Eko snaps out of her trance and topples toward the floor. I catch her and see that she’s conscious, just utterly exhausted by whatever she just tried to do. “Are you okay?” I whisper.

I failed. I couldn’t wake him. You have to try.

Me? What can I do? Reviving slumbering wizards wasn’t in the curriculum in Hadley High School.

She looks up at me. You are the beacon of hope, and you are also your father’s son. Please, you must try.

Okay, but … try to do what?