Intense curiosity finally overcame my inability to speak.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The tree, boy, don't you remember?” he asked in his scratchy voice. “The day it all started, the day you saw Mayor Duck and …” He looked behind me with a smile, as if deep in thought. “That day, Jimmy. You gave Duck a most precious gift. Your sneeze.”

  “Do the Shadow Ka ever learn to just speak and quit beating around the bush? What are you talking about?”

  “Getting braver and braver, aren't we?” he continued. “We found a glitch in The Shield, a small one, a very small one. The Sounding Rod. It's unearthly song would break your barrier, but it had to have a catalyst, a natural one. It had to be from you. We couldn't let it be a word or something that you could easily control once you learned of it. Finally, it was a precious memory from Duck that solved everything. Your sneeze. It has a distinct sound to it, Jimmy, has anyone every told you that?”

  I didn't answer. I was only getting sicker to my stomach the more he spoke. I started thinking about sneezing, and tried my hardest to make myself do it. It was pointless.

  “It worked beautifully. Duck shared his memory with us, and we instilled it into the Sounding Rod. Ah, the sharing of our minds, what a beautiful thing, boy. You should covet such a gift. It makes The Four so trivial. So worthless. You should hide in a hole until the day the Stompers come.

  “Anyway, you make me ramble, boy! Kenji and his men planned it all so perfectly on the train, planting the dust and waiting for the right moment. They wanted your family as collateral but let you go, knowing that this pitiful Alliance would find you and lead you here. Now, finally, I can end everything, and the last obstacle in our path will be removed.”

  Raspy leapt into the air, ignoring gravity, and hovered there for just a second, and then came back down.

  “Ah, it is happening so fast, it feels so wonderful,” he said into the air, no longer talking to us, his madness made evident.

  He turned his back to us, then leapt into the air again, shooting forward toward the stone altar and the book. Fear ripped me out of my coma-like state and I ran forward, afraid of his intent. I had no Shield, but I could not sit and watch him as he …

  It was too late.

  With almost no effort, and with even less care, Raspy picked up the dusty book from its perch and tossed it into the closest lava pool.

  I stopped in my tracks, eyes wide, heart sinking, and stared as the book disappeared into the impossibly hot liquid, burning as it went, sinking in a sizzle of flame.

  The Book.

  The Book for which I'd come all the way to Japan.

  The Book that was to deliver the remaining Gifts to me.

  The Book.

  It was gone.

  I fell to the ground, my knees too weak from the shock of what Raspy had just done. I stared at the pool of lava, hoping against all reason that somehow it would come sailing out of the hot bubbles and smack Raspy on the head, knocking him into the steaming pool.

  Despair cankered my heart.

  “It's gone, Jimmy. Without the other Gifts, there is nothing you can do now.” Raspy smiled an awful grin. “The Four Gifts’ purposes must work as a whole, or do nothing. Now, you are without even your precious Shield. It is tempting to leave you for the wonder of the Stompers when they come, but I have had enough of you. Time to die.”

  Raspy leapt at me with the speed of lightning.

  Parts of his body blurred into blackness, like living shadow, and before I could tell what was what, something big and hard whacked me in the head. It sent me reeling. I tumbled over and over, coming to a stop right next to a pool of lava.

  Hurting, I pinned my eyes on Raspy and caught a glimpse of swirling blackness around his arms, like mini-tornadoes of dark dust. They disappeared, leaving his normal arms in their place. I had no idea what I'd just seen.

  Raspy leapt again, intent on one more attack to end it all. Looking on with little strength to fight back, I readied myself for an attempt to kick him into the lava when he came down on top of me. It would never happen.

  Rayna and Miyoko attacked Raspy from two directions, stopping him short. Just a few feet from where I sat, they pummeled him from both sides, like some kind of tag-team wrestling move. Their attack was perfectly timed and fierce, and Raspy collapsed beneath them. Tanaka came from behind, propelled by rage, and jumped into the air, coming down with his legs aimed at Raspy's face.

  There was a blur of darkness and a swirling of shadow, and Raspy was gone before Tanaka landed. Our eyes shot to a place behind Tanaka where Raspy had come to a stop. He jumped into the air and flew over toward the black slide and the shaft of the Pointing Finger.

  Black shapes trailed him, and for a second I was sure he had grown wings, but the shapes were gone as soon as I noticed them.

  He landed, and turned toward us again.

  “It matters not. You will not receive the Gifts, and you will not leave this place.”

  He reached his hands into the folds of his robe and pulled out what looked like two apples.

  “A toy of your people,” he yelled, “a toy of your making! We find them useful.”

  Raspy then pulled the stem off the apples and threw them at the base of the slide. The clanking as they bounced and rolled to a stop underneath the exit of the slide revealed that the objects were most definitely not apples.

  They were hand-grenades.

  With a wicked laugh, Raspy then shot upward into the shaft of the Finger, gone before we knew it, his laugh trailing away as he rocketed skyward. We could only wonder in horror at these new powers he was starting to show in our world.

  My companions understood as well as I what Raspy had done.

  We collapsed to the ground and held our hands over our ears.

  The boom of the exploding grenades rocked the air, but it was nothing compared to the crashing sound of black stone collapsing from above.

  The crashing seemed to go on forever. Our terror made us cower on the ground and shake with fright. The splitting and cracking of the slide collapsing on itself was deafening, and we were sure it would never end until the whole Finger collapsed.

  We cowered, hands pinned to our heads in a meager effort to protect our ears, and endured the thunderous collapse of our only hope for escape.

  It finally ended, and black dust swirled from the opening of the shaft, a few more faint sounds of settling stone travelling with it.

  We coughed and wheezed and spit and then gathered ourselves together, looking as one toward the opening.

  “What we do now?” Tanaka asked no one in particular.

  “Let's have a look,” answered Rayna.

  We waited until the dust had mostly settled, then walked over to the big pile of shiny black rubble. It was a mess, pieces of stone lying on top of each other all over the place. I looked up, and could just make out something in the middle of the shaft. Miyoko gasped.

  “It didn't destroy the whole thing!” she proclaimed, her voice echoing eerily up the long stone shaft of the pillar. She was right. We all agreed that we could just make out where the slide had broken off, the remainder winding its way up the Finger to the very top.

  Still hurting, but feeling a little better, I asked, “How in the world can that small strip of rock at the top support it now that it's not attached at the bottom?”

  “Because it's special,” was Rayna's answer.

  “What you really mean is that you don't know,” I said back to her.

  “You would be right,” she said with a scowl, and walked back into the massive cavern.

  We followed her, and sat in a circle on the ground, looking at each other, waiting for some brilliant ideas.

  “Well,” Rayna finally said, “it doesn't really matter that the whole thing didn't collapse, because there's no way to get to where it starts up again. Plus, the insides of the Finger are as smooth as glass, and there is no chance of climbing it. And, I know of no other way out. Any ideas?”

  Silence was her only answer.

  That's when I saw the door.

  A wooden door, one that looked very familiar.

  There is no way we could've missed it earlier. It was in the wall right beside the stone altar where the book had been lying. It was made of a dark wood, and looked exactly like the one at the end of the tunnel below the door in the woods near my home—the one that led to the First Gift. It had the same curved iron handle, with both ends attached to the wood.

  When I pointed out the door to the others, they became animated.

  “That was definitely not there before,” said Miyoko.

  “I didn't notice it either,” said Rayna. “It must've appeared when the book was destroyed.”

  “It looks just like the door I opened when I first met the Givers, when I received the First Gift.”

  “Jimmy-san,” yelled Tanaka, “you must open it! Open it!”

  The others agreed.

  “Maybe there is still hope after all,” said Rayna. “That door is meant to be opened. We all know who must do it.”

  The three of them looked at me, and I couldn't disagree.

  “Okay, you're right. It just seems so weird that it just appeared like that.”

  “Jimmy,” said Rayna, “we just saw a lunatic fly off into the sky. I wouldn't worry about things seeming strange. We will wait for you.” Like they were going to go anywhere anyway.

  I got up and walked over to the wall with the door in it. As I approached the stone altar near the wall, I noticed that there was a small square cut into the top of it. I went up to it and traced my finger around it.

  “It looks like maybe there was a trigger or something that was set off when Raspy, I mean Custer, lifted the book from the altar.”

  They walked over and inspected it themselves.

  “Looks like our shadow friend didn't quite look beyond the tip of his nose,” said Miyoko. “He may have done exactly what was meant to happen, although I can't imagine the book was supposed to be destroyed.”

  “Well,” I said, “whatever happened, this door is begging for me to come on in. I feel good about it since it looks so similar to the door that led me to the First Gift. Wish me luck.”

  It seemed like a stupid thing to say, but I couldn't think of anything else. I walked over to the door, paused, grabbed the long handle, then pulled.

  It swung open effortlessly, but all I could see inside was darkness. After one last look at my friends of the Alliance, I stepped through, and let the door close behind me.

  It made no sound.

  The instant the door shut completely, the room lit up with a brilliant flare. It was blinding, and I put my hands over my eyes. I turned and squinted toward the door I'd just walked through.

  It was gone.

  All around me was … nothing. Nothing but a brilliant white light. My eyes began to adjust.

  I was in the very center of a large, round room made completely of white marble—floor, walls, and ceiling. A light seemed to shine through the marble, making the room almost unbearably bright. To my right, about twenty feet away and built into the round, marble wall was a big archway, almost twice as tall as me, apparently an exit from the room. But it was completely blocked in with another wall of black marble, indented slightly past the archway.

  I looked over to my left, directly opposite from the blocked exit. There, in the wall, was another exit, an exact copy of the one I'd just been studying. The same white marble archway, blocked in by a wall of black marble. But this one had something on the floor right in front of it.

  It was a small wooden table, on which a book rested, similar to the one Raspy had destroyed just moments before. My heart skipped a beat. Maybe this was the real book. I walked up to it and flipped through its pages. It had a very old feel to it, like something you'd find in an old, dusty antique shop. But all of the pages were empty.

  Except one.

  The very first page had six lines written on it. I had seen the words before.

  enter the fire, turn to the cold

  express your desire, you must be bold

  the fire will kill you, there is no doubt

  the Ice will fill you, the other way out

  beware the rift, see it and die

  steps be swift, do not turn the eye

  The riddle of ice and fire.

  Too bad I had no idea what it meant. I concentrated on the words, forcing myself to memorize them even if I didn't understand their meaning. There was no doubt that the purpose of the riddle was critical, and I burned the words into my mind.

  Then I noticed that lying next to the book was a big feather, it's long quill dirty with black ink at the end. An ancient pen, or pencil, or whatever they used to call it when they'd write by dipping those things in ink and then scratching them along their paper. A book, mostly blank, with a feather next to it. Things weren't clearing up very quickly.

  Why couldn't the Givers be here? They'd been there for me for the First Gift, and I felt like I needed them more than ever. I had absolutely no clue as to what I should do.

  The lights went out, sending my heart through my throat.

  I was just about to panic and scream, when the lights came on, shining once again through the white marble walls, floor, and ceiling. Things had changed.

  I was in the middle of the room again. The archways were now much further apart, the room ten times bigger. The black marble walls blocking the archways were gone. I stared in wonder at what was beyond the exits.

  The archway to my left, the one that still held the table and book, now led into a wall of flame. Loud, crackling fire burned intensely, filling the entire archway. Flame licked and spit, like a huge bonfire, almost too bright to look at. I could feel the heat from where I was standing.

  I looked at the other exit.

  It was the opposite in every way. Misty swirls of air moved up and down and across the opening, like the entrance to a huge freezer. Icicles covered the curved top of the arch, hanging down almost halfway to the floor, ending in sharp points. Frost covered the remaining edges of the exit. It was impossible to see beyond the mist at what lay beyond.

  One doorway to a burning inferno. Another doorway leading to an icy freezer. A table with a book and pen.

  Again, I wondered what I should do, and nothing came.

  After several minutes, with no progress, I sat down on the marble floor, and put my mind to work. The riddle was, after all, a riddle, and I figured I'd better get busy trying to solve the dumb thing.

  It said I was supposed to enter the fire. By the looks of it, I decided that would burn me up in no time. But then I thought that maybe it was a test, and that it wouldn't actually hurt me. But no, the riddle made it very clear that the fire would kill me. No doubt, it said. Obviously, the Givers did not want me dead, yet they told me to go into the fire, yet they told me it would definitely kill me. It didn't make any sense!

  I thought and I thought and I thought.

  Enter the fire.

  Enter the fire.

  Enter the fire.

  I thought about the word on a deeper level. It had to have different meanings, because the obvious one, the definition that sounded like it wanted me to walk into the fire and die, just couldn't be right. The only time I had ever really come across the word “enter” was when I had used a computer. The “enter” button was what you pushed to “enter” something into the computer. To input something into the computer.

  Could it mean …?

  Why else would the fire door have the book and pen, and the ice door not?

  They wanted me to enter “the fire,” not go into the fire and die!

  Excited, I walked up to the book on the table. I flinched at the intense heat pulsing through the archway. I picked up the quill pen, flipped open the book, and wrote the words “the fire” into the book.

  Then, following the riddle's next words, I turned to the cold.

  I swiveled my body around, putting my back to the fire, and looked toward the frozen archway on the other side of the chamber.

  Suddenly, it seemed miles away. I could barely see it. The room had continued to grow to an enormous size. The marble floor stretched on and on, with the other door barely visible now, way in the distance.

  And I noticed something coming toward me from that direction.

  At first, it was a gray blur. Then it began to take the shape of many points of gray, flying toward me, coming faster and faster. My stomach turned.

  The points reached the middle of the vast room. They were traveling at a blistering speed now and I finally realized what was coming.

  Long, sharp, metal spears, hundreds of them. Light reflected off of their metallic shafts and points. Their tips were blades, and I could only assume that they were really sharp.

  The metal spears flew faster and faster, all coming straight for me. Thoughts spun through my head, panic surged through my body. I only had seconds. Forcing myself to think, I thought of the riddle.

  The spears were still coming.

  The riddle, the riddle.

  The spears were almost to me.

  The riddle.

  Express your desire, you must be bold.

  The spears.

  Only seconds away.

  Express your desire.

  The spears, coming fast, coming with tips of death.

  You must be bold.

  Express your … yes! At that precise moment, there was only one desire in the world that mattered.

  My voice boomed throughout the chamber.

  “I DO NOT WANT …”

  The spears, just feet away.

  “TO BE KILLED …”

  Inches.

  “BY THE SPEARS!!!”

  With a metallic whisper of air, the spears vanished, and all was silent.

  They had disappeared an inch before they ripped into my body.

  Seconds later, I reminded myself to breathe.

  The vast chamber became deathly silent, my breathing the only sound. I looked around, expecting someone to pop out and congratulate me for not being killed by the spears. My mind was still working through the details. What purposes were being fulfilled by these tests, these riddles?