But it wasn't over yet.

  The fire would kill me, which didn't seem like rocket science to figure out, and the Ice would fill me, the other way out. Well, there was only one other way out, the arched room across from me, its edges icy and cold.

  Beware the rift, see it and die … what and where was a rift? And how could I avoid it if I didn't see it? My brain was starting to hurt.

  Steps be swift, do not turn the eye. That could only mean one thing, and now two things were for sure. The icy door was my way out, and my feet needed to be swift about it.

  Taking one last deep breath, I bolted across the room toward the other archway.

  A sudden and violent cracking noise boomed and echoed throughout the white cavern, coming from behind me. Splitting rock and potent crunching noises exploded into the air. With a little shriek I ran faster. Every inch of my body screamed at me to turn and look at it, at the source of this dreadful noise, this thunderous danger that approached from behind. But the riddle was clear on one point.

  See it and die … do not turn the eye. Over and over I told myself this as I ran, overloading every instinct that was telling me to turn my head and look.

  I was halfway to the archway and the iciness behind it.

  My feet pounded the white marble, arms swinging, body straining, head leaning forward, pushing myself faster and faster. The horrible fracturing of the rock behind me was getting closer and closer. I could sense the growing crevice, the rift, ripping through the ground, trying its best to catch my feet and send me to the depths of whatever waited below.

  Closer, almost there.

  Still fighting the instinct to look back, I ran on. The ground shook below me, felt looser. I faltered a bit, barely catching myself, knowing that one slip and the rift would be on me.

  Only feet away.

  The air filled with sounds of splintering rock. My feet and legs were ready to give up, my head wanted so badly to look, to look back at the rift.

  With one last push, I took the last frantic steps and dove through the icy entrance, just underneath the hanging icicles. The storm of sounds ceased in an instant, and the world became very cold.

  There was the brief sound of a soft hum. It was the same sound I'd heard when the door in the woods closed after descending the stone stairway back in Georgia. Quickly, I glanced behind me.

  The large wooden door with the iron handle was back, closed tight.

  I looked back into the room, and the cold hit me like a wall of icy water. The room was freezing, and there was a strong breeze blowing, icy snow slapping at my body, everything defying my senses of being inside a room. I could still see walls, completely covered in ice, but everything else felt like I was outside during a blizzard. With no Shield to protect me, I thought I'd be frozen dead pretty darn soon.

  A shadow moved past my vision.

  I jerked my head in that direction, and saw a figure, standing, obscured in the impossible snowstorm. Shivers flew up and down my body, this time from eerie fright, not the cold.

  The figure moved toward me, slowly trudging back and forth. It was huddled in a mass of blankets and clothing, wrapped from head to toe.

  The figure stopped two feet in front of me. Then it … he … spoke.

  “Our ways cross again, my friend. Welcome.”

  With that, he reached up and pulled back his hood of garments. An ancient, withered, and familiar face looked into my eyes.

  Farmer.

  Shivering almost uncontrollably, I wasn't even that shocked. I could only think of being cold.

  “How?” I asked. “The Black Curtain is blocked! How did you come here?”

  “Jimmy!” he yelled back, trying to speak above the sounds of the wind and beating snow. “Do you really think there is a room of snow and ice in the middle of a volcano? It is you, my friend, who have come to me. These are special places where we meet! They have nothing to do with the Curtain or the Blackness. You have much to learn.”

  He leaned forward and cracked a smile with his purple, shivering lips.

  “You are quite remarkable, young man. You have made it so far, yet there is so much more to see. Ah, bother! Come, I have something for you.”

  We stepped toward the middle of the frigid room and I asked him about the purpose of the riddle of ice and fire.

  “Growth, Jimmy. Progression. Learning. Strength. Your path leads to something that you must be prepared for. It is for that reason we have set these trials in place. One day, you will understand, and you will know, and you will be thankful. Now, this bothersome noise is getting me cranky, so let's get on with it!”

  Farmer reached into the layers of his clothing, and pulled out a small red box, which appeared to be made from polished wood. With a flick of his hands, the box opened on a hinge. The inside was cushioned with black velvet.

  Lying on the velvet, right in the middle, was a piece of ice. A crudely formed ice cube, frosted and misshapen.

  I looked up into Farmer's eyes, my own full of questions.

  “This is it, my boy. Take it.”

  “What is it?” I could hardly speak now, my body shaking. “Is it…”

  “Of course it is. Take it.”

  The Second Gift.

  It seemed so unreal. After all the journeying, after all the close calls, after all the adventures, here I was, in the middle of a blizzard, being offered a piece of ice. I had no doubts anymore—it was just so strange.

  There, ready for the taking. The Second Gift.

  With trembling hands, I reached out and grabbed the cube of ice. It sent a wintry chill down my arms and into my chest. I knew it would be cold, but it was really, really cold. It had the slight roughness that ice has when first brought into contact with something warm. It stuck to my fingers for a second, then grew slick as it melted. From my experience with Farmer under the door in the woods, I knew he wanted me to eat it, just like I had drunken the silvery liquid to obtain the First Gift.

  I looked up at Farmer, and he nodded.

  With trembling hands I brought it to my mouth, popped it in, and chewed it up, just like ice from a soda. It had no taste.

  The blizzard disappeared, as did some of the surrounding ice and snow. The room was instantly warmer, although still chilly. Farmer took off his excess clothing, revealing a tattered old flannel shirt and dusty overalls.

  “Good,” he said, strangely cheerful. “You have just received a gift most precious, to go along with your other, of course. By the way, we are indeed sorry for the slight miscalculation on our part.”

  “Slight?” I asked.

  “Jimmy,” he replied, now in a much more somber voice. “Nothing is or can be perfect, for reasons you may come to understand. We placed the flaw of The Shield with full knowledge of its existence and risk. But the odds of the Ka discovering it … just mind-boggling. After all these eons, I can't believe we once again underestimated them. Oh well, it is solved. You will destroy the Sounding Rod, and they will never be able to duplicate their deed.”

  “Destroy it? How? That thing is indestructible.”

  “It is, you say? It is not, I say. Let's move on. Our time is short, as usual.”

  Farmer walked a few feet away and sat down, although I did not remember seeing a chair.

  “Now,” he said, “The Second Gift. It is extremely important, Jimmy. You will not know how much so for quite some time, but I assure you, it is vital to our cause. In the end, it will make or break our struggle against the evil forces that beset us.”

  He paused, lost in thought, before looking up.

  “Jimmy, raise your right arm.”

  “We've been through this before,” I answered back.

  “Jimmy, raise your right arm. Please.”

  I did as he asked.

  “Jimmy, raise your other arm.”

  I did.

  “Just as easily as you have done this, and just as easily as you now call upon The Shield, you can now call upon a new and formidable power. The Ice has filled you, my friend.”

  He stood up, and there was no chair where he had been sitting.

  “The air is filled with water, Jimmy. No matter where you are, no matter where you go. The air is filled with water. You can now take that water, and turn it into ice. It sounds silly, it sounds simple, it perhaps even sounds worthless. When you embrace the Gift, however, you will never cease to be fascinated with what it can accomplish. It is called The Ice. By simply thinking it, you can form ice from the invisible water that surrounds you. You can create it in any way, shape, or form. If you can think it, it will form. Ready for your first try?”

  I stared at him, trying to envision what he was talking about.

  “I will now throw this rock at that wall behind you. If it hits the wall, you will suffer seven seconds of an unbearable tickling sensation.”

  That last phrase caught my attention.

  As he had done in the past, Farmer pulled a small rock from out of nowhere. Without hesitation, he reached back and flung it at the wall behind me. Having no idea what was going on, I just watched.

  When it hit the wall, I doubled over and fell to the ground. An onslaught of the worst tickling feeling I'd ever experienced swept through my body, like a million fingers of a most annoying uncle tickling me all at once. I screamed, and laughed, and writhed on the ground. Then it was gone. There was no lingering sensation.

  I stood back up, gasping.

  “What is this? Why would you do something like that to me?”

  “I am very sorry, Jimmy. I cannot tell you how sorry I am to see you have to go through this ordeal.” A smirk flashed briefly across his face, and I frowned. “But it is the only way you will learn this lesson in particular. Now, I will throw this rock again at that wall. If you do not stop it, you will suffer twenty seconds of unbearable tickling.”

  Somehow, the rock was again in his hands.

  He threw it.

  Trying to think of something, trying to make something, anything, happen, I threw all thoughts into stopping that rock. A little spurt of misty ice, about the size of an apple, formed in the palm of my hand. It was frigid, and I whipped it away, but it evaporated back into the air with a swish of cloudy air. The rock thudded against the wall.

  Just as I was about to complain, the tickling started all over again. Falling to the ground, writhing once again, I flipped and flopped all over the place from the unbearable tickling. Unable to stop myself, the room was filled with the sounds of my tormented laughter. Twenty seconds seemed like twenty minutes. Finally, it stopped.

  I stood up. “Farmer, this is just about the most—”

  “Ah,” he said, cutting me off with his outstretched hand. “Come now, Jimmy. After what we've been through thus far, don't you think it may be time to trust me?”

  I nodded, still baffled at how silly the whole thing was.

  “Now, we will do it again. Jimmy, The Ice is an extension of your thoughts, just like The Shield. All it takes is a thought, a notion, a whim, and you will catch this rock with your new Gift. The Ice weighs nothing. It is no burden on you. Your thoughts completely control it, holding it in place, moving it, manipulating it, bending it, relinquishing it. It is a part of you.”

  He paused, letting everything sink in.

  “Ready?” he finally asked.

  I nodded.

  Again, he had the rock in his hands without any effort on his part. He reached back, and gave it a heave.

  This time, my brain allowed the Second Gift to take over. The Ice. I reached out my right hand toward the sailing rock, and wished it to stop.

  There was a crackling, swishy sound, and a tingling in my arm. From the air around my hand, swirls of mist swarmed in from all directions, forming a tornado of white air shooting out in a line toward the rock. The mist almost instantly formed into a line of solid ice, extending from my hand all the way to the flying rock. The ice caught the rock, freezing it in its grasp, before it hit the wall.

  I looked on in complete astonishment. My eyes went from the rock, frozen in a ball of solid ice, down to the shaft of ice that led to my hand, still outstretched and also covered in ice. I felt no weight. It was like the entire ice structure I had just formed ignored all laws of gravity.

  With a thought, I made the ice go away. It exploded back into a swirling cloud of mist and disappeared into the surrounding air. The rock fell to the floor, two feet from the wall.

  All traces of ice were gone.

  I looked over at Farmer, and surprised even myself when I started to laugh.

  Farmer let out a slight chuckle as well, then sat back down on his invisible chair.

  “Ah, Jimmy. There is still a glimmer of hope as long as we have you around. But a grave day comes, a day when battle will be joined on your world, just like it has on many others. Yet I feel we may stem the tide this time, that we may have a chance. It grieves me that no other world has had even such scant hope as you now have. It grieves me greatly.”

  Farmer put his fingers to his chin, taking on a look of deep thought. “Do you know why you were able to open the Door and retrieve the First Gift, establishing you as the Giftholder?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied, “but I guess it was because I got lucky and had the key.”

  Farmer shook his head adamantly. “No, it is much deeper than that. Try as they did to get the key, your enemy, the Shadow Ka, would not have been able to open the Door even if they had obtained the key. Tell me, Jimmy, why did you open the Door?”

  I thought about it, then shrugged. “I didn't know what else to do.”

  “Did you do it to obtain the Gifts, to gain power, to save the world?”

  “Well … no.”

  “Then why?”

  Thinking back, I remembered the reason. “My whole family had been taken, and it was the only thing I could think of to do in order to save them. I didn't know what to expect beneath the Door, but I thought it was my only chance.”

  Farmer smiled. “You did it for one reason, and one reason only. To save your family. Think on that, and think about the intentions of the Shadow Ka. You will understand why you were successful that day.”

  “Farmer,” I said, realizing that he didn't mind me calling him that. “Most of the things you say go right over my head. When will someone just explain to me everything that I need to know? It'd be nice to at least know what a Stomper is.”

  He stood up and came a step closer to me.

  “Trust me on this. You must learn in small steps. Would you teach a young one just learning to walk how to perform advanced mathematics? No, you would not. It is like that.”

  He seemed to ponder for a moment.

  “But, then again, our time is not long until the day of war comes. Each Gift will serve its own purpose at that time. Learn them well. Yes, learn them well. There are things about them that you do not yet realize. Uses that far surpass their immediate and most obvious qualities. Especially The Shield, Jimmy. I know I have told you how it can be used as a weapon, but there is something else much deeper, something tremendous.

  “Also, the Stompers are not what you may now picture them to be. No, they are quite different than anything you could conjure up in that mind of yours. When you are ready to learn of them, you will be quite stunned, I assure you.”

  While Farmer spoke, a memory popped in my head, something I had not thought of in a long time.

  “Back in the Blackness, right after blocking the Black Curtain, what did the girl mean, when she said that she would ‘die’ for Joseph, after he'd been whisked away by the Shadow Ka?”

  “Ah, yes, that word. I can only say that its meaning is difficult to explain, but that word is the closest we could come in your language. You see, we, the Givers, do not really exist in the sense that you understand. It is part of the greatest mystery of all, the one that you are not nearly ready enough to hear yet. Jimmy, the day comes in which you will learn something that will turn everything upside down, even more shocking than the Stompers themselves.”

  He leaned forward. “The greatest surprise is yet to come.”

  Farmer settled back, and stared at me, seeming to enjoy the look of confusion that had to be on my face.

  His head then jerked and his eyes looked into the distance, like he had just heard something.

  “Our time is always so sweetly short when we meet, my friend. You must go, now, or you and your friends will be in grave danger. Practice this Gift, and you will find it to be far more powerful than you can imagine it to be, even now. Run, my boy.”

  His urgency took me completely off guard.

  “But, wait,” I said, feeling like there were too many unanswered questions lingering. “What about the other two Gifts? Where do I go? What happens next? I can't leave yet.”

  Farmer stepped up to me, looking very grave and certain.

  “You must go to the Tower of Three Days. The remaining Gifts await you.” He surveyed my face with somber eyes. “I'm sorry to add that you will be very surprised when, and if, you receive them. A guide will come to assist you and teach you more. You are ready to learn, this I can see. Now go.”

  A rumbling, gurgly sound came from somewhere, and the icy room began to tremble.

  “What about the Stompers?” I yelled to Farmer, as the sounds got louder, a thundering of cracking ice.

  “Time grows shorter,” he replied. “The Stompers will be here before the next season dawns. Go. NOW!”

  He pointed toward the door, which stood open, revealing the red, glowing cavern of the Pointing Finger. Confused and frightened, I made for the door. Farmer spoke once more as the cold of the room turned into the fierce heat of the volcanic cave.

  “Jimmy, beware. The Stompers are not what you think. We must talk of them, soon.”

  I nodded, and with a pitiful wave goodbye, I reached over and slammed the wooden door closed after stepping through.

  The room of ice was gone.

  Immediately, my strange group of companions surrounded me, all yelling at the same time.

  “Jimmy, the whole place is shaking! We've got to get out of here, now!”