“Shinta, what I have to say now is very important. So important that we must talk about it here and now. But when we go home we will never speak of it again. Not to daddy, not to anyone that comes to our home and not to anyone we meet outside of home. No one. Do you understand?”

“You want to keep secrets. Even from daddy?”

“Even daddy, Shinta. He won’t be happy to know and I think we both want daddy to be happy. Right?” Cora is more concerned by Shinta’s apparent torment than by the fact that she has made the cognitive leap to ‘secrets’ so quickly.

Shinta nods.

“So you have to promise me, it’ll be our secret.” Shinta nods at this too. Cora pauses a moment, afraid it may be too much for her daughter to keep things from Tarek. Her resentment for him surfaces. His dogmatic disbelief in the protection of the Guardians fuels her passion for what comes next. “Before you asked what has happened to Arcadin. This is the answer: Arcadin has resumed Life’s journey along the path of the Way. The very place you, I, and every avatar that holds Life shall journey when Light leaves our bodies.” Shinta’s eyes grow wide with slow wonder. “All living things are borrowers, empty shells that are filled with Life—this is the avatar. At their commencement, when they can no longer hold Light, that energy moves. This is the Way.”

“You mean when I die?” Shinta asks. “Like Charlie?”

Cora shivers remorsefully, smoothly exhaling a swell of sympathy from her lungs. Shinta uses her brother’s name so innocently—and why shouldn’t she. If anyone should be spared of the pain of Charles’ passing, it is Shinta. Better she be traumatized with selective amnesia than frightening memories.