Chapter 24Second Interlude
Elissa is a stranger to me now. Her name is no longer mine. My name, my true name, lays behind the cloud of unknowing. If I can but pierce the cloud, I might grasp it between my fingertips.
I am all but blind in this place. The Underworld has its own moon and stars, but they yield an unwilling light. I waft past the Styx and through the Woods of Mourning and I do not fear the shadows. It is not the first time I have made a journey in the dark.
Throughout our voyage across the Middle Sea, I squeezed my eyes shut but refused to surrender the tiller. There was a light that lay behind my lids. Up ahead, a beacon was just over the horizon. I saw it in my dreams and it remained in the hour between sleeping and waking. My mother whispered to me that opening my eyes w
