His peculiar question took me off guard but I shook my head negatively. He did not push for an answer, though I was sure that I would be giving explanations pretty soon.

We reached the undergrowth and took the stairs down into the chest. I realized on our way down that he had been unaffected by the protective barrier I had set.

I could have sworn it was there, but he simply walked right through it. I dismissed the idea as a by-product of all the mana he had in him now.

I had read of powerful spellcasters being able to countercast protection spells and become able to circumvent these barriers, and I was told by Priestess Cheandra of people that were powerful enough to disregard any barrier, but Kai could not have had knowledge of this.

Thinking of Cheandra pained me, so I tried to shift my focus back to the plan I had previously devised. Once we were downstairs, I walked to an adjacent room, removed my clothes and put on dry robes.

I returned to see him sitting on a bed, his little arms stretched, looking at the color of his skin.

“Why is my skin like this Myriam?” he asked. “Is my face like this too?”

I sat next to him and took hold of both his hands in mine. I forced myself to smile, in order to ease the worry that I saw in his eyes.

“What is the last thing you remember, Kai?” I asked, gently.

“Well, I remember you receiving your mana,” he replied, slowly. “I think you got a lot. You did, didn’t you?”

I nodded my head, my mouth still holding what I hoped was a comforting smile.

“I couldn’t see very well from where I was standing,” he continued, “but I tried to do exactly as you did. I hope I didn’t mess it up, Myriam.”

I continued smiling, not wanting to interrupt his recollection of what had happened.

“Then I went up there and picked up the dagger.” He tilted his head sideways as he tried to remember. “I was afraid, but also excited. I remember plunging the dagger in The Divine like you did… and then we were in a different place.”

“You mean you woke up here?”

He shook his head.

“Where did we go, then?” I asked.

“No, not you. Me and The Divine. We were no longer on that marble platform. Everything was white and there was no up and down. We were standing but our feet weren’t on the ground. We were just there, infinite white emptiness on all sides. And It spoke to me.”

My comforting smile broke, and I opened my mouth at this. I was told that each liturgy experience was different from one person to the other but I had always felt it too intimate a moment to ask other people about their experience. Not to mention that most of it was a haze after the fact.

“And what did It tell you?” I asked, hesitantly.

“I don’t know, Myriam. I didn’t understand, but it sounded sad. And then…” he paused and looked at me, his eyes filling with water. “Then It started bleeding. It was bleeding a lot, Myriam. Its blood was gold and all of the white in the place that we were was slowly getting dirty with its gold blood. I must have done something wrong. I did, didn’t I?”

“No, no, no.” I tried to console him. I brought his little hands to my lips and kissed them. “You did nothing wrong, Kai. What happened after that?”

“Everything was golden.” He was trembling as he spoke now. “Gold as far as I could see. Then my legs started disappearing in Its blood. It was like everything was flooding but it wasn’t wet. I didn’t feel anything, but I was afraid because the golden flood kept rising. It…”

He stopped speaking, and though he did not show it, I knew he was about to burst into tears.

“It’s fine. Take your time.” I pressed his little hands in mine all the tighter.

“It covered my nose and I breathed it in,” he continued. “I swallowed it. It wasn’t like water or air. I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t hurt. Then I felt dizzy, and that’s the last thing I remember.”

He crumbled and buried his face in my lap. I felt the tears from his eyes on my hands. He certainly seemed traumatized by this whole ordeal. His story did end abruptly, but regardless of whether he had hidden anything from me, he almost certainly had no recollection of what happened afterward.

“It’s ok, Kai.” I comforted him again.

I put my arms around him and rocked my body back and forth until his breathing came easier. After a minute or two, he sat up straight again and started asking his own questions.

“Why are we here, Myriam?” he asked, but continued without waiting for an answer. “Where are my parents? And why is my skin gold?”

“There’s no easy way to say this…” I tried to sound as calm as possible, but I knew I was announcing what would be the most horrible news he’d ever received. “Your parents are dead. They were killed by The Divine’s archangels.”

He just stared at me, not blinking. I could see a profound sadness in his eyes as he began tearing up again.

“Why?!” was all he shouted as he turned around to hide his tears.

That was the question that I had feared. This moment could break him beyond repair. I should have thought this through better.

“Because they thought that we killed The Divine,” I heard myself saying. “The angels attacked us because they thought that the village had plotted to kill The Divine. The people fought bravely but more and more angels arrived and… They were too many, Kai.”

His body, which had been shaking before, was now perfectly still. His head leaned down and even though I could not see his face, I could feel his sadness getting muddied by anger.

“Did I kill The Divine, Myriam?” he asked.

“Of course not!” I said, and turned him to face me. His eyes were dry but still very irritated. “How could you possibly kill It? If anything, I drew much more mana than you did.”

He seemed to believe me, but at this point, I could not even be sure what was a lie and what wasn’t. Was The Divine dead, and if It was, did little Kai kill It?

“Then who killed It?” came his next question.

“We don’t know if It is really dead. You passed out so Priest Imar and I carried you home.” I continued weaving my lies, feeling guilty about it but doing it all the same. “People continued while we brought you home and soon there was a commotion. Priestess Cheandra came and said that each time someone received mana from The Divine, It seemed weaker until It fell to the floor. That was when the angels started flocking and attacking us. She took Imar back to help her and that was the last I saw of them.”

“Why did they not kill us?”

“Before leaving, the priests cast a protective spell upon us, and told me to wait it out there. And that’s what I did. I waited and waited. Until I could hear nothing anymore. I returned to the liturgy site only to find out that the angels had killed everyone. They had left the village. I saw some of their weapons laying there but they were all missing.”

“Which means that they took their dead and left?” He completed my thinking.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” I confirmed, relieved to see that he believed my lies. “But I knew that they would soon return. So I took what I could as fast as possible and I ran with you. This was more than a day ago.”

“I see…” he said and turned his eyes toward the ground yet again.

Not wanting to let his thoughts run back to the death of his parents, I tried to respond to his other question.

“I don’t know why your skin is gold, but I’m sure that is nothing we can’t fix. Unless you want to leave it as is?” A new lie to comfort him formed in my head. “I have heard of people’s skin taking all kinds of different colors after they receive their mana.”

“No!” he almost shouted. “No, I want my normal skin. I want nothing to do with the angels’ color.”

“Okay. Not a problem,” I said in order to relieve the tension. “We will fix your skin first thing tomorrow morning. I know you were sleeping, but how does your body feel?”

“It aches, Myriam. It feels as if I was training for hours,” he replied, and touched his legs and arms.

“Would you like to rest?” I asked him with a smile on my face. “You can sleep here and I’ll lay there, close to you,” I said pointing to another bed in the same room.

“Yes, please,” he replied, in a quiet, almost whispering voice.

I laid him down on the bed and covered him with a black blanket as he rolled over with his back toward me. I guessed this would have to do for today.

He handled it better than I thought, although of course I would need to keep an eye on him over the next few days. I knew exactly what he was going through.

I walked over to the bed I had chosen for myself, laid down on it and covered myself with another black blanket. Even though I was extremely tired, my eyes would not give themselves up to sleep and I found myself staring up at the ceiling.

“Myriam?” Kai’s voice came from across the room. “Why were you in the water when I found you?”

I looked over, but he was still facing the wall.

“Because I was weak,” I replied, and I felt sadness overwhelm me once more. “I fell in and was too weak to get out.”

“Please be more careful,” he responded. “You’re all that I have left now.”

I didn’t respond, fearing that he would hear my voice break, but I made a muffled noise of agreement instead. He didn’t speak again that night, and I figured from his breathing that he fell asleep soon afterward.

I cried myself to sleep. I let myself cry that night and I promised that it would be the last time I did. I needed to be strong for him.

I needed to take him as far away as possible and figure out what really went wrong during the liturgy. I had a mission, and my mission would not allow me to be weak.