A particle of ash touched his cheek and he brushed it away. Gabriel knew there was no way out, but he ran back to the church building. Smoke leaked out of the crack around the heavy door. The stained-glass windows glowed from within. As he watched, a crack appeared in the center window and grew larger, like a jagged wound on someone’s skin. Air expanded inside the building and the window exploded, showering the street with broken glass. Flames reached out of the window frame and black smoke touched the side of the white cupola.

He sprinted down the street to the other side of town and watched a burning pine tree explode into flames. Turn back, he thought. Run away. But all the buildings were burning now. The intense heat caused a wind that made bits of ash swirl around like leaves in an autumn storm.

Somewhere in this destruction was a way out, the dark passageway that would guide him back to the human world. But the fire destroyed all shadows and the rising smoke turned day into night. Too hot, he thought. Can’t breathe. Returning to the square, he kneeled beside the stone obelisk. The park benches and the dry weeds were burning. Everything was touched by the flames. Gabriel covered his head with his arms and curled up in a tight ball. The fire surrounded him and pushed through his skin.

AND THEN IT passed. When Gabriel opened his eyes, he saw that he was surrounded by the charred ruins of the town and the forest. Large pieces of wood were still burning and wisps of smoke rose toward a slate-gray sky.

Gabriel left the square and walked slowly down the street. The church, the cooper’s shop, and the fabric store with the upstairs apartment had been destroyed. A moment later, he reached the edge of the town and the remains of the forest. Some of the trees had fallen to the ground, but a few of them were still standing like black stick figures with twisted arms.

He retraced his footsteps through the ash-covered streets and saw that a wooden awning post was still standing in the middle of the destruction. Gabriel touched the post, sliding his hand down its smooth surface. Was this possible? How did it survive? He lingered by the post, trying to understand its meaning, and saw a white plaster wall standing about twenty feet away from him. The wall hadn’t existed a few minutes ago-or perhaps he was too dazed to notice it. He kept walking and found a barbershop chair in the middle of the ashes. This object was completely real. He could touch it, feel the green leather and the wooden armrests.

He realized that the town was going to reappear in exactly the same form. It would become whole, only to burn again-the process repeating itself forever. This was the damnation of the fire barrier. If he couldn’t find the passageway, he was trapped within this endless cycle of rebirth and destruction.

Instead of searching for a shadow, he returned to the square and leaned against the obelisk. As he watched, a front door appeared, and then part of a wooden walkway. The town began to form and reassert itself, growing like a living creature. The smoke vanished and the sky was blue again. Everything was changed but the same, as ashes melted in the sunlight like flakes of dirty snow.

Finally the process was complete. A town with empty rooms and dead trees surrounded him. Only then did a degree of clarity return to his mind. Forget the convolutions of philosophy. There were only two states of being: equilibrium and motion. The Tabula worshipped the ideal of political and social control, the illusion that everything should remain the same. But this was the cold emptiness of space, not the energy of the Light.

Gabriel left his refuge and began to look for a shadow. Like a detective searching for a clue, he entered each building and opened the closets and the empty cupboards. He peered beneath beds and tried to look at each object from a different angle. Perhaps he could see the passageway if he stood in the correct position.

When he returned to the street, the air seemed a little warmer. The town was new and complete, but gaining power for the next explosion of flame. Gabriel began to get angry about the inevitability of the cycle. Why couldn’t he stop what was going to happen? He began whistling a Christmas carol, enjoying the feeble noise in the silence. Returning to the church, he yanked open the door and marched toward the wooden altar.

The candle had reappeared as if nothing had ever happened and burned bright in its brass holder. Gabriel licked his thumb and forefinger, then reached out to snuff the flame. The moment he touched the candle, the flame broke off from the wick and began to flutter around his head like a bright yellow butterfly. It came to rest on a rose stem and this dry tinder started to burn. Gabriel tried to crush the fire with the palm of his hand, but sparks escaped and settled on the rest of the altar.

Instead of running from the fire, he sat down in a center pew and watched the destruction spread through the room. Could he die in this place? If his body was destroyed would he reappear again, like the altar and the barbershop chair? He began to feel an intense heat, but tried to deny the new reality. Perhaps all this was a dream, another construction of his mind.

Smoke had risen to the ceiling and now it began to drift downward, pulled toward the half-open door. As Gabriel stood up and began to leave the church, the altar turned into a column of flame. Smoke entered his lungs. He started coughing, then glanced to the left and saw a shadow appear in one of the stained-glass windows. The shadow was black and deep; it floated back and forth like a wavering particle of night. Gabriel grabbed a pew and dragged it over to the wall. He stood on the pew and pulled himself onto the narrow ledge at the bottom of the window frame.

Drawing the sword, he slashed at the shadow and his right hand disappeared into the blackness. Jump, he thought. Save yourself. He began to fall into the dark passageway, pulled forward into space. It was only in the final moment that he looked back and saw Michael standing in the church doorway.

With Gabriel’s motorcycle hidden in the back of the van, Maya drove north to Las Vegas. She saw dozens of road signs advertising casinos, and then a cluster of bright towers popped up on the horizon. After cruising past several motels outside the city, she checked into the Frontier Lodge-ten individual rooms designed to look like log cabins. The shower stall had green stains bleeding from the faucet handles and the mattress was saggy, but she placed her sword beside her and slept for twelve hours.

Maya knew the casinos would have surveillance cameras, and some of the cameras might be connected to Tabula computers. When she woke up, she took out a syringe and injected facer drugs into her lips and the skin below her eyes. The drugs made her look overweight and dissipated, like a woman who had a drinking problem.

She drove to a mall and bought cheap, flashy clothes-Capri pants, a pink T-shirt, and sandals-then visited a shop where an older woman wearing a cowgirl costume was selling makeup and synthetic wigs. Maya pointed to a blond wig sitting on a Styrofoam head behind the counter.

“That’s the Champagne Blonde model, honey. You wanna wrap it up or wear it?”

“I’ll put it on right now.”

The clerk nodded her approval. “Men just love that blond hair. It drives ’em crazy.”

Now she was ready. She drove down the main boulevard, turned right at the half-sized Eiffel Tower, and left the van in the parking lot of the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. The hotel was an amusement-park version of the City of Lights. It had a small version of the Arc de Triomphe and painted façades that resembled the Louvre and the Paris Opera House. The ground-floor casino was an enormous room with a domed ceiling that glowed with a dark blue color like an endless Paris twilight. Tourists wandered down cobblestone streets to blackjack tables and rows of slot machines.