Fintan manifested another candle, but unlike his grandfather’s candle, his was an ordinary wax candle. It lit the room dimly. His grandfather’s candle flashed one last emergency message that he correctly assumed meant it was finished.

  Then it guttered out with a pop, leaving a puddle in the saucer but no wick. Outside the house, the trees crashed into each other, and Fintan could see the darkness moving in the shadows. It was substantial, not smoke, with defined limbs.

  He shook his grandfather, but the old man didn’t budge. He was still breathing, but nothing Fintan tried would wake him up. The light was important, but twenty of his candles wouldn’t equate to one of his grandfather’s.

  There was no choice. He would have to face the darkness alone. He couldn’t manifest more fire inside the cabin without risking burning it down. He thought about manifesting a sword or a spear, but the metal was too difficult to manifest. He put together the image in his mind, but when the spear started to form, the metal resisted and drew strength out of him, as if he would disappear before the sharp edge appeared.

  He thought about changing the gun barrel to a spear point, but that didn’t work either. Apparently, the same effort was put into changing the metal’s shape. He couldn’t make part of it disappear; he was working with some kind of magical second law of thermodynamics, and he hadn’t studied physics well in school. He was always better with animals. He had an almost empathic ability with them as good as anyone with computationally augmented assistance.

  He had to make a choice.

  When at last you don’t succeed, fail with honor.

  That got him into the afterlife. Maybe it would get him into the next life. If he failed at a Western version of resurrection, perhaps he would succeed as a reincarnation of a tadpole or a radish.

  He’d died, barely fighting back. He wasn’t ready for physical violence. This time, he would die fighting.

  He flung open the door, leaving the dim candle on the counter. His spear was nothing more than a staff, but he ran out of the cabin toward the woods.

  In the distance, a subtle glow reminiscent of the portals provided a backdrop for the outlines of the trees. A paw from the sky landed in front of him, flattening the vegetation, and the elongated shape of a large feline body shoved the treetops aside as if walking through a field where oaks were no more a nuisance than tall grass.

  The maw turned toward him, and Fintan manifested a giant torch in one hand.

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  He was right. It was a lion. The look in its eye was vengeance. Lions hated people, and they were inordinately large, having been engineered for size and near human intelligence. This lion was grotesquely larger than any he’d beheld on the net.

  Fintan bent his will to the fire, creating a towering conflagration in the palm of his hand. If he’d done anything like this near the cabin, it surely would have burnt to the ground, but he was in the clearing.

  The lion’s mane was golden in the yellow light, and it had a spiraled horn on its forehead. It was not like the lions he remembered. He was in the afterlife, and this was a spiritual creature.

  The lips pulled back into a snarl, and a clawed paw raised as if to rend him and his puny flames, but a transformation came over the face of the cat. Instead of vengeance, he saw interest. The gaping maw closed, and the large eyes contemplated him.

  Surprised, Fintan pulled back the flames he’d been ready to hurl at the spirit.

  Then he waited.

  The lion didn’t speak, but he didn’t move along. Fintan considered easing away from the lion, but the house with his grandfather was only yards away. Where would he go? With a simple misstep, the lion could crush his grandfather.

  Lions were said to have near-human intelligence.

  “What do you want?” Fintan asked.

  “You will serve me in death as you did in life,” the lion pronounced. The words came out in a low rumble but were clearly audible.

  Fintan frowned. He’d never served the lions. He knew quite a bit about them, but he primarily worked in horticulture. Herbivores were particularly dangerous, and they required a varied diet. Since the chain of life was broken, he had to figure out the missing compounds and make sure they were present in the environment using spray compounds. Most of those were vitamins, and loosely, he thought of himself as a rabbit nutritionist.

  Arguing with the lion seemed like a bad idea, so he thought he should stick with questions.

  “How?” he called to the face in the night sky.

  “You are impatient and angry,” the lion said. “Your desire is my conflict. Your passion feeds my purpose. I stand before the door, but you will not enter.”

  “Is it the door to life?” Fintan asked. The lion was speaking in riddles, but this riddle was obvious. He’d come through death’s metaphorical door to get here. That door turned out to be a portal.

  The lion nodded. His massive head sent a gust downward as he spoke.

  “You know this is true because the telling provides me no purpose, and the doing is your purpose.”

  Fintan considered how to respond to the words. The lion was human or at least capable of human emotion, and as with any conversation there was as much to read in those feelings as the logic in the language.

  The language seemed contradictory. He wasn’t sure what the lion was saying, but he felt the hostility behind the words like an alien presence. Lions hated humans, and they hated fire. They did not feed off of them. Something about this spiritual lion saw him as food, and he shuddered at the thought.

  “Go sleep, tiny man,” the lion said. “This night, I grant you a reprieve. Serve me well, and I will fulfill your greatest desire.”

  The lion turned aside, his massive footfalls lost in the darkness. Strangely, there was no crashing of trees as the lion left.

  Fintan had no desire to chase the beast. With the threat gone, he barely had the strength to stand. Nervous energy drained out of him, and he dragged himself back into the cabin.

  He bared the door before falling on the guest bed beside his grandfather. Before closing his eyes, he wondered if he would dream.