11

Ernst studied Darryl within the Orsa. His outstretched fingers were only a half dozen inches or so from the end. Sometime since Ernst’s last visit, the fellow’s flesh had lost its translucency and returned to normal. He now looked just as he had when he’d entered the Orsa.

Had the process failed?

Ernst banished the thought. After all they’d gone through—the time, the effort, the risks, the manipulations—failure was inconceivable.

And yet . . . the thought persisted.

The transformation had to have taken place. No, more than a transformation—a transubstantiation.

Transubstantiation . . . the changing of substance without changing perceivable physical attributes. The Catholic Church believed in transubstantiation. It proclaimed that when one of its priests offered up the consecrated bread and wine at mass, they maintained their outward appearances but literally became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The bread became holy flesh, the wine became holy blood from the son of the Christian god. Many Protestant sects, on the other hand, considered the bread and wine of the ceremony merely symbolic.

What had happened to Darryl was not symbolic. He maintained the physical aspect of a typical human being, but his substance had been changed—transubstantiated—into something totally Other. He had entered the Orsa a human, but he would emerge as something else.

The Fhinntmanchca.

Or so Ernst hoped.

Darryl . . . simple, insignificant, trivial Darryl would be the Fhinntmanchca . . . the Maker of the Way. What did that mean? What was he expected to accomplish? Only the One seemed to know the nature of the Fhinntmanchca, but even he didn’t seem too sure if it would or could accomplish its purpose.

Maybe tomorrow Ernst would know. Maybe tomorrow the world would know.