Free Sister Emily's Lightship by Jane Yolen

sat closer to his heart, by the left side, the tears like rivers running down her unpainted cheeks.
    And standing at the bedfoot was his old nurse, weeping loudly and beating upon her bosom with a closed fist.
    The young prince Ho ch’ok opened his mouth to speak and all four about him fell silent, for his voice was but a whisper. He reached out his hand and his sister took it loosely in hers.
    â€œI am afraid,” Ho ch’ok said, for though he was a prince he was, still, a small boy. “I am afraid of the journey. I am afraid of the dark.”
    â€œThen,” his mother said softly, “I shall give you something to light the way.” She plucked her heart from her breast and held it out to him. And when he took it, it shone with a light that was even and white.
    â€œAnd I will give you that which can tell dark from light,” said his sister, plucking out her third eye and putting it on his forehead. “It can tell the hard places from the soft.”
    â€œAnd I will give you a weapon that you shall not be afraid,” said his brother, breaking off a little finger, the last one on the left. He placed it on his brother’s chest.
    â€œBut still I am cold,” said Ho ch’ok. “So cold.”
    At that the nurse took a great leather wallet which was hanging from a thong on her belt. She opened it and there was the young prince’s foreskin. Since he had not yet wed his sister, the foreskin was as soft and supple as the day it had been cut from him. The old nurse took it from the wallet and shook it out, and it became as great and as wide and as warm as a cloak, and she wrapped him in it.
    And the young prince smiled, closed his eyes, and rose up out of his body for his journey, leaving but a roughened hulk behind.
    The first step he took went to the East where the sun hit him full in the face, leaving a bright red scar on his cheek. The next step he took went to the South where a branch of the world tree slapped him across the chest, and a sliver of wood slipped in under his nipple into the meat of his breast. The third step took him to the West where the wind whirled his cape up over his head and burnished his buttocks with hot sand.
    But the fourth step took him to the North and the Cavern of Night, where all those who die have to go.
    The way into the cavern was dark and winding, like the stomach of a serpent. Ho ch’ok held aloft his mother’s heart. The light it cast crept into all the pockets of the dark and sent the shadows screaming silently from its rays. At that Ho ch’ok smiled.
    But as he went deeper into the cavern, even his mother’s heart light grew dim.
    â€œOh, my mother,” cried the young prince, “what am I to do?” And receiving no answer, he reached into his own breast through the opening made by the sliver of the world tree. But his heart would not leave his body, for he was not a woman. Still, there was just enough light from the opening of his chest with which to see, and so he went on.
    After a while, he came to a cavern flooded with water that seemed to be both red and black. Ho ch’ok stopped, and bent close to the water but he could not tell if it was possible to cross.
    He opened his sister’s third eye and saw that that which was black was, indeed, water; but that which was red was a bridge of smooth stones. So being careful to step only on the stones, he started to the other side.
    He was halfway across when his sister’s eye, being tired, closed. And as he was a man he had no third eye of his own.
    â€œOh, my sister,” cried Ho ch’ok, “what am I to do?”
    He would have thrown himself down and wept except that a man does not do such a thing, except that he did not know how to tell the wet places from the dry. But as the first tear touched his cheek, it touched also the red scar. And where it touched the scar, the tear turned aside.
    The young prince felt the turning of the tear, and so