Outlaw. Part 34

He rushed through the jungle and doubled around, searching for higher ground. Within the hour he reached a knoll that offered him a clear view of the valley.

He peered down at the village, panting and drenched with sweat. From his vantage he could see the full scope of their resolve. Five thousand warriors had found their way into Kirutu's compound now and flowed like a river around the towering structure that held his mother.

Another five thousand ran back and forth just outside the main gates that led into the fenced village. There was no way into the stronghold. And if by some impossible means he did manage to reach his mother, ten thousand strong would smother them both.

He too, then, was held captive. He too was in the heart of darkness, lost and trembling. He could feel her desperation-layers of it, thick like so much black mud deposited over so many years. How she'd endured it he could not fathom, but she'd somehow clung to life, fed by dreams of being rescued by him. Dreams that were now failing her. She was too weak. It had been too much.

And he would fail.

Stephen sank to his knees, limp and powerless.

He tried to still his mind, but new voices had taken up residence, whispering pain and anguish, his mother's and his own. His mother had brought him to this distant world knowing the danger, subjecting him to isolation from the rest of his kind. Now he was left to live his life in this jungle alone?

There would be no home among the Warik. He couldn't live on a mountain his whole life. He needed companionship, the kind he'd been allowed to feel with Lela, if only for a day.

The memory of Kirutu slashing his blade across her neck sliced through his mind.

Every bone in his body demanded he rush down the mountain to save his mother. To reclaim Lela. Both were impossibilities. They were dead and doomed already and he was alone.

Abandoned.

He would rather be dead. And now he saw that Kirutu was right: he was dead already, with his mother in her grave.

He was falling apart and he didn't seem to be able to find a way clear of his desperation. Tears filled his eyes as he stared down at the sea of pulsing flesh.

He had to find Shaka. There was no other way. He had to return to the mountain and fall at Shaka's feet and beg his teacher to show him a way he could save his mother. And in saving his mother, save himself from this pain, because he was her son, born of her flesh, one.

Stephen staggered to his feet, turned his back on the Tulim valley, and ran.

Each step took him farther from her hole of misery and this alone terrified him, but he could see no other way. Shaka had negotiated his release from Kirutu many years ago. Surely he could do the same for his mother now.

The miles fell behind and still Stephen did not slow. Under any other circ.u.mstance he would have jogged lightly for such a long run, but the world had changed. There was no time. He ignored the pain in his shoulder and the crying of his lungs and he ran, leaping over fallen logs, rushing up steep inclines, often cutting directly through the brush when he knew the switchbacks would only slow him.

The sun was setting when he finally burst into the familiar clearing he'd called home for so long.

"Shaka!"

At first glance there was no sign of him.

"Shaka!"

He ran up to the cooking hut and shoved his head inside. "Shaka."

The fire was out and the ash smokeless. Two partially burned sticks of wood stuck out of the cold coals where he'd left them when he'd finished reading his mother's story two days earlier. The fire hadn't been lit since then. There was no sign anyone had been in the hut since he'd last left it.

Stephen hurriedly checked both of the other huts and found them both vacant. The roll Shaka typically kept at the head of the sleeping hut was in place, which meant he hadn't left with the intention of sleeping elsewhere, as he sometimes did.

Stephen tore out of the hut and cried out. "Shaka!" In every direction he repeated the same call. "Shaka! Shaka!"

Only birdsong answered him. How could his teacher have left him alone, knowing what he would find in the Tulim valley?

He paced, fighting back an uncommon fear, staring at the jungle, willing the familiar form of his teacher to appear as it always did.

But no. The jungle sounded oddly vacant. And he was alone, high on the mountain.

The cliff? It was where Shaka had first spoken of this quest.

Stephen ran, his mind lost to desperation. He wasn't aware of the path, or the way, only of the one question that drummed through his mind.

What if he's not there?

He came out of the jungle at a fast jog and bounded up a ledge on the highest part of the cliff.

"Shaka!"

A hawk perched on the far edge of the cliff sprang off the rock face and glided into the abyss below. The valley lay in near darkness, lit only by a sliver of gray light on the distant horizon.

Stephen stood on the ledge, breathing heavily from the run, staring at the setting of all light in his world.

It was as if the sun itself were shrinking, conspiring with all the world to abandon him in his darkest hour of need.

He tightened his fists as a ball of rage rolled up through his chest, and he screamed the name of his teacher into the falling night.

"Shakaaaa!" Then again, face flushed with heat, jaw strained wide. "Shakaaaa!"

The cry went out into the void before him and was swallowed by a heavy, mocking silence.

Shaka was cruel. In the valley far below, his mother lay crushed. Here on the cliff, Stephen stood powerless.

He stepped out onto the ledge on numb feet and walked out to the edge of the cliff, pulled by the notion that jumping from this precipice would be his deserved end. Perhaps only in his death could his mother be safe. Kirutu would keep her alive indefinitely as a means of drawing Stephen in. If he died now, he could never again threaten her life.

The rocks below would crush his costume and save his mother's.

Costume.

Yes, these thoughts, all of them, were those of his costume-so he had learned. And now he was learning that he was his costume. All of Shaka's words to the contrary mocked him.

Remember, Stephen...

Remember that he was a Water Walker. His true self could jump off this cliff and float down the mountain, unaffected by the pull of gravity, as much as his Master had once walked on water, knowing that he would not sink.

So perhaps he should jump. His costume would die, of that he was certain. And why not?

Remember, Stephen...

He was remembering! He could hear all the words drilled into him for so many years. But those words did not save his mother. Nor convince him that she didn't need saving.

All that Shaka had taught him seemed to fail him now. That promised power of security and beauty and peace and joy only ridiculed him.

In this way too Shaka had been cruel. To promise so much and deliver so little in the time of need. Where was he now?

Stephen stood on the cliff for a long time, at a loss. The last of the light vanished and tonight even the crickets were silent.

He didn't know what to think, much less do. Every time he tried to go beyond his thoughts, they quieted for only a brief moment before whispering of hopelessness once again.

He thought he might return to the huts but saw no point in sitting alone in an empty home. Returning to the valley wasn't an option.

So he finally sank to a sitting position, wrapped his arms around his knees, lowered his head, and rocked.

Save me. Save me...

He prayed to his Master, whom he had accepted as the truth, but he heard only silence.

He begged G.o.d, the Creator who had sent his Master, to save him.

He begged his Spirit to fill him and wash away the anguish that tortured his mind.

None of them answered his call.

Time slowed as waves of sorrow washed over him. He let them come, one after another deep into the night, until his mind finally surrendered itself and left him vacant. Hollowed.

Numb.

"Tell me, where does Stephen live?"

He heard the voice in his mind-his mother's. And he answered in a whisper only to answer himself.

"He lives in the mountains above the Tulim valley."

"Where does he sleep?"

Stephen hesitated. "He sleeps in a home next to the Wagali River."

"And how is his costume now?"

He'd heard these same questions only two nights ago, spoken by Shaka on this very cliff. His mind was replaying the discussion. But not all was as it had been.

"His insane mind screams of failure."

"And his true mind?" his mother's voice asked. She spoke with Shaka's inflections but in a higher tone. More soothing.

"It's at peace," he said, but he couldn't believe it now because he felt none of that peace.

"Why is this?" she asked.

"Because my true self is always at peace, dead to insanity. Only the insane mind offers any disturbance to the sound mind."

"And who gave you this sound mind?"

He blinked. A hint of calm, barely discernible, edged into his awareness.

"The One from whom I come."

"What is his name?"

"He is called the One in me. Immanuel. The Way and the Truth. The One who defeated death and is Life."

"And you?"

Stephen spoke aloud now, eager for the comfort that came with his speaking these words, however little.

"I too am now made whole without any further blame, condemnation, or need for correction. I am dead to that which makes me less than whole. I am alive only in my Father."

"Then can anything threaten you?" his mother asked.

"Nothing can separate me from his love. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed any true thought of my separation from him. I am blameless and nothing can remove me from my Master. It is impossible."

"Forgiven."

"Forgiven," he said.

"And yet, though dead, your insane mind speaks."

"Only when I forget that my insane mind is dead."

"And then?"

"And then he tempts me to feel threatened; separated from my true self in him. To feel less than whole and therefore needing of something other than the knowledge of my Master's love, which is already in me."

The voice waited a few moments before coming again.

"And yet now you think that you need your mother."

The truth of those last words grew in his mind like a balloon. He blinked.

A hand rested on his shoulder. "This is the grievance you cling to, my son. This is the G.o.d you look to for your salvation."

He jerked his head up and twisted to his right. His mother stood beside him, dressed as she'd been in the Tulim valley. Not merely an image of his mother, but her, in the flesh, hand on his shoulder, looking out at the abyss.

She turned her head and offered him a gentle smile. "You forget your true Master, Stephen. Only he can save you. And he already has."

Stephen scrambled away and clambered to his feet, expecting the vision to vanish when he lifted his eyes.

But his mother was still there, looking out over the cliff again as a slight breeze lifted her hair.

"It's almost finished," she said.

He tried to speak but found his throat knotted.