Outlaw

Chapter Twenty

AT FIRST I thought it was only another dream.

“The day is bright,” the voice said. “And yet you slumber.”

I pried my eyes open and stared at the grass in front of me. The voice was real? The world before me looked cockeyed from that perspective, with my cheek flat on the ground.

“Wake up,” the voice said yet again, low and soothing.

It was real and it came from my right.

I jerked my head up and pushed to my elbows, twisting. There, resting against the boulder, holding a bloodstained, bone-tipped spear, stood the one Melino had called the Nameless One, watching me with kind, gentle eyes.

A two-inch strip of fox hide cinched his hair and forehead. Similar bands encircled his ankles, knees, wrists, and elbows as well.

The short lap-lap at his midsection was made from two swaths of tanned leather—of which hide, I couldn’t tell. A large tribal tattoo, an O of sorts, covered the right side of his chest.

He looked at me without moving, and in those eyes I saw a vast understanding that drew me like a vortex. The warm breeze continued to sweep over my skin and lift my hair, but it seemed to move with purpose now, as if it too knew something.

For a few seconds I remained still.

“My name is Shaka,” he said. “Some call me the Nameless One.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was the third time I’d seen him since coming to the valley, and the first time I’d heard him speak.

His voice seemed to reach into my bones. I’d heard it before, not spoken, but in song. I was sure of it. My dream. But I wasn’t dreaming now, I was also sure of that.

I pushed myself to my knees and thought to rise to my feet, but somehow the thought of doing so felt presumptuous.

“You’re too weak to stand?”

I cleared my throat. “No.”

He pushed himself off the boulder and offered me his hand. I tentatively took it and he helped me to my feet. He wasn’t Tulim. His cheekbones were slightly higher and his skin wasn’t as dark, but he had the scars and lean muscles of one who had mastered the jungle.

“That’s better.” He offered me a kind wink, then turned to face the valley like a man eyeing the journey ahead. I followed his eyes and stared at the same jungle from which I had climbed. The Tulim valley consisted of several smaller valleys bordered by the tall cliffs and jagged peaks that protected it from invading tribes. Sweeping slopes thick with jungle descended to the southern swamps, which were just beyond view.

“You seem to have a problem,” he said, keeping his eyes trained to the south. “But only because you think you do.”

I turned back. I wasn’t sure what to think, much less say. It occurred to me that Melino would be searching for me, frantic by now. The sun was already high in the sky. Wilam might be facing off with Kirutu in the Tegalo valley as we spoke. How many had already died?

“My problem is very real,” I said.

“Is it?”

“Who are you?”

“The question you should be asking,” he said, shifting his eyes to meet mine, “is who are you?”

“I’m Julian. Carter. Julian Carter.” So many months had passed since I’d last spoken my own name.

“Julian.” The man who called himself Shaka smiled. “A nice name for a costume. And who is Julian Carter’s father?”

“Richard Carter,” I said. “He died a year ago.”

“No one dies,” he said. “They only shed their costumes.”

His reference immediately connected with me, because I knew some things about spiritual beliefs, both in major world religions and among the Tulim. He was calling my body a costume.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

For a long time he didn’t answer. I forgot that I was standing on a hill deep in the jungle. I saw only him. Only Shaka. My heart raced.

It raced because I suddenly saw myself in the dream that had first called me to leave Atlanta. Could Shaka be that one who’d called to me with his haunting melody?

“You’re confused, my child. It’s OK—so is most of the world. You don’t know who you are.”

“I…I’m Jullian.”

“No. This is only your costume. Your role. Daughter. Wife. Woman…” He paused, eyeing me. “Mother.”

An image of my Stephen sprang to mind. He was in Kirutu’s arms, reaching for me. Crying.

Our predicament stormed back into my awareness. We were both the victims of a cruel world.

“I have a son…” I stammered, tears welling in my eyes.

A gentle grunt came from the man’s throat, one of infinite patience that made me feel as though I knew nothing. He tapped the butt of his long ironwood spear in the dirt and stepped forward to the crest of the knoll, ten feet from where I stood by the boulder.

A single thick scar ran across his lower back, the mark of a battle with man, beast, or jungle. I walked up to him and faced the breeze, still disoriented.

“What I tell you today, you must never forget,” he said. “The truth calls to all, but few hear. You’ve waited a long time for this day, so you must hear. You must see.”

“Hear what? I’ve waited?”

“Hear that you are not wife, daughter, or mother,” he said. “They killed the body of one who spoke this truth a long time ago. They refused to hear and hung him from a tree. It was he who said that you’re not your son’s mother.”

I recoiled at the absurdity of his suggestion. Not only that I wasn’t a mother, but at the suggestion that the Christian faith had ever suggested any such thing.

“Here in this world, in a much lesser way, I suppose you are a mother, but where it counts, you’re not,” Shaka continued. “When they brought the Master his mother, he said that his mother was all who had ears to hear and eyes to see. All, one mother. It was he who also taught that if anyone tries to find the narrow way and does not set aside who they think they are and what they think they need, they cannot follow.”

Shaka raised his right eyebrow and peered at me. “You say that you follow this one? Our Master. Jeshua.”

“I…” He was talking of my faith. “Yes.”

He smiled. “The roles you identify with are not the true you, they are only the costume you wear for a short time. The time has come to put your eyes on the light of the world, which shines brightly. All who follow need not walk in darkness. They walk instead in that kingdom within, where there is no darkness, beyond the laws which bring suffering. This is the Way. On this path the yoke is easy and the burden is light. But that Way is hard to find. Few ever do.”

I didn’t understand all that he meant, but looking into his eyes I felt his deep sincerity settle me. Those kind eyes were the anchor in my stormy sea.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Hear me, my child…you suffer now because you are blind to the light that shines even now. You look for your identity among costumes. These are not your true self, one with your true Father. Being his offspring, his love flows through you already. What love can you possibly need from the world if you are already full of his? None.”

He removed his hand and lazily gestured at the horizon as if the world about us were only an afterthought.

“Once you surrender to this truth, you will see that all of your suffering is insanity. Until then you will be lost in darkness. Adrift in the black sea, trying to keep your head above the water so that you don’t drown. You cannot drown. Nothing can threaten the child of God.”

“You know about the sea?” I asked in a cracking voice. I swallowed. “That I was taken from there by the Tulim?”

“I do. I’ve been waiting more than two years, knowing you would come. I knew the moment he was born.”

“Who was born?”

“Stephen,” he said.

A hum ignited in my mind. So then…I was right. Shaka was the one from my dreams. In that moment, having suffered far too much, I felt my resistance drain from my bones. I still didn’t fully grasp his entire meaning, but I felt no compulsion to do so. His words spoke to my heart more than my mind.

“How can you hope to save this son you call yours if you yourself are walking in blindness?”

New tears blurred my vision and a knot filled my throat.

Shaka looked at me tenderly, with bottomless understanding. “Do you see the light I speak of, or are you groping in darkness?”

He wasn’t talking about any ideological condition of my soul beyond this life, but the here and now, that very moment, standing on that hillside.

“I’m in darkness,” I whispered. My sense of loss and hopelessness swelled and I could not hold back my confession. “I’m lost in it.” Tears slid down my cheeks. “I can’t see, I’m dying. God has abandoned me.”

“No, my child. God is no more capable of abandonment than he is of disappointment. He’s not that small or threatened. The light of his smile shines on you now. You will see that when you surrender.”

“Surrender to what?”

“Surrender your false self. Your costume. Your attachment to this world.”

“My son…” I trailed off, thinking of his earlier words. Anger and confusion lapped at my mind. What he suggested seemed impossible to me.

Shaka shifted his eyes to the horizon again.

“From this valley comes a great calling that will awaken many so that they might see the light beyond the dim glass. They will hear the drum and come. They will step out of the law of death and walk in the kingdom within, that eternal reality filled only with light and love.”

He said it with such confidence that I could not help but believe. Believe what, I didn’t yet know, because understanding was still out of my reach.

“Stephen will live an obscure life, but he’s destined to find and call all of those who would step out of the law and find the narrow path. Many will follow—some won’t. He will be tested in ways that few have been, but he must be if he is to show them the Way. It begins here, today, if you are willing. You don’t need to understand everything now, only that the path isn’t difficult when you let your old costume pass away and allow all things to be new.”

He was right, I didn’t understand. But he was speaking of a path that I wanted to take because, if he was right, it meant Stephen could live. Shaka might not consider me Stephen’s mother as such, but I wasn’t seeing the world his way yet.

I had to save my son.

“Then show me,” I said. “I’ll do anything to save him.”

“You can’t save him.”

“But you said—”

“You can save only his body. His costume.”

Costume again. But I was understanding more. And I didn’t really care what terms he used, I only wanted to save my son.

“Show me. I’ll do anything.”

He studied me for a moment. A tingling settled over the crown of my head and swept down my spine as his eyes searched mine.

“You must surrender. Everything.”

“I will! I do.”

“Nothing will be the same,” he said.

“I don’t want the same.”

“It may seem difficult at times.”

“Nothing can be as difficult as this hell.”

“It may cost you your life—the one you presently wear.”

He was saying that I might die. But in the wake of the life I had lived, I didn’t care.

“Show me.”

The Nameless One who called himself Shaka sank to one knee and pinched up some dust, which he sprinkled into his open palm.

“Everything you think you see now is far less than what is real,” he said, rising. He spat into his hand. “You will know what to do. Do not forget.” Using his fingers, he mixed his spit with the dust to make mud.

He lifted his eyes to me. “When the light fades, it’s far too easy to forget—we are a narcissistic breed consumed with our costumes and our performances. Remember what you see. Know who you are. Tell only those who have ears to hear.”

I felt my breathing quicken. Something was going to happen, I knew that as much as I knew I was alive. A tingling coursed through me as if the very blood in my veins carried electricity.

“Close your eyes, my child.”

I closed them and held my breath.

He wiped his fingers across both eyes in unison, from the bridge of my nose to my cheeks, very quickly, as if wiping something off, not on.

“See,” he said.

At first I saw nothing. Pitch-darkness. It took only a moment for me to realize that I couldn’t hear either. It was as though I were in a void. No sound, no sight, no sensory perception at all.

And I thought, I’m dead!

I opened my eyes…but I still couldn’t see anything, and for a moment I felt deep fear.

And then the sound came, low, the song that had first called to me in my dreams. Once again I was there above the valley, hearing the haunting call.

Once again I was flying forward as the call grew, higher and deeper at once. A chant joined the call deep down, like the chanting of the Tulim over and over as they danced.

My fear fell away as I became intimately aware that this was deep calling to deep—a call for love. I was being called…

And this time, when I approached the hill on which I’d first seen the form I now knew to be Shaka, I was suddenly there myself, staring out at the valley as if I were Shaka. Before me the jungle and hills fell away to a distant alluvial plain. The sound was coming from the jungle. From all of it. Not only from the trees, but from every living thing—beast and human—groaning for love.

The light of that love is coming, I thought. It’s coming to this world.

The moment I thought it, a single ball of light streaked directly over my head like a meteor, roaring with power. It shot all the way to the alluvial plain and there ignited in a single flash, an expanding, concussive blue-and-white wave filled with a swelling music. The valley came alive with light.

And there, in the Tulim valley, I saw.

I saw everything. Not what it suddenly became, but what it had been all along. One moment I had been blind my whole life, and the next I could see with such vision and clarity that I gasped aloud there on the knoll of the hill.

And immediately I began to weep with joy. Because I saw, you see?

I saw!

I saw that it was staggeringly beautiful, brimming with iridescent red-and-green light seeping from every hill, every tree, every leaf. Even the air itself shifted in translucent golds and blues.

I saw that the valley was whole, a perfect stage streaming with brilliant colors and light that was only abstractly aware of the conflicts raging between the cliffs.

I saw that nothing could possibly threaten or present the vaguest challenge to the power flowing in, through, around, and from me. I saw that my body was only a costume to be worn.

I heard.

The song from my distant dreams. Music, riding the light with such exquisite power that I felt my every bone tremble with it. Deep tones that could not be pushed lower, high melodic strains that danced with ecstasy.

I knew.

I knew that time was an illusion because there is no future and there is no past. There is only now, and what is called the future is just another now.

I knew that my Father was perfect and that nothing imperfect could have come from that perfection, much less threaten it in any way. I was safe. Saved. Now.

I knew that I too was perfect, even as my Father was perfect, and that nothing could possibly threaten me now. There was no longer any separation between me and my Father.

Weeping with gratitude and relief, I became aware that I had dropped to my knees and was shaking as unending waves of power and peace coursed through my body. Fear was as foreign to me as the sky might be to a deep-sea fish; I was swimming in a lake of raw love, pulsing with light and ecstasy.

And within a very short time that might have been many years or only a moment, I knew what I would do.