Outlaw

Chapter Twenty-seven

STEPHEN HAD covered only a quarter of the long slope that descended to the village when he heard feet pounding on the path behind him. But he held his pace—the warriors would allow him to walk. His mind returned to the prospect of walking into this place so at odds with the high mountain on which he’d lived.

The jungle seemed to have stilled for his arrival. He placed one foot before the other, aware now of the others running to his left. In his peripheral vision he saw a dozen warriors jog by, eyeing him curiously.

Another dozen passed to his right, two of these carrying Lela’s limp form between them.

For the space of two breaths his eyes blurred and the sky screamed, and he knew that their world encroached on his own, daring him to resist. But he knew this ploy already and he let the desperate emotions pass through him. Lela was not his to save now.

His mind went silent.

He could see. The village growing nearer with each step as he approached the towering fence. Smoke from a hundred cooking fires coiling lazily into the air. The warriors jogging through a doorway in the fence to the right of the gates, carrying Lela like a pig.

He could hear. Birds calling from far away and chirping from the nearby jungle. His breath being pushed in and out of his lungs. His heart pounding steadily in his chest.

He could smell. Woodsmoke laced with the scent of cooked meat. Feces and mud. Rotting flesh.

He could feel. The worn grass under his feet. The still, humid air pressing into his skin, filling his nostrils.

The slight tremble in his right hand.

Father, save me.

He could see some things more clearly now. The bodies of the two naked natives—one an elderly man, the other a young woman—dead on their perches on either side of the gate. He found that he couldn’t process this madness with reason, so he released his attempt to do so and walked on.

Down the hill. All the way to the gate, keeping his eyes forward so that he wouldn’t have to look at the dead body on either side.

He was wondering how he would enter the village when the gates began to swing out, each pushed by a warrior. Like a blossoming flower, the Warik stronghold opened to him.

And yet there was no beauty here that he could see.

Still he walked, arms limp by his sides, breathing deliberately as he passed through the gate and into the village.

The wide path was packed down the center, muddy along the edges. Round huts had been built on stilts in rows set back ten or fifteen paces. At least one human skull bleached by the sun hung above the entrance to each hut.

A long line of warriors had stationed themselves on either side of the path. All were armed with spears or axes, some with steel machetes. Their faces were painted in blacks and reds and they wore bands on their foreheads, arms, and legs. To a man they stared at Stephen with round, white eyes, as though dead.

They didn’t show any signs of hostility. They did not scowl or shout or lift their weapons. These were warriors enslaved by fear and uncaring of all but their own survival. They were only funneling him toward the one he’d come to see.

Kirutu.

And his mother.

Slave of Kirutu.

He was seeing a part of himself, he thought. This place was only a much larger version of his own costume, determined to protect what it understood as life.

This was darkness. And yet he couldn’t identify with the darkness. He felt misplaced. A bird in the sea.

Villagers stripped of hope were exiting their huts and loitering, watching. Hugging their bodies, as if this too might offer them some protection.

Did they know who he was? Had they seen other white men or women in the eighteen years since his mother had given her son to Shaka and herself to Kirutu?

Stephen wasn’t sure what he was meant to do, so he did nothing but walk. Forward. Headed directly for a second fence that surrounded a tall structure at the end of this long warrior-lined path.

Lela had been right, he thought. They’d known he was coming.

A small naked child hanging on to the thigh of one of the warriors pointed her stubby finger up at Stephen and asked a question, which the man ignored. Several other children were hurrying through the village behind the warriors, eyes wide with wonder. They were too young to realize that they were enslaved.

Like a child, Stephen, Shaka said. Always, like a child.

These were the first he’d ever seen. Such wonder in tiny bodies, clinging to innocence, still unaware of the madness lurking in their own minds, waiting to overtake them.

He walked on feet of clay now, separate from all that his eyes saw. Many women of all shapes and heights gathered, some supporting children hanging off their bodies, others peering around huts, afraid.

An older man with graying hair and a toothless smile squatted between two huts. Stephen stopped. Here he felt a momentary bond. The man’s grin was, like Stephen, an anomaly.

One of the warriors grunted and waved his ax at the looming fence fifty paces on. They wanted him to keep moving. He was expected.

He resumed his walk, feeling more disconnected from the strange forms around him with each step. And he began to understand why Shaka had said this would be his most difficult test.

To walk among men. For this task Stephen suddenly felt unequipped.

A dead body hung from a tree limb—a young man, limp at the end of a rope that had been tied around his neck and pulled over a thick branch high above.

At the base of that tree sat a man who was missing an arm. The stump was wrapped in bloodied leaves. And yet the children near him paid neither the wounded man nor the limp body any mind. They were interested only in Stephen.

He swallowed back a flood of emotions and walked on.

The space between the huts began to fill with more onlookers staring dumbly at him, the white man dressed in a lap-lap, bearing no weapons, walking freely to his fate at Kirutu’s hand.

But Stephen did not belong to their master—he had his own. And Kirutu had no power over his.

The Tulim village his mother had written of had been orderly and beautiful, abounding with laughter and song, clean and ornate. That world was gone.

Instead he was surrounded by death, the smell of feces and rotting flesh ripe in the air. Somewhere deep within his mind, the sound of distant screaming returned and with it a single, simple question.

What if I do forget?

And then another question, even as he approached the second fence that circled Kirutu’s stronghold.

Forget what exactly? Which part?

Because suddenly there was so much to remember.

The gate to the second fence swung open, and Stephen was greeted by the sight of a wide, manicured courtyard. It surrounded an expansive rectangular structure built of hardwoods, roofed with thatched palm leaves.

These were the grounds of royalty.

No fewer than two hundred warriors stood around the footing of what could only be Kirutu’s palace. Another twenty lined each side of the path leading up to the structure.

Stephen walked through the gate, heard it latch behind him, and stopped. Ornate carvings of faces and spirits, many stained in reds and blacks with touches of yellow, covered the building’s hewn timber walls. A dark entrance opened into the structure at the top of sweeping steps.

All of this Stephen saw at a glance, but it was the warriors who drew his attention. To a man these were stronger than those outside the courtyard. The red and black markings on their bodies and faces had been drawn with more care, and many wore colorful feathers in their headbands.

They did not look at him, they glared. They did not merely stand, they were poised, tall, with deeply defined muscles. They did not speak, they screamed, not with their throats, but with their hearts.

They screamed fear. And hatred.

This challenge could break you, Stephen.

The thought surprised him. Nothing could break him, of course, and yet he felt that this challenge might, and this more than anything disturbed him.

Do not forget, Stephen.

Forget what?

Who he was…but who was he here? A boy in a man’s body, momentarily lost in a sea of rage and insanity. Why had Shaka sent him here?

To find his mother. She would know what to do.

Or was he to tell her what to do?

Stephen took three more steps before a warrior to his right stepped out of line, closed the distance between them, and struck him on the shoulder with a club, jarring his bones.

He staggered to the side and righted himself, momentarily stunned. The man glared at him as if expecting him to speak.

But to speak what?

Another blow struck him—a warrior from behind had swung a stick at his lower back. Pain swept up his spine.

He turned to the man, wondering why they were hitting him. Was he doing something they disapproved of? He posed no threat to them.

“Do you stand like a god in his courtyard?” the second man who’d struck him yelled.

Another stick slammed into the backs of his legs, just below his knees, and this time Stephen’s instincts got the better of him. He leaped forward, spinning to ward off any further blows, thinking the next one might snap his bones.

They reacted to his movement immediately, ten or more of them leaping forward, clubs swinging already. The impulse to defend himself loomed large for an instant before his training kicked in. To resist would only bring greater force to bear against him.

So he let the blows fall, a pounding of staffs and clubs that thudded against his back and shoulders and head, forcing him to his knees. They were yelling, crying out his insubordination and threatening to kill him, the wam, the worm dragged from the jungle to be fed to their pigs.

Shaka had taught him to disassociate from physical pain, thereby robbing its power to control his body, and he was able to do so now.

But he was aware of another impulse that lapped at his mind—offense at being so forcefully rejected by others of his kind. He was human, they were human, and yet they clearly did not want him.

Was he not acceptable to them? His skin was the wrong color, perhaps, or his presence threatened them, though he meant them no harm. He’d only come to meet his mother.

A single hard blow landed on the back of his head and the world started to fade. He felt his body toppling forward but broke his fall with his right forearm. All that remained was a throbbing pain that spread down his neck, fueled by those screaming demons of fear that taunted him.

If the warriors had wanted to kill him, why hadn’t they done so in the field? Instead they’d attacked Lela. His mind swam in a sea of confusion.

“Bring him!”

He lifted his head and stared up the path. Slowly his eyes found focus.

There at the bottom of the steps that lead to the darkened entrance stood a man. A tall warrior with sharply defined muscles, older than some, more powerful, even in his harsh eyes, than any of the others.

This was Kirutu, ruler of all Tulim. Stephen knew it immediately by the scar running down his chest, described by his mother.

Hands dug under his arms and pulled him to his feet. But he didn’t need their help. His strength had returned as quickly as the blows had robbed him of it.

They shoved him forward, cuffing at his shoulders and his ears with cupped palms, quiet now in the presence of their leader.

“Release him.”

They let him go and backed away, leaving Stephen to stand three paces from Kirutu, who studied him with dark eyes set deeply in the shadows of a chiseled face. Here Stephen did not see fear. Only rejection.

For a long time the man didn’t speak.

Don’t forget, Stephen.

His mind was vacant. Perhaps his mother would know what to do.

“Who are you?” Kirutu asked in a low voice.

“My name is Stephen.”

Kirutu stared at him.

“Answer my question. Who are you?”

He hadn’t heard? Or didn’t understand the word—Stephen wasn’t a Tulim name.

“I’m the son of Julian, the woman you took as your own,” Stephen said.

The ruler’s face darkened.

“You refuse to speak the truth in my presence? When I ask who you are, you will speak only what is true.”

Stephen hesitated, then said what he thought the man wanted to hear.

“I am Outlaw.”

“You are nothing!” Kirutu hissed. He stepped forward, circling to Stephen’s left, speaking in a low, gravelly tone that was neither gentle nor accusing, like a man simply reporting the truth.

“You have no place…no home…you do not belong to anyone.”

He walked behind, rounding him, speaking matter-of-factly.

“In this way you are lower than the wam, viler than the serpents who slither in the grass. An outcast who dares enter the Tulim valley with hopes of finding a home. So then I will help you understand.”

When he came to a stop he was only a pace from Stephen. His skin smelled freshly washed and rubbed with oil from the angalo flower, which offered a sweet scent. When he spoke, the scent of rapina bark carried to Stephen on his breath.

“You are Outlaw and dead to this world. Tell me this is so.”

He thought about it and found the words true.

“I am Outlaw and I am dead to this world.”

“It is the only reason I am bound to let you live. You are dead to me. Knowing this you come. Why?”

“To speak to my mother.”

The brow over Kirutu’s right eye rose and a smile slowly twisted his face.

“And yet you have no mother. You are alone, never to belong. If you were not dead already, I would kill you now.”

For a long moment Stephen stood still, hardly aware of the meaning behind those words. And yet something in him had shifted. The sounds of the jungle had faded, as had the faint, high-pitched whine that had come and gone with his remembering and forgetting.

Slowly a new awareness grew in his mind. An isolation that he’d never contended with. The dawning realization that Kirutu was right. He was alone. He didn’t have a mother. Hadn’t Shaka taught him this very thing?

Hadn’t Shaka said that his identity with and in the things and relationships of this world only distracted from his true identity and could thus be his downfall?

He looked at the warriors staring back at him with vacant, dark eyes. He knew that he was forgetting something—being one with his Father—but he now felt oddly disconnected from that truth.

Here in the flesh, in the real world, he saw only rejection. And he felt only isolation. The feeling threatened to bring fear with it, so Stephen shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

It’s OK. It’s going to be OK.

When he looked back at Kirutu, the ruler wore a knowing grin.

“I don’t belong to your world,” Stephen said. “It holds no power over me.”

“No? And I say that every pig will root in the mud until he finds food. Perhaps if I show you that food, you will pretend to be alive. Then I will have reason to kill you as well.”

What he could mean, Stephen didn’t know.

“Bring her!” Kirutu ordered to one side, expression now flat.

Two warriors emerged from around the corner, supporting a hooded woman who struggled feebly in their grasp. She was one of them and her hands were tied behind her back.

They stood her up next to Kirutu, who kept his eyes on Stephen.

“All of this valley and everything in it belong to me,” the ruler said. “What I do to one, I can do to whomever I choose.”

He waited a beat to let his words carry, then issued an order.

“Remove her hood.”

One of the warriors jerked the hood from the woman’s head. Stephen’s mind put reason to what he saw before his heart could react.

Here stood Lela, hair still matted with blood. She was awake and her eyes were round with fear. If not for a gag, screams might have accompanied the tears running down her cheeks.

But he didn’t need to hear her screams, he could hear her heart already. Save me, she was crying. You said you would protect me.

Before Stephen could react, Kirutu stepped behind Lela, grabbed her hair, jerked her head back, and ran a sharp bone knife across her exposed neck.

He held her still for a moment, then released his hold. Lela collapsed to the ground. Dead in her own blood.

Stephen recoiled.

Do not forget. Do not forget.

“She means nothing to you because you are dead,” Kirutu said. “And yet you show fear because you mistake yourself as one who deserves a woman. You deserve nothing but your own misery. In this too you are alone.”

Shaka’s teachings flowed through his mind, longing to be absorbed but finding no place to rest. In their place a larger realization swelled: Lela had accepted him where these others did not. She had trusted him. He’d failed her.

“Take her!”

The two warriors grabbed her arms and dragged her around the corner, leaving Stephen numb on the path.

“In the Tulim, life is mine to give and take,” Kirutu said. “I have taken the place of the shaman who once spoke the ways of the spirit. I am now ruler of this valley. The woman you call your mother believed that by giving me her life, she spared yours. But she only sentenced both of you to death. Now you both live at my whim.”

“No,” Stephen said.

Eyes fixed on him, Kirutu lifted his hand and motioned with two fingers. “Come.”

A woman slowly stepped into the daylight from the dark entry above Kirutu. A white woman dressed in a top and a short skirt, both woven from strands of palm thread. Her skin was luminous and her dark hair long, and Stephen knew immediately that he was looking at his mother.

She stood on the landing, tall and brave, arms at her sides, staring down at him. He hadn’t prepared himself, not knowing what to prepare for, but looking at her now, he could see his face in hers. His skin on her body. His eyes in her face.

Eyes that brimmed with tears as she gazed down at him.

His mother slowly descended the steps, walking upright, holding her head steady. There was a bruise on her right arm…two more on her legs. No cuts that he could see.

Her fingers were trembling as she set her feet on the path and stepped forward. Stephen stood still, at a loss. But he didn’t have time to consider the matter because she was suddenly rushing forward.

Her face twisted and tears streamed from her eyes as she reached him. The woman who was his mother threw her arms around him, pressed her cheek against his chest, and clung to him as if he were her flesh.

“Thank God…thank God…you’re alive. You’re alive. You’re alive.”

She was speaking in the language Shaka had taught him. The tongue of his mother.

She pulled back and looked up into his eyes. “You’re alive.” She touched his arms, his shoulders, his neck, drew her thumb over his cheek, nearly frantic in her thirst to know that her eyes did not deceive her.

He’d never felt so treasured as he did in that moment. It was as though she lived only for him. And now he stood before her, flesh of her flesh.

“You’re healthy?” she asked. “He took good care of you?”

Stephen wasn’t prepared for the emotions that rose through his chest at her question. A whole new world blossomed in his consciousness. Where he’d felt a desire to be close to Lela, he felt perfectly as one with this woman.

She was the one who’d given him birth. Who’d submitted herself to life under Kirutu’s brutality so that he could live.

So that she could live through him.

And yet upon her seeing him alive, her only concern was for him.

The details of her story, merely fascinating only two nights ago, now flooded Stephen’s mind with vibrant life. In that moment he became his mother’s son. Wholly and without reservation.

“I’m your son,” he said, speaking her tongue.

She blinked, eyes wrinkled with smiling gratitude. “You remember me?”

He somehow did, if not in his mind, in his bones.

“I read what you wrote.”

“So you know.”

“You will come with me?” he asked.

“No.” Fresh tears spilled from her eyes. “No, I can’t come now. In their eyes you are Outlaw.”

Stephen felt the crushing weight of that single word as if it were a boulder dropped from heaven. He felt his fingers tremble at his sides. Why, he didn’t know. She was his mother; he was her son. Yet he was Outlaw. Unworthy to be with her.

“You are well?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said.

But the bruises on her body suggested he should.

She glanced over her shoulder at Kirutu, who seemed content to let them speak, which confused Stephen in the wake of his harsh words.

His mother turned back, speaking now in a whisper. “I have dreams, Stephen. I can only remember parts of them when I wake, but they keep me alive. They are something beautiful. A great love. Shaka taught you how to love?”

“He taught me many things…”

“You must remember his words! They’re from beyond all that you see, like Shaka himself. You must not give in to the thoughts that will tear you apart.”

She knew, then.

“There isn’t time, sweetheart.” His mother placed her hand on his chest and gazed up into his eyes. “Promise your mother you’ll remember. Promise me.”

“Enough,” Kirutu said.

Enough? Fear swiped at Stephen’s mind, threatening to pull him into its prison.

“I beg you, Stephen. You have to remember, because I can’t. It’s the only way.”

“Enough!”

She backed away from him, eyes pleading. “Don’t give in to the fear. I beg you!”

Kirutu stepped up from behind and struck her jaw, sending her staggering.

“Enough!”

He grabbed her hair and pulled her up against him.

“Find the light,” his mother said.

But Stephen could see no light now.

The warriors on either side closed in next to their ruler. Kirutu brought his knife up to her exposed throat and pressed the blade into her skin, deep enough to draw blood.

“You have no mother because you are dead. The dead feast only on bones. It would be this woman’s bones that I feed you.”

The world had darkened and his mind was spinning, taunting him with a terrible fear. He couldn’t leave her in this monster’s house.

Three paces to Kirutu’s right, Lela’s blood still soaked the ground. The bodies he’d passed upon entering the compound still hung from their perches. Tulim was a valley of death, and the mother who had given her life for him was in its grasp. She too would die. Of this Stephen suddenly had no doubt.

“You will leave this valley and the mountain on which you hide, never to return. Know that she will serve me as I see fit, as she has. She too is dead.”

Stephen’s self-control was slipping, he could feel it, like silt being drawn by a deep current, pulled toward open waters.

A very faint voice at the back of his mind suggested that Kirutu was playing him, taunting him, daring him to react. But the warning was already distant, a voice far out from the shore. And then gone. In its place Stephen heard only the rush of blood in his ears.

Kirutu lifted his blade and swiped it against his mother’s cheek, leaving a bleeding gash in her flesh.

She gasped with pain, and Stephen felt something in his mind snap. Only one thought remained.

Save her.

And with that thought, a hundred emotions he’d long mastered overtook him. To save his mother he had to terminate the threat against her.

Kirutu. And the warriors at his side. Those who’d subjected her to endless abuse because she’d given herself to save her son.

All of this came to him in a single blink of his eyes, exploding into his awareness like a ball of fire that consumed his mind.

With that awareness, only one impulse.

To kill.