Outlaw

Chapter Thirty

THE SUN SHONE bright and hot over Stephen’s head as he ran in a steady cadence, planting one foot before the other without breaking stride, gracefully avoiding obstacles. The drumming of each footfall on the earth provided a simple guide—three for each pull of breath—which kept his mind fixed and his resolve sound.

It was true, as Shaka had taught him, that in life there was nowhere to go, only a place to be. But in the world of flesh and bone, he ran for the Tulim valley, his mind disregarding any trouble it might bring.

Because now he remembered, without doubt, that there were problems only in the world of madness, from which he’d been rescued long ago.

He was the child of his Father. Nothing could possibly threaten his Father. Therefore, abiding in his Father, he could know no threat, much less any real problem. Wasn’t this the lesson he’d learned in Shaka’s illustration, in which God was as big as a million suns and could not be threatened by a mere mouse?

Only yesterday he’d forgotten and feared that mouse. Thinking now, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

And so he ran, one stride followed by another in perfect rhythm, three footfalls for every breath; two heartbeats for every footfall.

The sun was already low in the western sky when he reached the cliff from which he and Lela had gazed into the Tulim valley. He pulled up on the rock ledge, chest heaving like a massive bellows.

He’d half expected to see the black fog, the madness that had imprisoned the Tulim. But the valley was perfectly clear, without a hint of low cloud or mist. He thought it was because he wasn’t bothered by the valley’s threat.

But the moment he thought this, a black mist began to materialize, first above the distant swamps, encroaching up-valley.

He watched in fascination as the low-hanging fog formed out of thin air on all sides, flowing like long reaching fingers that coiled and flowed of their own accord, as though alive.

They joined to form a seamless river of darkness that blanketed the lower Tulim valley, where the Warik gathered for their feast at Kirutu’s feet.

A feast?

Yes. At which his mother would be sacrificed to that darkness.

Fear whispered through his mind. It was then that Stephen realized his task might be impossible, and the thought made him shiver.

He closed his eyes. Breathed. Set his mind at the feet of his infinite Father. Saw that there was no snake to threaten such vast love and power. As far as the east was from the west—as far as one end of infinity was from the other—this was how far his Father had removed the threat of separation from him. It no longer existed, not even in the mind of God, for even to think of a threat is to be threatened. The infinite did not contemplate any such thing.

Peace washed over him like warm water, and he breathed it deep.

When he opened his eyes, the fog was gone.

“You see, Stephen. Madness has no power over you,” he whispered.

A long call cut the still air and he spun to see its source. The call was coming from another bluff some distance off. It was uttered by a warrior just visible between the trees, calling down into the valley.

The cry echoed, then fell away, followed by another, this one from much farther down in the valley, barely heard, answering or passing on the first call.

He’d been seen by Warik scouts. They were sending word down into the valley. So then…they would be ready for him.

But he’d expected no less. Kirutu was no fool. The ruler knew now that the white son raised as Outlaw was a highly skilled warrior not easily killed.

And this was Kirutu’s clear intention. To kill him.

Stephen knew this as well, and being reminded of it now gave him pause. But he allowed the concern to pass quickly. His place wasn’t to outwit or best Kirutu. Not this time. Nor ever.

It would take some time to reach the village, and darkness would be falling. They would be waiting and he wouldn’t disappoint them.

He ducked back into the jungle and ran. Through the trees, down the switchbacks that took him lower, always lower, then over a creek and up a rise, the view of the valley now hidden by the jungle.

Still he ran, closing the distance between himself and Kirutu.

His mother would be awake now, he thought. She probably wouldn’t remember what had happened in her dreams, much less realize that they, not her waking hours, held the Truth of awakening. It could be said that his mother was only truly awake while sleeping. During the day she lived a nightmare, separated from the Truth. Only the remnants of her dreams continued to give her hope.

He would quicken that hope. Like a burning log, he would join her and their fire would burn brighter. Where two or more gathered, there was always more light, Shaka said.

Exactly how he would do this when he arrived at the Warik village, he didn’t know yet. In truth he knew far more what he would not do when he arrived than what he would.

He would not entertain any grievance against Kirutu or the Warik.

He would not allow his costume to wail of its need or shout with any grievance.

He would not resist.

He was dead to this flesh, to the law of the world. His costume might not know it, because it was only flesh and bone and brain, but his true self, long ago made whole, did.

He was only a short way from the knoll that overlooked the village when he heard the sound of crashing through the understory to his right. His first thought was that he’d disturbed a boar.

He pulled up and scanned the forest. This was human. And now he could hear the unmistakable sound behind and to his left as well.

They already had him surrounded, just beyond the trees. The thought that he should evade them again skipped through his mind, but he immediately let it go. He’d been raised in this jungle for this day. Resisting his destiny on any level would only trigger his own madness once again.

So he ran on. They herded him forward. He could easily escape. Kirutu would know that. They knew he could just as easily turn and kill any number of the warriors who trailed him in the bush—perhaps it was why they didn’t attack.

Run, Stephen. Run to your mother. Run to Kirutu. This is your path now. Run.

He ran. Closer. Very close. Close enough to hear a low chant rising from the valley ahead.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

Like a slow drumbeat that pulsed through the trees and reached into his bones. They were waiting.

Stephen did not slow. Neither did he press forward with more speed. He simply ran to his destiny. To whatever awaited, without judging what that might be. For this he had been brought to the jungle.

For this he had been saved.

And then he was there, bursting from the trees out onto the knoll that overlooked the Warik village, which sat half a mile down the wide, grassy slope. He pulled up hard, taken off guard by what he saw.

A thick slab of black cloud hung low over the village, creating a ceiling that no light could penetrate. The ominous sky shifted and flowed, perfectly flat and silent.

It had no reason to shriek or thunder—that power had been passed to the sea of flesh below.

The warning calls he’d heard on the cliff had reached the village long ago, and Kirutu had gathered his Warik into a massive show of force, ten thousand strong outside the main gate. Warriors all, blackened skin glistening in the light of a dozen fires. They formed a wide arc, perhaps several hundred men wide, fifty deep, and faced the hill on which he stood.

Facing him.

Chanting, armed with bows and spears, dressed in bright paint and feathers—the only color besides the light of the fire and the whites of their eyes.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

And with each chant their feet and the butts of their spears came down hard on the earth, ten thousand crushing hammers that sent a tremor through the earth.

A chill rode Stephen’s bones, unbidden by his will.

Before the sea of Warik warriors stood a large pyre of wood stacked around a post. And strapped upright to that post…

His mother.

Ten paces to her right, Kirutu stood tall and broad-chested, glistening with greasy, blackened skin. He stared up the hill at Stephen.

Somewhere at the edge of the inexhaustible reservoir of peace and wholeness, Stephen’s costume began to scream. And for a long moment that stretched out with each rumbling chant from below, he wondered if he could do what he was meant to do, not yet even knowing what he was to do.

Surrender your own understanding. Trust only in the truth. See the narrow path. Follow him. This is the Way.

And that Way would lead him down the hill to that black sea. It was no different from stepping off the shore and walking out on the black waters in the dead of night. Hadn’t the Master been a Water Walker? Wasn’t he still?

Stephen looked over his shoulder. The jungle behind him was lined with a hundred armed warriors, staring at him with fixed resolve. They did not approach, they did not speak, they only stared, and in their eyes he could see fear.

Fear. They knew that if they attacked, he was more than capable of taking any number of lives before vanishing into the jungle.

These warriors were only doing what Kirutu demanded of them.

Stephen faced the gathered host and walked forward, one foot before the other, down the slope, into the reverberating chant.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

Now his breathing was shallow and his pulse deep. And his costume began to ask its maddening questions, innocuous at first, then with an edge of fear.

Why has Kirutu gathered so many in such a crushing show of power?

“Because he is terrified, deep inside, where a voice asks him why even such a skilled warrior would return to certain death in a hopeless attempt to save his mother.”

Did you come to save your mother?

“I came for Kirutu, who holds my mother’s costume in his claws.”

And how will you defeat Kirutu?

“I won’t.”

You’ve gone mad! What can you possibly do?

His mind went blank. One foot in front of the other.

“I will remember. I will surrender. I will be what I am and surrender all else.”

And if you fail to find that place of infinite power inside you, they will kill you.

“They cannot kill me. My life is eternal.”

They will kill me!

“I don’t need my costume.”

I do! I need your costume! I am your costume!

Stephen hesitated. “Be quiet,” he said aloud. “You’re already dead.”

Their chanting, delivered in perfect unison with hammering feet and pounding spears, shook the earth as the slope gave way to level ground. The blazing fires that stretched east and west before the Warik sent sparks to the black-capped sky with each stomp.

He glanced behind and saw that the warriors who’d herded him here followed, fifty paces to his rear.

The only thing Stephen knew to do was walk, as he had once before, this time knowing that he was walking into the arms of a crushing force.

Two others stood near his mother’s pyre. An emaciated man who wore no paint nor dress of any kind. And to his right, one step behind, a frail-looking woman wearing only an old grass skirt. Death had hollowed out their stares. They watched Stephen without expression. He thought it might be the prince of his mother’s story, Wilam, and his wife, Melino. Stephen couldn’t be sure.

Kirutu had strapped his mother to the post at her ankles and bound her arms behind the pole to keep her upright. A dirty brown sack covered her head.

They will burn her.

She is safe.

They will burn you.

I am safe.

There’s no way out!

There is the Way. And it is in, not out. Shaka said I would see it.

Shaka has gone mad!

You are madness.

Stephen came to a stop twenty paces from Kirutu, who stared at him, hand wrapped tightly around his spear. His chest rose and fell slowly as the thundering chant made his power plain. His mouth was flat, his face resolute. But Stephen saw something else beyond his eyes.

Fear.

Uncertainty. Terror, beneath layers of power and years of brutality, but hiding there still, in the deepest caverns of his mind.

A strange calm settled into Stephen’s mind. Who was Kirutu but another deeply wounded man who didn’t know what else to do but protect his costume?

The ruler was used to an enemy who would resist him, and he’d learned to crush any such threat. Now came one from Shaka who walked willingly to his death without fear. Kirutu could not understand this. And what he couldn’t understand, he feared.

Stephen felt the world fall away. The chants faded, the air thickened. He experienced no grievance, no judgment, no blame—these things were not his concern. And in that place without grievance, he saw no threat. Before him stood a child, crying out for what he had long forgotten.

Screaming out for a love he had never known.

Compassion swallowed Stephen whole and a knot rose into his throat. What was inconceivable to flesh and bone became perfectly clear to him. There were no words to explain it.

Kirutu lifted his hand, a casual gesture that was immediately taken as a command. The chanting ceased. The earth stilled, leaving only the crackling of fire and the anguished sound of a woman trying to hold back her sobs.

His mother was crying under the hood.

Stephen held his eyes on Kirutu, pulled by his mother’s fear.

Deditio. Surrender. Remember who you and your mother are. There is no threat. None.

Kirutu stepped forward, brazen before a people who could not see the fear in his heart. Blinded to it himself.

He stopped two paces from Stephen and ran his gaze down to his feet, then back up to his eyes.

“You wish to die,” he said in a low, graveled voice.

“You can kill my body, but not the love inside it.”

“And this childish love for a mother will end only in the burning of your flesh with hers.”

“I did not come to save my mother,” Stephen said.

Kirutu watched him, unblinking.

“I came for you.”

“For me. You would cut off the head of the snake, but this snake does not die so easily.”

“I didn’t come to kill you. I came to set you free.”

The man’s jaw tightened. “And yet you kill with ease.”

Yes, he had killed, and the memory of that now filled him with a deep sorrow.

“Forgive me. I had gone insane.”

“This madness has not left you. You see as an infant. This woman you call your mother is a slave who cannot be saved. So you come to die with her. You are mad.”

It was a natural conclusion, but wrong.

“You are the slave,” Stephen said quietly, riding the waves of compassion that rolled through his mind. “Hatred rules your heart and puts you in a deep pit of suffering where you live alone.”

The man wasn’t able to quickly respond, so Stephen told him more.

“Your power in this valley is unquestioned—no man can live without your approval. Even the trees bow to your will. There’s no more to be gained and yet you suffer, secretly hating all that you are and all that you’ve done. That is your pit. But you can be free.”

For a moment Stephen thought Kirutu was listening on the deeper level of his soul, no longer deaf to this hidden knowledge. And maybe, for a moment, he was, because his face seemed to soften and a hint of wonder relaxed his eyes.

But as he watched, Kirutu’s face began to change. His jaw tightened and his lips twisted into a snarl. His people couldn’t see the shift, because Kirutu had his back to them, but they’d surely seen rage consume their leader a thousand times.

Stephen looked at the warriors’ faces, all of them full of desperation. They too were enslaved by Kirutu’s hatred. But he also saw wonder in their stares. The powerful man from Shaka’s mountain could stand before their tormentor and his full army without fear.

There was surely a place in the heart of all Tulim that desired liberation from Kirutu’s tyranny. Kirutu couldn’t allow his people to see Stephen stand before him without fear.

A quiver had taken to the man’s hands. Stephen was about to speak, thinking he should tell Kirutu that he didn’t need to fear the loss of his power—instead he would gain a greater power—when the man turned, walked up to his mother on the post, and ripped the bag off her head.

Stephen now saw his mother’s face, filthy, stained by the tears that had raked her cheeks, still matted with blood from the cut above her jaw. Her eyes were bright with fear as she jerked her head to take in the scene. They fixed on Stephen and her face twisted into an unspoken plea for help.

Kirutu grabbed her hair and spun back to Stephen.

“This is the pig who bore you! She is the one I have crushed.” His voice cut like a spear, and, seeing his mother’s anguish, Stephen felt the dark sky above him reach for his soul.

“You come to my house to save her?”

Kirutu jerked his mother’s head to one side by her hair. She screamed: the sound of it sank into Stephen’s mind like a talon.

“Save her,” Kirutu mocked. “Show me the love of a son and save this wretched woman!”

His mother was beyond herself now, lost to terror, weeping loudly. He felt her anguish as if it were taking up residence in his own flesh. He was slipping.

“Save her!”

Kirutu glared, muscles drawn taut, made of rage and undone by it at once. His mother was shaking on the post, neck twisted to the breaking point, wailing—the terrifying keen of a dying animal.

Darkness pressed in and Stephen felt the first tendril of rage slip into his gut.

Kirutu lifted his right arm and brought his fist down on his mother’s face as he held her hair. The impact of bone on flesh produced a sickly thunk.

His mother’s body went limp, but that didn’t stop Kirutu from striking her again, as hard, pummeling the helpless to show his strength.

He released her hair and she slumped forward in her ropes, head hung low, unconscious.

The tendril of rage coiled into a ball and rose through Stephen’s chest. He couldn’t stand in the face of such brutality without resisting. Without extracting revenge. Without crushing the oppressor.

Without engaging Kirutu, even knowing that this was Kirutu’s ploy. The ruler could not abide an enemy that did not fear him in front of his people.

Which was why Stephen could not attach himself to the anger rushing through him. He could neither react to nor resist it without also fueling it.

His breathing thickened and he felt as though he might break. And if he did, both he and his mother would die.

They would die anyway. It was already over. There was no way out.

No, Stephen. There is the Way.

A narrow way, already misted over with forgetfulness. A realm seen only dimly through the fog.

A chill washed over Stephen’s crown as his mind flopped between assurance and the desperation that tempted him. He was going to fail. He’d come in trust, leaning only on the understanding that came from beyond his mind, and yet there was his mother, bleeding on the post, and he, powerless before the people.

Kirutu closed the distance between them in three long strides, face dark like a storm.

He could save his mother now. He could kill Kirutu with the man’s own dagger. In the space of one breath he could twist out of Kirutu’s way, slip the bone knife strapped to his thigh from its sheath, and bury the blade deep into the back of his skull, forcing upon him the full meaning of surrender as used in conquest.

Deditio.

Stephen caught himself.

Deditio. This was his way.

He stood still, allowing the fear to wash through him. The terror was only his costume in full protest. He had to stay surrendered to the Way in which—

Kirutu swung his hand and slapped him, a slicing swipe that crashed into Stephen’s jaw and jerked his head to one side. For a brief instant the world became perfectly dark and silent, a void with no valley, no Warik, no body. Only stillness.

But only for a split second and then he was back, in the flesh. Pain ballooned in his skull, and with it the terrible fear that his body and his breath weren’t only his costume. His very life was being threatened. He had to save himself!

But he couldn’t. Not now.

“You have no will to stand like a man?” the ruler bit off. He slammed his fist into Stephen’s gut. And as Stephen folded forward, Kirutu brought his knee up into Stephen’s face—a glancing blow that struck his cheekbone and sent him staggering back.

Once again the world sputtered to darkness and silence. A void. The end of existence.

Once again that void vanished and he returned to the place where he was being beaten while his mother hung limp on a post. Panic welled up and screamed his name. Live, Stephen! You can’t die…not now.

“Fight!” Kirutu stepped to him and swung again. When his fist connected with Stephen’s head, Stephen dropped to a sitting position. Blackness swirled through his mind and he felt the world slipping. On the edges of his consciousness the loud demand that he protect himself persisted. He must kill this man and save his mother.

But he could not. Would not. His whole life was staked on this truth that his Master had taught: When the evil man comes against you, do not resist. You are not your body. Walk on water, Stephen.

He felt himself sinking into darkness, like a rock into a pool. Over him Kirutu, enraged and roaring, beat him. He was aware that he was lifting his arms to ward off the blows. Aware that a heel had slammed into his rib cage with a crack. Aware that he was curling into a ball to save himself. Aware that he was being beaten to death.

The world suddenly blinked off. And this time it stayed off. The rushing of blood through his head fell away. He wanted peace to flood him but he felt none.

Instead he felt alone in the darkness, and so deep was that darkness. Isolated, lying on his side, quivering.

Abandoned.

In that moment he felt like a child, powerless to protect himself. He had failed again. The world had been rolled onto his shoulders and he’d been crushed by its weight.

He only wanted to die now. It was too much.

“It’s alright, darling. It’s only our costumes they take.”

Stephen heard the voice, clear and present, and he snapped his eyes wide.

The first thing he saw were the bands of color flowing through the air. The darkness was gone, replaced by a sky that streamed with light, and wide bands of red and orange and blue.

He jerked his head off the ground and stared. He wasn’t in the valley. He was above it, far away, on the cliff overlooking it. The trees glowed with life under the flowing, colored sky, and with a single draw of breath, the truth returned to him, as if living in the air itself.

All was well.

All was perfectly well.

“It’s going to be alright. They can’t hurt us, Stephen.”

He turned his head and saw that his mother stood two paces from him, gazing out over the valley, hair lifting with a gentle breeze.

This was real?

The colored world suddenly blinked off. He was back in the valley, cheek pressed against the cool earth. Being beaten by Kirutu, who landed his heel on his side. He heard himself grunt.

His mother hung forward against her restraints on the post. Unconscious, as though asleep.

Dreaming of another place. A place on the cliff, above all of this savagery.

They can’t hurt us, Stephen.

The words had been his mother’s, spoken in the other place as she dreamed, and his memory of them turned off the night.

He was suddenly there, back on the cliff under brightly colored ribbons of light, looking up at his mother, who was walking toward him, then kneeling. Smiling softly.

She lifted her hand and stroked his hair. “You’re going to be alright. We have no reason to fear.”

He saw her words. They came not only with sound, but with color like the bands in the sky, flowing from her mouth as she spoke. They washed over his face, waves of intoxicating power that flooded him with overwhelming peace and love.

“We’ve always been together and always will be,” she said, and again the words flowed from her in waves of raw color that stroked his soul. “Here there’s nothing to fear. We are one.”

He wanted to wrap his arms around her. He wanted to rest his head in her lap and let her hold him close.

But the gratitude smothering him had turned his muscles weak.

“I love you,” he said. And the words came from his mouth in another wave of colored light. They streamed to her face and he watched as she breathed them in. She smiled, intoxicated by that love. “I’m with you always,” he said.

Tears misted her eyes. “Always.”

Here there was no problem. No darkness. No time. No pain.

Here there was only infinite love and power.

And there?

The words Shaka had spoken after touching his eyes returned to him like a soft echo. You will see more when the time comes.

This is what he’d meant?

“When you speak, I can see color,” he said.

She looked at him. “Color?”

“Like the color above us.”

She glanced up at the sky. “I see only the bright sky.”

And then he knew what Shaka had meant.

He stood up and helped her to her feet. All around there was color. He could see it with each of her breaths, very faint, but there. She was inhaling and exhaling more than air.

“I see it, Mother,” he said in wonder. “I see it everywhere!” He blinked and looked out over the cliff. “You’re dreaming now on the post. It’s the same gift that first drew you to this valley.”

He looked back and saw that she understood.

“You see clearly when you’re asleep.”

She offered a gentle nod.

“And when you’re unconscious. Like you are now.”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

“And now I can see as well. And what I see is more.” He took her hand. “There’s power in your words, Mother. Great power. When you speak I can see it. I can feel it. But when you wake up, you forget who you are and fear fills you.”

“Yes. I try…”

“But don’t you see, Mother? It’s your love that Kirutu must see. The forgiving of all grievance from the woman he has crushed.”

“But when I wake…”

“Not when you wake, this is too much for you. But now, while you embrace that love completely, reach out to him.”

Her eyes were wide.

“I see it now,” he said with rising passion, watching his words wash over her. “I see that I was brought to the valley to help you love him. Now. They are down in the valley, killing our costumes, but we are here, and here we’re swimming in power and love. Can you forgive and love him?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Yes,” she said. “Now I see his costume as nothing more. There’s no need for any grievance.”

“Then speak to him now.”

She blinked. “How?”

“How were you called to this valley?”

“A song,” she said.

“Then sing as Shaka sang to you. Draw him where soul calls to soul, as you were called.”

She stared out over the valley, awareness dawning in her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. He lifted his hand and caressed her cheek. “Sing to Kirutu, Mother. Sing to him now, while you can. Let that song hold you in its embrace of love and call to the one you would forgive.”

A tear broke from her eye.

“Forgive him,” Stephen said. “He is only a broken child who doesn’t know love.”

A slight smile nudged the corners of her mouth. “Yes,” she said, and wiped the tears from her cheek. “Thank you, Stephen. Thank you.”

Then his mother turned to face the valley, stared into the colored light for a moment, closed her eyes, and began to sing. A simple long note, pure and crystalline. It streamed from her mouth into the air, bearing more power than had ever been known in all of the Tulim valley.