Ted Dekker: Mortal

“What are you saying? That we dig him up and drink a corpse’s blood?” The thought curdled his stomach.

“No, we inject it into our veins, as we did before.”

“Jordin, he’s dead! The blood is probably congealed by now.”

“Then we die, too, with his blood in our veins. He said to follow him. He said it to me, he said it to you, he said it to all of us. We have to dig his body up and take his blood. We have to follow him.”

He fell back down onto an elbow. “You can’t be serious.”

“Will you help me?”

The words Jonathan had shouted to Corpse and Mortal alike from the temple steps whispered through his mind. Find life and know that the realm of Sovereigns is upon you.

The demand had haunted him. What could find mean? Not you have found , but find .

In any case, Jonathan surely hadn’t meant for them to dig up his grave.

“Jordin, please… The Keeper tested Jonathan’s blood and found no properties of-”

“He said to follow him.”

“Yes, but not by dying!”

“He said his blood was being spilled for the world.”

Spill my blood and drain it for this world. He’d taken the words to be the desperate cry of one about to die.

“Yes. He said that. But if he wanted us to dig up his body and take his blood, he would’ve made it clear.”

“Jonathan always hid the truth for those who would find it,” she said. “I’m going, whether you help me or not.”

She actually meant to do this.

What if she’s right?

He got to his feet and paced, suddenly seized by the notion, however unlikely. Why had they assumed that Jonathan’s blood would mature by becoming a stronger version of what it had been rather than something new altogether? And yet, assuming the boy knew, why hadn’t he said anything to that effect?

Or had he?

“I’m getting a shovel,” Jordin said, spinning around to leave.

“Wait!”

She turned back.

“Hold on. We can’t just desecrate his grave by digging up his body! It’s revered by a thousand Mortals!”

“By me more than any of them,” she said. “I’m getting a shovel.”

“And then what?”

“Then I follow him in his death. I take the blood he spilled when he died. That’s what he meant. That’s what I’ll do.”

“We should ask the Keeper.”

“No. If you won’t help me, I’ll go alone.”

He thought a moment longer, then grabbed his boots and tugged them on. “We leave his body in the ground.”

“Of course. Do I look like a savage?”

Yes.

He grabbed his jacket. “Get the shovel.”

It took Rom and Jordin twenty minutes to find a shovel and ride up to Jonathan’s grave. The night was still, long past the hour of insect song-a good two hours before the first birds came to life. Before them, the slightly rounded mound of dirt looked as dormant and lifeless as the body they’d buried beneath it.

To Rom’s right lay the long burial mound of those other Keepers, a raised scar on the surface of the earth. It still smelled of earth, fresh as upturned grass and rain over the flesh decaying beneath. A sacred monument of death for those who lived to remember life.

And now they were about to desecrate the monument cherished most of all. For a moment he gave in to misgiving.

“We’re doing this based on pure conjecture,” he said.

“We’re doing this because I saw it in his eyes.”

“The eyes are easily misread, Jordin.”

“His eyes promised me love. Does love kill hope?”

Rom looked up at the round moon, a bright beacon in the star-speckled heavens. They had remained cloudless in the days since Jonathan’s death-rare, though not unheard of. The storm that had accompanied his death, on the other hand, had been singular.

The Maker’s Hand. If it was true-if it was possible-that it had bent toward earth in that moment, did its touch linger still?

Rom considered Jordin, looking so expectantly at him, her last question lingering in the air. And then he picked up the shovel and pressed it into the earth. A few seconds later, he tossed the first heap of soil aside.

They took turns at the shovel, heaping the dirt carefully to one side so it could be easily replaced as the grave slowly yawned opened beneath them.

There. The first glimpse of a dirty shroud.

Sweating from the work, hands raw as his emotions, Rom dropped the shovel behind him. He dropped into the grave and carefully scooped the remaining earth away from the top of the body, unable to staunch the image of that sword impossibly flashing beneath the darkened sky. Twice, he turned his face into his arm, seemingly at the smell of the corpse, already decomposing, but mostly against the memory of Jonathan falling forward on the temple steps.

And then he carefully continued clearing the dirt away from the three ceramic vessels set around his head. Red. The color of ochre and earth and blood.

He glanced up at Jordin, who looked as pale as a ghost in the moonlight, her eyes struck wide, fixed on the body. Tears shone in her eyes, broke down her cheek. But she did not turn away.

She dropped to her knees, reached down for each container as he handed it to her, handling it as gingerly as though it were made of eggshell.

“Cover him,” she said. It sounded almost like a plea.

Rom hauled himself up out of the grave, grabbed the shovel, and began filling it back in. Twenty minutes later they had returned the grave to a semblance of its original shape and strewn field flowers over the dirt. But even a Corpse would know that the earth had been freshly disturbed. And any Mortal with their keen perceptive sense would know immediately without doubt.

He could hear the outrage already.

It no longer mattered. Jordin’s reasoning had grown in him as he’d dug, pushing him to steely resolve. If she was right… Maker. The whole world would change.

Jonathan’s other statements, cried like a madman at the Gathering, mushroomed in his mind. I will bring a new, Sovereign realm… Death brings life… You won’t know true life until you taste blood. He had said all of it as Avra’s heart had dripped with blood in his hands.

But he could just as easily have been speaking of his own.

Jordin bundled the vessels in her coat, carefully placed them in her saddled bag, and threw herself on her horse.

They rode down from the plateau side by side, speaking only as they approached the camp.

“Take the blood to the inner sanctum,” Rom said. They’d already agreed that they would perform the ritual with the Keeper’s instrument, and for this they had little choice but to involve him. “I’ll wake Book.”

The inner sanctum was lit by three candles hastily gathered by the Keeper. In less than half an hour, morning light would filter into the valley, and Roland and his band would rise early to prepare for their journey north. They had to hurry; Rom had no desire to explain himself to any Mortal who might find their actions outrageous in the least and profane at worst.

Rom had pulled the old Keeper from sleep, insisting they’d discovered something that could prove all of his predictions true. Not until the old man had rushed into the ruins and stopped cold, eyes on the three ceramic jars, had they told him just what.

“What have you done?” the Keeper had cried. “He’s dead!”

“And we mean to follow him in his death,” Rom said, hearing the absurdity in the echo of his own words.

The old man spun to stare at him. “You mean to die?”

“No, I mean to follow. The blood in those containers. Will it kill me?”

The Keeper hesitated. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On what’s in the blood.”