Ted Dekker - Outlaw

I was too dense at the time to realize that their curiosity was motivated by incomprehension as to why any woman would want to hide her femininity and perhaps be mistaken for a man. In their eyes I was not unlike a cross-dresser. An outer garment was bad enough—surely they’d seen Western clothing before. But from their expressions I gathered that they’d never seen a bra.

For several long moments, neither seemed to know what to think of it.

The woman reached out and plucked my shoulder strap. Then she pulled one of the bra’s cups aside to make sure it wasn’t attached to my flesh.

She giggled and turned to the man, who shared none of her amusement. He mumbled something that elicited a high-pitched diatribe and unbelieving scoffs from the woman. The man let her rave for several seconds, then cut her off with a single word.

She nodded and waved her arms at me, motioning me to take it off. “ Bo purack .”

Needing no further encouragement, I quickly removed my bra and handed it to the woman, who examined it carefully. When she motioned to me to keep going, I took off my shoes and pants.

I stood naked except for my underwear, once yellow, now brown. They continued to stare at me. Once again the woman broke into an amused diatribe. Once again the man silenced her.

The man shoved his chin at me. “ Peked .”

She began to inspect me as if I were something from the market. Without any regard for whether I might care, she examined my hair and my scalp. She pulled open my lips and flicked my teeth, then peered into my mouth. At this both of them mumbled in amazement.

Satisfied, she moved on to a cursory examination of the rest of my body. There was no mistaking the matter: I was not her equal. I was her lesser, her slave.

In a strange way the realization gave me strength as she examined my belly, my thighs, my toes. When she’d finished, the man stepped forward and gently squeezed my mouth open again. He stared at my teeth for a few seconds, then grunted and stepped back. It was my teeth that impressed him the most. In fact, he seemed interested in nothing but my teeth.

Then he released my face, spit one last time into the fire, mumbled something to the woman, and left the hut.

I could not know it at the time, but I had just been touched by one of the three most powerful men in the Tulim valley, and he’d left me unscathed. His name was Kirutu, fearless leader of the Warik, one of three valley tribes coexisting in a fragile balance.

Never again would I be so fortunate.

As soon as he left, two older women entered the hut through the same door. For a brief moment the three women stared as if unsure what to make of me. Then they approached and touched my skin, expressing their astonishment.

The eldest, a woman of about thirty with heavy breasts and a scarred chin, began to speak in a harsh tone. She was lecturing me, waving at my body and then at the skulls on the wall, scrunching her nose and pointing accusingly at my skin and my hair. With each exclamation, the woman who’d accompanied her voiced agreement. I didn’t know any of the words, but their eyes and gestures spoke a language shared by all women.

Clearly these savages who were as black as midnight and wore little more than colored mud for clothing did not approve of the way I looked or smelled. But their opinion outweighed mine. I was at their mercy and I quickly felt as ugly and stinky as they seemed to believe I was.

The eldest must have decided to correct my flaws, because she scooped up a handful of black soot and began to rub it over my belly and chest. The other newcomer joined in, heaping the soot on my head and my shoulders, smearing it over my whole body.

The show came to an abrupt end when the youngest, the woman who’d helped me undress, picked up a burning stick from the fire and threatened to burn the other two if they did not leave. They argued with her for a moment, then left, uttering their disapproval.

At first I thought I had been spared, but it soon became clear that the gods of that earth were fickle, and there were only very faint lines between salvation and damnation.

The young woman walked around me, frowning, then tapped me on my head and pointed to the line of skulls. She snapped a clear warning, threw the stick back into the fire, and followed the others out.

I was alone with the fire. Alone with the human skulls. Naked and shivering, but unbound.

Free.

Chapter Six

MY FIRST thought was to run, but before I could properly consider where I might run to, three men stepped in, hastily shoved the bag over my head, and marched me out of the hut. I was confused, I was in shock, and I was terrified.

But another thought gave me a hint of hope as they steered me down the path. Although the hole they’d thrown me into was its own muddy hell, I’d found some solace there. Now without the gag, I could speak to the man who’d called out to me.

And yet they weren’t taking me to my hole. That much became clear five minutes later when we began trudging up a steep incline that I couldn’t remember.

I had difficulty walking on the stony path barefoot, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to complain, so I stumbled forward as best I could. When I tripped on a rock that sent me to the ground with a sharp cry, the men argued for a few seconds, then pulled off my hood.

“ Naneep .” They motioned up the path. This could only mean “go” or “walk.”

I could see the trail well enough by moonlight to avoid most sticks and rocks, but the bottoms of my feet were already bruised. The underbrush on either side was thick and the trees a tangle of branches. After three days I’d seen only brief glimpses of the land itself, and I imagined the worst. It didn’t matter that I had yet to see a snake; I was sure they were there, just out of sight, as were crocodiles and lizards and every other kind of crawling creature. Truly, I was surprised that I hadn’t been attacked.

I struggled on, panting and sweating.

It took us at least an hour to reach our destination on a barren hill that overlooked two draws, one on either side, just visible by a three-quarter moon. Now I could see more of the terrain. We were nowhere near the river, which I assumed lay far behind us where this sweeping valley met the swamps we had crossed in the canoes. Beyond each draw, tall mountains eclipsed a starry sky.

Ahead, under a grouping of massive trees, stood a large shelter without walls, perhaps forty feet to a side. Firelight cast a glow into the surrounding foliage.

I could see dark forms silhouetted there as we approached, but my escort stopped under the closest tree. They tied a rope around my neck and secured the other end to one of a dozen posts. I was obviously not the first to be brought here, and fears of what awaited returned my mind to a state of frenzy.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a goat about to be slaughtered.

One of my escorts wagged his finger in my face, uttered a stern warning, then motioned at something to my right before leaving.

When I first laid eyes on the girl who waited in the moonlight twenty paces away, I thought we’d been followed by the woman who’d helped me undress. But as she approached I saw that she was much younger, perhaps twelve or thirteen. The simple bands around her arms and neck were fashioned from woven vines, and she wore no colored accessories.

Something else caused me to wonder if she was of a lower class than the three women I’d met earlier. The split skirt hanging from her waist was made from some kind of woven grass or thin bark rather than from dyed fabric, as the others had worn. And as she walked toward me I saw something even more distinctive about her. Her skin was a milk chocolate, not the near-black of the others’. Her hair wasn’t as curly. In fact, she looked altogether racially divergent, from her tiny stature to the roundness of her face.