Ted Dekker - Outlaw

She frowned. “Did you see his eyes?”

I looked into hers. “Yes.”

“He came to me once. No one knows except Wilam and no one must know. It could be dangerous for me, you understand?”

Lela’s voice held a slight tremor as she translated for Melino.

“I understand.”

“He did not speak to me. He only laid his palm against my face. But I saw.”

We remained silent, bound by the mystery in her voice.

“He was not evil. He was something very different and very powerful. Something very good, I think. Perhaps he is the one.”

“The great warrior who will come?”

“Or perhaps he values your life because you will bear that great warrior. On more than one occasion I convinced Wilam to keep you. But he refuses to hear me any longer. He has his own power in his eyes, you see?”

So then Melino had been my greatest advocate all along. In that moment she became my savior.

“The power to rule,” I said.

“Yes. To rule. The thirst for power blinds them all.”

“Do you know what the Nameless One said to Kirutu?”

“Enough to make him leave. But Kirutu is blinded by his own power. Whatever he heard has been long forgotten. He sees only vengeance now. If he accepts you as Wilam intends, he will either kill you or force you to bear him children.”

I harbored no doubts.

She stopped and looked back at the warriors who were eyeing us, a hundred yards distant now.

“Wilam’s a strong man, bound by the ways of his father. His mind isn’t easily changed. There is only one way to save yourself now.”

A sliver of hope sliced through the darkness in my mind.

“Tell me what to do,” I blurted. “I’ll do anything.”

She eyed me thoughtfully, then nodded at my blouse. “Let me see your body.”

Lela was already unbuttoning my blouse. “This is good, miss. You must show your beauty.”

My blouse fell open and Melino looked at me for a moment before making the reason for her request apparent.

“You don’t look like a woman who has suckled a child. I must know the truth, how is it that you’ve given birth to a child?”

I understood the issue immediately. Wilam had seen me at the council meeting and had concluded the same.

“I bore a son but was unable to produce enough milk. I used a special…gourd…a gourd to feed my child.”

“And you were impregnated in your first month, as you say?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can bear another child?”

“Yes.”

“And the first child…it is dead?”

Two months after his death, the truth of it was still a knife in my heart. I could barely manage the answer.

“Yes.”

After a moment she nodded once, satisfied. “Then you must make yourself beautiful. And you must win Wilam’s favor before all the people.”

“I am wam with white skin!” I objected. “He sees me as ugly.”

“You are a woman! I know my husband, and although he pretends not to notice you, he is fascinated by you. I would have you become his wife.”

“His wife?”

The Tulim took many wives and concubines, naturally, but I’d been told that my being wam precluded me.

“There’s a way,” she said. She paced before me slowly, thoughtfully. “The rivalry between Wilam and Kirutu began when Kirutu was sent to the Warik by their father, Isaka.”

“Kirutu was once Impirum?”

“He is the son of Isaka, Wilam’s blood brother from another wife. His heart has been turned black with jealousy because Isaka sent him, rather than Wilam, away. Neither will bow to the other. If you are seen as something truly valuable, Wilam may risk war to keep you. Kirutu doesn’t know that you are intended as a gift. We must not allow Wilam to give you away.”

“You would approve of Wilam taking me as his wife?”

“I fear that I will never bear a child,” Melino said, staring off into the jungle. “I will always be the lesser of any Tulim wife who does bear him a child.” She set her jaw and turned to me. “But if he has a son from you at my request, I will be as worthy.”

Melino was as shrewd as her husband.

I didn’t understand the complexities of how childbearing influenced a woman’s status within Tulim society, but I caught the essence of her suggestion. She stood to gain considerable prestige if I could bear Wilam a child. I would be her surrogate.

My child might be more important than any other child in her view. The great warrior who was to come.

“Then tell me what to do,” I said.

“My servants will make you beautiful. You must win my husband. It’s the only way.”

“Then I will try,” I said.

Chapter Fourteen

IN THE SPACE of an hour I was transformed from the proper, albeit filthy, Southern belle who’d grown up in Atlanta, Georgia, into a Tulim woman. My skin was still white and my hair was still long and straight, but in every other respect I began to believe that I could be beautiful.

They disposed of my blouse, but rather than blacken all of my skin with pigment, they accentuated my femininity with wide blue swaths down my chest to my belly button, where they came to a point, like a blade. Blue streaks brightened my cheeks and eyes. A light oil that tanned my flesh was rubbed over my entire body so that it shone in the sun. They fixed tiny red beads along the ridge of my shoulders and on the backs of my hands.

Like a group of chattering, giggling girls half their age, Melino’s servants decorated my body as I stood still with my arms spread. The necklace they placed around my neck was made from seven mother-of-pearl shells that flashed in the sun. Using golden bands for my arms and legs, and an elaborate headdress made from red and black seeds and beautiful cockatoo feathers, they changed me into a woman who might make any Las Vegas chorus dancer stare with envy.

The skirt they brought for me was nearly identical to the one she wore. Melino was attempting to present me as a version of herself, as magnificent and royal as any woman in the valley save for my white skin, and even that looked purposeful, as if applied as a part of my makeup.

I emerged from the forest with Lela and the servants, where they presented me to Melino, who looked me over with a critical eye. I admit, I felt utterly self-conscious. My mother would have turned in her grave.

But then Melino smiled and nodded her approval. “Now I see a true Tulim woman, the envy of Kirutu.”

The servants covered their mouths and giggled at such an audacious statement.

“Do you like it?” I asked. “I don’t look too odd?”

“You look like a rare treasure from the most secret place,” she said. “A forbidden fruit that no man can resist.”

She laid her palm on my chest. “Now you must become Tulim in your heart. Let no stray thought steal this from you. We must go, the feast is underway.”

I recalled her encouragement a hundred times as we made our way down to the pounding drums. I was at a complete loss as to how I might impress Wilam, but I knew that I would leave the feast either with him or with Kirutu, and the faintest thought of being handed over to Kirutu filled me with dread.

The moment we stepped from the tree line and looked out over the celebration, any thoughts of seducing Wilam fled my mind and I knew that I was doomed.

The field was sloped on either side, similar to the one near the Impirum village, cleared by hand with one massive tree at its center. Hundreds of women bent over smoking pits near the bordering trees. Here boars and vegetables roasted, waiting to be eaten at the end of the ceremony. Several thousand warriors danced on both sides, close to the jungle, bobbing and chanting to percussive drums. Their dark bodies were greased and painted, topped with feathers and furs. The field had become a canvas for all of nature’s glory.