Ted Dekker - Outlaw

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.

Chapter Thirty-one

THE WORLD shifted, and Stephen found himself on the ground at Kirutu’s feet. Two things he knew before he had time to open his eyes. The first was that nothing had changed in the valley, because only a moment had passed, not enough time for Kirutu to land more than one blow.

The second was that everything had changed in the valley. He could hear the sound, very faint, only at the very edge of his consciousness. It was a note and it came from his mother.

He opened his eyes and saw her in his direct line of sight, hanging from the pole, head slumped, hair draping her face.

And now he knew a third thing. He could still see. A very faint wisp of color drifted from his mother’s mouth, eked out by a note so thin that perhaps only he could hear it.

He lifted his head off the ground. The sky above was still dark, yes, but from his mother on the post, color was coming into the valley.

“And now you will watch her burn,” Kirutu was saying.

He landed another blow to Stephen’s face, but this didn’t bother him. His eyes were on his mother and his heart was one with hers.