by Erin Lorence
How ridiculous that the crowd of shoving people shifted to let Reed limp through.
Before the believers mashed back together, I sighted Governor Ruth inside. Her eyes met mine and then flickered to my outstretched hand. “Give it to her, councilman. And a radio. One of the good ones that gets a signal.”
I wiggled my fingers at the toothless geezer and noticed the dark objects heaped under the slab. Radios.
After a pretense of hunting for it, he handed me my paper. “Strong.”
I squeezed it tight and spelled “Joyner.”
“B-R-A-E.” Reed pulled back my hood. “Hope you’re OK carrying three back solo, Dove.”
I mashed my papers to my heart. “Melody? You’re not coming home with me? But, but then when?”
Her face flooded red, and I knew the answer. Never.
“Your mom and dad and sisters?”
She shifted and lowered her gaze.
I tried again. “Micah?”
The last stragglers filed past. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Kiss any pagan princes today?”
“You can’t do that to your family, Melody.” I knew how Mrs. Brae would feel when her daughter never returned. A bruised heart. And a stomachache.
I kept my eyes on their intertwined fingers while Reed explained.
“Dove, she’s staying where she’s needed most—here. She’s been given a rare gift that’s one hundred percent wasted living buried in the earth the way her family does. You’d sentence her to a life of never feeling sunlight? Of never tasting fresh air? Bottom line, the Oregon Council needs her—needs us. We’ve been invited to stay on here. Permanently. Together, we’ll use our abilities to protect God’s land and His believers and prepare for our better future.”
Arguments and questions whirled. I snatched at one. “But what about your family, Reed? You said how much the MTV relies on you to keep them protected. Can Stone do it alone?”
He grimaced. Silly, Dove.
Oh. Right. Together—and only together—would the warrior role be complete.
“My parents have always known me and Stone will be where God most needs us.”
“Even if they die for it?”
“Even then. But I expect my third-in-command has stepped up to fill our shoes. He’s gifted. And there’s Darcy.”
Numbly I clutched the three papers and nodded. His family’s survival now depended on the whims of a giant, feral cat.
He dropped the radio into the bag on my back. “Safe travels home, Dove.”
Nice words. But his real meaning? Not so nice.
Dove, it promised, you’ll never make it alive.
~*~
I’d only gone a few yards over the cobbles when Melody stepped on my heel.
“Tell them I’m sorry. And that I love them.”
She was crying, so I agreed. I refaced the cliff.
She snagged my arm. “And a teeny favor?”
I braced myself.
“Since you’re going home, Dove, and since you live so close, well, I was thinking. What if you could get to know Micah better? I bet you’d like him. And if you guys got married it’d be easier on my mom that I’m not there.”
“Bye, Melody.”
I finished traveling the empty cobbles and reached the valley’s first giant foothold when I heard the tiniest crunch on the snow crust behind me.
I grasped the frozen wall. “Forget it. Me and Micah—we’re so not going to happen. I’m not marrying him or anyone else—”
“Dove?”
My hand slipped off its hold—a mistake. I should’ve climbed hard when I’d registered no footsteps. A quick check revealed the worst. Stone and I were alone.
Yet, he didn’t look like he was about to kill me. He seemed to have an impossible time looking at me at all. But that could be how he acted before he struck. Apologetic. Sorry he had to carry out Reed’s order.
My palms pressed against the crag at my back, feeling for another grip. I could only hope to out climb him. “Did you come to say goodbye, Bender? Or that you’re sorry.”
“Neither. I mean, yes. Sorry.”
He stepped forward with his hands out. I flinched away.
“I should’ve defended you.”
My lids popped back open.
“You were up against us all, and I...I blew it. I knew from the moment I saw you that you’re as pure and good as an angel from Heaven. I’ve never had any doubt. But what happened…that won’t ever happen again.”
Sky alive. How had I ever thought his face blank? It was intense with messages, all jumbled. Apology. Eagerness. And something that made my toes cringe inside my shoes.
“And you shouldn’t be traveling home by yourself, Dove. Yeah. That doesn’t seem right. Lots of stuff can happen to you out there. If you’ll wait a little so I can explain to Reed, then I’ll come with you. I...I get that you’re tight with God, but that’ll only get you so far when it comes to surviving an attack. But I can protect you. I swear.” He offered me his right hand. “Always.”
In his left, he held a skull-sized chunk of Mount Jefferson. He squeezed. After a tremendous crack, the solid mass fell into halves on the snow.
Oh, no. Oh, Father. Words. Give me words here.
He’d stooped for another when I stopped him. “You and my big brother are branches of the same oak.”
He straightened slowly.
“My brother Gilead—he’s strong. Unstoppable. And like you, he didn’t think I had a chance of surviving my journey because physically I’m nothing compared to him. Or you. And I feel the same way about him as I do you. I love you both—but not...”
He nodded and turned away. “But not.”
I watched his silent back. “Stone? Listen, Stone. You’ve got to do something for me. Promise me. Ditch Reed and go home. Don’t let him tell you what God wants you to do anymore. Find out from the Lord yourself.”
He swiveled so quick, I stumbled but didn’t fall. His hands at my elbows stopped me.
“But that’s why I need to go with you, Dove. I didn’t say it before, but this week I’ve been thinking exactly that. The more I’m around you, the more you’ll rub off on me. You can show me how to do this knowing-God-better thing.”
I continued to shake my head. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m no magical cure. Trust me. Sixteen years with my brother has done nothing. He needs to know God in his own way, so do you.”
He released me. “So that’s it.”
“Yeah.”
“You love me, but not like...like...”
“Yeah. Not like that.” I gripped the rough edge of the wall we pretended to examine.
“You can handle this?” We both chose to ignore the break in his voice.
“I’ve never needed help climbing, Stone.”
“Oh. Right.” But he lifted and set me on the lowest ledge.
Taller than him now, I forced a half-smile down at him while thanking God I wasn’t dead…and he wasn’t sobbing.
He cringed away. A ray of sunshine must’ve escaped the cloud blanket behind me because light nailed him in the face. No matter how he shifted and shaded his brow, he couldn’t focus on me. Weird, since I didn’t think the sun ever reached this far down in the canyon.
“Huh.” He gave up and shut his eyes. “Maybe you will make it OK after all.” He lifted a hand.
I copied him in a goodbye he couldn’t see. Then, I stood to face my next obstacle.
33
It was great to travel by myself. And camp by myself. And not have to wait for anyone at all.
Sure.
Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, and I twitched the damp shoulder strap to the other side. I scanned the wooded terrain in my automatic, side-to-side way—more than aware I’d received no promise I’d make it home.
While I continued hiking the foothills, the part of my mind not on stay-alive duty hoped my uncle would appear from behind a tree and fall into step with me. Not my biggest hope, but the one I allowed myself to think on.
I was still hearing my aunt’s imaginary gasps of joy, when way up ahead I spotted white. A wintery smear against a slope of broken, black scree.
By the time I reached the warped, bullet-riddled rectangle Reed had used as a shield, the sky’s purpling clouds warned me of night. Both broken cars had vanished. The road was empty of everything. Everyone. No Saul, no—
I slid with the cartwheeling debris into the shallow gravel ditch and picked my way around the fragments of red translucent plastic and glass. The only signs left of my first—and last—car ride.
My gut ached. With my fingers pressing almost to my backbone, I fought it and the disappointment.
“Keep going, Dove. Don’t linger on the what-ifs and have-nots.”
Still, I stayed rooted. Then I threw back my head.
“So, God, what was the point? I was fine before, back home in the life You gave me. Then You had to go and force me out into the world, among all those people. Believers. Non-believers—it didn’t matter, You threw them all on me. And You knew they’d do something to my heart. Tug at it. Twist it. Break it. Why, Father? Why make me care about them? Because now I’m alone. Again. And it stinks.”
My shoulders drooped, and I hung my head. “Stay with me. Help me remember I don’t need anything—anyone. All I need is You.”
~*~
A small, furry night hunter felt the warning before I did. It darted across the road behind me, into the ditch where I walked, and then it vanished. A moment later, I heard the engine. My shadow stretched long and misshapen in front of me.
I tried to copy the fox, but somehow I’d brainlessly allowed a towering wall of rock to come between me and my escape in the trees. The nearest accessible forest—without some serious backtracking—was on the other side of the road.
My body was too exhausted. My reaction time slowed. Before I made it across to safety, two beams of light bore down on me.
“So, what number on the jerk-o-meter does a guy win for ditching a girl, shackled to a creep, halfway up a mountain?”
“A ten,” a higher voice shouted. “A million!”
I smiled and kept walking the yellow line.
A roofless, boxy vehicle—the kind that ends up dumped on our property—pulled up next to me and kept pace.
Wolfe leaned out. “OK. I give up. What’re you doing?”
“Guess.”
Something rustled near my ear. “I got chips!”
“No one cares about your chips, brat. Seriously, get in the vehicle, Dove. I’m not driving two miles an hour, watching you walk home. I’m not even touching the gas pedal. I’m actually braking.”
I lengthened my stride, knowing I’d never keep it up. “Better?”
In response, the vehicle lurched forward and stopped. Hands gripped my wrists tight, and then my elbows, pulling me into the four-wheeled trap.
Wolfe settled down in front of me. “Relax. I can drive anything expertly. Tractors. Forklifts. Backhoes. Once even a firetruck. OK, fine, it was a brush rig. But Dove?”
“Yeah?” It came out a croak.
“You should still probably, you know, buckle up.”
His sister crawled over me and pulled a strap across my rigid body as I perched on the edge of the warm seat. She clicked the strap’s metal end into a plastic piece.
Even in my shock, I recognized Wolfe’s driving ability. In the few seconds we’d moved, the car hadn’t scraped a tree branch or thrown me off my perch. Not once.
The wind shrieked over and around as we flew over the snaking pavement. Jezebel’s greasy hand patted my leg. Then her whole body relaxed against my stiff arm.
“And so. Your home. It would be?” Wolfe flashed a grin over his shoulder. “Please, please don’t say Arizona.”
The buffeting twilight stole my air. “Head to where you live. I’m not too far from there.”
Lights dotted the horizon in front of us, and I forgot to breathe. Next to me, Jezebel twisted, lunged up, and anchored my head between her hands. As I jerked away, I felt my hair coil come loose. It fell heavy onto my shoulder the same moment the approaching vehicle swooshed passed.
I clutched at my fast unrolling strands. “Are you insane?“
She slid back to her side with a smirk. “It’s done, Woof.”
Her brother didn’t bother to glance back.
“Dove, you’re a radical, and you look like one, which, so sorry, isn’t a compliment. So unless you got another army of wasps in that bag to fight off anyone who gets suspicious, trust Jezzy and me on this. This?” He stuck his thumb over his shoulder at my head. “This is better.”
I pawed through my straightening strands, deciding. Rebecca dressed different, worldly. And she was still a true Christian.
Jezzy’s fingers helped mine comb while the night air whipped my hair around us and over us and behind us. She paused in her raking. “Wow. See this, Woof!”
His eyes showed up in a small mirror. “Hmm? Oh, whoa. That’s...that’s long. I guess it’s better. But speak up if it gets snagged around the car’s axle. Or if you start picking up roadkill.”
I shoved handfuls of it behind, pinning the mass between myself and the seat. Even so, the eyes in the mirror kept reappearing.
I kept my own on the racing trees and rolling terrain, squinting against the wind and the escaped strands lashing me. Jezebel stuck her feet up on the black chair back in front of her. The one in front of me—its twin—had a big, vertical rip.
I followed its fluttering edges up to where they stopped at Wolfe’s left shoulder. In the last of the sunset, I caught sight of inked, triangular lines marking his skin there. I shielded my eyes and for the first time looked at the tattoo.
My other hand muffled my gasp. And my laugh.
The triquetra. The Trinity Knot. His tattoo—this non-believer’s—was my cousin’s favorite symbol and namesake. Three elegant, interconnecting loops...representative of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Wolfe’s whistling warbled on like a songbird.
But why would he have...? He doesn’t know, I realized. He has no clue what his tattoo means—that it’s the believers’ sign of the Almighty God.
But no. This tattoo wasn’t a coincidence or joke.
I moved to the seat’s edge, which released my hair. No more wasting time, Dove. Time to fight for a soul.
“Hey, Wolfe?”
Jezebel shifted in her sleep, her head pillowed on a red food bag that smelled like potatoes and grease. In the front, the whistling stopped. The alert eyes in the mirror laughed at me.
“Stop this thing, Wolfe. I’m coming up there. We need to talk.”
34
Only two conversations starters came to mind. Both were lame. There was, “So, what’s it like being controlled by Satan?” And the other, “It must feel horrible knowing you’re going to hell.”
“Stupid people-speaking gift.” I remembered Rebecca and how she always got her way with her words.
Some words here, Father?
Wolfe glanced at me. “What’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. Boy, you never shut up, do you?”
I hadn’t spoken since relocating to the front.
“OK, OK, Dove. If I teach you to drive, will you please give my ears a rest?”
I blinked fast. “Maybe I already know how to drive.”
He grinned and called my bluff. “Do you?”
I pictured myself behind the car’s wheel, humming to a stop under my home. In the branches above, my boy cousins pointed at me while Gilead gawked from the shadows.
“I don’t want to.” I fingered my heavy braid I’d slopped together. My grandpa had admitted he could get at least one old, junker vehicle on our property running if he wanted. But he’d refused to do it for the same reason we’re not allowed guns. He declared both worldly inventions invited sin.
“Driving would save you on shoes.”
“No.”
“What if knowing how to d
rive saved your life someday?”
I tossed away my braid. “I said, no.”
“OK, OK.” His hands drummed against the wheel. “I just want to do something. To make up for being the jerk who ran off and never said thanks. Thanks for saving us. I planned to, but then with all those flocks of owls swarming. Whoo-whoo.”
My answering hoot was more realistic. We spent the next few minutes working on his, which broke the tension in my head and tongue. “It’s Rebecca, not me, who gets the thanks. She’s the one who talked Sto—your guards—into letting you go.”
“Rebecca? The normal-looking fanatic chick? Yeah, I know. I heard her that night. But you were behind it.”
He sounded so sure. Why?
He clucked his tongue. “Gotta tell you though, setting Diamond loose wasn’t your smartest move. Not the most forgiving person, Diamond. And she’d never let radicals get away with what you—they—did. She talked revenge our whole first morning hiking back, and almost turned around to deliver it.”
My hands squeezed pale in the gray light, clasping and unclasping between my pant legs.
He nodded. “But then he showed up.”
I didn’t ask who. Both Cal and Governor Ruth had mentioned Saul. Uncle Saul.
“Of course, he didn’t say much. But his eyes...Dove, they had this scary warning in them. Like ‘Keep moving and don’t mess with no one.’”
I unclasped. “I know. It’s a family thing. He’s my uncle.”
“Ha! I told you he reminded me of you. And, well, after that, even Diamond wouldn’t go back. But I’m still sort of drawing a blank on why you did all that—protecting the brat and putting your neck on the line to help us get away.”
“You let me and Mel go that night at your home. So, for us Christians to be less merciful than non-believers?” I shook my head. “No, I had to help you.”
He smiled. “Ah. I get it. We helped you, so you helped us. We’re equal.”
“No, Wolfe. I’m not talking about fair. I’m talking about mercy.” My heart began to race while I tried to spit out the words before I lost them. “Mercy isn’t what you’ve done, or what I’ve done. It’s about Jesus, what He’s done. Can’t you understand? We all mess up. We sin. Me, you, everyone. And because of it, we’re responsible for Jesus being nailed to the cross. But He allowed the cross and dying because He’s God and He loves me—and you and everyone. If He can forgive me for killing Him and choose to show mercy so I can escape hell, well then, I have to have mercy for you guys. Don’t you see?”
