Outlaw

by Ted Dekker

  “Sing, Mother,” he whispered.

  He watched in amazement as a red wave left his mouth, closed the distance to his mother, and washed over her body.

  He said it with more power. “Sing.”

  Another blow from Kirutu landed on his body.

  “Sing…”

  She sang. Eyes still closed, head still hanging, she sang from her soul, a long note that streamed with increasing volume and color.

  “Sing…”

  The note came pure and long, a haunting tone that could not be denied.

  Stephen shifted his eyes and saw that Kirutu had hesitated. The soft song was now just audible above the roaring flames—he’d heard it. Surely he had.

  The man twisted his head and stared at the slumped form on the post.

  There was his mother, hanging as though dead, and yet from her mouth came a beautiful song that defied her state. They could all hear it and they’d all gone still.

  And as Stephen watched, his mother’s head began to rise. Her eyes were still closed, but her mouth was parted and the colored light that streamed from it shot past him, up the hill, into the night sky far behind him.

  Kirutu slowly stepped back, away from Stephen, fixed by what he heard and saw. Not the color, surely, but to hear such beauty from such a desolate victim…

  “Sing,” Stephen whispered. “Sing.”

  Her head came all the way up and she sang to the distant mountains, now with even greater volume and growing intensity. Light streamed from her face, shooting deep into the night sky.

  Stephen was just twisting his head to see where the light was going when the first band of color from that distant horizon swept through the sky above him.

  Her simple call for forgiveness was being returned, not as another streak of light, but in thick ribbons pushed by a wall of light that rolled into the valley.

  A thundering, concussive tsunami of brilliance that rushed toward the valley. The ground shook with its power as it approached, moving fast.

  Cries of alarm spread. The Warik weren’t looking at the sky—they couldn’t see the light. But they could feel the earth trembling and it sent them scattering, running for their very lives.

  Still the light came, hurling down the valley like a rolling mountain of color, threatening to crush everything in its path.

  Still the Warik fled in terror before the thundering sound and bucking earth.

  Then the light reached his mother and blew through her, lifting her hair from her shoulders.

  She sang on, one long crystalline note returned by crushing power.

  The flames of the fires bent low, bowing toward his mother under the power of the wave.

  Still she sang, as the light streamed past the fence, through the village, and flowed toward the lowlands beyond.

  This was the song his mother had first heard in her dreams, now made manifest in the Tulim valley. This was why she’d come.

  This was why he’d been saved. So that they too could be saved.

  Her song remained unbroken and beautiful until Stephen wondered if his own body could stand the power sweeping through it. Her hair streamed backward as the light rushed past her, but her face glowed in perfect peace, like that of a child singing through a dream.

  For an endless breath that robbed Stephen of his own, she sang, face full in the rushing color.

  And then, when Stephen thought his own lungs would burst, she closed her mouth. Her song quieted and the rumbling earth settled. But the silent, colored light did not abate. It flowed through her, filling her with its infinite life. She hung from her pole, head erect, bathed in power.

  The Warik warriors who’d fled crept back, eyes on his mother, as the earth stopped shaking. Villagers—women and children and the aged—rushed out of the gates and pulled up short at the sight before them.

  His mother’s eyes opened. She stared ahead for a moment; then, as if knowing precisely what she must do, she slowly turned to look at Kirutu.

  For a long time she said nothing. When she spoke, her words flowed as light.

  “Let me speak to you, my husband.”

  Her light reached out to Kirutu and flowed through him, and although he couldn’t see what Stephen saw, the power of her love was affecting him already. He stood rooted to the ground, unable to comply or refuse. The night seemed to have stalled completely.

  His mother turned to the man who stood next to the emaciated woman. “Cut me down, Wilam,” she said softly.

  A tear glistened on Wilam’s cheek, but he showed no other outward signs of emotion. He looked at his brother, who made no move to stop him, walked over to a warrior, took the man’s knife from his hand, and stepped up to the pole.

  Stephen pushed himself to his feet, watching with vision blurred only by emotion.

  With one last glance at Kirutu’s wide eyes, Wilam cut the grass ropes—first the ones at her feet, so that she could reach the ground, then the ones that bound her hands behind the pole.

  His mother stepped away from the pole slowly, on light feet, as if still in a dream. She took Wilam by the hand and led him halfway toward Kirutu before releasing him and crossing the rest of the way alone, eyes fixed on the man who had tormented her for so long.

  Kirutu might have objected, Stephen thought, but here with a full army in the face of no threat, doing so might be seen as weakness. And more, there was a place in his wounded soul that surely cried to be free of the prison he’d lived in for so long.

  Or perhaps there was another reason—Stephen didn’t know—but Kirutu made no move.

  She stopped in front of him and searched his eyes.

  “You are a great leader, my husband. And I am your humble servant.”

  The words streamed into Kirutu’s face, unseen by all but Stephen yet felt by Kirutu to his very core. His eyes were wide.

  “In any way that you have hurt me, I remember it no more.” The tangible power of her words reached Stephen as a warm wave that swept over his skin. She was speaking to them all, he knew. And to the whole world.

  “My heart cries with you and your people. Like children we long for love. Know my love for you. Know that your Maker would see only the love in your heart. Hear his call, Kirutu. Hear his song calling your name and know that he will remember no blame on your part.”

  Kirutu’s hands were shaking. He might have been trying to stem the tears that filled his eyes. If so, he failed miserably.

  She stepped up to him, lifted her hand to his face, and brushed away his tears with her thumb.

  “The heart of all Tulim cries for a great love that would make you innocent of all but love,” she said. “Hear my words and see this same love now. It is my gift to you.”

  She took his hand and kissed his knuckles.

  The first sound of crying came from the woman who’d stood by Wilam. His wife, Melino, stood thirty paces away, weeping softly, unabashed. And Wilam too was quickly besieged by tears, his silent. They had suffered too deeply and for too many years to hold steady in face of such beauty.

  His mother leaned forward and whispered something to Kirutu that only he could hear. But its power became immediately evident.

  Even as she spoke, Kirutu began to shake from head to toe. And the moment she pulled away he sank to his knees. He sat back on his haunches, let his arms drop by his sides, and began to weep with his head hung low.

  The sight of their powerful warlord so overcome by kind words swept away the last bonds of fear that had kept his warriors in check, and now the soft sound of crying could be heard spreading through their ranks.

  Stephen slowly scanned the scene before him. He had a few broken ribs, and his head had taken far too many blows, but the pain sat at the edge of his awareness, only a minor disturbance.

  The Warik, on the other hand, had suffered a lifetime of cruelty. They looked like lost children, some confused, some weeping, some only standing with vacant eyes. Their minds could not begin to understand the full implications of what they were witnessi
ng, but in their hearts they knew that something had changed in the Tulim valley. In time to come they would find a new life. Then they would understand more.

  It was for this that his mother had been called. It was for them that she had suffered.

  Stephen looked at the sky. Stars shone brightly. The bands of light were no longer visible, not because they weren’t there, but because he no longer needed to see them with these eyes, placed like buttons on his costume.

  Why should he? The full power of the light lived inside him already.

  His mother was walking toward him, eyes swimming in the sea of such love and power.

  She took his hand.

  “Come with me, my son.”

  And she led him away from the Warik so that they could be together.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  One Week Later

  THE TULIM valley lay in all its lush splendor beneath a bright blue sky helmed by a crystalline sun. From this vantage high upon the hill, where Shaka had first called to his mother in her dreams and later opened her eyes to see what few ever saw, the endless swamps glistened with reflected light where the canopy thinned to expose the still waters. A flock of red-and-green parrots flapped over the jungle below Stephen. He could barely hear their call.

  “It’s all so clear now,” his mother said, gazing out over the expansive scene. “This was what I saw in my dreams on the night you were born.” She faced him, eyes round. Such a beautiful woman, his mother. A woven yellow headband crowned her as the queen in this valley, though she was the servant of all.

  “I couldn’t see who was calling to me, but I knew, where deep calls to deep—I had to come. Even as I know now that I must stay.”

  Stephen looked into her eyes, then offered her a gentle smile. He turned back to the valley without speaking. They’d spent a week on the mountain where he’d lived with Shaka, speaking little at first. Whatever could be said in the wake of such a powerful encounter with love was best left to the heart, not the mouth. As Shaka had often said, sometimes words diminished the greatest truths and experiences.

  Then they’d slept and bathed and eaten and been, just as he and Shaka had been for so many years. They hadn’t discussed the awakening in the Tulim valley until the second day, and then only in simple terms, because they already knew what had happened.

  Strangely, his mother seemed to know much of how he’d spent his life on the mountain, as if she’d lived there with him. But then, she had, in a manner of speaking. She recalled it all as she might a dream, distant and slightly out of focus, but remembered. Even so Stephen had taken great delight in recounting those years for her. Once they began, their talk went all day, filled with wonder and laughter. In some ways they had many years to catch up on; in other ways none.

  She’d gone down to the valley on the fifth day, and two days later he’d met her on the hill where they now stood. She’d had to see the people, she said. It was her place to do so, alone. She’d found the Warik still in a daze. Confused. Stripped of all the brutality that had ordered their world for so long. Kirutu had not come out of his house once since that night of power. He’d wept like a child when she went in to see him.

  “So you will stay,” Stephen said, eyes down-valley, “and I must go.”

  “Yes.”

  He felt some apprehension at the prospect of leaving, but he knew that his time here was finished. He had come for two reasons: to be raised on the mountain with Shaka, and to help his mother bring light into the valley. He was ready to take that same light to a faraway land so that others might awaken as well. He couldn’t deny the eagerness he felt in setting out for that discovery. This was his purpose in life.

  This and to walk in the light himself.

  “I’ve lived my whole life with you and Shaka,” he said. “It will be a new thing.”

  “It will, and I will miss you more than I can bear to think about at times. But I send you gladly.”

  She stepped up to him and took his hand in hers. Kissed his fingers.

  “I’m so grateful for you. Proud beyond any mother’s right to be. You’re such a man. The world needs the light you have to share.”

  She was a foot shorter than him, so he tilted his head to look into her eyes. “And what would I be without your sacrifice? Is there another woman like you on this earth?”

  She chuckled. “Many. They just don’t know it yet.”

  “Then I’ll help them learn.”

  “I’m sure you will. And break a few hearts along the way.”

  “Break them?”

  “Just an expression, dear. Unknowing hearts are fragile and easily broken. Wasn’t mine?”

  She had a point.

  His mother stepped away, crossed her arms, and faced a slight breeze that shifted her hair. “It’s quite ironic, isn’t it? I left my home to bring God’s love to this dark valley. Now you will leave this valley to bring that same love to others. Full circle.”

  He nodded. “There’s a part of me that would like very much for you to come with me. Not in a sad way, just in a hopeful way. We’ll see each other again, won’t we?”

  “Of course we will! Often, I hope.” She took a deep breath and let it settle. “My work isn’t finished here, Stephen. They need me more than before now. They have so much to learn about the source of the power they saw. So many questions about the path to forgiveness, so little understanding about the Master’s Way.” A pause. “Besides, I know this valley better than I knew my own home. I belong here.”

  “And Kirutu? You’ll still be with him?”

  “I don’t know. We will see. It’ll be mine to decide, not his.”

  He understood this. Some might think staying with such a tormentor unwise, but Kirutu had only done what he knew to do. Love would change his heart and his costume.

  “What about Wilam?”

  “I don’t know. The children need me most. I am mother to them all.”

  “And I am son to all mothers.”

  “And how fortunate they all are,” she said with a smile.

  Her eyes lowered to the medallion on his neck—the tribal carving that Shaka had given him with the word DEDITIO at its center. He’d tied it to a leather thong. She reached for it and ran her thumb over the smooth surface.

  “You are Outlaw still,” she said softly.

  “As are you,” he said.

  “Beyond the law that brings death, into the law that is life.”

  “Found on the narrow way that few find and fewer follow,” he said, recounting Shaka’s words.

  She smiled. “My place is to help the Warik become Outlaws, all of them. Your call will take you to places few have seen.”

  “Beyond the Tulim valley.”

  “He told me on this hill that you will live an obscure life. That you’re destined to find and call all of those who would step out of the law of death and find new life.”

  “Then I’ll fill the world with Outlaws.”

  She released the pendant. “Many will follow. All Outlaws, just as our Master was one.”

  “As we will be, always.”

  That brought a smirk to her face. “It’s now what? Nineteen eighty or so? Dear me, I’ve lost track of the years. It seems I’m destined to grow old in this jungle.”

  “Your costume ages,” he said.

  “Yes. My costume. Older than yours, but I’m sure we both still have so much to learn.”

  “More to learn?” This confused him. What more could there be to learn that was not already known? The ways of the foreign lands he would see, perhaps.

  “Yes, Stephen. More. You will be tested in ways we cannot foresee. As will I. The temptation to forget is woven into the fabric of these…costumes. Even our Master felt great fear, even up to the day he sweated drops of blood before the world killed him. If our Master felt such fear to the end of his life, I’m sure we will as well. We take courage from the one who rose from that grave of death and fear.”

  She had quickly adopted his language. But then,
it was hers as well, from her dreams. Hadn’t she been one with Shaka? The notion of that singular truth was still bound in mystery. Stephen wouldn’t try to understand—leaning on that understanding only inflamed the costume’s need to know what it could not with its limited mind.

  Allow for mystery, Stephen. Shaka’s teaching. Lest you think you would be the greatest of all, feeding always on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is Lucifer’s complex. Instead, trust in the One who gives you true life.

  So he would trust. And be. As he was, saved from the ravages of the law that had thrown the world into chaos. Outlaw.

  “This life will give you much and then take it all away,” she said, “and yet you will gain and lose nothing you don’t already have. In so many ways your journey is only beginning, however complete it already is.”

  She paused and a shadow crossed her face.

  “Many people won’t understand you. Some will find great courage in your gift, others will try to kill you. When the voice of doubt cries the loudest, remember your Master’s journey. Remember mine. Eighteen years here, and now it’s only been one night. And this too will pass. If you wander the earth for as many years or longer, remember…it’s already done. Just walk the Way, abide in the Truth, and embrace the Light.”

  The Way, the Truth, and the Light. She was speaking to him both as mother and as the voice of God.

  He felt compelled to step up next to her, take her hand as a son, and gaze out over the valley with her. The breeze whispered its contentment.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  A long beat settled between them.

  “Thank you, Son,” she said.

  And then they said nothing for a while.

  “Now what?” he finally said.

  “Now I go to the Tulim to bring healing and you leave this jungle to be Outlaw.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then faced him with a bright twinkle in her eyes.

  “But first, would you like to meet some beautiful children?”

  He grinned wide.

  “I would love nothing more.”

  Author’s Note

  Some of my readers know that I was born and raised the son of missionaries in the jungles of Irian Jaya where this novel is set. I didn’t grow up among the Tulim people, because they are a people of my making—rather I grew up among the Dani, a tribe of cannibals north of the Tulim in Outlaw. Indeed, my first language was Dani, the native language which I borrowed for the story you have just read. Yes, “wam” really does mean “pig.”