by Ted Dekker
“This is the fruit that Thomas ate?” Tanis took the fruit from the grinning black beast with both hands.
Thomas released the tree he had gripped with white knuckles and leaped forward. No, Tanis! Don’t be such an utter fool. Throw it back at him!
He wanted to yell it, but his throat was frozen.
“It is indeed, my friend,” Teeleh said. “Thomas is a very wise man indeed.”
Half the Shataiki lining the trees now noticed him. They flew into a fit, pointing in panic, shrieks now earsplitting.
Thomas raced across the bank toward the arching bridge. “Tanis!”
But Tanis didn’t turn. Had he already eaten?
Tanis took one step backward, and Thomas was sure that he was about to fling the fruit back at the beast and leave him standing on the bridge’s crest. The man paused and said something too softly for Thomas to hear above the bats. He stared at the fruit in his hands.
“Tanis!” Thomas cried, rushing onto the bridge.
Tanis calmly brought the fruit to his mouth and bit deeply.
The throng of bats in the trees behind Teeleh suddenly fell silent. The wind whistled quietly and the river below murmured, but otherwise a terrible stillness swallowed the bridge.
“Tanis!”
Tanis whirled around. A stream of juice glistened on his chin. The fruit’s yellow flesh was lodged in his gaping mouth.
“Thomas. You’ve come!”
He closed his lips over the piece between his teeth and held the bitten fruit out toward Thomas. “Is this the same fruit you ate, Thomas? I must say, it is very good indeed.”
Thomas slid to a halt halfway up the arch. “Don’t be a fool, Tanis! It’s not too late. Drop it and come back.” He shook as he spoke. “Now! Drop it now!”
“Oh, it is you,” the beast behind Tanis sneered. “I thought I heard a voice. Don’t worry, Tanis, my friend. He would like to be the only one to eat my fruit, but you know too much now, don’t you? Has he told you about his spaceship?”
Tanis swiveled his head from Thomas to the beast and back again, as though unsure of what he was expected to do.
“Tanis, don’t listen to him. Get ahold of yourself!”
Tanis’s eyes seemed to float in their sockets. The fruit was taking its toll on the man.
“Thomas? What spaceship?” Tanis asked.
“He’s afraid to tell you the truth,” Teeleh snarled. “He drank the water!”
“It’s a lie!” Thomas said. “Do not cross the bridge. Drop the fruit.”
Tanis wasn’t listening. Yellow juice from the fruit trickled down his cheek, staining his tunic. He turned back to the beast and took another bite.
“Very powerful,” he said. “With this kind of power, I could defeat even you.”
“Yesssss.” The hideous bat grinned. “And we have something you cannot possibly imagine.”
He withdrew a leather pouch.
“Here, drink this. It will open your eyes to new worlds.”
Tanis looked at the bat, then at the pouch. Then he reached one hand for the pouch.
Teeleh turned, and in doing so he bumped into something Thomas hadn’t seen before. A stick resting on the railing. A dark stick that had lost its color. The wood slid off the railing and fell into the river.
Thomas whirled around. Michal was watching in silence. “Elyon!” Thomas screamed. Surely he would do something. He loved Tanis desperately. “Elyon!”
Nothing.
He spun back to the bridge. What was happening was happening because of him. In spite of him. He felt as powerless and as terrified as he could ever remember feeling.
Teeleh walked slowly, ever so slowly, favoring his right leg. Down the bridge to the opposite bank. “More knowledge than you can handle,” he said. “Isn’t that so, my friends?” he bellowed to the throngs lining the forest.
“Yesss . . . yessss,” rasped a sea of voices.
“Then bid our friend drink,” he cried out, stepping onto the opposite bank. “Bid him drink!”
“Drink, drink, drink, drink,” the Shataiki chanted slowly, in one throbbing, seductive tone. A song.
Thomas felt the hair on his neck stand on end. Tanis looked back at him, eyes glazed over, a grin twisting his face. He released a nervous chuckle.
Thomas’s mind began to swim in panic. Tanis was falling for it!
In final desperation, he lunged up the arch toward the intoxicated man. “Tanis, don’t. Don’t do it!” he cried over the bewitched song. “You have no idea what you’re doing!”
Tanis turned back to the chanting throng and took a step toward the opposite shore.
Images of Rachelle and little Johan flashed before Thomas’s eyes. This was not going to happen, not if he could help it.
He leaped forward, gripped the railing with his left arm, and flung his other arm around the man’s waist. Planting his feet hard, he jerked Tanis back, nearly pulling him from his feet.
With a snarl Tanis swung around and planted a kick on his chest. Thomas flew back and sat hard on the deck.
“No, Thomas! You are not the only one who can have this knowledge! Who are you to tell me what I must do?”
“It’s a lie, Tanis! I didn’t drink!”
“You’re lying! You’re dreaming of the histories. No one has ever dreamed of the histories.”
“Because I fell!”
A brief look of confusion crossed the firstborn’s face. He turned away with a tear in his eye, lifted the pouch to his lips, and poured the water into his mouth.
Then he walked over the bridge and stepped onto the parched earth beyond.
What happened next was a sight Thomas would never forget as long as he lived. The moment Tanis set foot on the ground next to the large black bat, a dozen smaller Shataiki stalked out to greet him. Thomas scrambled to his feet just as Tanis extended a hand in greeting to the nearest Shataiki. But instead of taking his hand, the Shataiki suddenly leaped from the ground and slashed angrily at the extended hand with his talons.
For a moment, time seemed to cease.
The pouch dropped from Tanis’s hand. His half-eaten fruit tumbled lazily to the ground. Tanis lowered his eyes to his hand just as the white walls of a deep gash began to fill with blood.
And then the first effects of his new world fell on the elder like a vicious, bloodthirsty beast.
Tanis screamed with pain.
Teeleh faced the black forest, standing tall and stately.
“Take him!” he said.
The groups of Shataiki who had greeted Tanis dived for him. Tanis threw his hands up in defense, but in his state of shock it was hopeless. Fangs punctured his neck and his spine; a wicked claw sliced at his face, severing most of it in one terrible swipe. Then Tanis disappeared in a mess of flailing black fur.
Teeleh raised his wings in victory and beckoned the waiting throngs that still clung to the trees. “Now!” he thundered above the sounds of the attack on Tanis. “Now! Did I not tell you?” He lifted his chin and howled in a voice so loud and so terrifying that it seemed to rip the sky itself open.
“Our time has come!”
A ground-shaking roar erupted from the horde of beasts. Above the cheer Thomas heard the leader’s throaty, guttural roar. “Destroy the land. Take what is ours!”
Teeleh swept his wings toward the colored forest.
Thomas watched, frozen by horror, as a massive black wall of bats took flight. The wall ran as far as he could see in either direction and seemed to move in slow motion for its sheer size. A dark shadow crept across the ground. It moved over the black forest, then up the bridge toward Thomas. The white wood cracked and turned gray along the forward edge of the shadow. The pungent odor of sulfur swarmed him.
Thomas whirled and ran just ahead of the shadow. He leaped off the bridge and hit the grass in a full sprint. Michal was gone!
“Michal!” he screamed.
He dared a quick glance back at the trees that marked the edge of the colored forest. The g
rass behind him was turning to black ash along the leading edge of the shadow, as if a long line of fire had been set ablaze beneath the earth and was incinerating the green life above it.
But he knew the death didn’t come from below. It came from the black bats above. And what would happen to his flesh when the shadow overtook him?
He screamed and pumped his legs in a blind panic, knowing full well that panic would only slow him down. “Elyon!”
Elyon wasn’t responding.
The shadow from the wall of black bats above reached him when he tore into the clearing just beyond the riverbank. He tensed in anticipation of the searing pain of burning flesh.
The burned grass under his feet crackled. The colored light from the trees on either side winked out, and the green canopy began crumbling in heaps of black ash. The air turned thick and difficult to breathe.
But his flesh didn’t burn.
The shadow moved on, just ahead of him. His strength began to fade.
The wall of bats was moving toward the village. No! It would reach them long before Thomas could sound any warning.
The animals and birds howled and shrieked in aimless circles of confusion.
Here in the shadow was death. Ahead, before the shadow, there was still life. The life of the colored forest. The life that allowed Tanis to execute incredible maneuvers in the air with superhuman strength. The life that had fed Thomas’s own strength over the previous days.
One last wedge of hope lodged stubbornly in Thomas’s mind. If only he could catch the shadow. Pass back into the life ahead of it. If only he could summon the last reserves of his strength from any fruit on the trees, from any life in the land.
If he could just stay ahead of the bats.
The fruit was falling from the charred trees and thudding to the ground like a slow hail. Thomas veered to his left, dipped down and grabbed a piece of fruit, and bit off a chunk of flesh. He swallowed without chewing.
Immediately, strength returned.
Clenching his hands around the fruit, he tore forward. Juice seeped around his knuckles. He shoved another bite in his mouth and swallowed and ran.
Slowly, very slowly, he gained ground on the shadow. Why the bats didn’t swoop down and chew him to pieces, he didn’t know. Perhaps in their eagerness to reach the village they ignored this one human below.
He sucked down two more chunks of fruit and chased the shadow for ten minutes in a full sprint before catching it. But now his panic had left him. The moment he passed in front of the canopy of bats, his strength surged.
He snatched a piece of unspoiled fruit and ripped off a huge bite.
Sweet, sweet release. Thomas shivered and sobbed. And he ran.
With a strength beyond himself, he ran, gaining on the shadow, on the approaching throng shrieking high above him. First fifty yards, then a hundred, then two hundred. Soon they were a massive black cloud well behind him.
From a hill he could see their approach with stunning clarity. From this vantage point he saw what was happening in a new light. The black forest was encroaching on the green in a long, endless line that blocked the sun and burned the land to a crisp.
He raced on, vision blurred with tears, screaming in rage.
The sky above the valley was empty when Thomas broke from the forest. It was, in fact, the only sign that there was anything at all askew. At any other time at least a dozen Roush would be floating in lazy circles above the village, or tumbling along the grass with the children. Now there wasn’t a single one to be seen. No Michal, no Gabil.
Below, the villagers went about peacefully, ignorantly. Children scampered between the huts, laughing in delight; mothers cuddled their young as they sang softly and stepped lightly in dance; fathers retold their tales of great exploits—all unaware of the approaching throng that would soon tear into them.
Thomas tore down the hill. “Oh, Elyon,” he pleaded. “Please, I beg you, give me a way.”
He ran into the village screaming at the top of his lungs. “Shataiki! They’re coming! Everyone grab something to defend yourselves!”
Johan and Rachelle skipped toward him with smiles on their faces, waving eagerly. “Thomas,” Rachelle called. “There you are.”
“Rachelle!” Thomas rushed up to her. “Quick, you have to protect yourself.” He glanced up the hill and saw the wall of bats above the crest. Thousands of the black creatures suddenly broke rank and poured into the valley.
It was too late. There was no way they could defend themselves. These weren’t the ghosts with phantom claws that they had learned how to combat with fancy aerial kicks. Like Tanis, they would be pummeled by the bloodthirsty beasts.
Thomas whirled around and grabbed both of their hands. “Come with me!” he demanded, sprinting down the path. “Hurry!”
“Look!” Johan yelled. He’d seen the coming Shataiki. Thomas glanced over and saw the boy’s wide eyes looking back at the beasts now descending on the village.
“The Thrall!” he cried. “The Thrall. Run!”
Rachelle sprinted by his side, face white. “Elyon!” she cried. “Elyon, save us!”
“Run!” Thomas yelled.
Johan kept wanting to turn around, forcing Thomas to repeatedly jerk him back down the path. “Faster! We have to get into the Thrall!”
Thomas urged them up the stairs, two at a time. Behind them, screams filled the village. “Don’t look back! Go, go, go!” He shoved them roughly through the doors and spun back.
No fewer than ten thousand of the beasts dived into the village, claws extended. The screams from the villagers were overwhelmed by a high-pitched shrieking from thousands of open Shataiki throats. Talons swiped like sickles; fangs gnashed ravenously in anticipation of meat.
To his right, a Shataiki descended on a young boy fleeing down the street. He fell to the ground, smothered by a dozen bats, who sank their talons into his soft flesh. The boy’s screams became one with the Shataiki’s shrieks.
Not ten paces from the boy, a woman flailed her arms wildly at two beasts who had attached themselves to her head and gnawed madly at her skull. The woman whirled about, screaming, and despite the blood covering her face, Thomas recognized her. Karyl.
Thomas groaned in shock. All around the village, the helpless fell easy prey to the bloodthirsty Shataiki.
And still they came. The sky was now black with a hundred thousand of the creatures, streaming over the hills into the valley. He knew it was this way in every village.
Thomas slammed the large doors shut, gasping. He threw the large bolt and turned to Rachelle and Johan, who stood on the green floor, holding each other’s hands innocently.
“What’s happening?” Rachelle asked in a trembling voice, her wide green eyes fixed on Thomas. “We have to fight back!”
Thomas ran across the floor and shut the rear doors that led to an outer entrance.
“Are these the only two entrances?” he demanded.
“What is—”
“Tell me!”
“Yes!”
No Shataiki could get into the Thrall without breaking down the doors. He turned back.
“Listen to me.” He paused to catch his wind. “I know this is going to sound strange, and you may not know what I’m talking about, but we’ve been attacked.”
“Attacked?” quipped Johan. “Really attacked?”
“Yes, really attacked,” he said. “The Shataiki have left the black forest.”
“That’s . . . that’s not possible!” Rachelle said.
“Yes, it is. Possible and real.”
Thomas walked over to the front doors and tested them. He could barely hear the sounds of the attack beyond the walls of the Thrall. Rachelle and Johan remained still, hand in hand, at the center of the jade floor where they had danced a thousand dances. They had no way to understand what was really happening outside. They had no idea how dramatically the colorful world they had known so well just a few moments ago had forever changed.
Thomas
walked up to them and put his arms on their shoulders. And then the adrenaline that had rushed him through the forest and into this great hall evaporated. The full realization of the devastation racking the land beyond the Thrall’s heavy wooden doors descended upon him like ten tons of mortar. He hung his head and tried to remain strong.
Rachelle placed a hand on his hair and stroked it slowly. “It is all right, Thomas,” she said. “Don’t cry like this. Everything will be just fine. The Gathering is in a short time.”
Like a flood, despair swept through Thomas’s chest. They were doomed. He strained to maintain a semblance of control. How could Tanis have been deceived so easily? What a fool he’d been to even listen to the black beast! To even go near the black forest.
“Please, don’t cry,” Johan said. “Please, don’t cry, Thomas. Rachelle is right. Everything will be fine.”
An agonizing half hour crept by. Rachelle and Johan tried to ask him questions about their plight. “Where are the others? What will we do now? How long will we stay here? Where do these black creatures live?”
Each time, Thomas shrugged them off as he paced about the great room. The jade hall would become their coffin. If he did answer Rachelle or Johan, it was with a nondescript putoff. How could he explain this betrayal to them? He couldn’t. They would have to discover it themselves. For now, their only objective was to survive.
At first the Shataiki attacks on the outer Thrall came in waves, and at one point it sounded as though every last one of the dirty beasts had descended on the dome, beating and scratching furiously to gain entrance. But they could not.
An hour must have passed before Thomas noticed the change. They had sat in silence for a good ten minutes without an attack.
He stood shakily to his feet and crossed the floor to the front doors. Silence. The bats either had left or waited quietly on the roof outside, waiting to attack the moment the doors opened.
Thomas faced Rachelle and Johan, who still, after all this time, stood in the center of the green floor. It was time to tell them.
“Tanis drank the water,” he said simply.
