by Ted Dekker
And Johan—it was the same with him!
Thomas turned around and looked at his own arm. Dry. No pain, just bone dry. The nausea in his gut swelled.
“Eat? Don’t you want to go to the lake first?”
He waited for a response, afraid to face them. Afraid to look into their eyes. Afraid to ask whether his eyes were also gray saucers.
They weren’t responding. See, they were afraid too. They’d seen his eyes and were stunned to dumbness. They stood on the steps of the Thrall, ashamed and silent. Thomas certainly felt—
He heard a loud smacking sound and spun around, fearing bats. But it wasn’t bats. It was Rachelle and Johan. They’d descended the steps and were stuffing some fruit he hadn’t seen into their mouths.
Whose fruit? Everything else here appeared to be dead.
Teeleh’s.
“Wait!” He took the steps in long leaps, rushed over to Rachelle, and ripped the fruit from her mouth.
She whirled around and struck him, her hand flexed firm and her fingers curved to form a claw. “Leave me!” she snarled, spewing juice.
Thomas staggered in shock. He touched his cheek and brought his hand away bloody. Rachelle snatched up another fruit and shoved it into her mouth.
He shifted his gaze to Johan, who ignored them totally. Like a ravenous dog intent on a meal, he greedily chewed the flesh of a fruit.
Thomas backed to the steps. This couldn’t be happening. Not to Johan, of all people. Johan was the innocent child who just yesterday had walked around the village in a daze, lost in thoughts about diving into Elyon’s bosom. And now this?
And Rachelle. His dearest Rachelle. Beautiful Rachelle, who could spend countless hours dancing in the arms of her beloved Creator. How could she have so easily turned into this snarling, desperate animal with dead eyes and flaking skin?
A flurry of wings startled Thomas. He spun his head to the blackened entrance of the Thrall. Michal sat perched on the railing.
“Michal!”
Thomas bounded up the steps. “Thank goodness! Thank goodness, Michal! I . . .” Tears blurred his vision. “It’s terrible! It’s . . .” He turned to Rachelle and Johan, who were making quick work of the fruit scattered below.
“Look at them!” he blurted out, flinging an arm in their direction. “What’s happening?” Even as he said it, he felt a sudden desire to cool his own throat with the fruit.
Michal stared ahead, regarding the scene serenely. “They are embracing evil,” he said quietly.
Thomas felt himself begin to calm. The fruit looked exactly like any fruit they’d eaten at a table set by Karyl. Intoxicating, sweet. He shivered with growing desperation. “They’ve gone mad,” he said in a low voice.
“Perceptive. They’re in shock. It won’t always be this bad.”
“Shock?” Thomas heard himself say it, but his eyes were on the last piece of fruit, which both Rachelle and Johan were heading for.
“Shock of the most severe nature,” Michal said. “You’ve tasted the fruit before. Its effect isn’t so shocking to you, but don’t think you’re any different from them.”
Johan reached the fruit first, but his taller sister quickly towered over him. She put one hand on her hip and shoved the other at the fruit. “It’s mine!” she screamed. “You have no right to take what is mine. Give it to me!”
“No!” Johan screamed, his eyes bulging from a beet-red face. “I found it. I’ll eat it!” Rachelle leaped on her younger brother with nails extended.
“They’re going to kill each other,” Thomas said. It occurred to him that he was actually less horrified than amused. The realization frightened him.
“With their bare hands? I doubt it. Just keep them away from anything that can be used as a weapon.” The Roush looked at them with a blank stare. “And get them to the lake as soon as you can.”
Rachelle and Johan separated and circled each other warily. From the corner of his eyes, Thomas saw a small black cloud approaching. But he kept his eyes on the fruit in Johan’s fist. He really should run down there and take the fruit away himself. They’d eaten more than enough. Right?
Thomas cast a side glance at Michal. The Roush had his eyes on the sky. “Remember, Thomas. The lake.” He leaped into the air and swept away.
“Michal?” Thomas glanced at the sky that had interested the Roush.
The black cloud swept in over blackened trees. Shataiki!
“Rachelle!” he screamed. These black beasts terrified him more now than they had in the black forest.
“Rachelle!” He bounded down the stairs and seized first Rachelle and then Johan by their arms, nearly jerking them from their feet. He glanced at the skyline, surprised at how close the Shataiki had come. Their shrieks of delight echoed through the valley.
Rachelle and Johan had seen, too, and they ran willingly. But their strength was gone, and Thomas had to practically drag them up the stairs into the Thrall. Even with Rachelle finally pulling free and stumbling up the steps on her own, they just managed to flop into the dark Thrall and shove the doors closed when the first Shataiki slammed into the heavy wood. Then they came, shrieking and beating, one after another.
Thomas scrambled back, saw the door was secure, and dropped to his seat, panting. Rachelle and Johan lay unmoving to his right. He had no idea how to follow Michal’s last request. It would be hard enough to sneak undetected to the lake by himself. With Rachelle and Johan in their present catatonic state, it would be impossible.
Neither of them stirred in the Thrall’s dim light. The once brilliant green floor was now a dark slab of cold wood. The tall pillars now towered like black ghosts in the shadows. Only the weak light filtering in through the still-translucent dome allowed Thomas to see at all.
He rolled over and pushed himself to his feet. The Shataiki still slammed unnervingly against the door, but the period between hits began to lengthen. He doubted they could find a way to break into the building. But it wasn’t the Shataiki he feared most at the moment. No, it was the two humans at his feet who sent shivers up his spine. And himself. What was happening to them?
The fruit in the storage room. Thomas scrambled to his feet and pounded down the steps. Had the air destroyed that fruit as well? Actually, now that he thought about it, the fruit in the forest had dropped to the ground as he ran by, but it hadn’t turned black. Not right away.
He slammed into the door and pulled up. This door had been closed before they’d opened the main Thrall doors. If he opened it, would the air that now filled the Thrall destroy the fruit?
He would have to take that chance. He threw the door open, stepped in, and slammed it behind him. The jar stood against the far wall. He bounded over, grabbed one fruit out, and immediately stuffed rags in the top. He had no clue if this would work, but nothing else came to mind.
Thomas lifted the one red fruit up and blew out a lungful of air.
Bad air, he thought. Too late.
The fruit didn’t wilt in his hand. How long would it last?
He shoved the fruit into his mouth and bit deep. The juice ran over his tongue, his chin. It slipped down his throat.
The relief was instantaneous. Gentle spasms ran through his stomach. Thomas dropped to his knees and tore into the sweet flesh.
He’d eaten half the fruit before remembering Rachelle and Johan. He grabbed an orange fruit from the jar, stuffed the rag back into its neck, and tore up the stairs.
Rachelle and Johan still lay like limp rags.
He slid to his knees and rolled Rachelle onto her back. He placed the fruit directly over her lips and squeezed. The skin of the orange fruit split. A trickle of juice ran down his finger and spilled onto her parched lips. Her mouth filled with the liquid and she moaned. Her neck arched as the nectar worked into her throat. In a long, slow exhale, she pushed air from her lungs and opened her eyes.
Eyeing the fruit in Thomas’s hand with a glint of desperation, she reached up, snatched the fruit, and began devouring. Thomas chu
ckled and pressed his half-eaten fruit into Johan’s mouth. The moment the young boy’s eyes flickered open, he grabbed the fruit and bit deeply. Without speaking they ravenously consumed flesh, seeds, and juice.
If Thomas wasn’t mistaken, some color had returned to their skin, and the cuts they had sustained during their argument were not as red. The fruit still had its power.
“How do you guys feel?” he asked, glancing from one to the other. They both stared at him with dull eyes. Neither spoke.
“Please, I need you with me here. How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Johan said. Rachelle still did not respond.
“We have more, maybe a dozen or so.”
Still no response. He had to get them to the lake. And to do that he had to keep himself sane.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. He left them cross-legged on the floor and returned to the basement, where he ate another whole fruit, a delicious white nectar he thought was called a sursak.
Eleven left. At least they weren’t spoiling as quickly as he’d feared. If Rachelle and Johan showed any further signs of deterioration, he would give them more, but there was no guarantee they would find any more. They couldn’t waste a single one.
The next few hours crept by with scarcely a word among them. The attacks at the door had stopped completely. Thomas tried his patience with futile attempts to lure them into discussing possible courses of action now that they had found a temporary haven from the Shataiki. But only Johan engaged him, and then in a way that made Thomas wish he hadn’t.
“Tanis was right,” Johan bit off. “We should have launched a preemptive expedition to destroy them.”
“Has it occurred to you that that’s what he was doing? But it obviously didn’t work, did it?”
“What do you know? He would have called me to go with him if he was going to battle. He promised me I could lead an attack! And I would have too!”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Johan.”
“I wish we would have followed Tanis. Look where you got us!”
Thomas didn’t want to think where this line of reasoning would lead the boy. He turned away and broke off the conversation.
Two hours into the unbearable silence, Thomas noticed the change in Rachelle and Johan. The gray pallor was returning to their skin. They grew more restless with each passing hour, scratching at their skin until it bled. In another hour, tiny flaking scales covered their bodies, and Johan had rubbed his left arm raw. Thomas gave them each another fruit. Another one for him. They were now down to eight. At this rate, they wouldn’t last the day.
“Okay, we’re going to try to make it to the lake.”
He grabbed both by their tunics and helped them to their feet. They hung their heads and shuffled to the back entrance without protesting. But there didn’t seem to be a drop of eagerness in them. Why so reluctant to return to the Elyon they once were so desperate for?
“Now, when we get outside, I don’t want any fighting or anything stupid. You hear? It doesn’t sound like there are any black bats out there, but we don’t want to attract any, so keep quiet.”
“You don’t have to be so demanding,” Rachelle said. “It’s not like we’re dying or anything.”
It was the first full sentence she had spoken for hours, and it surprised Thomas. “That’s what you think? The fact is, you’re already dead.” She frowned but didn’t argue.
Thomas pressed his ear against the door. No signs of Shataiki. He eased the door open, still heard nothing, and stepped out.
They stood on the threshold and looked over the empty village for the second time that day. The bats had left.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They walked through the village and over the hill in silence. An eerie sense of death hung in the air as they walked past the tall trees looming black and bare against the sky. The bubbling sound of running water was gone. A muddy trench now ran close to the path where the river from the lake had flowed. Had they waited too long? It had been only a few hours since Michal urged him to go to the lake.
Lions and horses no longer lined the road. Blackened flowers drooped to the ground, giving the appearance that a slight wind might shatter their stems and send them crumbling to join the burned grass on the ground. No fruit. None at all that Thomas could see. Had the Shataiki taken it?
Thomas stayed to the rear of Rachelle and Johan, carrying the jar of fruit under one arm and a black stick he had picked up in the other hand. His sword, he thought wryly. He expected a patrol of beasts to swoop down from the sky and attack them at any moment, but the overcast sky hung quietly over the charred canopy. With one eye on the heavens and the other on the incredible changes about him, Thomas herded Rachelle and Johan up the path.
It wasn’t until they approached the corner just before the lake that Johan finally broke the silence. “I don’t want to go, Thomas. I’m afraid of the lake. What if we drown in it?”
“Drown in it? Since when have you drowned in any lake? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard.”
They continued hesitantly around the next bend. The view that greeted them stopped all three in their tracks.
Only a thread of water dribbled over the cliff into a small grayish pond below. The lake had been reduced to a small pool of water. Large white sandy beaches dropped a hundred feet before meeting the pool. No animals of any kind were in sight. Not a single green leaf remained on the dark circle of trees now edging the dwindling pool.
“Dear God. Oh, dear God. Elyon.” Thomas took a step forward and stopped.
“Has he left?” Rachelle asked, looking around.
“Who?” Thomas asked absently.
She motioned to the lake.
“Look.” Johan had fixed his eyes on the lip of the cliff.
There, on the high rock ledge, stood a single lion, gazing out over the land.
Thomas’s heart bolted. A Roshuim? One of the lionlike creatures from the upper lake? And what of the upper lake? What of the boy?
The magnificent beast was suddenly joined by another. And then a third, then ten, and then a hundred white lions, filing into a long line along the crest of the dried falls.
Thomas turned to the others and saw their eyes peeled wide.
The beasts at the head of the falls were shifting uneasily now. The line split in two.
The boy stepped into the gap, and Thomas thought his heart stopped beating at first sight of the boy’s head. The lions crumpled to their knees and pressed their muzzles flat on the stone surface. And then the boy’s small body filled the position reserved for him at the cliff ’s crest. The boy stood barefooted on the rock, dressed only in a loincloth.
For a few moments, Thomas forgot to breathe.
The entire line of beasts bowed their heads in homage to the boy. The child slowly turned and gazed over the land below him. His tiny slumped shoulders rose and fell slowly. A lump rose in Thomas’s throat.
And then the boy’s face twisted with sorrow. He raised his head, opened his mouth, and cried to the sky.
The long line of beasts dropped flat to their bellies, like a string of dominoes, sending an echo of thumps over the cliff. A chorus of bays ran down the line.
The air filled with the boy’s wail. His song. A long, sustained note that poured grief into the canyon like molten lead.
Thomas dropped to his knees and began gasping for air. He’d heard a simi-lar sound before, in the lake’s bowels, when Elyon’s heart was breaking in red waters.
The boy sank to his knees.
Tears sprang into Thomas’s eyes, blurring the image of the gathered beasts. He closed his eyes and let the sobs come. He couldn’t take this. The boy had to stop.
But the boy didn’t stop. The cry ran on and on with unrelenting sorrow.
The wail fell to a whimper—a hopeless little sound that squeaked from a paralyzed throat. And then it dwindled into silence.
Thomas lifted his head. The beasts on the cliff fell silent but remained p
rone. The boy’s chest heaved now, in long, slow gasps through his nostrils. And then, just as Thomas began to wonder whether the show of sorrow was over, the small boy’s eyes flashed open. He stood to his feet and took a step forward.
The boy threw his fists into the air and let loose a high-pitched shriek that shattered the still morning air. Like the wail of a man forced to watch his children’s execution, with a red face and bulging eyes, screaming in rage. But all from the mouth of the small boy standing high on the cliff.
Thomas trembled in agony and threw himself forward on the sand. The shriek took the form of a song and howled through the valley in long, dreadful tones. Thomas clutched his ears, afraid his head might burst. Still the boy pushed his song into the air with a voice that Thomas thought filled the entire planet.
And then, suddenly, the boy fell silent, leaving only the echoes of his voice to drift through the air.
For a moment, Thomas could not move. He slowly pushed himself up to his elbows and lifted his head. He ran a forearm across his eyes to clear his vision. The child stood still for a few moments, staring ahead as though dazed, and then turned and disappeared. The beasts clamored to their feet and backed away from the cliff until only a deserted gray ledge ran along the horizon. Silence filled the valley once again.
The boy was gone.
Thomas scrambled to his feet, panicked. No. No, it couldn’t be! Without looking at the others, he sprinted down the white bank and into the dwindling water.
The intoxication was immediate. Thomas plunged his head under the water and gulped deeply. He stood up, threw his head back, and raised two fists in the air. “Elyon!” he yelled to the overcast sky.
Johan ran only a step ahead of Rachelle, down the bank and facefirst into the water. Now numb with pleasure, Thomas watched the two dunk their heads under the surface like desperately thirsty animals. The contrast between the terror that consumed the land and this remnant of Elyon’s potent power, left as a gift for them, was staggering. He flopped facedown into the pool.
