Beyond earth’s sun and the heavens’ galaxies of suns, beyond the wall of ice and the mighty deep whose depths are beyond measuring, there was singing in the third heaven. The Time had come round again!
DARKNESS BLANKETED THE JUNGLE, muffling every sound. By ones, twos, and threes, from the youngest to the oldest, the Yanoako assembled in the ceremonial area. No one spoke. They brought no weapons, no provisions, only themselves and their faith in the invisible God who commanded that tonight they make their journey into the forbidden land.
Jerry stood beside Ruth at the edge of the gathering, glad Neisen had not finished dressing when he left the hut. His delay gave him his first opportunity to be alone with Ruth since arriving at mid-day.
Like last night, rings of stars had begun rising above the trees surrounding the village then rotating around the core of darkness overhead. Overwhelmed by the unfolding scene, she and Jerry stood holding hands and said nothing for several minutes.
“Ruth.” Jerry spoke without taking his eyes off the swirling stars. “Can I tell you something, something I’m just now admitting to myself?”
Ruth looked at Jerry’s shadowy profile highlighted by the backdrop of stars. “Sure, if I can ask you something, too.”
Jerry shifted his gaze to Ruth’s upturned face. “It sounds crazy,” he began, as if feeling in the dark for the right words. “The last thing I want to do is sound super religious, because you know I’m not.”
Ruth heard the struggle in his voice.
“Today when Akhu spoke of God as his Father, I finally understood what I’d missed all these years. I’ve played a seeing is believing game with God, waiting for Him to answer all my questions before I trusted Him. Akhu helped me see believing is seeing.”
He paused as if waiting for Ruth’s confirmation.
Instead, she simply squeezed his hand, not wanting to distract from what she knew was a sacred moment.
Finally, he blurted out a conviction he could not contain any longer. “Ruth, I see something I’ve never seen before.”
“What is it Jerry?”
“Out of contact you probably don’t know all the disasters that are shaking the world; bomb blasts killing millions, our freedom lost, financial collapse, people in a panic heading for the hills.”
“I’ve only heard a little, but what is it you see?”
“I believe with all this happening, Jesus is coming soon.”
Ruth’s heart leaped. Thank you, Lord, she prayed silently, for answering my prayers. She squeezed Jerry’s hand even tighter. “I do, too,” she whispered as she sought his eyes and kissed him with a passion, until now, reserved for a calling greater than life itself.
“I don’t mean soon, like twenty or fifty years from now or after we have seen and done everything and squeezed life so dry we’re ready to discard it anyway.”
Jerry’s eyes probed Ruth’s for understanding. He drew her even closer and whispered, “I mean soon, Ruth, like real soon, like any moment.”
“Jerry,” she replied, “last night as I watched the spinning stars I had the same feeling, one I realized had been growing in my mind for nearly a year.” Tears reflected the starlight making her face appear to glow as she spoke.
“A feeling like we’re caught in a swift current…about to be carried over a giant waterfall?” he murmured.
“Exactly. I think Father Alfonso, the Catholic Priest who keeps in radio contact with me, feels it too. On the radio yesterday, he said he believes anxiety is giving the Western world a nervous breakdown.”
“It’ll get worse before it gets better.” Again, Jerry remembered the terrible scene on Calibogue Sound, the horror of Abelard’s transformation.
“Remember all the plans we had to visit faraway places together?” he asked..
“This may be our first and last faraway place,” Ruth said as her eyes swept the heavens now ablaze with a whirlpool of stars that clearly outlined the mighty deep at its center.
At that moment, only God knew that as Jerry and Ruth held each other close, the sun, whether overhead or hidden by darkness, like a flickering candle, was suddenly extinguished. But had they known, how could they have comprehended the power that plucked it from the heavens or the hands that folded space in such a way so that everywhere on earth everyone saw the same swirling rings of stars, the same gaping mouth of darkness.
“Aren’t you afraid of snake bites?”
Ruth and Jerry had not noticed when Neisen joined them at the edge of the crowd.
“Hardly ready for a trek through the jungle,” he observed, pointing at their walking shoes and bare ankles.
“This is all I have,” Ruth replied. “But look at the Yanoako. We’re a lot better protected than they are. I notice you came well prepared,” she added dryly, giving Neisen a quick onceover. Calf-high boots, heavy-duck hiking pants, a safari hat, shirt and jacket. He certainly has it all together, she thought, noticing that Jerry was also eyeing the professor’s Indiana Jones get-up as well.
An Elder approached and whispered, “Teacher, Akhu calls.” He gestured toward Jerry and Neisen. “All of you.”
“Are you ready for our journey?” Ruth asked holding out her hand to Jerry.
“As long as you’re with me,” he said, giving her that boyish grin she remembered.
Neither noticed Neisen’s face cloud as he fell in behind them.
The tribe parted as the Elder guided them to the ceremonial area where Akhu stood waiting. Only his height made him distinguishable from the hundred or more who crowded the small space.
As they broke clear of the inner circle, Neisen saw the stone clutched in Akhu’s hand.
“Little sister,” he said as Ruth walked up beside him, “Shi calls, and now we must follow.”
For the first time since Ruth had known him, she heard emotion in his voice.
“Your people have waited a long time, haven’t they?” she asked gently.
“So long,” he replied with a sigh.
Like the other men, he wore only his loincloth Ruth saw there were no ceremonial markings on his body and even his precious Stone of Memory was absent from around his neck, replaced now by Neisen’s talisman he clutched in his hand. The other men’s bodies were as his; no feathered halos on their heads or quills in their lips, even the small fetish bags many wore around their necks were gone.
Akhu read her questioning look and gestured toward those around him. “We go to Father Shi just as we came into the world…with nothing.” Then he looked directly at her. “Now pray for us, little sister.”
Jerry did not understand her words, but as Ruth and the others about them bowed their heads, their meaning became clear.
“The Lord is my shepherd…I shall not want…he makes me lie down in green pastures…” Though her words were in the Yanoako tongue, their cadence told him she was probably quoting the Twenty-third Psalm.
Suddenly he realized he understood perfectly what Ruth was saying. The realization came as a high voltage jolt to his spirit, bringing even more assurance he was exactly where God wanted him to be.
“He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
The words reinforced Jerry’s with a newfound faith in Christ. We are about to go through a valley not into a box canyon, he realized, along a path leading to something, to Someone, wonderful! And, if death overtakes us on the way? It will only be a passing shadow. “…and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
As Ruth finished praying, Jerry opened his eyes. The Yanoako were pointing to the stars.
The stars! Ruth, Neisen, and Jerry gasped, unable to find words. No longer a swirling whirlpool, they had reformed into a blazing, comet-like hand pointing eastward.
To the house of the Lord! The look of rapture on Ruth’s face told Jerry the same thought had seized her.
Neisen had not taken his eyes off Akhu while Ruth was praying. He watched the hand in which he clutched the stone and saw him raise it toward the stars as she finished. Though his action produced no feeling of physical movement, Neisen had an immediate sense of dislocation.
Jerry felt it too. He looked across the courtyard toward the huts. They were gone. He turned toward the forest and as he did, it dissolved before his eyes. Looking down, he realized even the ground beneath him had vanished. Except for an awareness of Ruth and the others nearby, he felt completely detached from everything physical.
“Look!” Ruth’s shout of rapturous wonderment broke the silence engulfing them as she pointed again toward the heavens.
The stars had reformed again into a corridor of shimmering lights that were no longer far away but almost close enough to touch.
“Our pillar of fire,” Ruth said joyfully. In the starlight, she saw Akhu, too, was smiling.
For Neisen, Ruth’s words and his feeling of detachment from the physical world were having a different effect. His security rested on men and things. Their loss created an immediate sense of unease that, like dark waves, lapped at the underpinning of his confidence. He reached inside his jacket and caressed the pistol in his shoulder holster. The cold steel was a comfort, something solid, something real he could still touch.
Without any sensation of movement, the earth tilted, and they glided silently through the corridor of stars.