:-) :-)
continued.....
PROLOGUE
Bahia, Brazil
"Dr. Jonathan X, the director of the National Museum of Natural History, realizes the birth is the fulfillment of an ancient African prophecy. He wants to reunite the baby with the keepers of the prophecy. The Catholic Church, the CIA, a large diamond company, and his academic rival would all sooner see him, and the child, dead."
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Here goes....
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Come! Listen to the old stories. You have been chosen to carry them on.
"No!" She protested silently to the voices clamoring inside her head, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping to choke them off.
"Perhaps you will bear the sacred Child."
"Not me!" She threw her head back, and looked up defiantly.
Then she felt herself slowly collapse, her head slumping to her chest, her eyes dropping toward the ground. "
If only the voices would stop. . . Surely, Father Bartolomeu will know what I must do."
A door on the other side of the confessional booth opened, then closed with a sharp crack. The rickety wooden frame of the small enclosure shuddered, jangling her raw nerves. She waited, listened to the taps of footsteps, the ruffling of fabric, and the "ting ting" of the silver cross dangling around the priest’s neck.
"Father, forgive me for I have sinned," she blurted out.
She could wait no more. She heard her own voice, thin and unsteady, hovering just above her tears. She fought back the fatigue of several nights of little sleep. And though she ached in spirit and in flesh, she pursed the fingers of her right hand tightly, bowed her head, and etched a cross in the air over her chest.
"Yes, my child, what would you like to confess?" Serene and reassuring, Father Bartolomeu’s voice floated to her past the grated opening in the fragile wall that separated heaven and earth.
Neither heaven nor earth seemed safe. They will come after me, she thought. Through the tattered pillow under her knees, she felt the wooden groove worn out by all who had kneeled for forgiveness from this spot.
"I have given birth to a boy," her throat tightened, "but I am not married."
She clutched the sleeping baby to her full breasts, fearful of its destiny and her own. The strange new scents of her infant’s body mingled with the tiny church’s old familiar smells of must, incense and candle wax. For years she had struggled against the "old stories," trying to throw them off, until she gazed upon the baby that had come from her womb.
"God loves you." She heard the priest bestow his blessing in Portuguese. "Know that you are forever married in Holy Spirit to the Almighty Father, God. Raise your son as a child of the Church. Come, let us pray."
Her heart beat faster, the pounding rushing into her ears. How can I make him understand? In her mind, she heard the voices of the "old ones" herald her as one of them, though only a child at the time. She remembered them proclaim her dark skin, full lips, wide nose and tightly curled hair, marked her forever as a reborn spirit of the Africans first brought to Brazil in shackles and chains.
She shook her head back and forth, trying to dislodge their voices.
If you know the Way of the Sign, then you know the Way of God. The old ones kept a sacred Sign hidden in their hearts. Even when they were captured, they carried this Sign with them. They drew it wherever they went to remember the old stories. And of all the old stories, the most sacred was the legend of the Child, a redeemer bearing this Sign on his skin. This story nurtured the old ones through the long, dark years of their bondage. They spoke of the story only in secret, passing it on from one generation to the next, as we now pass it on to you. This story foretold of a day when that child would be born. Perhaps it is you who will bear the sacred Child.
"No! Please! No!" She begged without speaking.
"Father, there is more," she whispered hoarsely, staring at the grating and then hesitating.
Should I say? Won’t the "old ones" already know?
She had seen it before; witnessed them foretelling the future after inhaling their sacred smoke.
"Yes, my child." The calm certainty of his voice only kindled her fear.
She knew all the answers were not inscribed in his holy book.
"My son was born with . . ." She trembled, struggling to unleash the dreaded words, fearful the truth would haunt her and her son forever.
"He was born with . . . with the Sign." She wept openly.
She was only fifteen, too young, she thought, too young to sacrifice herself and her baby to the prophecies of a nearly forgotten time, still dancing around the fires in the minds of old women and men. They will come after my child and me.
"I do not understand?" the priest intoned.
She could find no words to convey to him the power of prophecies older than his own.
"Look!" She stripped the baby’s blanket away and thrust his small brown back into the metal-framed portal.
The startled child awoke screaming, but she held him against the cold black bars.
"Dear God!" She heard the priest cry out.
She watched his long, pale fingers slip between the iron bars to rub her newborn’s skin.
"It’s perfectly symmetrical. . . a cross. . . circles at each end," he gasped.
She snatched the child away, cradling him, rocking her baby back and forth, and sobbing softly.
"Smooth skin!" She listened as the priest murmured astonishingly. "Not a tattoo nor a scar. . . Only God knows why your baby was born with this mark, my child. You must return with your baby later today."
He pressed his face against the metal bars. She moved back, covering her own face with her arm, terror flattening her body against the opposing wall. Why does he wish to see me? Why does he want me to return with my baby?
"Together we will call the archbishop and seek guidance for you and your son. Now, let us pray."
She heard the priest adjusting his position, making ready for the age-old act.
"In Nominee Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen—" The prayer began, but today the strange words brought none of their usual comfort.
He switched to Portuguese.
"I believe in God the Almighty Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son—"
She feared the priest’s heaven did not have room for more than one son born of the Sign of God.
The Church will track us down to protect their Child against mine. She felt dizzy. Her head swam with the voices teeming inside. Her baby shrieked, and she knew then that she could not pray.
She rose quickly, spinning her child in cloth, and slinging him behind her back. Pushing open the blood-red curtains, she fled down the threadbare, carpeted altar steps, over the cracked stone floor, and past the aging pews. Rushing out of the church’s timbered portals, she encountered the Virgin Mary, whose sad eyes, cast in marble, looked down upon a dead, crucified son. Maria turned away from the statue, praying as she ran that the same fate did not await her and her son.
"My blessed child." She ran from Father Bartolomeu’s voice.
"My blessed child." She ran from its echo, ricocheting off the empty hallowed walls.
"Come back, do not fear God’s will . . . Come back, do not fear God’s will."
But she had already gone beyond his voice and its echo, both now drowned out by the buzzing of insects and calling of birds waking to a tropical dawn.
*****
He lay hidden in the shadows outside the church, for it fell to him to confirm the birth of the Child. He watched as she flew by like a wild bird with her young under wing, unaware of a hunter’s presence. He did not rush to follow. A scent, a distant echo, a broken twig were all a patient hunter needed to follow her trail. He would wait for now, trusting his hunter’s sense to know when he should act.
*****
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SHINTO -
06-24-2002, 02:45 PM
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