Changing the Prophecy Chapter Ten

 

Chapter 10 North Coast

Jasper crept silently through the undergrowth and toward the compound with Jack floating alongside and Doshmisi stepping softly behind him. They managed to work their way around the beach and close enough to the compound for them to catch a clear glimpse of the activity inside. Crouching in a dense collection of young tree sprouts, cottonwoods, and brush, they observed. A few women and many children scurried about within the confines of the fenced area. The women spoke in small groups or tended campfires in front of the tents scattered throughout the enclosed encampment. The children ate by a campfire or played with one another in the open spaces between the tents and campfires. Many creatures in white jumpsuits, all equipped with guns of some kind, stood guard. A high fence topped with barbed wire encircled the compound. A group of women rounded up the children and herded them to a cluster of three tents. The babies and toddlers remained behind with their mothers.

“School,” Jack whispered. The children had gone to some type of school for the day. These women and children apparently lived in the compound, at least for the time being.

A group of men emerged from one of the buildings adjacent to the fenced area. Under heavy guard, they marched to the beach and boarded small boats, which headed out toward the oil derrick. After that, not much happened. Doshmisi tapped Jasper’s arm and whispered, “Let’s go back into the forest so we can talk.” Jasper turned and led them to a secluded and sheltered spot.

“Those people are being held prisoner,” Jasper said.

“But don’t you think it odd that their captors leave them to themselves to hold school and cook over their campfires and all that?” Doshmisi asked.

“They left the women and children to their own devices, but they took the men to that machine in the ocean,” Jasper pointed out.

“I recognize that machine,” Doshmisi told him. “We have them in the Farland. It’s pumping oil out of the ocean floor. How can I explain it? The oil under the ocean has a powerful energy locked in it; energy that can run machines without the need for batteries. In the Farland, lots of machines run on that kind of oil. I didn’t know you had that kind of oil here. But those creepy things in the white jumpsuits knew about it and they built that machine, as you call it, that oil pump, to extract the oil.” She had the feeling that if she thought on it long enough and hard enough she could figure out what was going on, but so far she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“If only we could find Mole and have a conversation with him,” Jasper wished.

“How can we do that without getting caught or even killed?” Doshmisi wondered. “If we get caught then we can’t help anyone trapped inside to escape.” Although, even if the creepy creatures captured them, she thought, they might still figure out a way to help the others escape, but it seemed unlikely.

“I wonder if they took Mole to that oil pump to work,” Jasper speculated.

“Watch,” Jack commented.

“Jack’s right,” Jasper said as Doshmisi nodded in agreement.

The three of them spent most of the day on their bellies in the brush, watching the compound. The children came out of the school tents for lunch, then went back in. The women tended the fires, talked with one another, cared for the littlest ones, and prepared food. In the evening, the boats returned from the oil pump and the guards marched the men into the compound at sunset, where they joined the women and children for the night. The guards dispersed. As Doshmisi, Jasper, and Jack observed attentively, the fence burst into glowing orange light.

“A heat boundary,” Jasper said.

“What’s that?” Doshmisi asked.

“Anyone who touches that fence will burn up instantly,” he explained.

“Not a wall,” Jack blurted excitedly. “Not a wall.”

“Not a wall?” Jasper repeated, puzzled.

“He means that you can see through it even though you can’t pass through it,” Doshmisi interpreted.

“Right, so that means?” Jasper scrunched his eyebrows together in concentration as he tried to understand.

“We can talk to them through it even though we can’t touch it. If we can sneak down there,” Doshmisi said, as she pointed toward the heat fence. “Almost all the guards have left. Couldn’t we sneak down there? Like over there?” Doshmisi indicated a spot where the bushes came close to the fence.

“Sneak. Talk,” Jack urged them.

They waited until the sun had set completely and then, under cover of darkness, Jasper led the way down the gentle sloping hillside to the compound and directly to the bushy area that Doshmisi had pointed out. The bushes concealed them where they squatted, close to the glowing fence, which cast a dim eerie light. No one inside the compound was near enough for them to safely call to them, but a group of children clustered around the entrance to a tent not far away. Jack picked up a round stone and threw it deftly between the wires of the fence so that it landed beside the ring of children. Several boys looked up curiously. Jack threw another stone. The boys whispered to each other anxiously. Jack threw a third stone that bounced into the fence and sizzled. Doshmisi glanced furtively along the fence line to see if any guards had noticed the sizzle. No guards saw it, but the cluster of boys did. They approached the fence cautiously.

Jasper whispered loudly, “Over here.”

The faces of the boys glowed with wonder in the orange light of the fence. None of them spoke.

“We’re friends,” Jasper whispered. “We want to help you escape. Do you know Mole? Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s here,” one of the children confirmed.

“Do you think you can bring him to us without attracting attention?”

“We can do it,” another child assured them determinedly.

“Tell him Jasper wants him to come to this spot without attracting notice.”

“We can find him,” the children promised.

“We won’t go anywhere unless the guards come,” Jasper told the boys. “But you mustn’t stand by the fence. If the guards see you, it will cause suspicion. Go back to what you were doing.” The children left the fence and while some of them continued playing as before, others faded into the encampment to find Mole.

They didn’t wait long. Mole appeared soon afterward. He brought a couple of boys with him and they squatted on the ground next to the fence, pretending to play a game with stones in the dirt. Mole focused on the children and did not so much as glance in the direction of Jasper, Doshmisi, and Jack.

“What you be doin’ here?” Mole asked, without looking up from the game.

“We came to find you,” Doshmisi replied.

At the sound of Doshmisi’s voice, Mole laughed softly, his dreadlocks quivering with his laughter. “Doshmisi,” he said softly with delight. “Yah mon, that be a good thing. The Four is come back.”

“It’s just me right now. I mean just me here,” Doshmisi told him.

“That be good enough for me for now,” Mole replied.

“What’s up?” Doshmisi asked. “Tell us quickly.”

“We’ll try to help you escape soon,” Jasper added.

“Escape be tricky,” Mole warned. “We have the children to consider. The Corportons took these women and children hostage…”

“Corportons?” Doshmisi asked.

“The creatures in the white jumpsuits. We call them Corportons. They kidnapped us along with the women and children. Sissrath has an agreement with them, to help them drill for the black oil under the ocean. They needed workers with skill to help them. That be us battery makers. The Corportons be clever. They force us battery makers to work because of the women and children hostages. If we don’t work or we refuse to do what they tell us, they will hurt the hostages.”

“Where did they come from? Why did they come here to drill for oil?” Doshmisi questioned Mole.

“They come from some other land far away where this black oil be extremely valuable. They have sophisticated tools that I have never seen. They sent out a universal search for the oil with one of their tools and it told them to come to Faracadar. So they came. They call the oil drill in the ocean the New Beginnings Well. They have a weapon that shoots a piece of metal and it can kill a person instantly. Terrible device.”

“We have these weapons in the Farland. We call them guns,” Doshmisi interjected.

Mole continued. “We must do as they say because we fear these guns. They plan to transport this oil to their land after they pump it from our ocean. Sometimes I imagine maybe I hear the ocean scream because it be drilled deep by that machine at the well.” Mole tapped his head with his middle finger, “But that scream be in my head. Not real. One thing I tell you for sure, mon, no good can come of this.”

“No good,” Doshmisi echoed.

“Why is Sissrath helping them? What does he get out of it?” Jasper asked.

“Prophecy,” Jack said, in his typically cryptic way. Doshmisi wished that once in a while he’d give a straight answer.

“Sissrath believes the land be destroyed soon. Be gone. The Corportons will take him away with them when they have all the oil they want. They talk about it at the well. They talk as if we battery makers be stones, not people; as if we can’t hear them. They promise Sissrath power in their land because of his talent for enchantment. He will escape with them before Faracadar be destroyed,” Mole informed them.

“Why does he think Faracadar will be destroyed?” Doshmisi demanded in alarm.

“Prophecy,” Jack repeated.

“I don’t know, mon,” Mole replied.

Jasper turned to Jack. “What prophecy, Jack? Did Sissrath hear a prophecy?”

“Prophecy from Khoum,” Jack stated earnestly.

“Yes, well that explains everything,” Jasper announced in exasperation.

“He be what he be, mon,” Mole reminded Jasper. “Don’t be getting angry with Jack. I need to go before the guards notice.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow night. Same time. Be here,” Jasper told Mole.

“I’ll try, mon.” Mole stood and walked back into the compound with the children.

After Mole left, the three renegades returned to the barn under cover of darkness. Doshmisi had picked a few apples earlier in the day and she cut them into pieces and fed them to Dagobaz while she pondered the information Mole had provided. Jack fell asleep instantly in the comfortable hay, exhausted from attempting to communicate his visionary thoughts and from climbing down to the compound and back.

“I keep thinking about this prophecy. Sissrath must have heard a prophecy about the destruction of the land,” Jasper said, his expressive brown eyes filled with worry.

“Possibly. Tell me what you know about this Khoum,” Doshmisi requested.

“They taught us about it in history class in school, but I can’t remember what they said. Something about a prophet and an enchanted book. I guess I should have paid closer attention to that lesson,” Jasper noted regretfully. “When I was in class, my mind wandered to the fields and forests, and the guiding skills I needed to learn.”

“Tomorrow morning I’ll talk to the trees,” Doshmisi promised. “Oil is dangerous stuff. I wish we had Denzel here. He would know more about oil wells and drilling for oil in the ocean. It scares me. I remember times when oil spilled into the water in the Farland and it killed a lot of sea creatures as well as birds. I hope these Corportons know what they’re doing out there at that New Beginnings Well. The Corportons have definitely not earned popularity points with the whales.”

“We’ll find a way to free Mole and the others. If the Corportons don’t have the battery makers to work for them then maybe they will have to stop drilling.” Jasper put his arms around Doshmisi and gave her a hug and then he kissed her lightly on the lips. She kissed him back. The kiss made her feel so good that she forgot about Mole, the New Beginnings Well, the Corportons, and pretty much everything else in the world, for a quick minute. But then Jasper released her. “G’night,” he said self-consciously as he flashed her his smile, that smile that lit up his face like the sun.

“G’night,” she echoed.

Jasper climbed into the hayloft with Jack and bedded down while Doshmisi curled up with Dagobaz in his stall, running her fingers through his beautiful dark mane while she thought about Mole, the Corportons, and the oil well.         

Doshmisi woke early, just as the first glimmer of dawn slipped through the cracks in the barn walls. She collected her belongings and put them quietly up in the hayloft with Jasper and Jack, who slept peacefully. She slipped out to the surrounding forest and proceeded purposefully into the heart of a stand of old trees, where she sat down on the mossy, leafy forest floor.

Safe in the embrace of the trees, she unbuckled the carry case that she wore around her waist and took out the herbal. She held the enchanted book in her lap and it opened to a page. On the page she read:  “Fear of change prevents creative thought. When hope explodes, take me to the water and start again from the beginning.” Doshmisi sighed. The herbal had her pretty worried. It seemed broken. She used to understand what it instructed her to do, but now it made no sense.

She shut the herbal and focused on her mission in the forest. She closed her eyes and visualized her spirit dancing to the tops of the trees, where it intertwined with the tree spirits. She cherished her ability to communicate with the trees in their way as perhaps the greatest gift she had received as the keeper of the Amulet of the Trees. She rejoiced with them in the beauty of the dewy fresh morning. Nothing loves a fresh new morning like a tree.

The trees had helped her solve problems in the past, so she placed a question to them in her heart. She asked them what was wrong with the herbal and if the strange words that appeared in the herbal connected to the New Beginnings Well, the Corportons, and a prophecy. She didn’t ask the question in words, but instead let the images of these things pass through her mind and out to the trees. She felt herself enveloped in the comforting embrace of the trees’ spirits and her amulet glowed warmly, emanating a green light. The image of her grandmother, Clover, came to her as it had at the Garden; and Clover appeared even more unwell than before. The trees still wanted her to go see Clover. She wondered if she had made a poor choice by coming to the North Coast before attending to her grandmother. But the trees did not seem to mind her choice. They were happy to have her among them. They distinctly planted in her mind the thought that everyone was needed for some task that lie ahead. Everyone needed to come together. Then she had the reassuring feeling that the whole confusing puzzle of circumstances and events would work out in the end, that just around the corner a perfectly wonderful resolution awaited, and that she would eventually find it, like finding a star buried under the hay in a barn, uncovering its unspeakable brilliance in a shining moment of unexpected discovery.

She opened her eyes and retreated from the heart of the forest with a welcome sense of calm. Her amulet no longer glowed. She patted the trunks of trees she passed as she walked back to rejoin the others. But her calm shattered as she neared the barn. A group of Corportons had gathered in a corral in front of the barn where they were attempting to control Dagobaz. They had thrown four lassoes around his neck and he rebelled against their efforts to tame him by alternately rearing on his hind legs and then pawing frantically at the ground. He snorted and screamed in outrage.

Doshmisi couldn’t bear to see him mistreated, but she didn’t dare reveal herself. One of the Corportons tried to throw a saddle across the frenzied horse’s back, but Dagobaz sidestepped the saddle and kicked at the Corporton. She wondered how the Corportons communicated with one another from inside the jumpsuits. They didn’t speak aloud so they either talked directly into each other’s brains with telepathy or they used some type of device embedded in their face masks to communicate. She wondered if they had ears.

One of the Corportons touched a metal rod to Dagobaz’s hind leg. The horse shrieked in pain and leapt forward. The Corporton continued to torture Dagobaz with the charge from the metal rod as he forced the horse forward onto a ramp that led into a round vehicle resembling an enormous golf ball on wheels. Every time the Corporton touched Dagobaz with the metal rod, the horse screamed in pain and moved forward. Tears streamed down Doshmisi’s cheeks as she observed helplessly from the shelter of the forest. The Corportons followed Dagobaz into the golf ball and folded up the ramp. Then the wheels folded into the golf ball and it flew into the sky where it soon disappeared over the trees.

Doshmisi sobbed after the Corportons left. Jasper and Jack emerged from the barn and hurried to her side.

“What happened?” Jasper asked as he gently pulled her to her feet and handed her a handkerchief from his pocket. Doshmisi wiped her tear-streaked cheeks and blew her nose.

“They hurt Dagobaz. I think they wanted to ride him, and that they were trying to break him. He fought them. They forced him into a flying machine by torturing him with electric shocks from a metal rod. It was horrible.” Doshmisi shuddered again at the recollection. “They left in the flying thing. Were you hiding in the hayloft? ”

“Yes. We heard them come and we burrowed into the straw. Luckily they didn’t think to search for anyone in the barn. They came for Dagobaz,” Jasper replied. “I bet they took him to the compound by the New Beginnings Well. That’s their base camp. We can try to free him when go to free Mole and the others.”

“That sounds great when you say it,” Doshmisi told him, with a sniffle, “but we don’t have a plan for how to free Mole and the others, let alone Dagobaz.”

Just then, Jack hopped on his skateboard, which instantly became a hoverboard under his feet as he floated above the ground. “Diversion,” Jack pronounced excitedly. “Diversion, diversion.” He swooped up into the air in a loop, kicking the board out from under his feet in a flip and then deftly landing back on it perfectly.

“Someone’s been practicing,” Doshmisi complimented the intuit.

Jack continued to swoop through the air like a large bird until Doshmisi could grab his attention and convince him to stop swooping and listen to her. “They have guns, Jack. Real guns that shoot bullets. They can shoot you out of the air in an instant. You’ll be no help to anybody dead.”

Jack drooped and shook his head from side to side. “Diversion coming,” he said, pointing out toward the ocean. The others ignored him and he shrugged, then popped back into the air to practice his skateboard moves.

“Mole knows the routine and how the Corportons do things at the compound,” Jasper said. “Mole’s resourceful and so are we. If we put our heads together, we can come up with something. We can at least get Mole out of there and then we can go back for the rest of them when we have reinforcements.”

“A nonviolent march won’t work against the Corportons,” Doshmisi pointed out. “They come from outside of Faracadar and they would kill every last one of us within gunshot range in a heartbeat.” The previous year, the Four had led a nonviolent march on Sissrath and had defeated him because the army had joined the people and turned against Sissrath. “I wish I could see what they look like under those jumpsuits,” she added. “If I could see them then I might figure out if they have a weakness that would work in our favor. They seem familiar to me but I can’t put my finger on why.”

“After nightfall, we’ll talk to Mole again. Maybe he has seen them without the jumpsuits and face masks,” Jasper said hopefully.

They spent the day close to the barn. Doshmisi went into the forest searching for food and came back with mannafruit, the apricot-sized lavender globes that tasted like whatever you imagined them to taste like when you took a bite. When you ate mannafruit, you had to feel grateful for the food, or else it tasted like sawdust. The mannafruit stayed good for weeks unopened, but once opened it went bad quickly. Because they filled you up with just a few bites, they made a terrific traveling food.

Doshmisi worried all day about Dagobaz. She wished the proud stallion would bend to the will of the Corportons and allow them to tame him for the time being so that they wouldn’t keep hurting him. Obviously they wanted to ride Dagobaz and he refused to allow them to do it. “They can’t tame you in your heart,” she whispered to Dagobaz, even though he could not hear her.

At twilight, Jasper, Doshmisi, and Jack once again went down to the compound. Doshmisi insisted that Jack wait at the edge of the forest and not come with them to the fence. She worried that he might try to do something crazy that would get him killed. He reluctantly agreed to remain behind while Jasper and Doshmisi crept into the undergrowth near the fence where they had talked to Mole the night before. Orange and pink light from the setting sun lit the clouds drifting over the ocean. The clouds slightly obscured the abundance of bright colorful stars that dotted the night sky. In a few minutes, only the light from the stars would remain visible as the sun’s rays faded completely.

Doshmisi saw Mole playing a jump rope game with a group of children. He and a woman turned a long rope while little girls chanted a rhyme and jumped together in rhythm. A few other children stood nearby and clapped to the rhyme. As she watched, the girls stopped jumping and Mole coiled up the rope. He lit a glow-lamp and walked over to the fence accompanied by a handful of children. They squatted down on the ground and proceeded to set up the game with the stones that they had played the previous evening. Without looking up from the game, ever so quietly, Mole spoke. “You be there, mon?”

“We’re here,” Jasper replied.

“I have hidden a tool I think will open the gate at the entrance,” Mole informed them. “But if I open the gate with all these guards around, they’ll shoot anyone who tries to leave. I wish we had an enchanter up in here. ”

“We could go get one,” Jasper suggested. “But that would take time.”

Suddenly the quiet of the night erupted with the piercing sound of a loud electronic blast in the form of Aretha Franklin singing about riding on the freeway of love in a pink Cadillac. The music emerged from Doshmisi’s backpack. The line from the song repeated in a loop as Doshmisi desperately fumbled with the front flap on her backpack, unbuckled it, and grabbed her cell phone, which she flipped open. The racket stopped instantly, but too late, for it had already alerted the Corportons, who descended rapidly.

“Who is this?” Doshmisi shouted into the phone furiously, while at the same time realizing that the situation was her own stupid fault for forgetting she had the phone in her backpack and forgetting to turn it off. But who would have imagined that the phone would work in Faracadar? It didn’t seem possible.

“Dosh? It’s me! Elena!”

“Why are you calling me? How are you calling me?” Doshmisi demanded.

“I have your number in my phone and we have this crystal thingy that Denzel…”

“Denzel? Are you in Faracadar?”

“Yeah, we’re at Big House City,” Elena informed her.

“Who is with you?” Doshmisi asked quickly as the Corportons closed in. She had to know that much at least from the crazy phone call before it ended.

“Maia, Denzel, and Honeydew.”

“And Sonjay?” Doshmisi asked. Time was short.

“No. We don’t know where he is,” Elena answered cheerfully, sounding thoroughly pleased with herself. “We thought he might be with you.”

Armed Corportons poured toward Doshmisi from all directions.

“I can’t talk right now. Tell Denzel the trees want us to go see Clover. Tell him Jasper and I will try to meet him at Clover’s. Tell him the Corportons have an oil well in the ocean at the North Coast and Mole is with us and…”

“Corportons?” Elena asked, uncertainly. “Jaspo? Clover?”

“This is really, really not a good time. I’m in the middle of something.” Doshmisi turned the phone off and slipped it back into the front of the backpack just as the Corporton guards surrounded her and Jasper.

“Show us your hands,” said a mechanical voice with the distinct tone of an unfriendly police officer. Doshmisi held her empty hands up over her head to show she had no weapons. The voice had come from one of the Corportons and it shocked her that she could understand the words, which were in English. She wondered where these aliens came from, but she thought perhaps she had an idea, insane as it seemed.