“Kaleo!” the lady shouted again, this time louder, causing Thura to cringe.
The door opened, and a man, the same age as her father, walked out of the house. To Thura, he looked as if he could have been sleeping, but she also knew he wore a tired, worn-down look on his face when fully rested. Being a social outcast in Patrida had taken its toll on him emotionally, but even more so physically, as his head was now entirely gray and the creases on his face were deep. Kaleo walked toward Thura, smiling, and gave her a big hug.
“Thura, it’s so good to see you,” Kaleo said. “It’s been a while. Where have you been?”
Not really having the time to engage in a conversation or pleasantries for that matter, Thura jumped right into what was happening in Patrida.
“I am sorry to be so abrupt, Kaleo,” she said, “but I have a very important favor to ask of you.”
She had his full attention.
“What’s wrong, Thura? What’s going on?” Kaleo asked.
“A young man was apprehended in the woods the other day, and it turns out he lives on the other side of the island with a small community,” Thura explained.
With interest, Kaleo leaned in closer to Thura to hear every word of her story.
“Evidently, during the Great Liberation when my father killed Numa and took Sophia captive,” Thura continued, “there were several others who got away. They have been living on the other side of the island this entire time.”
The older man closed his eyes and shook his head as if he understood precisely what Thura was telling him. While Kaleo now lived on the edges of Patrida as an outcast, he was once very close to Thura’s father.
“From everything people told me,” he responded, “I believed your father killed every remaining insurgent, as well. In fact, all these years later, I still believed it. So you’re telling me one of them came back, and he’s here?”
“Yes, he is a young man named Odigo, and they have locked him up with Sophia,” Thura said. “But listen, I need you to trust me. I do not have time to tell you every detail, but my father will have them executed soon. I have taken a key to the cell door and am getting ready to break them out within the hour.”
Kaleo smiled at Thura, his creases stretched across his face under his gray stubble. Not only was he impressed with her bravery and determination, but Kaleo was also delighted that someone was finally pushing back against the system. It made him even more thrilled that it was Ochi’s daughter.
“What can we do to help?” Kaleo asked. “I know my wife and friends here will be happy to help in any way possible.”
“I’m going to grab a few things for the journey first, and then I am going to come back and hopefully get them out,” Thura said. “There are a half dozen guards in the woods on lookout. I need you to run out there and tell them there has been an uprising in town and everything is on fire.”
By this time, everyone on the porch had surrounded Thura and listened to her plan.
“We’ve got this, Thura,” Kaleo responded emphatically. “Every single one of us. We’re in this with you.”
Fortunately for Thura, she had already packed a satchel and hid it away the same night she first talked to Odigo and Sophia at their cell. All it would take was her sneaking into the house to retrieve it from her room. Thura climbed the stairway located at the side entrance of her house and tip-toed her way down the hallway without making a sound. Opening her bedroom door, she dashed across the room and grabbed her satchel from underneath her bed. Not hearing another sound in the house, Thura ran down the hallway and then down the stairs.
“Hey! Whoa! What’s the rush, young lady?” Ochi inquired from the top of the stairs as she tried to race out the door.
Thura hesitatingly stopped and looked up toward her curious father.
“Nothing,” Thura muttered. “Just uh… well… I’m just… um.”
The young woman searched desperately for anything at all to give him. Turning her attention toward a growing commotion along the Monon, Thura saw a large contingency moving in the direction of Sanctuary. A crowd walking eastward on the thoroughfare at that time of day struck Thura as peculiar.
“Um… hey dad… what’s going on over there?” Thura asked, redirecting their conversation to the passing parade.
Ochi walked casually down the stairs and stood beside Thura, as they both watched each passerby with interest. At once, the father and daughter looked at each other in disbelief.
“Do you smell that, father?” Thura asked, knowing exactly what it was.
Ochi did not answer. He knew precisely what the scent was, as well. It was the burning of frankincense and myrrh, which could only be from one person doing one thing. Ochi left Thura in haste and immediately ran toward the Monon.
With no time to spare, Thura rushed behind her house and along the alleyway westward toward the gallows. Each stride carried her past the narrow gaps between houses from where she could see the crowd continuing to walk toward Sanctuary. Thura had an idea of what was happening and what Father Prodido was doing. But all she cared about at that moment was the crowd moving in the right direction, away from Sophia and Odigo.
When Thura reached the gallows, she stood still for a second behind the monstrous contraption to catch her breath and to make sure no threats were in sight. When she took in the entire length of the Monon and saw the crowd settling into their seats, she was frightened by what she saw. Each aisle, including the perimeter of Sanctuary, was lined with hooded guards wearing their black robes. While she had seen executions in the past, she had never seen the guards wearing their formal attire.
At the front, Thura saw Father Prodido standing triumphantly beside her father. The scene broke her heart for him and the cowardly path he had chosen for himself. Every word the young woman had written to him and placed in his cedar box was true. He was reaping all he had sown in Patrida all these years. Without question, Thura knew she was making the right decision by releasing her friends and fleeing from a truly godforsaken place.
Convinced every guard in Patrida was either at Sanctuary or in the woods, Thura darted toward the cell. Odigo and Sophia were already standing at the door, looking out the window and smiling as she approached. Without saying a word, Thura hurriedly took the key out of her satchel, placed it in the keyhole, and tried to turn it. The key did not move. Frantically, she removed it from the slot, but it slipped out of her nervous hand to the ground. Beginning to sweat and breathe rapidly, Thura scrambled to pick up the key and try once again. Putting the key in the hole, she tried to turn it. But it did not budge.
Watching Thura fumble through the window, Odigo gently offered a suggestion.
“Thura, it is going to be okay,” he said. “Just calm down and take a deep breath. Try turning the key the other way.”
Thura stepped back and looked at Odigo. She inhaled and then exhaled before stepping forward and placing the key into the door one last time. Turning the key the other direction, it finally began to move, then suddenly clicked. The door unlocked.
Thura pulled the door open as Sophia and Odigo stepped through. The trio walked briskly away from the Monon toward the back alley- way. When they turned the corner, Sophia stopped abruptly and looked around the corner back at the cell.
“Sophia, we have to get moving,” Thura said, gently pulling at the old woman’s arm. “I have friends helping me create a diversion in the woods so we can make a safe escape.”
Caught up in the urgency of her plan, Thura failed to consider the fact that Sophia had been locked away in Patrida for nearly two decades. The old woman had spent a little less than a third of her life narrowly looking out the cell door window. She had seen people come and go. She had watched children like Thura grow up. She had no reason to feel anything but complete exhilaration for her escape, yet she turned to Thura and Odigo with tears in her eyes.
“I am not finished here,” the old woman said. “There is still so much to do. So many people. So many lives and relationships.
I have gotten to know more of them than you can imagine over the years from within those four walls. I know their stories. I have heard about their families. They need me here.”
Despite her urgency, Thura paused to listen to her old friend.
“When you spend so much time in captivity,” Sophia continued,
“you have to decide what you will do with your time and who you want to be. This has been my home, and I have tried to make everyone I meet a part of my family. It is true I could only do so much from my cell, but I did all I could. Yet, there is so much left undone.”
Sophia put her wrinkled hand over her face and cried.
“For the hand you were dealt, you have done so much, Sophia. You have done enough. Look what you have done for me,” Thura whispered as she pulled Sophia close and stroked her white hair. “And there is still so much more you are going to do now that you are free.”
“I was free when I was imprisoned, Thura,” Sophia said. “Am I now supposed to abandon those who are truly imprisoned?”
Thura released Sophia as Odigo interrupted.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” he said, ‘but we really need to get to the woods before someone sees us, or we miss our window of opportunity. Sophia, may we continue this conversation once we are in the clear?”
The old woman nodded her head in humble agreement and walked at her own unhurried pace down the dusty alleyway ahead of the other two. Thura and Odigo quickly fell in behind her. Despite having been locked away with minimal movement for all those years, Sophia moved at a surprisingly brisk pace. While Thura and Odigo may have mistakenly believed the adage that a group can only move as fast as the slowest person, it was, in fact, Sophia who slowed her pace so they could catch up with her.
CHAPTER 10
The forceful hands of the Patridian guard had at last silenced the panicked hysteria of Patrida. Under the loud and commanding leadership of Machi, the guards turned every house upside-down in search of the prisoners while at the same time pulling everyone else out into the streets. Gradually and painstakingly, the guards encircled Patrida, moving inward, successfully corralling the townspeople on the Monon.
An eerie and uncertain hush befell everyone as the guards carried out a directive to line each side of the Monon. This directive included each end, essentially securing the entire length of the main thorough- fare. For all the citizens knew, a threat remained. But the safest place at the moment was in the middle of those tasked to protect them. The word on the street was that Ochi and Father Prodido would soon be giving an update on the prisoner escape and their plan moving forward. There had also been a rumor, spreading like wildfire, that someone had abducted Thura during the escape.
As would be expected during a crisis in the town, there was a higher concentration of guards protecting the front entrance of Ochi’s house. The restlessness along the Monon necessitated it. Being that the people had been enclosed like sheep and treated as if they were the real threat, several factions close to one another became significantly loud and unruly, shouting profanities at the guards.
Like the grand conductor of a disjointed and discordant symphony, the epicenter of the contentious scene was none other than Fovos. The fear-mongering maestro stood on a wooden crate, uniting his band of brigands in a song of rebellion. While he certainly drew the Patridian guards’ attention with his barking and animated gestures, his tirade had not yet reached a level of concern, so he continued unimpeded.
“We’re not barnyard animals here! And this is not some kind of petting zoo for your amusement! Are we free-range chickens! Are we dairy cows!” Fovos shouted to the laughs and cheers of those surrounding him. He then turned contentiously to the guards closest to him, and the joking immediately ceased.
“What’s the price of admission, boys?” he asked. “How much are they payin’ you to turn on your own kin? To turn on your fellow man? Who’d ya sell your soul to, anyway?”
Fovos’ sharp turn from comedic routine to a more serious tone prompted a similar change in the crowd surrounding him, which had been quickly attracting more people. One moment they nervously laughed at Fovos’ jokes. In the next moment, unsettled displeasure erupted among them, as they remembered the Patridian guards corralling them like animals. Fovos knew how to direct the crowd masterfully from one emotion to another without anyone ever suspecting that his sole motivation was manipulating and turning them against Ochi. Summoning his inner thespian, Fovos put his thumbs behind his suspenders and launched into another tirade.
“Look around, sheep!” Fovos shouted. “Who outnumbers who here? Oh yeah, that’s right. We outnumber them. But looky there! Look who sits up in that little comfortable council room while we’re caged down here like animals! Who’s controlling who here? Who’s controlling who! What do you think they care about more? You or remaining in power! I’m startin’ to think…”
Suddenly, interrupting Fovos and emerging from the house, Ochi, Father Prodido, and Tyran walked out and stood behind the guards before the sea of onlookers. As Ochi raised his hand to summon the crowd’s attention, a mob rolled across the Monon like a wave moving toward the leader.
The guards, still clothed in their midnight black attire and armed with their staffs, took a defensive stance in front of Ochi. Their sudden movement subsequently set off a domino effect with every guard on the perimeter. The majority of the citizens could not determine whether the guards caused the sudden rush of people in the crowd or if the movement provoked the guards. Either way, people began to scream and move frantically away from the guards, which forced everyone to huddle more closely together in the middle of the Monon.
Standing in the newly created gap between the compressed, uncertain masses and Ochi, who was still calmly holding his hand in the air, was Fovos. The man glared directly into the soft yet tired eyes of Patrida’s leader and dared him to say or do anything. If there was a moment that perfectly captured the deteriorating and free-falling state of Patrida, in what they had lost and what remained in its place, it was that exact moment. Wisdom had abandoned them, and fear stood in her place.
“Why don’t you come down from your perch, dear leader, and talk to me mano a mano,” Fovos impatiently shouted at Ochi, disregarding pleasantries.
The leader didn’t immediately respond, which caused Fovos to take a step forward before barking at Ochi a second time. Although his step forward was nothing close to an attack, the guards lunged forward with their staffs.
“Get down here and face me like a man, you coward!” Fovos screamed. “This is why you’ve lost the people! Quit hiding behind your guards and look me in the eyes when I talk to you!”
At that point, no one in Patrida knew the motives of anyone else or what was happening in general. Father Prodido stood beside Tyran, and neither of them could discern what Fovos was doing. Had he gone rogue? Was he no longer serving the interest of the religious leader? There was no way they could be sure of anything with him amidst the pandemonium, so they continued to watch hesitantly.
Ochi, unfazed by his adversary’s tone and aggressiveness, brought his hand down and waved it toward the guards standing in front of him. Each guard stepped aside, faced the leader, and stood at attention. Unarmed yet confident, Ochi passed through the pathway created for him and stopped a few feet in front of Fovos. It appeared as if every eye was upon the men. The quiet along the Monon added to the tension and suspense of the staredown. Neither man wanted to be the first to speak, but at last, Ochi broke the silence.
“Fovos,” he said, “I understand many of you are upset with the escape of the prisoners and for the intrusive measures we have taken to secure you. But for the time being, may I kindly ask for your patience and cooperation? The infidel took Thura hostage when making his escape.”
Fovos reached into his pants pocket, fished around for a minute, and then pulled out an already chewed toothpick, which he then placed in his mouth. Putting his thumbs behind his suspenders and smiling from ear to ear while leaning back and shaking his
head at the crowd, Fovos said the unthinkable.
“Listen here, your majesty, and listen close to what I have to say,” he began. “Cause I’m only gonna say this one time. I know you all must be worried sick about your little princess, but I don’t give a good goddamn about you or your daughter. Really your whole family for that matter. Did I just say that out loud? Hmm. I guess I did. But see, the truth here is that Ol’ Fovos knows a snake oil salesman when he sees one, and you been sellin’ a lot of that snake oil these last few days.”
Ochi was emotionless and nonreactive as Fovos turned toward the crowd and continued to blather and bloviate.
“The reason they took this fool’s daughter,” he shouted, “is because he didn’t have the cajonés to walk our little savage visitor down to hang town. Do you people know what I’m sayin’ here? Your majesty sits all high and mighty in his throne room barkin’ out orders about how this is gonna be or how that’s gonna be, but he kept that poor bastard alive just so he could scare us and keep every one of us under his thumb!”
Smiling with his handlebar mustache as big as it had ever appeared, Fovos turned back to face Ochi and continued.
“Isn’t that right, your majesty?” he asked. “Ol’ Ochi feels like he’s done lost control here in the Fatherland, and the best way to keep the people on your big kingly teat is to scare ’em a little bit! Isn’t it!”
Of course, nothing Fovos said was based on facts or evidence. Every word he spoke was conjecture and a creation of his own ill- informed opinion. Nonetheless, he believed every single word that came out of his mouth was the truth. What he did not know, however, was that Father Prodido had purposefully kept him in the dark on many important details, even more than he had Tyran. Fovos was way too reactionary and volatile to trust as anything more than a useful idiot. Father Prodido knew any real information given to Fovos would immediately guarantee its weaponization, and he was much too calculating than to ever throw such valuable pearls before such a swine of a man.
What Can't Be Hidden Page 12