Free The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) by Jean Kilczer Page B

presence radiating love and warmth to all His children as He nourished Himself on our offering and threw us bones that still held meat!
    My work finished, I stood, let rain stream off my body and felt only a dull ache as I stepped back against a rock and ripped off a scab on the swollen heel of my left foot. A yellow liquid ran out. Blood mixed pinkly with brown rain-dappled water around my feet. The way blood would streak the Master's Pond as He ate.
    There is a giving in blood, a sacrifice of self. I raised an arm, watched raindrops bounce off my puckered skin. Between flattened hairs bruises showed like pink windows to the river of hot blood that rushed beneath, that burned to mix with the cleansing rain. Rain snapped like cold snakes, like multitudes crying out for the purifying sacrifice of the blood.
    I lifted my face, smiled into the blizzard of water, and filled my mouth like an overflowing crucible, and let it pour down my beard. I swallowed the holy water into my body and felt it wash clean that inner slate.
    I drank.
    I drank it through my mouth and it seemed through the pores of my body until I felt that I could finally be forgiven, to have the guilt of my sister's death torn from me in a pouring of blood sacrifice. Only then could I approach my Master unflawed, a diamond reflecting His great and perfect light.
    I leaned against the bowed narctressus trunk, my Tree of Enlightenment, spread my arms out until the backs of my wrists pressed branches.
    And drank again.
    But this sacrifice needed blood, the blood of nailed wrists that tear from the weight of the body. 'Sye Kor! This is my body! Take the blood from it for I have sinned! Forgive me my sins. Ginny? Virginia! Oh, Ginny!” I cried and ripped the back of my wrists across rough bark to ease the sudden agony within me. “Ginny. Oh Great Mind!” She had wanted to look down at mountains. I fell to my knees in the mud.
    Her giggles and laughter fill the small cockpit of the Hornet Cub I'd flown as a teenager, with Ginny beside me. But a sudden updraft. The Cub lurches. “No!”
    “Jules!” I heard Christine shout and felt the ground shake. But that was not my reality.
    The cub plunges. I release wing chutes. Too late. The scent of pine. Too late! Boulders at impossible angles as the cub tumbles.
    Too late!
    “Ginny,” I moaned as I remembered and didn't want to. Had never wanted to. “Oh, forgive me. I'm so sorry!”
    “Jules! What are you doing?” Christine yelled. “He's coming! Get away from the bait!”
    The Hornet Cub plunges to rocks below. Rocks that jut past the canyon's edge. Too far. Terror drags at her small mouth as she slides away from me and down a boulder.
    Too far.
    “Ginny! Grab my hand. Grab my hand!” Her nails streak gray rock. They claw at my outstretched straining fingers. Our fingertips touch. This can't be happening to her. She's so young. Oh my God. “Ginny!” She slides from my sight. Below, the canyon waits. Her screams echo across rock walls and mix with mine as she plunges down.
    “For God's sake, Jules, run!” Christine shouted and yanked me away from the tree. Her eyes were wild as she stared back to where a rumbling sound like a small plane tossed in wind rode treetops. Wind whipped Christine's tattered shirt and pants. Something big stamped ground, shook down leaves the storm could not loosen.
    I fell to my knees, wrapped my arms around myself and cried tears that mixed with rain.
    Christine backed away from me and the snuffler bait. “Did the Master command you to sacrifice self?' she shouted through rain.
    “There are other Masters.”
    “There's only one!” She threw a frightened glance at the great dark shape ripping through sheets of rain and causing the ground to tremble.
    “He's coming!” She pressed her head between hands. “He's coming.”
    “Get away from here! I don't want your death on my soul too.”
    'You're a fool!” she screamed, 'Only the Master decides when we die.”
    “I've decided