Mariel sat unwavering until the moon had crested the treetops and the snores of the chief reached fever pitch. She only breathed and watched. Varren and Kai exchanged nervous glances but sat patiently on their branches only shifting to relieve discomfort. The hoot of an owl in the distance made Mariel look away briefly. She clenched her jaw and glared. Her stomach growled she longed to root down to taste the earth. To drink up the dark salty earth. She shoved the urge down. She would eat soon enough. A breeze carried through the trees and brought her the scent of fall leaves and moist dirt. The scent of mushrooms. A mouse sprang across the brown leaves below and she watched it with her peripheral without taking her eyes off the window to the nest. She could see his chest rise and fall. She would have to be as silent as the flakes of snow falling the night, she met HaShem.

“Wait here,” Mariel whispered. She sprang from the tree as if she were a bird and snapped off another lower branch tossing her body to the side of the nest and landing light as a leaf, folding around the structure to soften the impact. She crept as a lizard down to the window and slipped into the darkness. Kai and Varren watched with jaws open. She was more of a critter of the forest than any of the Viv.

Mariel clambered across the floor on all fours. She went first to the chest that sat at the foot of the cot. Chief slept soundly on. He snored loud enough to wake the rabbits in their Burroughs. Drunken fool. She opened the chest slowly. Clothes. She shuffled them to the sides but no stone. Where would he keep it? She closed the chest and tip-toed to the woven arched door leading around the tree to his main room. Would he leave it on a shelf for guests to witness? She searched the walls and shelves with her fingertips in the darkness. The jangle of beads made her stop.

The Chief walked into the room. He still wore his necklaces. Grunting and scratching his stomach he went to the door and stood on his balcony. Mariel slipped back into his room peering out at him. He was sound asleep just moments ago. She crouched in the corner in the shadows. The Chief yawned and relieved himself off the balcony. Mariel cringed. Something caught her eye, a glimmer. Laying on the mat on the bed was the stone. He slept with the stone. The stone of worship. The holy black stone. Mariel was about to stand when the Chief walked back into the room. He walked over to a stand at the wall by the window and began to crush herbs in his pestle.

Mariel held her breath in the corner. Her feet were beginning to tingle. Her calves were getting sore from squatting. She wanted to sit down but fear of noise kept her poised. The Chief set a kettle on the fire filled and sat in a chair waiting for the water to boil. Mariel looked back out the window as Kai and Varren gave her impatient gestures.

How long would her mother and father wait before they came back to check on her? She imagined her little brother below unable to keep silent alerting the Chief that something was at hand. She wanted to get the stone and hide it away safely before returning to her father. She loved him but he couldn’t be trusted with something so crucial.

Could she even trust HaShem? How much did she know about him really? Stories from childhood about an ancient Godman? What if he was just setting her up to betray the Viv to their demise?

The kettle began to steam, and Mariel shifted slowly her rear foot was tingling. The Chief sat staring off at the wall unaware his water was boiling. Mariel willed him to look down. She begged him internally. Blue howled in the distance and Mariel glared at Varren. The Chief walked to the window. Mariel held her breath. Varren and Kai were sitting too close in the trees. They were sure to be spotted. Don’t you move, Mariel commanded them in her mind.

The fat Chief sauntered back from the window and over to his kettle of boiling water. As he poured the water over the herbs in a cup Mariel kept her eyes on the stone on the bed. The moonlight flickered on the rough edges. She could just take it now while his back was turned and leap out the window. He turned and walked back to his chair and sat watching the fire.

She imagined bolting from the shadows and grabbing the stone right in front of him. She would dive out the window and run mad, screaming in the night. All the greatest Viv warriors chasing after her to cut her feet from beneath her with an ax. Forbidding her from ever rooting again. The slowest and most brutal of all deaths. Reserved for the most flagrant of lawbreakers. She saw herself laying on the moist soil sobbing and starving. Withering away laying on a feast. She dug her nails in her palm and felt the absence of her nails in her left hand. She grimaced. Her father had torn them from her. Why was her father even going with her? Just to betray her again? Did he finally feel guilty for all he had done? The thought of that pleased her. He should feel guilty.

A snore caught her attention. The Chief was passed out in his chair. She had been so caught up in her imaging her father’s shame she hadn’t registered the Chief’s head bobbing down to his chest. She slipped a foot from the shadow. Her eyes stayed on the Chief as she walked slowly toward his bed. She reached her hands out gingerly toward the holy stone. She could feel a sensation as her fingers drew near. Then she stopped. It was an eerie feeling. A feeling of wrong. Stealing it of course was wrong, but this was more than that.

There was a sinister feeling that ran down her spine from the sensation. She felt a chill and pulled back her hands. The stone felt alive. It pulled at her. Begged her to touch it. She looked across at the Chief. His head still bobbed on his chest. A leather sack on the floor caught her attention. She lifted it quietly and slipped it over the stone.

The Chief snorted and Mariel stopped. He swatted his face and shifted in his seat. She waited until she heard his breathing fall back into rhythm. Slowly she lifted the stone inside the leather bag and flung it over her back strapping it across her chest. She climbed on the windowsill and looked up at Varren. He clutched the branch and watched her as if he hadn’t taken a breath in minutes.

She sprang into the air landing on a low branch and scrambling up the tree. When she reached them, she gestured for them to follow her. They were a part of it now. They had watched her commit the forbidden act. They would share in the punishment when it came.

They looked back only a moment then clambered after her. She had successfully brought them from honor to banishment in one night and now on the same night had set their fate in stone. They climbed down from the trees when they had reached a safe distance and began to run on foot.

Mariel ducked low branches and rounded the briers as if it were daytime as her companions called out in pain behind her. She rushed through the tall weeds and came out onto the bank of the river right where her parents stood. Koda stood there as well rubbing tired eyes. Mariel knelt in front of him. “Are you ready for an adventure Koda?” His eyes glimmered with excitement and the alarm sounded in the village behind her.