The water cascades from high above me, falling in a powerful stream or at the edges of the cataract, like a spray of droplets, and even further out, a fine mist. The clear crystal splattering of drops shields my skin from the sun, even though as a gecko I'm designed for it, and the water is bracingly cold. Taur wades through the shallow water and splashes his broad chest to cool off. He wipes at the scar between his horns, where there used to be a tattoo of Baal the Possessor. I think back to when we fought in the temple of Baal, and the bull man threw me across several rows of pews. I remember leaving him for dead when I set fire to the temple as I fled. I had no idea that we would be friends.

Liana sits on the slope of a boulder at the edge of one of the pools. She dips her delicate colorless feet into the water, and giggles when dozens of tiny fish nibble at the dead skin on her soles. It's fascinating to watch the albino girl, whose palms are the same color as the backs of her hands and whose soles are the same color as her feet. She is close enough to the mountain that she is in the shade, and a fine mist from the water churning at the base of the falls rolls across the still pools and washes over her.

I sing from the psalm, the Ballad of Restoration...

Let your righteousness pour over me from on high

as the cool water from the fount of the earth

falls from the cleft in the mountain

to wash me of every blemish

“I remembered the 39th psalm, believe it or not,” Taur tells me as he wades out into deeper water with his powerful thighs. “I didn't get very far in school, but I remembered it. Liana and I were on our way here when we were met by the Pintados.”

Taur is referring to my secret clue to him and Liana when we were at the bakery in Sugbu, and I designated this waterfall, which is visible from the city, as a rendezvous.

The big man is nearly up to his neck, stretching his arms out in the cool, clear water, while I swim lazily, with my large eyes visible above the water, taking in the scenery with my vertical irises like black slits.

“Your tail is nearly grown back,” Taur observes.

“Yeah, I can walk on two legs, but it's like Lord Riyel has been teaching me to stay humble, when I had to crawl on my belly these last several days.” I do a slow circle in the pool and wheel back around to watch the waterfall.

Taur looks over his shoulder to the spot where the albino girl has dipped her feet into the water. “Do you think Liana is pretty?”

“She's beautiful.” I know where he's going with this; I've noticed an attraction between the two.

“But you're a gecko.” Taur doesn't mean to be insulting, it's just that he's doubtful.

“Thanks for calling me a gecko and not a lizard.” I want to smile, but I realize I'm like the guy who's texting, who can't rely on tone or facial expressions to convey ideas. I don't even have any emojis. “Remember, I used to be a man like you—well not as big or strong, and without the horns...or the demon tattoo—but you get the point. I had a wife and child. I know what a beautiful woman looks like.”

Like Keisha, Vic? I just can't let it go, can't shake it. The clear lids roll down over my eyes as if to close them, but I can't stop seeing it.

“Do you think...?” he starts to ask but hesitates. “But I mean, I've seen so many things, done so many things...”

“Let it go, Taur. If God the Healer forgives you, you're forgiven. Let Him do the work. Let Him carry the weight for you.” Maybe I should start listening to myself.

“Still, she's an albino and I'm...”

“A huge, muscular guy with horns. That's obvious.” I'm now floating in the cold water in front Taur and see the doubt on his face. “You both have been through rough lives, but now you're together, fighting side by side. You're both followers of Lord Riyel, and you know the scripture, Earthen pots...”

Taur joins me, so that we are both reciting the scripture as a chorus. “...not those of silver or gold, shall contain the glory of the Lord. We're all just clay, so the form that takes doesn't really matter. You've got your chance, so take it. Having a woman by your side is the greatest prize of your life, and when you have children, it's even better.”

“But what about you?” The big man treads water with his horns reflecting in the pool.

“I'm on a mission. I had my chance, but now I'm cooked.” Hah, “cooked” is an apt choice of words. How long was I roasting in purgatory?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I dive down deep, darting over the bottom of the pool at the foot of the waterfall, which is worn smooth by the passage of water. I want to feel miserable about losing my wife and son, but I suppose I should be grateful that after an insufferably long stretch of burning alive, I'm now deep under cold water, something my anguished mind fantasized about repeatedly.

I snag a fish with my teeth and crawl up onto the worn boulder, surprising Liana when I drop down beside her and release the fish, which flops and slaps the sandstone beside her. I spin around, my flexible body forming a 'U,' and slither back down the other side into the pool, where I catch another fish, and then several more, only now when I bring the fish back, Liana has moved them to a spot beneath a tree the Sugbuanos call a talisay, with broad, green leaves that goats are fond of. Liana has gathered up twigs, and Taur helps her pile them up.

“Now what?” Taur asks. “We don't have a flint.”

“My pain, your gain.” I try not to grimace or growl when I ignite my hand. The flames envelop my stubby fingers and I grasp the kindling consisting of old, dry leaves and bits of bark. I'm aided by the fact that I don't have lips, and the face of a gecko is just not going to be as expressive as a human's, so I imagine I look pretty impassive and macho as my hand burns. Geesh, Vic. Just one hand on fire for a few seconds today, and you're about to have a cow. You've never had it so easy.

Soon we have a fire going, and Liana turns and flips the fish on skewers so that they cook evenly.

“We don't have any rice,” Liana observes as she brings a skewer to me, while I'm lying on the sun on the smooth boulder.

“That's fine with me,” I reply. “Hey, think you could slide that fish off the skewer for me? I have stubby arms and pudgy fingers.”

I watch as she pulls the twig out from the fish and drops the roasted perch—at least it looks like a perch—in front of me. Of course, on a planet without any chickens, I suppose anything goes. There could be pleiosaurs in that water for all I know.

Liana now takes out several skewers of fish to Taur, who smiles broadly. Their eyes meet and she looks away.

“Oh, no, I can't eat all this,” Taur protests. “Save some for you and the Vicar.”

“I'm fine, Taur.” The albino girl gestures over her shoulder with her hair, which causes her white hair to swirl like a flurry of snow.

“Speaking of pudgy fingers,” I add, “I've been eating too much rice. There's nothing worse than a fat gecko. So you just help yourself, big guy.”

“You're not going to take out the bones?” Taur asks, looking at me incredulously.

I've been caught with a whole fish in mid gullet. Gecko style, I've bitten the roasted fish to smush it up, then swallowed it whole. “Remember what I was saying about stubby arms and pudgy fingers?”

The three of us eat silently, although I'm watching Taur and Liana eat because I pretty much swallowed my fish whole, which saves a lot of time that humans spend picking out tiny bones.

“How does it get so bad?” Liana asks while Taur washes his hands and mouth in the pool. “How does it get to the point where people will kill their own children?”

“It all starts with a central truth, that there is a God,” I explain as Taur takes a seat in the sun. “That God made human beings in His likeness, male and female, and that he designed them for each other. When you abandon those truths, saying there is no real truth, just personal opinion, then anything goes.”

“You can kill a human because a human is no different than a fish,” Taur says as he leans back to soak up the sun.

“You surprise me,” I tell the horned man. “True. Or, you will have some who won't kill a fish, because it's wrong, but will say it's all right to kill an infant.”

Liana scoots to the shade to protect her soft skin. “But I still don't see how they justify killing a child.”

“They argue that it's a woman's right, that women are empowered when they kill their own children, argue that it's wrong for you to stop the killing of children.” I point at Liana with my tail. “They'll say because you don't have a father that you're better off dead, that your life only makes your mother poor, so she's better off getting rid of you.”

“If you'll kill your own child,” Taur asks, “who won't you kill? How could you ever feel compassion for anyone else?”

“But you've killed people.” Liana looks directly at me.

“Yes, in pretty horrific ways, I should add. But they were all adults, and none of them were my own children.” The clear eyelids slide down to cover my eyes, and I think. Purgatory will toughen a guy right up, help him get over any squeamishness over breaking someone's neck. “I'm on a mission from God, but we should never take anyone's life lightly. Any human's death is a tragedy.”

“Have you ever thought of having children some day?” Taur asks the albino girl resting in the shadow.

The two of them exchange a look which I pretend not to see, even though I have eyes as big as oranges, and no eyelids.

“I just want to make sure my child has the father I never had.” She scoops up water with her pale hand and splashes it over her outstretched legs. “But I can't blame my mother. She didn't know any better. So few albinos have real families with a father in the home. Then they wonder why we're poor, criminals, die young, don't go to school, get drunk, blow all our money on gambling, and so on.”

Liana turns her head and she is pretty in profile, with soft, pure skin, pale crystal eyes, and long white hair that drapes her slim figure. “They're coming. Soldiers, marsupial tigers.”

Marsupial tigers? It was May 17th, late in the year, when we finally finished all the mitosis and meiosis garbage in Mr. Frazier's biology class. We were just getting to the marsupials of Australia and Tasmania, when there was a fire drill, so I never got that lesson.

There is a commotion, a splashing, together with the clanking of swords and spear butts on stone. Several large women with five o'clock shadow (and it's not even two-thirty), accompanied by men in dresses and an assortment of other troops dressed in animal costumes come splashing up the river toward the falls.

I'm not worried about these soldiers, and I use the term loosely, as I am about the pack of baying dogs, with stripes like tigers that are running over the smooth stones and splashing through shallow pools to get at the three of us. They're large dogs, but lean, with exposed canines who growl and snarl as they charge.