The Gift of Rio (The Gift of the Elements)

by C. S. Elston

  So, for now, they had to exercise some patience which had never been a strong suit for either of them, particularly Agent Fukuda. He was the kind of guy who got fidgety when the coffeemaker was taking too long to brew. Waiting for these people to return to their van was enough to drive him crazy. He had already chewed all his fingernails, cracked the bones in his fingers and neck until nothing would pop any longer, and chewed a pen cap until he had rendered it unrecognizable. Agent Watanabe, on the other hand, had adjusted his seat several times and, having worked through dinner, was starting to wonder if it was too soon to bring up the possibility of leaving his partner there to continue surveilling while he went in search of something to eat.

  “Here we go,” Agent Fukuda said as he watched a man who looked like he could be around the age of fifty enter the parking lot with another man and a woman, each of whom were about half the age of the first man.

  Agent Watanabe glanced over to see what his partner was referring to. He was skeptical because Fukuda had already gotten prematurely excited several times that night. But, as Watanabe looked closer, the older man appeared to be a possible match for Sota Tanaka. He had filled out some since the wedding photo they were viewing by flashlight. He wasn’t fat, just thicker. But, that’s what age does to a lot of men. The younger two fit the descriptions as well. At night and from that distance, they just couldn’t be sure until they saw if the group approached the van.

  “Come on,” Agent Fukuda spoke again, as if he could somehow coerce them into proving they were who he hoped they were, even though they couldn’t hear his voice.

  Finally, as the group talked and laughed, they meandered their way to the van and stopped.

  Agents Fukuda and Watanabe both leaned forward and grabbed their respective door handles without looking away.

  Luke stuck his key in the door lock and the agents instantly opened their doors to approach their persons of interest.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Fugitives

  Sota was the first to spot the agents as they advanced but he didn’t immediately recognize them as being law enforcement.

  “Excuse me,” Agent Fukuda said in Japanese as he flipped open his badge, gaining the attention of Luke and Rio. “National Police. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Suddenly, the gate valve on a fire hydrant, less than twenty feet away, burst open. The cap shot into a car door and water went everywhere. The noise was as loud as the firing of a gun and caused the agents to spin around as they tried to figure out what it was and where it came from.

  “Run,” Rio said with determination in her voice.

  Luke and Sota looked to see Rio drop her arm from having caused the fire hydrant incident. She turned to run and they quickly followed her lead as she hurried toward the restaurant where they had eaten dinner hours earlier.

  The agents spun back around and saw the trio fleeing. Immediately, they sprinted after them.

  “Find a back exit,” Rio said as she held the front door to the restaurant open so Luke and Sota could hustle inside. If she had the time, she would have noticed how surprisingly calm she felt considering the circumstances. There was a confidence inside of her that was new and stronger than anything she had ever felt before. It was a sense of peace in a situation that would cause most people severe anxiety. Somehow, she knew that everything was going to work out fine. God had a purpose for her in that place and at that time. And, because that purpose was God’s, and not some whimsical desire she was trying to fulfill for herself, nothing could stop it. But, she also felt confident that her purpose didn’t include sitting in a police interrogation room. In fact, that could possibly keep her from it.

  Following Sota and Luke toward the kitchen, Rio looked back at the entrance just in time to see the agents surge through the doorway. She spun around and made a motion with her arms that looked like a conductor leading a symphony into the crescendo of a beautiful song. But, instead of hearing music, the audience got to witness every ounce of liquid in the dining area leap out of various containers and form a large sphere in the middle of the room. The ball of liquid then hurled toward the agents and erupted all over them. The force was so strong it knocked them back through the door and sent them floundering to the ground. Rio hurried into the kitchen to catch up with Luke and her father.

  “Where’s the exit?” she heard Sota yell in Japanese.

  She saw a cook pointing and they all dashed for the door at the very back of the room. Sota and Luke piled out first and Rio saw the agents entering the kitchen just before she was going to exit.

  Rio stepped outside, then stopped and turned around again. She pointed her left hand toward a faucet and rapidly wiggled her fingers, building the pressure inside the pipes. Next, she raised her right arm and made a sweeping “S” motion before making a similar move with both arms to the one she had just made in the dining room. Every faucet, hose, bottle, can, jar, pitcher, pot and pan in the room sprayed liquid in all its forms. Even ice and steam were blowing through the air. The room looked like a bomb was exploding. Everything was, once again, feeding into a sphere that hovered in the middle of the kitchen. No matter what stage it was in at first, it was all liquid by the time it reached the ball. Realizing that she could change gasses and solids to liquid gave Rio a new idea.

  The agents stopped running and waited to see what the sphere was going to do. Everyone else in the room cleared out, running to the dining room.

  Finally, the agents started to inch their way toward Rio as the size of the water ball continued to grow, quickly filling the room. Their eyes were darting back and forth between Rio and the ball trying to determine if they could gain any control over either.

  Standing just outside of the doorway, Rio suddenly brought her hands in front of her face and then threw them out toward the walls. The water ball immediately spread in four directions, soaked the agents on the way through them, and splattered all four walls. By the time the water hit the walls, it began to freeze. Within seconds, the walls were frozen solid, trapping the agents in a room sealed by ice that was more than a foot thick.

  Rio looked at the ice, with a little bit of wonderment. She had just discovered she could do something she was unaware of less than a minute earlier. Realizing she didn’t have time to be impressed, she let the door close, ran down the steps, and joined Sota and Luke in the back alley.

  The trio continued running, out of the alley and onto a street. Rio turned around and looked for the third time since they exited the restaurant. No sign of the agents.

  The ice must be holding them for now, she thought to herself before speaking out loud as they continued to jog. “We need to find a place to hide.”

  When they were a couple of miles from the restaurant, Rio took the trio down a street that led toward the beach. “Let’s try and find something down here,” she said to Luke and Sota who were starting to slow down and fall behind.

  She had looked over her shoulders a couple of dozen times and never saw any sign of the agents so, she was confident the pursuit had ended. Or, at least, the ice prison in the kitchen had forced the agents to hit the pause button. This would allow the trio enough time to find a proper spot to hunker down and catch their collective breath.

  Sota had fallen the furthest behind. Finally, he stopped, while the other two continued jogging. He was heaving deeply as he put his hands on his knees and closed his eyes, facing the pavement.

  “I,” Sota tried to speak. “I just . . . need . . . a minute.” He finally got his sentence out and then promptly threw up.

  Rio turned back and rushed to his side. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Better now,” he answered while unsuccessfully attempting to force a smile. “I just need to stop running.”

  “I know,” Rio admitted. “I think it’s safe for the moment. Let’s walk until we find something. Can you do that?”

  Sota nodded affirmatively and they began to search for a place where they could lay low until they were abl
e to figure out the next step. Unfortunately, the next step wouldn’t be entirely up to them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Healing

  The search for a place to hide from the authorities continued and, ultimately, Rio was the one who spotted what looked like a vacant vacation rental cabin about a block from the beach.

  “How about there?” she asked out loud, somewhat rhetorically.

  “That house?” Luke asked, surprised.

  “Yeah,” Rio acknowledged. “Why?”

  “That’s breaking and entering,” he stated emphatically.

  “No one’s there,” she argued.

  “Still breaking and entering.”

  “It’s a vacation rental.”

  “That we didn't rent.”

  “No one will even know we were there.”

  “We’ll know.”

  “Yeshua will know,” Sota added.

  Rio nodded her head in agreement before a mental lightbulb went off and she asked, “What if we leave a rental fee on the counter with a thank you note? We just need a place to lay low for a while and none of us owns any property around here, am I right? Or, does someone have something they should have shared with the group an awful lot sooner?”

  There was a pause as Luke and Sota realized she was right. Going inside of any building would, technically, be breaking and entering. At least this way they had the opportunity to do it in a way that they could honestly justify.

  “I can get behind that plan,” Luke finally agreed.

  “Me too,” Sota added.

  “Good,” Rio sighed in relief. “Now that the hard part is over, how do we break in?”

  After a shared chuckle at Rio’s humorous attempt to ease the tension, the trio walked around the property and couldn’t find any doors or windows that were unlocked. But, standing at the top of a staircase on a second story deck in the backyard, Rio remembered what she had just learned about her abilities before fleeing the restaurant and an idea came to mind. She walked back over to the window that they had tried to nudge just moments earlier and stared at the kitchen sink just below it on the inside.

  “I think I’ve got this,” Rio said as she put her right hand up in front of the glass.

  Luke and Sota looked on as water began to pour out of the faucet and, just like it had at the drinking fountain in Hilo, bent mid-stream and inched toward the window. But, instead of heading for Rio’s mouth, the water worked its way toward the lock and began to solidify, creating a long and thin arm made of ice.

  “That’s new,” Luke said as his eyes widened.

  “Yeah,” Rio admitted, “I learned this when I was locking the agents into the restaurant kitchen. This just involves a little more precision than that did.”

  The ice-arm forced the lock open and Rio slid the window open with her left hand. She then pulsed her right hand like she was gently tossing something and the ice turned back to water as the stream splashed down into the sink. Immediately, the water stopped pouring out of the faucet. Rio took the screen out of the window, climbed up and through it, stepped down onto the counter, and hopped off onto the kitchen floor.

  “I’ll let you in through the sliding glass door,” she told the men before closing the window and locking it.

  Luke put the screen back into the window sill as Rio unlocked and opened the sliding glass door in the dining area next to the kitchen as she added, “Come on in. Make yourselves comfortable but try to touch as little as possible with your fingers. Don’t turn on any lights and stay away from windows. I need to call my mom.”

  “Guess we know who’s in charge,” Luke told Sota.

  “Sounds like she knows what she’s doing,” Sota agreed with a shrug. “Maybe there’s more for me to learn about my daughter.”

  “I think she’s just smart,” Luke said with a smile before pointing at the heavens. “And, maybe receiving a little guidance.”

  “Even more reason to follow her lead,” Sota said as he patted Luke on the arm.

  Rio found a phone in the master bedroom at the back of the house, picked it up using a wash cloth that she had carried in from the kitchen, set her calling card down in front of it, and used the bottom of her shirt to form a pseudo-glove for dialing, as she called her mom. She knew this was going to be her most difficult call yet. Of course, part of that was because she had finally found Sota. But, on top of that, she knew that it was time to tell her mom about her abilities. And, the thing that made it the hardest was the fact that, deep inside, she knew that this was the last call she would be making before “the big show,” as the elderly woman had called it.

  She was right, too. It was a tough conversation. Her mom expressed some skepticism when she first heard about Rio’s abilities. But, as Rio continued to explain all that she had experienced, Toki began to accept it as truth. And, relief set in that she finally had answers after twenty-five years of waiting and wondering. The kicker, for her, was hearing that Rio had met the same elderly woman while sitting on the same bench. That’s when the tears began to flow.

  A similar reaction occurred as Rio talked about accepting Jesus into her heart. Toki, at first, was skeptical. But, she knew her daughter and, she could hear in Rio’s voice that the experience she had been through was an authentic one. By the time that part of the conversation was over, Toki had promised Rio she would get her hands on a Bible and read it.

  Probably the most surreal moment of the conversation, for Rio, wasn’t really conversation at all. It was the moment that she put her calling card away and handed the wash cloth-wrapped phone off to her biological father so that he could speak to her mother. It was such a small action and something she assumed that most kids would consider common. But, she had never done it before and the significance of it was not lost on her. She was simultaneously nervous, happy, and sad.

  Rio left the room so her parents could talk in private. She heard Sota’s sobbing almost immediately after she closed the door and she went to sit with Luke. Rio snuggled in close and put her head onto Luke’s chest. He liked the fact that she had grown so comfortable with him and he felt an emotional tingle as a wave of romantic feelings rose inside of him. Clearly, Rio was emotional. Understandably so. But, Luke could tell there was more to her actions and he wondered if that should make him anxious. Little did Luke know, he was right to wonder because the Holy Spirit within Rio had already begun to prepare her for the event that was coming soon.

  Sota and Toki, although he couldn’t stop calling her Mei, talked for over thirty minutes. There were a lot of tears on both ends of the line but, as forgiveness began to take root, so did freedom. Toki was amazed as Sota told her about his encounter with Yeshua and she suddenly began to look forward to keeping the promise she had made to her daughter earlier in the conversation. As Rio’s credit card began to run out, Sota gave Toki the phone number that he found printed on the phone. She called right back and they continued their conversation like two old friends. Toki noticed that it was the friendliest that they had ever been.

  When Sota and Toki had finished their conversation, Rio got back on the phone to say goodbye to her mom. She fought back tears so she didn’t have to explain her sadness because she knew that her mom wouldn’t understand. After asking her mom to give her love to Anthony and Hani, Rio finally hung up the phone and turned around to open the door. As she did, she saw the elderly woman standing in the corner. They shared a knowing smile and the woman promptly vanished. Unshaken, Rio opened the door, walked out of the room and re-approached her father and Luke.

  “It’s almost time,” she told them.

  “For what?” Luke asked with more than a hint of trepidation.

  “My time is almost here. But, before it arrives, I need to give you some guidelines for the days that lie ahead.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Opening

  By the time Rio had finished explaining what she needed Luke and Sota to do over the days to come, it felt like something had bumped the house. It was just n
oticeable enough to give everyone a small pause. But, then the house started to roll and shake. It began weak and slow, but escalated and grew stronger quite quickly.

  “What is this?!” Luke exclaimed.

  “Don’t you recognize an earthquake, California boy?” Rio shot back at him as she braced herself between walls in the hallway. “When it’s over, I have to get to the beach.”

  “For what?” Luke asked, not really wanting to know the answer. He got into a doorway on the other side of the living room and braced himself just like Rio was doing.

  Sota did the same in the entryway to the kitchen.

  “Just trust me,” Rio said as she looked at Luke. “This earthquake is just the catalyst. The beach is where I’m supposed to be for the miracle that I was created to perform.”

  After staring into Luke’s somber eyes for a moment, she looked at her father. Thankfulness for the time she had been granted was coupled with a deep sadness that everything was about to change.

  Luckily, Sota broke the mood because his nerves caused him to start giggling uncontrollably and it was contagious. It seemed like an inappropriate time to be laughing but, like little kids in a church service, once they got going they couldn’t stop and the three of them laughed their way through the rest of the seven-minute earthquake, even as various items fell off shelves and out of cupboards and came crashing to the floor. What could have been a scary moment turned out to be one that would be remembered fondly in the future.

  Still, or perhaps even more so because of that moment, Rio wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the two men she had quickly grown to love. The same was true when she had said goodbye to her mother, and to the rest of the family back in Hilo, on the phone a little more than ten minutes earlier. But, when the massive earthquake finally settled, she knew it was time to do exactly that.

  The trio put some money on the counter and wrote an anonymous thank you note for the owners as they had promised each other they would do. They quickly wiped down everything they could remember touching before they went outside to survey the damage left behind by the earthquake.