His words settled over me like a numbing haze. Some of them filled me with apprehension – tests, labs, doctors. I thought wildly for a moment of X-file labs and drugged test subjects. But another look at Jason’s concerned eyes reassured me. This was Jason we were talking about. I trusted him. With my life. If anyone could be trusted to do this, it would be him. I shrugged and gave him a half smile.
“Sure. I do. I’ve started believing Nafanua when she tells me that there’s no cure, that I’m stuck like this forever. But you’re right. They’ve never questioned it. This stuff, whatever it is. It could be curable.” I started to get excited by the possibilities. “That would be awesome Jason. To be normal again, I can’t even dare to imagine it. To get my life back, to be just me again. And not some freakish fire girl who can fry people when I’m not concentrating hard enough. Yes. I want to try it. Please. How soon can we start and what do we do first?” I was ready to check myself into a lab that very minute, mentally psyching myself up for the needles and zap tests.
Jason laughed at my enthusiasm. “Hey, hey, hang on. Let’s take it one step at a time. I’m going to make a few calls, send a couple of emails. To people I trust. We’ll have to get some DNA samples off you but that will come later. Right now, I want you to write down everything you can about this fire thing. Like how it all started, early warning signs, date it as best you can remember. Oh, and also write down whatever Nafanua has told you about these powers. If what you’re telling me is true, they’ve been living with this stuff for a long time and will know more about it than we ever can. It’s important to get as much as possible down on paper” I grimaced at the thought of pages and pages of writing and he hastily amended. “Or voice record it on your iPod. If that’s easier for you. The more info we can put together, then the better chance my boys back home will have at addressing the problem.” He paused at the doorway to look back at me.
I hated to see him go. When I was with him, a regular life seemed within reach. Some of my hesitation must have shown on my face because he paused mid-way out the door.
“Hey, it’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be okay. I’m on this. And I hate to sound like my usual conceited self, but I am kind of good at what I do.”
Our eyes smiled at each other. I wrinkled my nose at him, “Whatever! You better get your arrogant butt out that door before I turn into a flamethrower.”
I followed him out onto the porch and into the golden sun. “Jason?”
He turned at the car door. “Yeah?”
“Thanks. For last night. For listening to me and for being my friend. And nothing else.”
He shook his head with a sardonic smile. “You’re welcome. I was pretty good, wasn’t I?” He climbed into the driver’s seat and then threw out a parting shot. “Leila, you do realize what that means we get this fire problem thing all fixed? It means you won’t have excuses left for why you can’t give in to your overwhelming attraction to me.”
He laughed at the expression on my face and accelerated down the drive before I could get in the last word. All I could do was stand and watch him drive away. And smile.
The house seemed uncomfortably empty without him and it was a relief when Nafanua’s black land cruiser turned into the driveway. Relieved to have company again, I ran lightly down the stairs. Nafanua looked weary, and there was a slight smell of smoke about her. She smiled appreciatively at the ice-cold lemonade and sandwiches I had made. I was eager to hear about her ‘mission.’
“I was starting to worry about you – you’ve been ages. Where did you go? How was it?” I waited expectantly but no answers were forthcoming. A shrug from Nafanua.
“Fine, it was fine. Nothing major Leila.”
“But you’ve been gone all night. And half the day, where were you? I could have helped, you know, like the other times …” My voice trailed away at the closed look on my mother’s face.
“It was nothing that concerned you. Nothing that you could have helped with.”
And with that abrupt statement, the conversation about her whereabouts was shut down.
Nafanua disappeared into her room for the remainder of the day, leaving me to occupy myself. An email update to Grandmother Folger – which said nothing about what was really happening in my life. Homework. Texts to Jason who seemed really buzzed about his initial contacts with his doctor friends back home. I rustled up an early dinner and then sat down to watch the news. And stared in horror, my food forgotten.
The television screamed at me accusingly. Four killed, village burned in freak lightning storm. The cameras showed grey smoke still rising from the blackened remains of houses and trees. My breath caught in my throat. Lightning had ripped through the village of Satumea on the southern coast, burning 25 houses to the ground. There were four men dead and 12 others had been admitted to hospital with second-degree burns. The village was too far from town for the Fire Services to get there in time and the people had stood helplessly and watched their homes, their lives, go up in smoke. In spite of the lashing rain and storm. There was disbelief. Fear. According to three of the villagers interviewed by the news reporter, the fire and the deaths were the result of a curse. They were being punished. The day before, two whales had stranded on their beach. A mother whale and her newborn calf. In spite of instructions from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment asking the village to help with saving the whales, in spite of ancient taboos regarding the sacredness of the giant mammal, several men had taken to the whales with axes and bush knives. Carving chunks of blubber and then abandoning their attack in frustration, the men had left the creatures desecrated on the beach. One old woman shook her head as she spoke to the camera, “This fire from heaven is a punishment for us. The four men who died were the ones who killed the whales. They have brought this curse on us all.” She turned to stare straight into the camera. “Telesā, it was telesā who did this to us.”
The interview cut to more shots of the carnage. The words kept playing through my mind, hammering a chant that wanted to break free. Fire from heaven … a punishment … a curse … telesā, telesā, four dead, a village burned to the ground … telesā. I thought of Nafanua and her sisters. The way their hair would blow wildly in the wind when they called down lightning. How trees would bow to their ushering. And forests would quake at their onslaught. I remembered how they looked as they walked towards me and Jason out of their storm. The coldness in Nafanua’s eyes. The suppressed rage. There is anger in the air tonight. Suddenly, there wasn’t enough air in the room. Not enough space. I stumbled to my feet and bolted for the door, tripping down the verandah stairs in my haste. Air. Space. Earth. Was what I needed. I sank to my knees beside the gardenias and threw up. Retching again and again in the sweet fragranced air as my brain screamed in denial. No. There was a voice from behind me. Filled with concern, worry.
“Leila, are you alright?! What’s wrong?” Nafanua was by my side, helping me to my feet. I shook her hands off mine and backed away.
“Get away from me. Don’t you touch me!”
“Leila, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Tell me you didn’t do it, Nafanua. Those men, that village. Tell me you had nothing to do with it. Tell me!” My demand was jagged in the setting sun.
She regarded me with those dark, calm eyes. Shrugged. “I won’t lie to you. Not about this. You are being foolish. Yes. We killed those men. Yes. We burned that village. But they brought it upon themselves. If you had been there, if you had seen what they did to those creatures – those beautiful, noble creatures …” her voice died away and there was a tinge of sadness in her eyes that lit with fire as she continued. “They butchered them, Leila, a mother and her child. Defenseless. They did not even need their meat, no, they did it just because they could. It gave them pleasure. It was horrible, if you could only have seen it.”
I rushed in to interrupt her, raising my voice against her soothing calmness. “But I wasn’t there, was I, Nafanua? No. You didn’t tak
e me with you on this particular mission. And why not? Because you knew I wouldn’t agree. You knew I would fight you on this one. You knew it was wrong. You hid this from me. All those other ‘missions’ we’ve gone on – they were all just a lie. That whole business about how we have these gifts so we can help, so we can make things right, so we can heal and nurture. That was all lies! You’re murderers. Killers.”
Warning fire flashed in her eyes, sparked in her voice. “Silence. You know nothing. That wasn’t murder – it was justice. We are telesā. That is what we do. We administer punishment when men forget how to honor the earth that gives them life. Without our warnings, where do you think men would be? Look around you, foolish little girl, this earth is dying. Every day she is raped by man’s greed and lust. She is bleeding as they cut her open. Choking on man’s poison. If there were more like us, then earth would be better protected. Man would give her the respect she deserved. Leila, we are the protectors, the earths’ weapons. Fanua doesn’t give us her gifts so we can waste them on moping, crying, and wishing we could be ‘just regular girls like everyone else.’ We are telesā and this is what we do. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can start paying Fanua the honor she deserves. You cannot fight against this, you are one of us. The sooner you embrace that, the better.”
I shook my head, swallowing the fear and anger, grabbing firmly to calmness before I spoke. “No, Nafanua. I’m not like you. I will never be like you.”
I turned and walked back towards the house. Cold certainty giving me the courage I needed to turn my back on the woman who could call down fire from heaven when people defied her. Her voice whipped me. “Where are you going?”
I threw my reply over my shoulder. “Away from you. I came here because I wanted to know my mother.” A joyless smile. “I know all I need to. I’m going back to live with Matile and Tuala. If they’ll have me. And only until I can get on the first plane out of here.”
I was at the door when she spoke again. Exasperated, as if berating a three-year-old having a tantrum. “How many times do I need to tell you, foolish child? There is nowhere else for you but here with your sisters. With us. We are the only ones who can help you control your fire. We are the only ones who can guide you. You are a danger to everyone else. Besides, I tolerate Matile and her pathetic abhorrence of telesā. My tolerance will wear very thin if she stands in the way of my only daughter becoming the telesā she is destined to be.”
My whole body stiffened and I turned, careful rage slowly emphasizing every word. “What are you saying? Are you threatening Aunty Matile?”
Nafanua’s smile did not reach her eyes. “I’m saying, that you are safer with us. With your sisters. I’m saying people you care about are safer as long as you are with us. Because you forget Leila, that with one careless thought, you can do far worse than kill four axe-happy men and burn a little village. Hah. You can lay waste to this entire island and more, if you but lose your temper. Or get a little too excited by someone’s silly teenage kiss. You are not a prisoner here, Leila. Go and come as you like. But remember, we are the only ones who can give you the instruction you need. We are the only ones who can keep the world safe - from YOU.”
A flush of celebratory pride made me rash, rush to utter words I would regret a thousand times over in the days to come. “That’s where you’re wrong, Nafanua. You’re not the only ones with answers about my powers, my genetic aberration. Jason’s going to help me. He’s going to find the answers with Western science, and I’m going to be that ‘pathetic regular girl’ you so despise. You’ll see, I don’t need you. Or your murderous telesā insanity.”
She recoiled as if my words had drawn blood, leaving her white faced with eyes flashing. “Jason? You revealed your powers to Jason? You shared your gifts with a man? A palagi man?!” Shock and horror painted welts in the setting sun. “Leila, it is forbidden. How could you? Do you realize what you have done? What will happen now?”
I threw my reply at her with impetuous abandon. “Yes I do. Jason is going to do everything possible to help me cure this. To be rid of it. He’s going to get the best scientific minds working on the problem and I’m going to be okay. You thought you could control me and make me do whatever you wanted, just because I was afraid of what these powers could do, but you were wrong. I don’t need you. I don’t need to become a telesā like you, I have a choice here. And I choose to be cured of this. I will be normal. And if that means I’m less like you, all the better. My father was right to take me away from you. I hate you and everything you stand for, Nafanua.”
I turned and took two steps towards the verandah stairs before Nafanua screamed my name and lightning ripped the sky, striking the ground so close to me that my hair singed. I caught my breath at the suddenness of it and spun around. For a moment we stood there, rigid in the green and blue day, hostility rippling waves of fire in the deepening twilight. Nafanua spoke and her words dripped with the poison of the stonefish.
“How dare you walk away from me? You are nothing. A child. I am Nafanua, the greatest telesā who has walked this land in over two hundred years. You will not defy me. You cannot walk away from your destiny, from a legacy of over a thousand combined years of telesā guardianship.”
My reply was swift. A single thought and a ripple of heat and flames burst from my core, extinguishing a weak girl made of flesh and bone, replacing her with one of lava and fire. “And just how will you stop me, Nafanua? You and I both know that your lightning is no match for my volcano. I may be just a child, but foolish children can have deadly temper tantrums.” The outrage that had started burning when I first saw the footage of Satumea village flared and I gathered a fireball and threw it with all my pent-up anger – straight at Nafanua’s black Land Cruiser. I was regretting my actions, even before the car exploded in an incendiary mass of flames, sparks, and billowing black smoke.
KABOOM!
Damnit! I gritted my teeth as I stared at the inferno. I didn’t want to be this person. Someone who blew up cars when they got mad. No. I forgot Nafanua for a moment as I focused on containing the flames, subduing them. There was nothing I could do to save the car but at least I could prevent the fire from running wild through the garden. I sighed at the sight of the twisted remains of steel and wire and spoke over my shoulder to Nafanua. “I’m sorry. About the car. I shouldn’t have done that. I won’t let you threaten me or the people I care about, Nafanua, but I really shouldn’t have blown up your car. That’s not who I am.” I appealed to her. “Can’t you get it, Nafanua? Telesā like you, is not who I am.”
Nafanua’s voice was pleading as she took several steps closer. “Leila, you have never been an ordinary woman. You have a gift and it’s been given to you for a purpose. Fanua needs you and the fire you hold. Can’t you feel her suffering? Surely you can see it? Hear her cries for help? Join us. You can help us, you can make sure that man listens, that he changes. The earth is sick, dying, and you can do something about it. Are you going to walk away from that?”
I shook my head in angry bewilderment. “I have no idea what you’re talking about Nafanua. I’m just a messed-up teenager trying to find her way through life. Truly, I’m so tired of it all. The lies, the secrecy, the powers. I don’t want it. Can’t you get it?”
She came up and stood as close to me as she dared, shading her eyes against the spitting flames. “Leila, listen to me. My sisters and I, we have a plan. A plan that can change everything. That can fix everything once and for all and restore the natural order, the natural balance of things. But we need you. Join us. Embrace who you really are and you could be earth’s last chance. Our plans just include our islands of Samoa, but there is no reason why we could not look further afield.”
My eyes narrowed. “Plans? What plans? What are you talking about?”
There was excitement in her reply. “There is a reason why Pele is called the creator and destroyer of lands. If you unleash her, tap into the core, she could do away with all this, all of man’s atte
mpts to civilize her, to control and abuse her. And then, with Pele’s creative power, the land could start anew, afresh.”
Telesa - The Covenant Keeper Page 40
