Telesa - The Covenant Keeper (30 page)

I nodded slowly. “Yes.”

She continued, “Tonight you felt terror but you also felt great joy unlike anything else, didn’t you?” She cast a slow sideways glance at my shocked face.

She
knew.
This woman knew what I had felt tonight. Maybe she
was
crazy, but what a relief to find someone who could understand my experience. I let out a huge pent-up breath.

“Oh Mother,” it was the first time I had called her that, but if she noticed my inadvertent slip up, she made no sign of it “it was terrifying, truly it was. The fire, it burned so strong and fast that the whole school field was in flames but it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I wanted it to grow, to cover as far as I could see. It’s like me and the fire were one. It was consuming me, but I loved it. I could throw fire balls and spit fireworks and sparks…and I nearly burned down the school dorm and I could have killed people. I’m a horrible person!” My excited rave turned into chagrin as I remembered how close I had come to causing tragedy.

“No, don’t be foolish! Of course you’re not.” She spoke sharply, as one confronted with a nonsensical child. “The gift of Pele is awe inspiring. You must
never
be ashamed of the joy it gives you. You must embrace your birth right. You would be ungrateful if you did anything different. And Pele does not tolerate ingratitude kindly. So, you set fire to a field. So what. And a school dorm? It’s good for people to be confronted with the powers that they so easily forget.
I
would not give it a moment’s thought. Clearly, you did NOT kill anyone, so let us move on.” She leapt to her feet again, pacing with nervous excitement. “Oh my precious daughter, there is so much to be done now. You don’t realize how long we as a people, have waited your arrival. Have longed for the power that you will give us. The simple fact alone that Pele has chosen once again, one of her daughters to speak and act for her. There will be much rejoicing amongst us. But there’s so much for you to learn, so much we must teach you. You have been denied years of essential training because of that man’s stubbornness.”

Through my tears, a cold fist clenched at my insides as I heard her mention ‘that man,’ my father. The father who had lied to me and gone to extreme lengths to keep me from ever even knowing my own mother. I had been angry at his deceit, but as Nafanua ranted on about ‘spirit sisters’ and sisterhood meetings and other meaningless jargon, I knew with a clear certainty that it had been a mistake to trust her. So what if Dad had lied to me. He had been trying to protect me. I was sure of it. From a scene exactly like this one. I looked at her wild exultant eyes, her gleeful smile as she spoke of the volcano goddess and I felt an overwhelming pull of love and appreciation for my dad. I sent him a prayer of thanks.
Thank you for sparing me a mother like this. Thank you.
But now he was gone. And thanks to my choices in the last few months, here I was in my crazy mother’s house.

The unease that Nafanua invoked in me was now heightened with the realization that not only was she not surprised by my fiery explosion, but it was as if she had even been expecting it. Waiting for it. My mistrust grew. She had sought me out. Professed to love me. Wanted to get to know me. Pleaded with me to come and stay in her Aleisa colonial-style mansion. Given me extravagant gifts. Unlimited freedom. I shivered. I thought I wanted someone to make sense of my fire but now, seeing it in a new light of cold calculation made me wish desperately that she had run screaming from the room at my story and made plans for my admission to a psych ward. It was all too much for me. I closed my eyes wearily, waves of exhaustion shrouding me in their drowning pull.

Abruptly Nafanua stopped in her fervour as if remembering I was there. “But of course you must be exhausted. You need to shower, sleep, take a breath. Give it time for everything to sink in. And then tomorrow, when you’re rested, we will talk again. I will tell you everything. And all of this uncertainty and doubt, it will be gone.”

Gratefully, I clutched at this escape clause, no matter how temporary it might be. “Okay, yes. I need to sleep. This has all been too crazy for me. Can we talk about it tomorrow, please?”

Nafanua embraced me fiercely and whispered in my ear. “Of course. I’m so proud of you Leila. So excited for us. The future is limitless for us now!”

She stood at the foot of the stairs and watched me as I went up to my room. In the quiet confines of my room I shivered, hugging my arms to my body, trying hard to instil some measure of sanity to this night.
Get a grip Leila. Get a grip. Breathe. You can do this.

I had confronted two realities on this cataclysmic night. I had gone running with Daniel and he had kissed me. Or rather we had kissed each other. And it had been amazing. Far more head spinning than anything a lame teen movie could ever depict. For those brief moments, I had been sure that Daniel felt as powerfully for me as I did for him. My brain shied away from what had come next, but I forced myself to confront it. Then I had burst into flames. My whole body had been on fire, and it hadn’t hurt and that had been amazing too. In fact, it had been more exhilarating than the kiss that had provoked it. I halted the train of thought with a jarring crash. Wait up. Had his kiss provoked the fire? Or rather my swirl of heat and adrenaline and hormones and all sorts of crazy chemicals going haywire at a first kiss – had those ignited the flames? What did that mean? I thought back to the previous occasions when the heat attacks had threatened to overwhelm me. The day of the fight at Leififi when the boy had tried to hurt me. I had been scared – no, then I had gotten angry, and the fire had burned and actually manifested outwardly. And then tonight, the kiss. I had been awash with sheer pleasure and excitement. And the fire had exploded. As I tracked the timeline, I realized the fire had been simmering ever since I arrived in Samoa. And it had grown. It exploded when I was threatened, when I got angry and when – I blushed in the darkness – I was physically aroused.

A horrible possibility began to dawn, did that mean that any hope for a relationship with
anyone
,
forever
was doomed? I thought of Daniel. The sunlight of his smile. His golden laugh and the way it warmed me. The strong, sure way he held my hand in his, the peace and contentment it gave me to be with him. At our rock pool. In his grandmother’s garden. At the workshop with fireworks skipping about our feet as he guided my trembling hands with the welder. The way a simple half grin from him could soothe my heated temper and avert one of my mini meltdowns. I thought of the joy of finding someone who could know your soul in all its misery and still want to be with you. I was certain a bond like that didn’t happen very often in one lifetime. And now, would I have to give it all up? Because it was too dangerous to be with him? Bone tired, I fell asleep with that final thought. Curled in a crumpled heap on the floor. In the house of a madwoman who was my mother.

I awoke with a start, cramped muscles aching from their night on the floor. Disoriented for a few moments, I could only shake my head blearily, wondering why I was asleep under my bed. Then the thirst hit me. And all I could think of was the raging drive to find water. Now. Stumbling to my feet, I made my ragged way to the bathroom sink, turning on the faucet and taking huge gulps of water. Too thirsty to worry about the nasty bugs probably squirming their way into my system right now. It seemed I would never get enough water. I felt a headache beginning to pound its way through my brain and a wave of dizziness had me gripping the sink tightly for support. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I was horrified with what I saw. Yes my eyes were bleary tired. And my cheeks were smudged with black soot. And words could not describe the state of my hair. And yet, even under all that, a stranger looked back at me. I looked different. I gazed at the stranger in the mirror, and she stared back at me. She was beautiful. High cheekbones, sensuous lips, even the lush eyebrows had shape and definition. The stranger looked familiar. She looked like my fiercely beautiful mother and her sisters.

No, I had to be imagining things. People don’t just wake up in the morning after a hell-ish night and look like something else. Shaking my head in denial, I stripped off Daniel’s shirt and stepped into the shower, hungry for the rousing jet of cold water. Unwilling to emerge to face my reality, that’s where I stayed for at least half an hour, taking the longest shower of my life. Wishing that the spray could erase the night before. Wash away the weird genetic discrepancy or whatever it was, that would cause a person to erupt into flame. Set my world on fire. And almost fry the boy I loved to a crisp. A night where my unnaturally strange mother would become even more unnatural. And claim me as hers. As one of her ‘spirit sisters’. Whatever the heck that was. I felt bile rise in my throat as I was reminded of Nafanua’s exultant response to my story the previous night. Panic pulsed in my chest. Desperate and ragged. I gripped the walls for support.
Stay calm Leila. Get a grip. Breathe
. I knew I had to think very carefully and not run screaming from my mother’s house. Because I had the awful suspicion she wouldn’t let me get very far. More than ever before, I needed to be in control of my emotions. I needed to be the consummate actress. I needed to be as calm and unruffled as … as Grandmother Folger in any crisis. I smiled weakly to myself as I thought of my grandmother. And caught a sob midway in my throat as a wave of homesickness assailed me. It surely was a time for firsts. Because this was the first time I had ever longed to be in that woman’s house. Safe in the civilized world of decorum and etiquette. More than anything, I wanted to call my grandmother. And ask her to come rescue me from my life. And as the tears escaped, I admitted to myself and the four walls of my shower, that if I called her, she would come. And she would do anything and everything to keep me safe. That realization alone gave me strength. To make some decisions. I was leaving. This house. I was going to get as far away from Nafanua as possible. Once I had distance between us, I was sure that I could figure things out.

I dressed and shoved my few belongings into a backpack. Thank goodness I was a light traveller. Taking a deep breath and steeling my resolve, I ran lightly down the stairs, hoping I could slip undetected out the back door. Raised voices from the kitchen stopped me. Nafanua and Sarona? Arguing.

Nafanua’s voice was menacing. “I am the Covenant Keeper, Sarona. And I say that this child is the solution we have been waiting and hoping for. She can right the imbalance once and for all.”

Sarona interrupted her, “Until a few days ago, you hadn’t even met her. What do you really know about her? Nothing! Your feisty husband made sure of that. I will tell you the only thing we do know with certainty – she’s not a child. She’s already eighteen years old! Far too old to be trained, to be pliable. She cannot be trusted or controlled. You know I’m right. It would have been different if we’d found her when she was ten or even twelve. As it is, she’s nothing but a threat to us. And she needs to be dealt with.”

Nafanua, almost pleading. “It’s not too late. I know it. This girl is strong willed. But she trusts me, listens to me. I can train her. I can mold her.”

Sarona spoke with cold finality. “No Nafanua, if she does have Pele’s gifts then she’s a nightmare in the making and you would do well to put an end to this now. Before it’s too late.”

A dry voice from behind me, had me jump. “Good morning, Leila. Don’t you think you should join your mother in the kitchen?”

Dammit!
It was Netta. Her lips pursed in disapproval at my eavesdropping. I gave her a weak smile. “Umm yeah, actually I was just going to slip out, I’ve got somewhere to go.”

Hearing our voices, Nafanua opened the door to the kitchen, “Leila? Is that you? Come in, we’ve been waiting for you to get up.”

I threw a glance over my shoulder at the front door, which now seemed an eternity away. There would be no easy way to get out of this. I squared my shoulders and walked into the sun-filled room. The two women sat at the kitchen table. Sarona with an enigmatic smile on her face as she took in my backpack, my hastily dressed state. Nafanua smiled,

“Ah, good morning daughter. Did you have a good rest? Are you feeling better?”

Sarona spoke before I could answer as she stood and walked over to pause a foot away from me. “Of course she’s better. Can’t you see Nafanua, she’s dressed to impress and packed ready to leave. Ready to run back to Aunty and Uncle.”

Again the mere presence of this woman had me on edge, only today, it was worse. I felt a prickling at the back of my neck, and against my will, my whole body tensed as if for flight. A flush of heat, unbidden, started to build within me at the smile that didn’t reach her midnight black eyes. I struggled for calm, to halt the heat before it built to raging fire. Sarona tilted her head to one side and considered me thoughtfully.

“Why, Nafanua do you feel that?”

“What?” My mother looked as puzzled as I.

Sarona raised her eyes and hands to the ceiling. On her face a half look of … awe?

“That. The temperature in here has just risen several notches. And the heat is coming from her.” She turned cold eyes upon me. Angry eyes that flashed dangerously. “Nafanua, you just may be correct about this daughter of yours.”

Half closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and from nowhere, a light breeze danced through the room. It should have been a welcome cooling relief in the tropical heat yet, for reasons I could not fathom, it set my teeth on edge and only accelerated the rise of heat within. What was she doing to set my instincts on hyper drive like this? I felt myself begin to smoulder. And I welcomed it. I smiled. And Sarona’s face darkened in anger. Her smile was replaced with steel loathing and she flicked one wrist rigidly. Impossibly, the breeze became a swirling current of wind that tugged at my hair and pulled at my clothing. A vase toppled to the floor, smashing in a thousand pieces at our feet. What was this woman doing to the air? Panic rose in me. And with it came fire. Would I stop it? Did I want to? My every sense screamed that I was in danger and all I wanted to do was allow the flames to erupt, because with them came fearlessness. I was afraid of this woman. And I didn’t want to be. A delicious warmth begin to surge from somewhere deep inside. The air in my chest and lungs was hot. Steaming hot. I could feel the edges of my skin start to blister. There was alarm in Nafanua’s eyes.