Telesa - The Covenant Keeper (47 page)

He grinned sheepishly. “I kinda had a few failures before I got to the scrambled eggs. I wanted you to have something nice, you know, you’re always feeding me these fancy dishes so I tried to fix us some pancakes using an old family recipe. Only it’s so old I couldn’t remember it properly. That ended up in the trash.” He pointed to the still-smoking trashcan in the corner. “So then I thought we could have banana muffins. I texted my sister back home for the recipe and her texts back were taking forever so I kind of got impatient and got creative with a few of the ingredients and then when I tasted them, ugh. Nasty. So they ended up on the back lawn feeding the birds.” He nodded his head to a fluster of birds bickering over scraps out the back.

“Jason you texted your sister in America for a muffin recipe for breakfast? You goofball. You do realize that I don’t cook any of the stuff you eat when you come over to visit, right? That I can’t cook to save my life? You could have just opened a box of cereal and we would have been fine or cooked us eggs and toast in the first place.”

He shook his head laughing ruefully. “Yeah, I realized that AFTER I trashed the place. I almost zipped down to McDonald’s to get us a Big Breakfast from there but it was after 10 so I gave up on that idea. Sorry about the mess, don’t worry, I’m totally going to clean it up when we’re done. Honest. I may not be a great chef but I do know how to do dishes. With four big sisters ruling the kitchen, I was always stuck with clean-up duty.”

He was right. I had to admit he did have some skills when it came to swift cleaning and dishwashing and before long, Netta’s kitchen was back to its pristine state.

“Leila, do you think you’ll be okay here by yourself? I need to get back home to my laptop.” He hesitated, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Last night, after you went to sleep, I did some thinking. About all of this. You know, your fire problem. I’d like to help you, if you let me. I have some contacts back home, good friends of mine who I could ask to help us out. These are people I can trust to safeguard your secret and to help me figure out what’s causing this to happen to you. A couple of doctors I went to school with, a physicist, a few lab guys. We could take some blood, get it back home to a lab. They could run some tests for me, try a few things, see if there’s any way possible that we can stop this from happening. That is what you want, right?” He peered closely at me. “I kind of got the impression yesterday that you would like to be rid of this anomaly.”

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 totally 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 ordinary 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 insanely 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 to greet them. Both Nafanua and Netta looked weary, and there was a slight smell of smoke about them. They smiled appreciatively at the ice-cold lemonade and sandwiches I had made. I was eager to hear about their ‘mission.’

“I was starting to worry about you guys – you’ve been ages. Where did you go? How was it?” I looked expectantly from one woman to the next, but neither of them was 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 their whereabouts was shut down.

* * * *

Both women disappeared into their rooms for the remainder of the day, leaving me to occupy myself. An email update to Grandmother Folger – which said absolutely 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. And then evening. I rustled up some 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 new-born 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. “
Telesa
, it was
telesa
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 … telesa, telesa, four dead, a village burned to the ground … telesa.
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 veranda stairs in my haste. Air. Space. Earth. Is 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 afternoon 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. Defenceless. 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 take 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 just bullshit! 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
telesa
. 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
telesa
, the protectors, the guardians, 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
telesa
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 panic, 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
telesa
. My tolerance will wear very thin if she stands in the way of my only daughter becoming the
telesa
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 me? 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.”