When Water Burns

by Lani Wendt Young

  We got into the Jeep and I texted Simone that we were leaving, so he wouldn’t worry. I drove fast up the mountain road, threw him a glance in the dim light. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live. It’s not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but it was certainly the most satisfying.” A low laugh had me shaking my head.

  “You’re crazy, you didn’t need to do that. You know he can’t hurt me.” Because I’m a fire goddess. I wasn’t dumb enough to say the words out loud but they hung in the air unspoken. I could sense rather than see Daniel tensing in the seat beside me. I rushed to soothe the tension. “Thank you for coming to rescue me.”

  “You mean even though you didn’t need it.” His voice was bitter.

  “That’s not what I meant. What you did tonight was brave and good and I loved it. I love you.” It sounded empty even to me. We drove in silence for much of the way back to town.

  “Turn right up here.” He pointed to an unfamiliar side road. Curt and cold.

  “Why? I thought we were going straight to your house.”

  “No. I don’t want to go home. Take this road.”

  I stole a glance at him in the darkness. He was staring out the window, his profile harsh and carved in granite. I gave up arguing with him and made the turn.

  “Now where?”

  “Just follow this road. I’ll tell you when to pull over.”

  It was a deserted road. Long sections of fenced plantation lots broken here and there by the distant lights of a sleeping house. He pointed to a section of trees coming up on the left.

  “Pull over up there.”

  I obeyed, bringing the Jeep to a stop on the overgrown grass. I turned the engine off and the lights cut off, leaving us in darkness. Moonlight.

  “Umm, now what?”

  But he was already out, slamming the door behind him. I got out, but he wasn’t waiting for me. There was some sort of trail through the trees and he seemed to know where he was going.

  “Daniel, hey wait up. Where are you going.?”

  “Come on. Follow me.”

  Okay fine. Nice, loving, gentlemanly Daniel had been replaced by mean, cold, and abrupt Daniel. I was in no position to argue with him though. Not after all that had happened tonight. Not when I had let some other guy kiss me. And don’t forget, you kissed him back, Leila. Yeah, I wasn’t going to fight Daniel on this. I ran after him.

  He walked with quick surety, and my curiosity was aflame. It was obvious he knew where he was going. He’s been here before. Where in heck are we?

  And then I didn’t have to wonder anymore because we had broken through a thicket of ginger plants and there it was. My midnight pool. Silver glistened over the low waterfall as it danced over black water. Ringed with bottle-green ferns.

  “Hey! It’s my pool. We must be close to Matile and Tuala’s house.” I peered through the forest, trying to get my bearings.

  He still didn’t look at me. Instead he pointed off to the right. “Yeah, it’s through the trees that way.” He jerked his head back in the direction we had come. “That’s the road I always use to get here. Me and the village boys would come swim here after school sometimes when I was a kid.”

  “But why are we here?”

  “The water. I want to be with the water.”

  In one swift motion he pulled his shirt over his head, wincing slightly as he threw it to the side. Time came to a crashing halt at the sight of his chiseled body drenched in starlight. He was beautiful.

  He waded into the waist-deep water and splashed cooling water onto his burns, making a face at the sting. Shame. Guilt. Sorrow. Daniel was hurt. I did this to him. I had betrayed him tonight and now he was hurt. This was all my fault. I walked over to join him in the water, standing behind him and slipping my hands under his arms to gently, carefully embrace him. I lay my head on the curve of his back. He was still. Rigid. His skin was cool against my cheek and I closed my eyes as all the tension of the night’s events seeped away. Replaced by the calm peace, the ‘rightness’ that Daniel inspired in me. With him, I was whole. With him, I was home. We stood like that for a long moment before he spoke.

  “Why were you out there with Keahi?”

  “He followed me from the party when I went to get a change of clothes. He wanted to talk about Sarona. And he asked me again about training him. Helping him.” I answered truthfully, wishing I could see his face, read his expression.

  Daniel moved my hands away so he could turn to face me. We stood close enough to touch. The burnt remnants of my thin dress were a poor shield against him. Every nerve ending could feel him. Wanted him. Longed for him. Even now. Even though he was angry with me. I looked up into his eyes and what I saw there frightened me. There was something fierce and taut in him tonight. Something I had never seen before. He stared down at me and when he finally spoke, his words resonated with restrained fury.

  “Did he kiss you?”

  I took a step back in the water and straightened to meet his eyes as best I could. This was Daniel. The one I loved. And I would not lie to him. “Yes.”

  “Do you want him?”

  My reaction was immediate. “No! I don’t even like him. He’s arrogant and rude and a jerk and I don’t trust him.” I took a deep breath, choosing my words very carefully. “But I’m not going to lie to you. The fire in me, the telesā in me, it responds to him, to his fire. I don’t quite know how to explain it. I think it’s because it’s excited, I mean, glad to find another person who has the same gift. But no, I don’t want him.”

  There was a slight softening in his face. Did he believe me? I whispered in the soft darkness. “Daniel, I love you.”

  “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he knows you in ways that I don’t. Intimately. Like he’s got you naked in his mind.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on in Keahi’s mind and I don’t want to know. All I care about is what’s going on in your head.” I stood on tiptoe so I could kiss his cheek. “And in your heart.” His arms went around me to clasp me tightly against him. I looked up at him. His eyes were storm ridden. He was still angry.

  “What if Keahi’s right? What if he does know you inside out? In some twisted fire telesā way? What if you two are supposed to be together? Fire and fire, or some shit like that.”

  “No. Don’t even say that. I love you. I didn’t know something was missing until I met you. Right here in this pool, a long time ago, you stood right here and you told me you would be the water that calmed me. You told me we bring out the best in each other, and you were right. You’re everything I’m not. You’re what I need. You’re the better part of me.”

  “I hate seeing you with him. I don’t want anyone else to touch you, Leila. Or kiss you. You’re mine.”

  And then he was kissing me.And it was angry and intense. His embrace was rough, his mouth on mine was searching and impatient. In one swift movement, Daniel hoisted me up, with legs around his waist, and carried me several steps, so I was seated on a rock shelf on the side of the rushing waterfall out of reach of the foaming splash. There was an urgency about his movements that I had never encountered from him before. His breath caught as he stared at me in the deepening twilight.

  He smiled. The anger was gone. A gentle smile that caressed my soul with its love. His voice was soft in the silken evening. “You’re more beautiful than I dreamed you would be.”

  Slowly, carefully he reached with one hand, almost as if in worshipful awe, to touch me, and then to kiss me, in places I had only ever dared to dream about. He pulled away one strap of my top so he could kiss the naked skin of my shoulder, pausing only to give me a searching look, ‘Is this ok?’ My smile was answer enough and then nothing separated us but water.

  That’s when the world changed. Irrevocably. Irredeemably. Daniel’s tattoos began to burn, to light up with an eerie blue glow.

  “Daniel?”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”


  As he looked at me questioningly, I caught my breath, eyes widening as I stared at his body. All his tattoos, all of them were glowing with the same blue fire. Through the rippling water I could clearly see the markings of his pe’a, the banded sleeve that marched up his arm and spread over his shoulder, even the patterns on his lower leg – all shimmering with iridescent blue. “Your tattoos, what’s happening to them?”He held up his arms and looked at them in astonishment. “I don’t know.”

  As we both stared wide-eyed, the water around us began to bubble and swirl as if a mini tornado was building up. Fear caught at me as it always did when I was in water, away from my power source. The earth that gave me fearlessness and unbridled power. “Let’s get out of here.” I slipped off the shelf, stumbling over rocks as I moved towards the safety of the poolside. But he didn’t follow me. Instead he stood there in the center of the pool, raising his hands in wonder, regarding his glowing blue markings. I spoke his name sharply, but it was as if he did not hear me. “Daniel!”

  The pool was now a raging broiling mass of white as the water churned, and in its heart stood Daniel. He smiled. But not at me. At the water around him. As tendrils of liquid began to rise from the churning surface, snaking its way around his body, along his outstretched arms, like silver ribbons of mercury. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The pool heaved with some unseen force and the water lifted like a platform of white surf, lifting Daniel with it so that he stood a few meters off the surface.

  I screamed his name and this time he turned his head to look at me. But it wasn’t Daniel. Not the Daniel I knew. Not the Daniel I loved. His eyes glowed with the same blue light as that which highlighted his every tattoo, and ropes of water were coiled around his arm. He raised the hands that had caressed me, that had traced the outline of my face with love, and shook them, as if trying to loosen the ropes. They responded to his motions and from that slight impatient shake of his hands, a whip-like wire of pure water lashed the surface of the pool. It reached to the earth on which I stood, lashing it with deadly force, ripping up rocks and plants as it scythed along the ground only inches from where I stood. I was too stunned to move, and shattered fragments of rock sprayed against my face. If there was pain , I didn’t feel it. I just stood and stared at the one I loved.

  Telesā vasa loloa.

  The shock on his face mirrored my own. “What the hell? Leila, I don’t know what’s happening. How to stop this …” He held his hands up at me with a helpless look on his face and even that despairing movement was not without consequences. In answer to his motions, the pool of water heaved again and a wave emanated from where he stood, rushing toward me, knocking me down, swirling around me as it pushed through the surrounding forest.

  I fell to my knees, buoyed by the rushing water, grabbing for a handhold at bushes, rocks, plants, anything. I could hear Daniel calling me.

  “Leila! Are you alright? Leila!”

  I shook my head in his direction ruefully, steadying myself against a tree, calling out “I’m okay. Fine. Don’t worry about me.” Worry the freakin’ hell about yourself and what in heck is going on with you, was my silent scream. From my secure place against the tree, I could see him still raised several feet above the ground, still trying wildly to shake off the coiled ropes of water. The panic on his face was an all too familiar sight – it mirrored my own the first few times my fanua afi gift had begun to manifest. Daniel was afraid. Out of control and afraid, and I knew all too well what that felt like.

  I shouted over the roaring water. “Daniel! Listen to me. Stop moving. Just stand still and breathe.”

  He looked over at me, confusion at war with terror in his eyes. “What? What do you mean?”

  “Stop moving, stand still, and breathe. Count to ten, or twenty or whatever, just do it! Look at me. I’ll count with you. Look at me, look in my eyes, and we’ll count together. Do you trust me?”

  He nodded, responding to the authority in my voice. “Yes. I trust you.”

  “Good. Don’t move. Breathe. Look at me and count with me.”

  He stopped thrashing about, stopped shaking his arms, and stood still. From his raised position above me, his eyes found mine, caught, and held, and together we started counting. One, two, three …

  I gazed at him, this boy that I loved with every fiber of my being and I willed him with everything I possessed – to calm. To gentle the power of the Gift that raged within him. To soothe it and subdue it.

  Her malu shimmered and glowed a fiery red as she called on the perfect strength of earth to speak with a mother’s love to this son of the ocean. Daniel and Leila counted, their voices in unison, and gradually the wild waters around Leila receded. The water platform Daniel stood upon began to sink until he was again standing in chest-deep water. And still they counted, their gaze locked. Forty, forty-one, forty-two … and the pool’s surface was once again a glass mirror, broken only by the silver splash of the rocky waterfall. She walked to the edge of the pool and he took those few steps forward out of the water until they were standing face to face. Together, their voices dropped to barely a whisper. Sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven …

  And then it was over. They were two people standing beside a forest pool. Two wet, half-naked, and somewhat bedraggled people. The counting died away but still Daniel stared down into her eyes, unwilling to break the lifeline that bound them. They did not touch, but she had never felt so close to him. Something had happened to him. And neither of them would ever be the same again. They were bound now by more than love. More than trust. They were bound by their mother earth, fanua.

  He spoke softly in the darkness. And there was tiredness and remnants of fear in his words. “Thank you.”

  Wet and chilled, she wanted – needed –to hold him. Reassure them both with the comfort of closeness. But she was afraid to touch him. Afraid of what that might generate. And so a thought summoned fire. Just a gathering of it in the palm of one hand. A flick of a wrist and tendrils of flame slowly encircled them so they stood within a gossamer-web of ruby red and orange. Ripples of energy that danced about them like a thousand fireflies.

  And thus they stood beside a black pool, under a solemn night sky. The patterns of her malu glowing ember red and his pe’a answering with ice blue fire.

  A daughter of earth, fanua afi, and son of the ocean, vasa loloa.

  ELEVEN

  There was only one logical course of action for us to take after that. We went to speak with Salamasina. “She’s the only person with any kind of answers for you, Daniel. There are things in your past – in her past – that you need to ask her about.” I didn’t even need to worry about breaking any confidences because as we sat by the poolside, surveying the wave-stricken damage all around us, Daniel had to agree.

  It was long after midnight when we pulled up beside the weather-beaten house. Daniel went in to wake his grandmother while I waited in the quiet kitchen, unsure if I should be present when he had this talk with her. She came out of the bedroom with questions in her eyes but one look at the both of us and her shoulders slumped. She sank into a seat at the table and asked us with dejected eyes, “It’s finally happened, hasn’t it?”

  Daniel and I exchanged glances. “What do you think has happened, Mama?” he asked her gently.

  “You are vasa loloa.” There was so much sadness in her words that Daniel moved to embrace her.

  “Mama, don’t be sad. I’m alright. Something has happened to me, but I’m alright. I’m hoping though that you can explain it? I’ve always known that I was adopted. Was my mother telesā?”

  Salamasina closed her eyes and breathed deeply in Daniel’s arms, as if seeking strength in her son’s closeness. “Come with me.” Sensing my hesitation, she nodded at me, “You too, Leila. This involves you both.”

  She rose to her feet and walked out of the house, carefully making her way across the tarsealed road, half-lit by a flickering temperamental streetlight. We followed – up and over the stone seawall that lined t
he roadside and then down to the beach. There was a half moon casting her diamonds upon the black ocean and the tide was coming in, each wave lapping in a little further than the one before it. Salamasina did not stop until we stood at the very edge of ocean where feet sank a little into wet sand. The old woman breathed deeply of the salt breeze and gazed out to the oceanscape, searching, searching. “Where are they? Ah, there. Look, what do you see? My eyesight is not what it used to be. Tell me, what do you see out there?”

  We looked where she directed and saw them. Betrayed by the silver flash of their fins as they leapt, danced, and played far out by the reef. I exclaimed, “Dolphins! I see dolphins.”

  Salamasina nodded her head and there was the same heavy sadness in her face. “Yes, dolphins. They have always been intermittent visitors here, but lately, they have been this shoreline’s constant companions.” A raise of her chin. “And if you could see further still, you would see the whales. The local fishermen speak of them. At least six of them are out there. Never venturing very far away from this beach. Do you know why they are here?”

  Moonlight glinted on the tears on her cheek as she spoke the truth that had been dancing on the waking edge of possibility. Ever since I had believed in the certainty of Daniel’s death – only to have him returned to me, battered and bruised, but alive. Returned by a school of silver dolphins.

  “They are here for you, Daniel. You are telesā vasa loloa as your mother was before you. She gave her life to protect you from telesā law. There are reasons why Tanielu and I did not tell you the truth of your heritage. They are the same reasons that we left our home on Niuatoputapu and came here to start a new life. All your life I have watched and prayed that you would not inherit your mother’s Gift. You have reached manhood now, and I had thought you had escaped the curse of the ocean, but now, I see it is not to be. I hope you can forgive me for keeping your past a secret. What I have done, I did for love.”