When Water Burns

by Lani Wendt Young

  It was a happiness that Salamasina did not take for granted, for she knew it could be taken from her at any time. The possibility of Daniel’s Gift was forever looming in the background, like the ominous distant roar of the waves beating against the reef in front of their house.

  THIRTEEN

  The sunrise was beginning to burn the horizon when Salamasina came to an end. “Not a day goes by when I have not given thanks for the blessing of being of your mother. Tanielu was so proud of you, as am I.”

  Daniel was silent as he stared out at the crashing surf on the reef. He looked so very weary and my heart went out to him. This had been a night of intense revelations for him. I reached for his hand, trying to will him some of my strength. Salamasina sighed at our clasped hands. “That is why I did not want you two to be together. It was nothing personal against you, Leila, but I knew of your ties to telesā and I feared that you would be a catalyst for Daniel’s Gift.” The look she gave me was accusing, and I shifted uncomfortably. “And then when you revealed that you are fanua afi, it was like a nightmare coming true.”

  “Grandmother,” Daniel interrupted with an embarrassed laugh. “Please. I wouldn’t use that word to describe the girl I love.”

  Salamasina rushed to explain. “No, you don’t understand. There is a telesā legend that speaks of fanua afi and the purpose of telesā. It is the telesā creation story and you both must hear it so that you can know why it is that I wish my son had never met you, Leila.”

  Ouch. I tried not to show how her words wounded me. This was my boyfriend’s mother after all. And Samoan culture was all about fa’aaloalo, respect for your elders. So instead, I clasped Daniel’s hand tightly in mine and listened as Salamasina told us the creation myth – according to the telesā.

  And when she was done, Daniel voiced the same question that I had. “Mama, I understand that these old stories are very important, and we can learn many useful things from them but honestly, I don’t see what that creation myth has to do with me and Leila.”

  “It is not just any story. It is the arcane knowledge that has been handed down from telesā mother to daughter since the creation. Telesā speak this knowledge to their daughters before they can understand its mysteries. They whisper it to their babies as they nurse at their breast, soothing them to sleep with the familiar words. They tell it to them as they search the forest for the plants that will heal. And the plants that will hurt. They recite it as they teach them how to unleash their gifts, how to speak to wind and water. They sing it together as they dance the siva, as they speak of earth’s mysterious beauty through their dance. No, it is not just a story.” The old woman paused and pointed at me. “Why do you think your mother Nafanua was so quick to embrace you? So eager to have you join her covenant, even against the wishes of her sisterhood? She knew of the prophecy. Ancient telesā have long spoken of the telesā fanua afi who would come and set to right the balance, awaken this people to a remembrance of their debt to fanua. In you, Nafanua saw the answer, the power that would restore telesā to their rightful place as the guardians, the protectors. What she conveniently forgot to take into consideration was the rest of the prophecy. That for the prophecy to be fulfilled, a man was required ‘he who would give his heart that earth may live.’ The prophecy is about sacrifice. A sacrifice of gifts, of life, of heart so that the land might live. I will not let my son be that sacrifice. Do you hear me!?” She shook her fist vehemently inches away from my face and I cringed against the force of her anger. “You must choose another. You must let my Daniel go. I tell you, let my son go.” And then she crumpled, her energy spent. She turned to Daniel. “Please? Surely you can see why it is a mistake for you two to be together?”

  Both Daniel and I sat in stunned silence, trying to process all that Salamasina had just hit us with. And then the boy I loved spoke with firm conviction. “Mama, I don’t want to hurt you, but Leila is the girl I love. She is my heart, my earth. I know nothing of legends or prophecies. But I know that without Leila, I am nothing. And together, we can endure anything.”

  Salamasina gave up trying to convince us of anything after that declaration. But she did tell us about her visit from Tavake the Tongan Covenant Keeper and her concerns about Sarona. “Now that your Gift has manifested, Tavake is going to want you to join her. She assured me that she would not harm you, but still, I worry for you, my son. I worry for both of you.”

  As we walked back to the house , Daniel held my hand in his and I tried to share the same faith that he had, together we can endure anything. More than anything, I wanted that to be true.

  Simone and I were so exhausted from the fashion show spectacle that it took a full three days for us to recover. It took another week for us to clean the house of its two weeks’ worth of creativity, until we could inspect our domain and agree that it finally resembled its original self. What a relief. Maybe now, life could go back to normal. Whatever that was. School, my work at the Center – everything had taken a back seat to the show and I was looking forward to the ordinary and mundane. I should have known better. There is no room in the telesā world for the ‘ordinary and mundane.’

  I got a phone call from Salamasina in the early morning, before the neighborhood dogs, or even the chickens were awake. The insistent beeping burrowed into my sleeping subconscious, waking me. What the hell?

  “Leila? Daniel’s missing. He’s not in his room, or anywhere in the house or the workshop, I can’t find him.” She choked on the words.

  Daniel. I didn’t hesitate. Falling over the mess in my room in my haste to get dressed, I was out the door and in the jeep within minutes, remembering at the last minute to leave a scribbled note for Simone to explain my absence. I knew the route to the ocean-side house in my sleep and I drove on auto-pilot. What could be wrong? I pushed a little harder on the accelerator, gripping the steering wheel firmly, trying to stifle the rising tide of panic that threatened to drown me. Too many thoughts. What if it was Sarona? What if she had taken Daniel? What if she had rounded up some more psycho telesā matagi? What if… The ten minute drive felt like an eternity. I pulled up beside the faded welding shop sign. Salamasina was waiting for me on the porch, with all the lights on in the house. She was pale and drawn, her hair a wiry mess as she stood there wringing her hands.

  “I don’t even know how long he’s been gone. I always get up at five and when I walked past his room I saw that his bed was empty and the back door was open. His truck is still here. Oh, where could he be?” In that moment, she didn’t look like a proud, mean woman who had threatened me to leave Daniel alone. She looked like a very frightened and rather frail grandmother.

  I walked her back into the house, trying to calm her. “I’m sure he’s alright. Maybe he’s gone for a run? Or just a long walk?”

  “No.” She shook her head in agitation. “He would have left me a note, or said something about it last night. He knows I worry about him, especially since Tavake’s warning about Sarona. What if she took him?” She sunk her face into her hands and gave in to her tears.

  “We’ll find him. Don’t worry.” I patted her on the back, my mind racing to think of all the possible places that Sarona could have taken Daniel. She had a house at the Aleisa property. I could check there first, although that would be a far too predictable spot to take a victim. Maybe I should go to the same beach the Covenant had taken us to last year? I refused to let my terror overtake me. Daniel needed me to be calm and composed. Plan with care and precision how to approach this. Through my fervid thoughts, something Salamasina said caught my attention. Something about nightmares…“What did you say?”

  “I said that I should have known much sooner that something was wrong. Every night for the past few weeks, he’s been having terrible nightmares and waking me up with his shouts and thrashing about. But last night, there was nothing, no noises at all and I just slept through it. I should have checked on him. I should have known he wasn’t in the house.” She sobbed piteously.

  Nigh
tmares. Immediately I was reminded of my fear-filled dreams from the year before. So real. So life-like. The dreams that had led me to the secret pool. I thought of Daniel’s birthmark, sharks and dolphins and I knew where he might be. I leapt to my feet. “I think I know where he is. Come on.”

  I ran out the door, down the porch steps and across the road to the seawall with Salamasina following closely behind me. “Where are we going?”

  “To the ocean. I think he’s somewhere on the beach.”

  We stood at the top of the seawall and gazed down the beach in both directions, right and left. The sun had begun to pierce the horizon with pinpricks of orange gossamer thread that embroidered the shadowed beach with filaments of light. I couldn’t see Daniel anywhere. A long distance away to the right was an outcropping of rocks, leading to a sheltered cove. A good place to start? I set off running.

  If only I had some kind of telesā radar, some way of sensing if there were any in the shadows waiting for me. I called his name in a hushed kind of whisper.

  “Daniel? Where are you?”

  And then I heard him. “Over here.” His voice came from the faraway silver strip of beach that beckoned from beyond the rocks. “Come quick. But be careful.”

  His voice seemed to catch on something unseen. I was afraid and fear made me hot. Tendrils of smoke rose from cindered patches on my singlet as my agitation ate through my skin, my clothing. I sprinted to the rocks and clambered over them

  “What is it? What’s wrong…” the question died in my throat as I jerked to a standstill on the beach.

  A beach that was cluttered with sea creatures. The bulk of a dolphin lay heavily at the far end of the sand, arraigned about it were turtles, the black triangle of giant sting rays, the silver glint of fish as they threshed and flapped in the shallows and all about the sand. And sitting in the midst of them all was Daniel. Clothed in the usual ragged pair of shorts, the muscled plane of his back was criss-crossed with vicious red welts. He looked up at my approach with an expression of bleak despair.

  “They’re dying. And I can’t help them. I don’t know what to do.”

  I ran to kneel by his side, navigating squid, jelly fish, and whoa, is that a shark?! “Are you alright? What happened?” He raised his arms to hug me with a fierce intensity. That’s when I saw his chest. Scourged with the same lacerations and purplish swelling bruises. “You’re hurt. We’ve got to get you up to the house where Salamasina can take care of you.”

  “No, I can’t leave them. It’s my fault they’re stranded here. They’re dying. They keep coming to me and I can’t make them stop.”

  “What do you mean?” I sank to kneel beside him in the wet sand, “How is this your fault?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Something was calling me. I could hear my name so I came down here to the beach.” He looked up out over the ocean and his eyes had that same faraway look which had transported him on that day when the water had leapt to his desire. Daniel was there with me but he wasn’t. Flies buzzed around his lacerated body but he didn’t see them. He saw nothing but the ocean and the sea creatures that surrounded us. A cold fist of fear clenched me. I wanted nothing more than to get him as far away from the ocean as possible, back up to the house where his wounds could be tended to, where we could assert some reason on this strangeness.

  He turned his face away from me and in the splintered dawn I saw tears glisten and glide on his cheek. Daniel was crying. The fist of coldness clenched tighter and I could barely breathe. The boy who had risked telesā wrath to stand by my side, endured lightning torture, and been to hell and back at the hands of a power-hungry Covenant sisterhood – now sat here on a beach littered with dead and dying sea life – and wept. His tears pierced me with a pain that I never knew was possible.

  “I wanted to see if I could make it happen again. What happened at the pool that day. You know, that thing with the water?”

  I nodded, willing him to go on. Don’t shut me out now Daniel. Tell me everything. Let me in to your personal nightmare.

  “So I tried focusing, thinking about how it felt at the pool when the water was responding to my thoughts, my movements and it worked.” His face lit up for the briefest of moments. “The ocean was moving to my thoughts, it was – well, I don’t know how to describe it.” He shook his head at the memory and I filled in the gaps for him.

  “It was magical?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Magical.” He studied his chafed hands thoughtfully. “Like something sleeping inside me all this time is finally waking up.”

  “Then what happened?” I prompted. “How did you get hurt?”

  “I was doing stuff with the water when all the fish went nuts. Out of nowhere, everything started to throw themselves on the shore, swimming all the way up until they beached themselves. And their thoughts. It was like a frenzy, I couldn’t make sense of their language anymore. They weren’t scared or angry. They were happy. Joyous. To see me. To hear me.” He shook his head, frustration blazing in his sea-green eyes. “I tried to stop them. First by talking to them with my mind. And then by carrying them back into the water. I’ve been chucking fish and stuff back into the ocean but they kept coming back faster than I could throw them back. For hours now. It’s hopeless.” He regarded his hands in defeat. “I can’t stop them. I tried. And now, they’re dying.”

  “Oh Daniel.” I took one ravaged hand gently in mine. “Is that how you got hurt? Trying to return them to the ocean?” I looked closely at his wounds.

  He nodded. “They’re dying Leila. I can hear them. I can’t get them out of my head. I don’t understand what’s happening. What’s wrong with me?”

  Before I could think of an answer that would make sense, Salamasina spoke from behind us, “Your mother had the same Gift. The ability to communicate with the ocean creatures. And to control them. Not all vasa loloa have it.”

  We both turned to look at her. Salamasina regarded us with sadness in her eyes. “Your Gift is strong Daniel. You will need training so you can control it. So that it doesn’t overwhelm you. And so that you won’t hurt anyone.” She looked at the death around us. “Or any thing.”

  Daniel rose to his feet. There was a hint of hope in his voice. “Can you help me?”

  She shook her head and hope fractured. “ I am no telesā vasa loloa. You will need Tavake’s help.”

  I leapt to my feet. “No. I can help him. I’m telesa.” I turned to Daniel, “You can’t trust any telesā sisterhood. I helped you the other night. We can figure this out together.”

  Neither of them looked very comforted by my assurance. Who could blame them? I sounded more confident than I felt. What did I know about oceans and talking to sea creatures anyway? Nothing. All I knew for sure was that Daniel shouldn’t go anywhere near a Covenant Sisterhood.

  In the hesitant pause that followed, Salamasina took charge. “Daylight is fast approaching. We need to clean up here and get Daniel home so I can tend to his wounds.”

  There wasn’t much we could do for the dead marine life that littered the shore. Except make a pile of their bodies on the sand. Salamasina and Daniel stepped back and watched as I summoned fire and set the pile ablaze. The smell of roasting flesh was overpowering and Daniel turned away, taut with some unnamable emotion. I forced the flames to intensify, wanting it all to be over faster. Salamasina went to stand beside him, an arm around his waist. The two of them stood there united as I did the only thing I was good at. Burn stuff.

  As my core sang to the flames, I confronted the harsh reality. What could a fanua afi teach a vasa loloa? About control. About harmony with one’s Gift. About the earth’s elemental promise? About anything?

  At some point, Daniel was going to need another Vasa Loloa. Where were we going to find one that didn’t want to kill him? Or siphon out his powers?

  I shoved the unwanted questions away and followed Daniel and Salamasina back up to the house.

  The next day, I tried again to get back to the regular life I had been tryin
g to live. I showed up to Dayna’s muay thai class and the students greeted me warmly. Keahi was nowhere to be seen. Dayna shook her head when I asked about him, “He hasn’t been back for over a week now. I got a text from him saying he wouldn’t be helping with the classes anymore because he would be travelling for a while.”

  Keahi travelling? Had he joined Sarona? I tried to quell the fluttering of unease in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t my fault if he had chosen to take Sarona up on her offer. There’s no way that I could have helped him. Not with him behaving the way he had. Not with the disastrous connection that we shared. I tried to put him out of my mind and went to meet with Mrs. Amani and catch up with the Center’s activities. Everything was fine, except for Teuila.

  “Her mother was released from hospital earlier this week and she moved back in with her boyfriend.”

  Stunned, I asked, “Not the same guy who knifed her?”

  “The very same. Teuila didn’t want to leave with her mother, but she insisted. I tried talking to her mother and getting her to change her mind, at least leave Teuila here. She’s settled in so well and starting to open up to people and trust us. She loves the muay thai classes and enjoyed doing the fashion show with you so much. But her mother took her home.”

  I was so angry that my rage felt like a white-hot lance in my chest. Teuila deserved better than this. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  Mrs. Amani shook her head, “I share your frustration, but we have no legal grounds to stand on. Not here in Samoa. All we can do is be ready to help Teuila when she next needs it.”

  In other words, wait for her to get attacked again. My first instinct was to go visit Teuila at once but the way I was feeling, I knew I shouldn’t. At least not until I calmed down because the way I was feeling – I wanted to knife someone myself.