Telesa - The Covenant Keeper

by Lani Wendt Young

  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?”

  Damnit! 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 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 smolder. 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. 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.

  “Leila. Leila stop it. I said stop it!” There was an edge of panic in her voice as she shook her head wildly at me. She grabbed Sarona’s arm. “Stop it, you’re scaring her. Provoking her. This is not the way we want to deal with this.”

  Sarona smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “What? Alright, alright. I’ve stopped. Now get your brat under control. Remember, you need all of our consent to allow her entry to our covenant. And I don’t like what I see.”

  As if I was but a pesky dog yapping at her heels, a dog she was tired of, Sarona turned and stalked out of the room. A wave of hate ripped through me, so strong that it had me reeling. I took a deep breath and fought for control.

  But there was none to be had. Fire exploded from me. But unlike the night before, this time it was only my hands that erupted into flame. And it hurt. So badly I screamed. Flailing and stumbling, I fell to my knees, shaking my hands trying to get the fire away. Which only sent jets of flame ricocheting through the room.

  “Leila!” Nafanua ducked for cover as a flame bolt narrowly missed her face and hit a cupboard behind her. I was terrified. The fire seemed to have a life of its own, I was not in control at all as sparks leapt at will from my fingers, no matter how hard I tried to stop them. Glasses shattered, a toaster exploded, a rope of fire snaked its way along the bench top. Dimly I was aware of Netta and Sarona running in, coming to a halt in shock just as a fire flash sprayed the wall above the doorway. I curled into a ball, trying vainly to curb the fire with my body by clenching my fists tightly against me.

  “Help me please. It hurts. I can’t stop it. I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do!”

  Half the kitchen was in flames now and I could hear Nafanua coughing on the smoke. “Sarona, we have to get her out of here! Get her out into the open.”

  Crouched in the doorway, Sarona shouted back. “Oh? And just how do you propose that we do that!”

  I was paralyzed with confusion. I couldn’t understand it. Last night, yes there had been a moment of pain when the fire first exploded, but that was it. This? This was like a thousand daggers stabbing the flesh in my hands again and again. And every time a new flash emitted, it ripped through the skin like a razorblade. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. No, this was vastly different from the night before. I knew Nafanua was right. I needed to get out of the house before I burned the place down. Before I hurt one of them. I rolled over onto my knees then stood, staggered and half fell out the back screen door onto the verandah. A few more steps and I was out onto the expanse of green, leaving behind a kitchen billowing with smoke. Still the fire burned my hands and still I tried to subdue it, beating them uselessly against the damp grass. Would the agony ever end?

  “Leila, stop panicking! Be calm.” It was Nafanua. She had followed me out onto the lawn, leaving Sarona and Netta to deal with the mess I had made inside. She hung back a cautious distance and ordered again. “Stop it! You’re doing this to yourself. Take deep breaths and calm down.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I can’t stop it. I don’t know how! It hurts. It hurts. Please make it go away.”

  I turned away from her and resorted again to my attempts to stifle the flames, throwing sparks everywhere. Then it happened. From nowhere, from the silk of a blue sky, it started to rain. Hard and heavy, it came in a deluge, so thick and strong I could barely make out the outline of the house. Or of Nafanua. The coolness distracted me from the torture of my hands, giving me the chance I needed to breathe, calm down Leila. Stop panicking. You made it go away last night. You can do it again. Tell it to stop. Tell it to go away! Breathe Leila. You can do this. Calm down. I breathed and, as I breathed, the fire dimmed, hissed, and fizzed. And died. Leaving me a bedraggled heap on the ground. I lifted my charred, blistered palms to the heavens and welcomed the soothing relief offered by the rain.

  The fire was over. And, as quickly as it had begun, the rain ended. Leaving me wet and cold on the grass. Shivering with delayed shock, I picked myself up and walked back up the stairs where Nafanua stood waiting for me.

  “Are you alright?”

  I nodded. But still she reached for my hands, examining the damage. “These don’t look good. You’re going to need some of my aloe ointment and probably a draught of ti-moana juice, a sedative, for the pain. Come in the house.”

  I followed her back inside, dreading the damage I would find there. Yet, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. Clearly, Sarona and Netta had managed to subdue the flames quickly. Netta was sweeping up broken glass in a kitchen with blackened walls while Sarona was nowhere to be seen.

  “She left. In a huff.” Explained Netta in answer to Nafanua’s querying eye.<
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  “Well, that’s probably for the best. Come into the living room, Leila, while I gather my medicines for your hands.”

  A few minutes later my hands were bandaged and I was wrapped in a towel. A long sip of Nafanua’s ti-moana liquid and already the razor edge of pain was numbing. Nafanua sat across from me and studied me carefully, waiting.

  “How are you feeling now?”

  “Better. Much better. Thank you.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. About ruining your kitchen. About almost hurting you and your sister. I don’t know what happened. Well, I do know but I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Nafanua waved my apology away with her hand. “Ah, a kitchen is easily repaired. And me and my sisters, we are stronger than we look. You can’t hurt us, don’t worry. It’s alright.”

  I interrupted her in a rush of words. “No it’s not alright! Last night I almost burned the school down. I could have killed Daniel. Today, Sarona gets on my nerves a little – and so I react by setting the place on fire?! This is not ‘alright’!” I paused, struggling for calm so I could recite the words I had practiced all morning in the shower. “Nafanua, I need to go home. To America. I appreciate all that you’ve done for me in these few days, but I really think it’s better if I move back to Aunty Matile’s. And then I’m going to see what’s the earliest flight I can arrange to leave, to go back to D.C. I’m sure you understand that I just want to go home. This fire thing, whatever it is, it all started when I got here and I know, if I just go back to D.C., back to my old life, then it will go away.”

  Nafanua turned quizzical eyes on me, one eyebrow arched. “You don’t get it do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “The last thing you should be doing right now, is going home. Is going anywhere. Last night was only the beginning. Your telesā fire is only just starting to manifest, which means that you have a way to go yet before you achieve full strength. In the meantime, you’re probably the most dangerous, most volatile person on the entire planet right now. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. You have no clue what’s building up inside you right now or what metabolic changes are taking place in your system, changes that are precipitous and unstable. What just happened in that kitchen today? That was only a preview to what could happen tomorrow. You’re unstable matter, you could blow up if someone is unlucky enough to bump into you on the street. You could set the whole town alight, Leila, do you understand that? Do you know how dangerous you are to people around you?”

  “No, no.” I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to open my mind to all the possibilities she was telling me about. “No. This is just a … a weird aberration or something. This isn’t really happening. I’m going home to D.C. and I know that everything will go back to normal. It has to.”

  Nafanua regarded me with pity in her eyes. “Leila, this is a part of you. This is who you are. I’m sorry, your powers are not going to go away, no matter how much you may want them to.”

  I was hostile. “How the hell do you know that?!”

  Nafanua did not speak. She stood and walked the few steps out the open front doors and down the verandah steps. I followed her, confused as to her intentions. Almost lazily, she beckoned with her right hand and out of a blank blue sky, thunder clapped loud enough to make me jump to my feet. Another hand flicked gracefully and white light jagged, crackled and hissed as lightning seared the ground beside her. I gripped the verandah rails for support, my mind struggling to accept what I was seeing. Nafanua spun in a soft circle and the lightning burned out a path around her. When the circle was complete she stopped and stepped out of the smoke, brushing a stray piece of cindered grass off her skirt. She looked straight at me.

  “I know because I am telesā. And you are my daughter. I am matagi. Storm. Air. Wind. Lightning. You are fanua. Earth. Blessed with earth’s fire. And your gift is not going to go away, no matter what you do or where you live. It’s part of who you are and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get the help you need to make sure that you don’t hurt anyone. Unless you want to that is.” She half smiled and walked slowly towards me. I slid to sit on the wooden step. The morning sunlight danced over the garden and a blue kingfisher sat on the wood railing and regarded me with dark eyes. It was supposed to be another day in paradise. Yesterday I had kissed a beautiful boy that a girl like me could only dream about. Today, here I was, watching the woman who was my mother call down lightning from the sky and burn circles of fire in the grass.

  Nafanua sat beside me on the step and together we looked at the bees moving ponderously through the gardenia bushes. And the kingfisher looked at us both. I took a deep breath. And then another. And tried to still the thoughts that were drowning in confusion in my brain. Nafanua spoke again. “Leila, there’s something else that you should know. Look at me.”

  I looked. She took my chin in her hand. “How old do you think I am?”

  I shrugged and half smiled at the ordinariness of the query. “My dad always warned me about tricky questions like these … there’s never a right answer, Leila – to ‘do you think I’m fat?’ And ‘how old do you think I am?’ So don’t answer ‘em.” I turned away from the memories and focused on the woman beside me. “I don’t know. You tell me. How old are you?”

  “I’m 116 years old.”

  The day faded hazily around me as I looked into Nafanua’s eyes. I was wishing for insanity but all I saw there was truth. I shook my head dumbly as Nafanua continued.

  “All telesā have a gift with plants. We are healers. We know what plants will cure diseases, soothe discomforts, heal all sicknesses and prolong life. It’s not that difficult or that big of a secret. If more people adhered to a truly natural and organic diet and lifestyle – then more people would live healthier and longer lives.” She shrugged. “We telesā are not immortal or invincible, we just know what to do to ensure we live long lives. The mixture I’ve been giving you to drink every night is a standard elixir blend that we all take daily. Now that your powers are awakening, your body is changing. Your genetic code is unleashing certain anomalies that make it possible for you to channel fire, to tap in to the earth’s strength. Please believe me when I tell you that this – this is only the beginning for you. Telesā fanua can move the earth beneath our feet, summon volcanoes, channel earth’s fire and make it do their bidding. You will need a great deal of training to help you control these gifts. You will need me to help you, to teach you. You cannot do this alone. Imagine what havoc you will wreak when you make the earth heave and roar. Think of the people you could endanger. Do you want to risk that? Is that what your father would have wanted you to do?”

  I paled. That was a low blow. Mention of my dad ripped me like a serrated knife. I wanted to curl into a ball and cry till my father scooped me into his strong arms. I wanted him to take me away from here. Away from my living nightmare. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  I gritted my teeth and prayed again for calm strength. Again the image of Grandmother Folger and her steel resolve was my focal point.

  “When we first met, you said nothing to me about this stuff. Now it all makes sense what Aunty Matile was freaking out about, she kept going on and on about telesā and spirits. I had no idea what she was talking about. Why weren’t you open with me when we met? When I first moved in here?”

  She smiled pityingly. “Honestly, would you have wanted to listen? Would you still have come to stay with me if I started spouting off to you about spirits and powers and all this? I don’t think so! Besides, we telesā have … I suppose you’d call them – rules – for this kind of thing. My sisters and I, we are feagaiga sa.”

  “A what?”

  “Feagaiga sa – the closest English word would be ‘covenant.’ It’s a sacred promise that we enter into. One that binds us to each other, stronger than blood. It enables our gifts, our powers to be multiplied many times over and renders them void against each other, making it impossible for any of us to attack the other.
We are bound to protect each sister in the covenant against any harm. We are covenant to many things, including secrecy. We cannot share telesā knowledge with anyone. Yes, people know of us, they hint of us in their quiet little chats, revere us in their legends and frighten children with stories of our punishments, but ordinary people do not, cannot really know us and what we can do. So, I could not tell you anything, until now. Now that you have come into the light of who you are. One of us. My daughter. My sister.”

  My mind was busy at work, searching for the answers that would help me carve a way out of this choking mess. “Wait, so let me see if I get this. We have these power things. Mine is catching on fire and blowing things up. Yours is like Storm from the X-Men?”

  She arched an eyebrow at me, “Excuse me? Storm who?”