“Now, Jacob, just because we have a pretty one doesn’t mean you can go and forget your manners.” She turned her smile at me and warmth ran from the top of my head to all my extremities. Whether it was from me or her, I couldn’t tell. “I’m Melika, dear. You must be Echo.”
Jacob scurried off the boat and helped me out.
“Yes, I am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Melika reached for my hand and held it tightly as she gazed deep into my eyes. I felt like I could stand there forever. “Oh my,” she said softly.
“What?”
Releasing my hand, she picked something from my hair and tossed it into the water. “It appears George got to you not a moment too soon.” Melika continued looking in my eyes, searching for something. I could barely feel it, but I knew she was there.
“You can barely feel it, my dear, because I am virtually unreadable to any but the strongest of us. Try as you may, you will never know what I am feeling, just as a telepath will never know what I am thinking.” Melika took my chin in her hand. She smelled of mint and oranges. “But you do have a great gift, to be sure.”
“It feels more like a curse every day.”
She released my chin and patted me on the shoulder. “Every gift can become a curse and every curse, a gift. It is how we choose to use it that makes the difference.”
And so, without taking another step, lessons began that would change the course of the rest of my life.
I met Tiponi Redhawk next. She was sitting on the stairs to the porch of Melika’s cute little cottage that looked like something a Keebler elf might have lived in. Unlike so many of the other shacks lining the Bayou that were made out of thin pieces of wood and sheet metal, this cottage was fashioned out of stone. A small wisp of white smoke curled from the chimney, and I wondered if there was a trail of breadcrumbs somewhere. A covered deck wrapped around the front of the house and had a wooden swing hanging at one end and a set of green plastic Adirondack chairs at the other. Quaint.
That was when I noticed Tiponi sitting on the stairs with her arm draped around a bloodhound. I was immediately struck by her exotic and out-of-place looks. Unlike the black folks I’d met or seen so far, Tiponi’s perfect complexion was that of a Native American; a golden hue with a slight reddish tint. Her hair was black tar that hung well past her shoulders. Her light hazel eyes looked at me with such intensity, I had to look away. She was at least twenty…maybe older. It was hard to tell. I’d never been good with ages.
“Stop it, Tip,” Melika admonished. “Please bring her things to the blue room, Jacob. Tip, please take Zeus for a walk, will you? I don’t need you underfoot right now.”
Tip rose and seemed to keep rising for several seconds. She was enormous; legs like the trunks of some of the trees we had passed, shoulders that stretched her shirt to the tearing point, and arms that said she did a lot of heavy lifting all made her quite an imposing figure for a woman. “I thought—”
“I know what you thought, Tip, but not now. Can’t you see she is a fish out of water? Scoot. Come back when you can be useful.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tip and the wrinkly dog strode away, leaving tree branches and leaves bending in their wake.
“Don’t pay her any mind for right now. You’ll be working closely with her later, but this trip has made you weary. Jacob will take you to your room. Take a little nap before dinner and get your energy back up. My son explained what happened to you in the hospital, but I’ll need to hear every single detail of your life from the first moment you felt what that boy was going to do to you. So, rest, my girl. We have a lot of work ahead.”
Nodding, I took two steps and then just started bawling. I’m not talking crying and sniffling; I mean an all-out meltdown. I sobbed uncontrollably until Melika put her arms around me and pulled me closer. She was right about me being exhausted. The horror of the hospital, the fear of the escape, the awful goodbye to the only person who loved me, not knowing when I would see her again hit like an elephant kick to my chest. Add to that, feeling all of the emotions of every person on the plane and entering a land as foreign as Ethiopia, and I was ready to collapse.
By the time I got to the blue room, I was more than ready for a nap. I needed to just close the world around me and just sleep.
I did.
“Welcome back,” came Jacob’s voice from a rocking chair in the corner of the small room.
“What time is it?”
“Two fifteen.”
I frowned, trying to remember how the times changed from one time zone to the next.
“Of the next day,” Jacob said, smiling. “You’ve been asleep almost twenty-four hours.”
“What?” Sitting up, I looked out the window at the bright sunlight. “It’s tomorrow?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. Melika has lunch on the table.”
Inhaling deeply, I rose and stretched. The smell of something baking hit my nostrils making me instantly hungry. “God,” I said, slowly putting my feet on the cold floor. I hadn’t slept that well in ages, but twenty hours? Sheesh. “I didn’t know I was so tired.”
“Everyone does it when they first get here. We call it Bayou Bliss. She just wraps her arms around you and lulls you to sleep. It will help you with your night terrors, for sure.”
“My ni—how did you know about those?”
“I was watching.”
“All night?”
He shook his head. “We took turns.”
“Including Tiponi?” The idea of that huge Indian woman staring at me all night made me nervous.
“Nah. Just me, Mel and Zack.”
“Is that how she knew I needed a nap?”
“Melika knows everything about us. That’s all I can say right now. Melika will start your lessons after lunch. Be smart and listen carefully to everything she says. When I say she knows everything, I’m not kidding. She can give you your life back. No one else can.”
I believed him.
I followed Jacob down the stairs, smelling this incredible aroma with every step. At the bottom, sitting at a small picnic table, were Melika and Tip. There was a huge pot of something that had steam rising off the top. It smelled so good, I couldn’t stop salivating.
“I trust you slept well,” Melika said, dipping her ladle into the reddish stew. Tip cut a piece of corn bread out of the pan and set it on the table. My stomach made its embarrassing announcement that it was hungry. “Have a seat and eat up. There’s plenty.”
“I’m sorry I slept so long. It’s sort of rude.”
“Always listen to your body, my girl. Let that be your first lesson. Your body will always tell you what you need, where you need to go, what to do if only you let it. Primitive man relied more heavily on his body than his mind. He ate when he was hungry, not because someone or some social rules told him it was time for dinner. Sometimes, progress takes us backward.”
I sat at the picnic table across from scary Tip, who never took her eyes from me. She was sort of creeping me out with her intensity and I found I could not maintain eye contact with her for longer than a moment.
“I’m Tip,” she said, extending her hand to me. “We haven’t formally met.”
I reached across the table and shook her hand. “Echo.”
“Interesting name.”
I shrugged, retrieving my hand. “It fits.”
Tip motioned with her chin over to Jacob. “As fitting as Jacob Marley?”
I started to ask what she meant, but my stomach continued to make itself known. My plate was loaded down with a yummy red stew and a chunk of corn bread. There was a crab-like thing in the stew that I had never seen before.
“Crawdads,” Tip said.
“We eat crawdads the way other people eat chicken. Tip, show her how.”
She picked up one of the crawdads, popped her thumb under the head and then pulled it off and sucked it before removing the meat from the shell. “Sucking his brains out is a Cajun thing, but don’t do it if you don’t
feel up to it.” Tip went on to explain how there are a lot of Cajun ways and Creole ways and Southern ways and Louisianan ways of doing things. I had never seen so many customs in my life. But no matter whose way was right, they all had one thing in common; an appreciation for fine food that was evident by the way they all dug in.
I jumped into my plateful of food with gusto that almost scared me.
“Always keep your body well-nourished, which is very different from well-fed. Eating well does not mean eat a lot. Treat your body like you would an expensive automobile; give it only the best.” Melika sipped her coffee and cut her eyes over to Tip. Something passed between them I could not name.
“And so it begins,” Tip said under her breath.
Melika swatted her arm. “Hush, you, unless you want to spend your days with Zeus.”
“No, I’m good.” Tip held her hands in surrender.
Melika returned her attention to me. “So, my girl, tell me what happened that day with the boy. Don’t leave a single detail out no matter how insignificant it may seem.”
Tip turned to me. “You’ll find that Mel is quite detail-oriented, so the sooner you get used to sharing the details, the better. We have no secrets.”
Nodding, I finished my meal and started my story. I wouldn’t get three sentences out before Melika would stop with a question or five. Tip wasn’t kidding when she said she liked details. She didn’t just like them…she demanded them.
When I finally finished telling her every single thing that had transpired since I whacked Todd in the head, it was nearly five o’clock; three hours in the telling.
“Very good. Now, I have a clearer picture of how you came to be. What we don’t know is how you came to be what you are.” Melika motioned to Jacob, who rose and started clearing the table. “Come.”
I followed her outside to the porch. We sat in the Adirondacks while Tip took the steps with Zeus.
“What do you mean how I became what I am?”
“Most of us are born one way or the other, Echo. Very few of us come to it in the middle of our lives. It is difficult when that happens because we are incapable of understanding what is happening to us until, more often than not, it’s too late.”
I looked over at Tip, who was petting Zeus. “Her?”
“Born.”
“Jacob?”
“Born.”
“You?”
She grinned. “Born. Like I said, very few of us are like you. As you learn and grow here, perhaps we’ll discover what it is that brought it out in you.”
“Big George said I’m an empath. Is that true?”
“That remains to be seen. At first glance, you appear to be clairempathic; you feel the emotional energies of others. You can read their auras until it becomes a part of you. You can experience their emotions with them. You are overrun by others’ emotions.”
I nodded. “But…I must have lost it or something because I can’t feel anything from any of you. Jacob mentioned something about blocking, but I don’t—”
“Blocking means we erect a psychic shield that prevents our energies from leaking to you, and you can’t read us because we won’t let you. That’s what blocking does; it protects us from each other.”
“You can actually do that?”
“So can you. At least, you will when I’m done with you.”
“So…you’re all empaths?”
Tip threw her head back and laughed. It was a sound I would hear repeatedly for the next four years of my life.
My first week with Melika was eye-opening, to say the least. It wasn’t just the bizarre food or location in the swamp that was strange, but the lessons I learned from others like me. I had had no idea how close I had come to losing my sanity…of coming to the edge of reason and falling off. Without their help, I would have most assuredly ended up like that frothing girl back in the California psych ward.
I was an empath. Unlike those born with the gift, I had come into mine in a moment of crisis; not uncommon for supers. Because it came upon me so quickly and without notice, it had the potential of quickly consuming me and driving me mad. I owed my sanity as well as my life to Big George…I knew I would end up owing my future to Melika.
“The first lesson is going to be the hardest one, yet the most important,” Melika told me the second day there. We’d loaded up a small boat with picnic items as she and I headed out to the Bayou. The Bayou, like I said, was another world unto itself. Out here, there was no hustle or bustle of crowds or people too full of their own self importance. Out here, there was just you and nature. You either learned to become part of the natural world or you’d leave it behind on your way back. For me, there was no back, there was no home. There was only this moment, and I was, at this moment, staring at an enormous alligator basking in the sun on the banks of the Bayou. I couldn’t help but hear Linda Ronstadt, though there wasn’t anything blue about it, really.
“You tensed up when you saw the ’gator. Do you know why?” Melika adjusted her large straw hat. Today she was wearing another black dress similar to the one she had on when I arrived. The rubber galoshes she had worn seemed to be her shoe of choice. Today, she had a yellow shawl wrapped around her shoulders even though the temperature was already over eighty degrees.
“Because he could eat us.”
Melika barely glanced at the beast. “Could. The question is does it want to?”
I stared at the prehistoric creature as the boat glided silently by. Neither of us were rowing, just floating down the river. I was pleased to see that this boat also had an outboard motor at the rear. Although no one seemed to use them on the Bayou.
“Well…I guess it could, but—”
“Don’t guess. Guessing is for naturals. We’re not naturals, Echo. We’re supernaturals. We can do things they cannot. A natural would make all sorts of assumptions about that ’gator. I don’t want you to assume. I want you to read it.”
“Read it? You mean—”
“Look at it. Everything has a vibration, an energy, a frequency that others can tune into. Not everyone has the ability to tune into others, and not all empaths can read animals or the natural environment. I want to see if you can.”
Nodding, I tried to put my fear of the ugly beast aside long enough to really focus in on it. Sure enough, I was immediately hit with a wave of bored energy from the alligator. He was more interested in napping than he was in eating us. “Oh my God! I did it!”
Melika smiled softly. “Very good. So much of what we’re going to be doing for the next couple of weeks is just to determine the strength of your power. You must be patient during this process because we cannot proceed with the education until we know what all you are capable of.”
“Wait a second. What do you mean, all?”
“Many empaths have additional sight as well as telepathy, clairvoyance—”
“Clair what?”
Melika inhaled deeply. “A telepath can do what you do, only with thoughts. Some telepaths are slightly empathic, some empaths slightly telepathic. Our gifts are as varied as our faces. There are so many varying degrees of our powers. No one knows how or why, and none of us know the true depths of our respective powers until we push the envelope.”
“And clairvoyancy?”
“Is the ability to see the past, present and future moments.”
“People can really do that?”
Melika tilted her head and when the sunlight caught her face, she looked years younger. “There are all sorts of gifts, Echo. All of you who have come to me have always been dubious about the other gifts even though you possess your own.” Melika took her hat off and sighed. “Let me ask you this: do you think the idea of flight was impossible to the people of the Middle Ages? Or that fuel-powered cars seemed like just a silly dream? Do you think men and women of the Wild West ever believed we could walk on the moon?”
I shook my head.
“And what about the idea of reattaching limbs, or transplanting organs? Don’t you thi
nk there was a time when the majority of people thought these were merely fantastical ideas?”
I nodded.
“And what about computers? Television? Radio? The Internet? Those used to be beyond the scope of man’s ability, yet here they are. We can drive, fly, do microscopic surgery and even clone creatures now, but these things were once considered impossibilities.”
I nodded, watching another ’gator slip into the water. “But they weren’t impossible.”
“Indeed, because they all happened. Now, we have pills that can keep us from getting pregnant, we can travel at the speed of sound, and even some blindness can be cured. But isn’t it funny that with all humankind can accept and do, it still does not believe in the power of the human mind that created all of this.” Melika pushed her hat back as I used the pole against a nearby bank. “Humans use less than ten percent of their brain. Apparently, this is a fact. What, then, is the other ninety percent used for? Filler? Clearly, it’s used for something, but science hasn’t figured it out yet.”
My eyes grew wide as I realized where she was going with this. “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying that just because society does not believe a thing exists does not mean it doesn’t. Before science came along to tell us what to believe and not believe, people believed in the possibilities of witchcraft, of alchemy, of Merlin’s power and the mental capabilities of the pagans. But science came along, Christianity grew powerful and soon, what couldn’t be explained or proven became an impossibility. Those of us with supernatural powers were forced underground by the fear of being hunted and destroyed. People like you and me lived in fear of being found out. We are one such impossibility.”
I nodded. “I get it.”
“Don’t you find it interesting how many insane people who are locked up say they hear voices? The belief is that only crazies hear voices. According to modern man and science, these voices must come from within that person. Because it is impossible for science to prove that we can do what we do, we’ve labeled those who actually can hear voices insane.”
“But it is possible. We’re proof of that.”
“Oh, dear girl, only a small number of us know how very possible it is. It’s funny; science tells us animals communicate in any number of ways we can’t. But we can only talk? Why, if we’re so damn smart, can’t we communicate much in the same way dolphins can?”
More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series) Page 5