Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar)

by Rose, Willow

  Aiyana grabbed my hand with hers that was full of wet clay and pulled me aside. Then she kissed me gently on my lips. “Don’t talk about money, okay?” she said. “It is all that is wrong with this world, my mother always says.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” I was confused. How could anyone live avoiding all talk about money? It was everywhere. In everything. It wasn’t something you could just ignore. That was impossible. All adult people in my life had always talked about money. How much they had, how much they didn’t have, how much they wanted and so on. It was always about the money. Only children lived a life without thinking about money.

  “Do you want to try?” she asked. “Do you want to try and make something?”

  In a matter of seconds I forgot all about what had happened to me that day. I forgot about the doctor who had made this huge decision on my behalf, I forgot about my father accepting this without even asking for my consent, I forgot about the many years I was about to be locked away in med school, studying something I really didn’t care about, but someday would make me a rich man. I even forgot about the woman and her child for a few minutes while I took the clay in my hands and started turning it and molding it into something that I might have wanted to be a vase, but mostly looked like an ashtray. Afterwards, I was covered in clay but I had laughed so lightly and that was worth everything.

  We cleaned ourselves up the best we could and went into the kitchen. Once again, Nadie and the grandmother made a divine lunch for us. It tasted like nothing I had tried before. I complimented them and they told me to pay them back with a song. Nina got the guitars and I sang one of my songs and afterwards the mother, Wyanet, tried to teach me how to play the flamenco. It came naturally to me but was hard on my fingers. I enjoyed watching Aiyana dance with her sisters and once again had an enchanting afternoon with them all.

  Later we went to Aiyana’s room, filled with laughter, drunken by music and dancing. I grabbed her as soon as she closed the red door to her room and pushed her against the wall while kissing her passionately, demanding, craving to touch her and smell her body again. I knew we were in her house and her entire family was right down the stairs and could probably hear everything, but I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I wanted so badly to explore her body once again and caress her, whisper her name and cause her dark skin to shiver with pleasure. She had that affect on me like no other woman I had met. I hated to be apart from her and counted the seconds until I could hold her in my arms again. When I was with her there was nothing else. There existed nothing more than the two of us in this world.

  “Easy, Christian,” she moaned while I kissed her neck. I lifted my head and gave her a disappointed look with my blue eyes. She would fall for that. All women did.

  Then she laughed out loud before she let me carry her to the bed.

  Chapter 20

  “So how do you propose that we find this woman?” I asked.

  We were still naked on the bed and I was exploring her body by letting my fingers walk all over it. There was no better moment in my life than this. Just the two of us all tangled up, laughing, enjoying each other, rolling around on the bed while kissing and caressing one another. It was so beautiful and somehow innocent. It was pure.

  “I told my mother everything you have told me and she went into her room and talked to the spirits about it. When she came out she said that the woman will find you,” Aiyana said, her beauty still astonishing me.

  “Will find me? But how?” I asked and kissed her belly while closing my eyes. Her skin felt so soft and gentle beneath my lips. I inhaled her scent and felt aroused. I wanted to take her once again on the bed. The very thought drove me mad with thirst for her body.

  “Your paths will cross one of these days soon and you’ll know,” Aiyana answered.

  I continued kissing her till I reached her breasts. Then I lifted my head and looked at them. They were stunningly shaped, and even though one was slightly bigger than the other they were absolutely perfect. Man could never create something like that, I thought to myself. Who were we kidding? There had to be some kind of divine power. One look at Aiyana and you’d know. She most definitely wasn’t of this world.

  “But I didn’t know with Mrs. Kirk,” I said. “I saw it happen in a vision, but I didn’t know it was going to happen until it was too late. And even if I had known that I could see things like that, that they might become real, I had no way of stopping it. I didn’t know anything about when it was going to take place.”

  She lifted her head and looked at me. “You knew enough to be alert when you heard the noise from downstairs. You knew enough to run down there and save her life. Maybe that was all you were supposed to do. Maybe it was just a warning about something that was going to take place in your life.”

  I hadn’t thought about it in that way. It was comforting. I had been so busy telling myself that it hadn’t been good enough what I had done, when it actually had been exactly enough to keep her alive. She was getting better now, and there was no way Maria could have pulled that off alone. Even with the lamp. I had actually done something with my life. Something that mattered to someone else. I felt suddenly good about myself and put my head on her belly and wrapped myself in her body. She held me tight. “So what you are saying is that I received that vision in order to know how to react when the situation presented itself. Is that it?”

  She nodded. “You’ll know. Somehow. Like I said, it is like a warning, really. At least that is what mother said. She said the spirits wouldn’t give you this premonition if they didn’t somehow also provide a use for it.”

  “But what about you? You have no use for what you receive. You can’t help those whom you hear.”

  “I am helping you, right?”

  “I guess.” I kissed the inner sides of her thighs. It made her laugh. She grabbed my head and made me look at her. I didn’t mind. I fully enjoyed looking at her. As a matter of fact I could do that all day, it was all I ever wanted out of life. Her.

  “Listen, Christian. You can’t help everybody in this world and there will be times when you fail or at least feel like you’re failing. Just do the best you can. That’s all anyone can ask for. React whenever you get the chance.”

  “Or I will end up like your grandmother, tortured by my visions. I hear you. How come she hasn’t done anything about her premonitions?”

  “She is afraid. She was called a witch and isolated because of her knowledge when she was younger. People called her all kinds of things and were afraid of her. I don't know the entire story, but some people thought she killed someone once just by staring at them. Having powers like ours is not easy. People will reject you. They don’t like people who are different than themselves. They are scared of people like us, scared of what we can do. They don’t like the fact that they can’t explain how we are doing stuff. Take Halona. No one knows how she does all that stuff. She just does. She discovered it one day by accident, that she could move stuff when she was angry. She made a lamp float in the middle of a soundless tantrum one day. So she started practicing it and making her powers more perfect. Now she can move any object simply by the power of her mind. That kind of thing scares people. It freaks them out. They label her as a witch or a weirdo if we let her go out there. They used to burn people like us. Even today they would rather call it black magic or voodoo than see how beautiful it really is. We can never let her go to a normal school. That is why she is homeschooled by my mother. We all are. Well, that’s part of it. It is also because my mother doesn’t think that what they teach in schools is important for girls like us, especially Halona who has completely different needs. I mean, what use is it to teach her about physics, when she has broken all laws of it before she turned six? Anyway, my grandmother gave up trying to save people many years ago. She is afraid that it’ll hurt our family. She is afraid of what people will think about us.”

  “But instead it ended up hurting her?”

  Aiyana shrugged. “I guess sh
e figured that was a better price to pay.”

  “Better her suffering than you.”

  “Poor her,” Aiyana said. “The last couple of days have been hard on her. She predicted the flooding at Bilbao in Spain two months ago and she just learned today that it had actually happened yesterday. She spent all morning in her room. She didn’t come out until Granny went through her locked door and got her to come out. She was really upset.”

  Aiyana stared out the window. A flock of five pelicans flew past the window. I wrapped myself around her body again and tried to disappear into it. I wanted to escape reality. I wanted to hide here from the world for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to leave her or this magical house to go home to reality that was waiting at me like death with his scythe. Waiting to take my soul and turn me into something I didn’t want to be. Something that was so far away from this world of magic and wonders. I wanted to stay in this world inside of this house in her arms that made me feel so filled with joy and peace, this world so perfect, where I came alive. So filled with love and music.

  “Now you are thinking all those sad thoughts again,” she said. “Don’t do that to yourself. It’ll be all right. You worry too much. Enjoy what you have, enjoy life.”

  “But they want to make me into something I don’t even want to be,” I said. “Something that I am not. Not any longer.”

  She smiled. “Then don’t do it.”

  “What?”

  “Tell them you’re not going to do it. Tell them thank you but it is not for you. You don’t want to become a doctor. You want to live your dream.” She looked at me like it was the most obvious solution and no problem at all. Just do it.

  “I can’t do that. They’ll send me home, back to Denmark. Then I can’t be with you. They have offered to pay for my whole education. I can’t say no to that. How could I? It is a great opportunity for me.”

  She shrugged. “Well, that is your choice.”

  “That’s not fair. I really don’t think I have much of a choice here. I need an education to get a job and earn real money. Like real grown-ups do.”

  Aiyana laughed. “You always have a choice. You just don’t like the consequences of the choice you know is right for you. You want everything to be easy. But it is never easy to follow a dream. It will be worth it in the end, but it is never easy.”

  I smiled back at her. Then I crawled over her till I met her face to face. Our lips were so close they almost touched as I spoke. “How did you become so smart?” I whispered. “You should be the one named the wise one.”

  Whoever said all good things must come to an end, was unfortunately right. Even if I didn’t want to I had to leave Aiyana and all the magic behind and go back to the house where dinner, as usual, was waiting in the kitchen wrapped in plastic. Heather was already eating when I stepped in. The kitchen was dark and cold.

  “Hey stranger. Where have you been?” she asked with her mouth full. She was reading a magazine on the counter in front of her. Suddenly, the big mansion seemed too big and too empty. Coming from Aiyana’s spirit-filled house it seemed so quiet and indifferent to me.

  “Just out,” I said, and put my plate in the microwave. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell her the truth right away. I mean I was in love with Aiyana, and Heather was going to find out about us soon enough, so I might as well have told her right away. But I didn’t. I guess I was afraid of her reaction. I didn’t want to hear her tell me how awful they were, these people that I loved so dearly.

  “How is your mother? Any news?” I asked while waiting for my food to be heated.

  She nodded. “She will be home next week if she keeps improving, the doctor said today. There seem to have been no damage to her brain or anything vital, so that is great news.”

  “It is,” I said and looked at her. She was shoveling food into her mouth with her fork while standing at the breakfast counter. She turned a page in her magazine. The microwave beeped and I took my plate out. I sat at the table and looked at all the empty chairs that were never used. I thought about dinners in my childhood home back when my mother had still been alive. She would have loved Aiyana and her family. She would have enjoyed the food, the music and happiness and would have known how to appreciate their way of living and their way of seeing things. She would understand. And I knew she would have adored Aiyana. I felt sad that they would never meet. My father would in no way be able to accept her or her family. He would rather see me end up with a girl like Heather who came from a decent and well-mannered family. I hated those words. Decent and well-mannered. They made me sick to my stomach. I looked at Heather, who was still flipping through her magazine. This was the kind of life my dad wanted me to have. This kind of house that I would always be too busy to even get to enjoy, like Dr. Kirk who was never home. I would get a family like this. A family that never even ate together, who never took time to talk to one another and if they did they didn’t know how to do it anymore, they didn’t know what to say, they had forgotten how to communicate and maybe they didn’t even care much anymore. Was that what I wanted out of my life? I knew I didn’t. But at the same time, I liked the idea of living a secure life with a secure income. Even if it meant I had to become a doctor. I wanted to provide nice things for Aiyana. I wanted her to be able to do exactly what she wanted to. If she wanted to do pottery or write, that was completely up to her. I would drown her in jewelry and beautiful things. I really wanted to spoil her and give her the world.

  “So you start in Jacksonville on Thursday, I hear?” Heather said. She was done with her plate and put it in the dishwasher. Her magazine was under her arm.

  “I guess I do,” I said.

  Heather came closer and bent forward. Then she kissed me on the forehead. “You’re going to make an excellent doctor. I just know you will. Daddy sees it, too. Some people just have it in them. It is in their blood.”

  Chapter 21

  Aiyana’s mother turned out to be right. It didn’t take more than two days before the first opportunity to warn the woman from my dream presented itself. I had driven the Corvette to downtown St. Augustine and stopped at a small newspaper stand looking for the St. Augustine Record to see if my article had finally been printed. It hadn’t been in the paper the day before as promised, because it had to yield to a story about a Korean Air Lines Flight that was shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter near Moneron Island when the plane entered Soviet airspace. All two hundred sixty-nine on board were killed, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald.

  The story was still heavily covered in today’s newspaper, but to my great excitement they had also found room to put in mine. As I opened on page eight, there it was. Two entire pages of my story, written by Christian Langaa. It even had my picture and all. I felt a thrill through my body seeing my name in the paper like that. That was really something, I thought. It made me happy. I bought a few copies. I had promised to send one home to my father and I wanted to be able to give one to the Kirks to keep, plus I wanted to save a few for my own sake. It was nice to have extra, I figured. As I took out my wallet from my pocket to pay the man in the newsstand, my eyes fixed on a car—a red Ford. It just passed by me when I spotted the license plate. It said 829 YRH. I don’t know exactly what drove me there, but I had a hunch, a feeling that I had to follow. Eight-two-nine was the exact number I had seen in my dream and in the flashing visions the last couple of days. I threw a bill at the guy in the newspaper stand and jumped into my car and started following it. I had no idea what I was doing or if it had in any way anything to do with my dream. It was more like a feeling, like I was somehow drawn to that plate and that number that I had recognized from my dream. Most people would have considered it a coincidence and never done what I did then, but I was no longer like most people. I’d had enough experience with these kinds of “coincidences” that I knew this might be important.

  I followed the red Ford all through town. As it stopped at a grocery store, I parked behind it. I opened the paper and put it in
front of my face while I studied the person coming out of the car. The door opened and my heart stopped. That was literally how it felt. I had cold sweats all over my body. It was really her. It was the woman from my dream. I would recognize that face anywhere. Once you’ve seen someone cry out in complete despair like that you’ll never forget their face. It’ll stay with you till the day you die. She looked in my direction and I hid behind the newspaper while I studied her walk towards the store. My heart was hammering in my chest. I had found her. I had really found her. The numbers from my dream were on her license plate. That was what they meant.

  I waited for her in my car as she came out with her bags full of groceries. She walked towards the car when all of a sudden one of her paper bags cracked open. In the next moment I saw all of its content spread all over the pavement. The woman was on her knees, desperately trying to stop escaping tomatoes and oranges. And it seemed like I was the only person in the universe that saw her on that pavement. Everybody else around us seemed not to notice her or to not care at all. I folded the paper and put it in the passenger seat. I exhaled. People were just walking past her without helping her collect her things from the ground. Some even kicked them by accident without noticing. I felt my heart racing. I couldn’t just sit here, could I? I would blow my cover if I got out and helped her. She would see my face and recognize me if I followed her home, which was my plan. A man in a blue t-shirt passed her without even noticing how she fought to get all of her stuff back. I sighed at people’s indifference and stepped out of the car. I started picking her items up from the pavement and gave them back to her. She put them on top of the other bags so they were now filled to the edge.