Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (13 page)

“Who is your friend, Aiyana?” a woman who’s beauty was as startling as Aiyana’s but who had more years to her, came out the front door with a big smile. She had no wrinkles and her big almond-shaped eyes gave the impression of extreme youth even though looking into them you knew she was older than she appeared. The eyes had seen and experienced more.

“This is Christian,” Aiyana said, singing my name again.

“I … I was just leaving …” I said when Aiyana grabbed my hand.

“No you weren’t,” she said. She looked at the woman. “He was curious. See, Christian has wanted to see our house and meet our family ever since he arrived here from Denmark. Isn’t it right, Christian?”

“I … I … guess so.” How she knew so much about me and even where I was from was beyond me.

“And we’ve been expecting you, Christian. Actually for a couple of days now. Aiyana said you would be joining us for lunch soon so I put out an extra plate at the table. What a terrible morning you have had, with all that commotion in your house and Mrs. Kirk ending up in the hospital and all. What kind of people would we be to not invite you in?” the woman said, still smiling. “I think you need some of my herb tea.” Then she turned around causing her skirt to flutter in the wind as she returned inside of the old house.

“Are you coming?” Aiyana said and pulled my hand.

“I guess so …” I started walking up the huge staircase towards the porch surrounded by white fluted columns where a rocking chair rocked endlessly in the corner like someone had just left it. Bugs were humming in the trees next to the house. The heat of the day fell damp on my face and I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. It had been quite an eventful morning in my life; the woman was right about that. But I wondered how she knew what had happened. None of the people from their house had rushed to the scene when the police and ambulance had arrived like the rest of the neighborhood.

“Was that you mother?” I asked Aiyana.

She laughed again, her frank and heartily laughter. “No. My mother stays in her room playing on her cello most of the day. This is my Shimasani. My grandmother. Her name is Aponi.”

“Your grandmother? But she looks so young. Like she could be your sister.”

Aiyana shook her shoulders. “We look young in our family. My mother says it is because we laugh so much.”

Chapter 15

I was absolutely dazzled by the splendor of the house when I stepped inside for the first time. It wasn’t like it was beautifully decorated or stylish or anything. It was simply magnificent in its own old-fashioned way with all its old oak furniture and wooden floors covered with Persian carpets. It was the kind of house you would suspect had secret rooms behind the fireplace in the library or had books that could open doors to passways leading to tunnels under the house. That kind of house. A house you could get lost in. A house you would be scared to be alone in at night if you were a small child and was dying to explore once you grew older. A house that had seen it all, that if the walls could talk would tell you old stories and old secrets that had never seen the light of day. Secrets that were long buried because the people sharing them had passed away, but not forgotten because they were for always written somewhere in the history of these walls behind the flowered wallpaper.

The low humming sound that I had heard so often from the Kirk’s yard became louder, and I realized it wasn’t the old house singing, but the mother playing her cello upstairs. She would do that all day and sometimes even all night, Aiyana later told me. She was “lost in her own world of music” as Aiyana always put it. “Beautiful,” as her name Wyanet meant, she spend almost all her time sitting in that room even that day when Aiyana showed me around and opened the door to introduce me. Even then she didn’t get up from her chair where she sat barefoot with her skirt pulled up over her knees with the cello between her legs swinging the bow over its strings causing the beautiful deep melodic notes to fill the whole house. Like the grandmother, she didn’t look much older than her mid-twenties, only her hair was gray like waves of silver from root to bottom. As a musician myself, I was startled by her intense devotion to the instrument. It was almost like she was making love to it when she played. The sight of her made me want to play music again.

“Oh, that’s right,” Aiyana laughed. “You play the guitar. I heard your song the day you arrived. It sounded beautiful.”

“But how could you have heard that? I was in my room?” I asked while she closed the door to her mother’s room, leaving her to her own world of notes.

“I have good ears. My mother always says I hear more than I should. Some things are better not heard. I mean, it is useless to hear someone scream if you can’t do anything about it anyway because you don’t know where it is coming from.”

I nodded. She was right. “But what if you can do something about it?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you do it then? Wouldn’t it be the responsible thing to do?”

She turned her head as we walked down the creaking wooden stairs. Then she smiled warmly. “Exactly,” she said.

“Why don’t you play anymore?” she continued as we went back into the living room. Three girls who looked just like her, even if one was blond, but didn’t quite own her grace and beauty, were sitting each of them occupied in their own thing. Two of the girls were older than Aiyana. They looked up and smiled as she presented me to them. They both had a cat in their lap and there were two other cats sleeping on the sofa next to them.

 “This is Nidawi and Nadie my older sisters,” Aiyana said, pointing. The blond-haired and blue-eyed Nidawi looked up and said a polite hello. She was drawing something on a notepad. “Nidawi is the painter in the family. She uses every excuse she has to draw or paint. My mother has given her the attic to paint in and even bought her all she needs to do so, but she prefers to paint on the tiles in the street downtown with her chalk-drawings. The police don’t like it as much though. Her name means fairy because she is so fair. She is also an albino. The only one in our family.”

“Nice to meet you,” said the young girl with the fair hair and skin as white as porcelain you could almost see through.

“Nadie is the oldest. She will dazzle you with her cooking. Right now she probably has several pots filled with delicacies for our lunch. She likes to read books while she waits for her food to be ready. Am I right?”

Nadie lifted her eyes from her book for only a second to say a brief “Hi.”

“What does her name mean?” I asked. “It seems that all of your names mean something. What does hers mean?”

“The wise one. She is the oldest, the firstborn. Her job will for always be to protect her sisters and be the bond that ties us together. She is really the soul of this house. And she is the only one except for my Shimasani that knows how to cook. We would all starve to death without them.”

“How many are you in this house?”

“We are five sisters, my mother, and my grandmother.”

“That is a lot of women,” I said.

That made all of them laugh out loud and caused me to blush.

“You already know Halona,” she said and pointed at the youngest sister who was sitting in the corner at a table with her eyes closed while a vase of flowers floated in the air in front of her. A fifth girl who looked like her age was somewhere between Halona’s and Aiyana’s stood up from the couch and grabbed the vase. She put it back on the table. “Halona is a little special. You’ll get used to it,” she said. “I am Nina.”

“We think that the not talking has enhanced other senses and abilities in Halona,” Aiyana took over. “Nina is also my younger sister. Her name simply means strong. She has the heart of a lion. Or a lioness.”

We left the living room with all the sisters in it and went back upstairs. A long crooked hallway that seemed to be endless led us to a lot of rooms on each side of it. Old pictures on the walls of men and women were staring at me, some of them dressed like Native Americans.

“My ancestors,” Aiyana said. “We are direct descendants from the Timucua Indians. Have you heard about them?”

“I have read a little,” I said. “They are the ones that lived in Florida before the Spanish people came, right?”

“That's correct. This guy, Saturiwa, is my ancestor. He was the chief of my tribe when the Spaniards came. He is supposed to actually have seen Juan Ponce de León make landfall not far from here,” she said and pointed at an old drawn picture of a proud Native American man. “But I don’t know if it is actually true. Anyway, it is mostly my mom who is into all these things with our ancestors and stuff. That’s why she named us these Native American names.”

 I studied the picture of the Timucua Indian man and realized that behind him sat big cat, a big cat with rosettes on its back. “What is that?” I asked.

“That is a jaguar. According to my mother, our people thought of jaguars as divine creatures. They worshipped them like gods.”

“Why jaguars?” I asked.

“Jaguars shared the forest with them and prowled the people’s imaginations,” she said. “Admired for their hunting skills and strength, feared for the same reasons, the elusive jaguar represents beauty, power, cunning, and mystery entwined in rituals and stories. For instance, some stories give a jaguar deity the power to eat the sun. Another story says that the end of the earth will come when jaguars ascend from the underworld to eat the sun and moon, maybe the universe. An eclipse will foreshadow this final event.”

“Do you believe in them?” I asked. “Do you believe those stories?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I do believe Nature is powerful, even more powerful than what most people could ever imagine. I also believe that the world is filled with magic but people just don't see it.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned and smiled at me. Then she stroked a soft hand over my cheek. “Like me. I can hear people think.” She paused. Then she leaned towards my ear and whispered: “And just like you, I simply adore jaguars.” She started walking down the hallway. I followed her.

“What do you mean you can hear people think?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just can. Sometimes. Not all the time. And some people I hear more than others. Like you, for example. I can hear you most days. Ever since you arrived my head has been humming with your voice.” She stopped walking and turned to look at me. “I miss your songs, though. You never answered my question. Why don’t you play anymore?”

“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t been feeling well. I was in an accident …” I stopped and felt confused. What was all this? Could she possibly have heard my thoughts? Even if I was still thinking and dreaming in Danish? Apparently that made no difference.

“Oh I heard about that alright," she said. "The accident in the swamps."

“So you can hear everything that I think?” I asked a little petrified by the thought.

“Not everything. Some of it, I think. Mostly I just hear it like a buzzing in my head. I have to sit still and concentrate in order to make anything out of it. It is like you are talking to me, only you are not here. Some days it is clearer than others.” She stopped at a red door and opened it. “This is my room,” she said. “I almost never let anyone up here but since I feel that I know you so well, I thought it would be alright.”

I still felt confused as I entered her room. It was packed with stacks of books on the floor and neat piles of papers. On the table stood an old typewriter. Next to it was a hot pot of herb-tea and two cups. I poured some in one and handed a cup to Aiyana. Then I made one for myself. It tasted different than I had expected. And it made me truly relaxed like the grandmother had said it would, as if every muscle in my body calmed down at once. My mind seemed to be soothed and I slowly put the overly eventful morning behind me. Even the voices seemed to be calm for once.

“You like to write?” I asked.

“Yes. Nadie is the reader. I am the writer of the family. I like to read, too, though, but I prefer to put my own words on paper than to be reading other’s. I spend hours in here creating my own worlds of fantasies. My father was the one who opened up the world of imagination to me. I have never returned since. He could tell the most amazing stories from his many travels to Europe, Asia and South America.”

I smiled and studied her desk. It was messy. Filled with stacks of notebooks that she had written in with beautiful handwriting. “How enchanting,” I said and paused. “So do you think that anybody could develop those kinds of abilities that you have? Do you think everybody possesses them, but just don’t know how to use them?”

She sat on her bed while gracefully making sure her skirt covered her legs. “No, I don't. People are generally too oblivious to reach a higher level of consciousness like that. But you’ve experienced it right?”

I went towards the window and looked down at the yard and the dock. The room faced a completely different side of the house than I had expected. Walking through the corridor must have messed up my sense of direction.

“Yeah. I have. I have experienced some strange things lately. Like this thing this morning, what happened to Mrs. Kirk. I saw it happen when I was in the hospital and she came to visit. It was so vivid when the images came to me that I thought it was something that had already happened to her long ago.”