Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar)

  I was gasping and breathing, holding a hand to my chest that had started to hurt. That had to be it. I was having a panic attack. It was all about staying calm. I had been through a lot lately. No wonder I was in a bad shape. It had to have some kind of affect on me. It was all psychosomatic, my father would say. It was all in my head. It was my emotions running wild causing my body to react to all that had happened to me. But emotions could be controlled. And I was an expert at that. I kept breathing deep and long breaths but I didn't seem to calm my body down. The voices, the feeling of urgency and anxiety wouldn't leave me alone. And then all those pictures. What was it? It seemed to be the swamps or something. They were so dark.

  The suffocation was only getting worse and I had to get out of the bed. I threw away the cover and stood on the floor. I felt myself falling forward against the dresser and heard the sound of something falling to the floor. I had knocked something over. More pictures and more voices made me pull my hair in agony. "Stop it. Please stop it," I whispered in the dark night.

  But there was no silence. How I suddenly longed for that feeling of silence inside, of stability and calmness. After my mother's death it had all been too calm in the house. I had been alone most days and weekends, and the house had grown completely mute after my mother's laughter and singing had died with her. I remembered how I used to go to her room where she had been in her sickbed in her last hours, and I would sit in the chair next to her empty bed and sing for her. Just like she had asked me to do when she was in too much pain to bear. "Sing for me Christian. Let me hear that beautiful voice." And I would sing for her until the painkillers would kick in and she could finally find rest. Later, when I sang to that empty bed, that would be how I remembered her. With her eyes closed breathing calmly and peacefully in her sleep.

  In those years I had grown to despise silence. I hated the quiet in our house and sometimes I would play my ghetto blaster on full volume and just sing and dance to keep it away. To keep the stillness from coming back. I would play the guitar for hours just to not feel so alone in that big house where my mother had taken her final breath. God, how I loathed silence back then.

  Now I would give anything to feel the quiet again. To stop those voices and pictures from ruining my brain and preventing me from thinking.

  I fell to my knees and let out my tears. "I need you, Mom," I whispered. "Where are you? Why did you let me go? Why did you send me back here?"

  My heart was knocking against my ribs as I tried to get back up. I swayed like I couldn't stand on my legs. I put on my pants and found a clean shirt in the drawer. With difficulty I got dressed. I had to get out of there. I could no longer stay in that room or even the house. I had to get out. I put on shoes and ran downstairs. I opened the front door and stormed outside, still trying to catch my breath and calm my thoughts down. The air was warm and moist against my face as I ran to the driveway. Then, suddenly I stopped. Someone was standing in front of me. The figure appeared frozen, wide-eyed, violently alert and focused upon me. It was Halona. She stood in front of me staring at me and pointing her finger at me. Over her head her doll circled in the air, it was almost racing like it was angry. I froze immediately when I laid my eyes upon her. An alarm went off inside of me. Some sort of instinct, I guess.

  "Has something happened to Aiyana?" I asked. I walked towards Halona and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Tell me. Has something happened to her?"

  Halona stared at me with her big melancholic brown eyes.

  "That's right," I said and let go of her shoulders. "You don't speak. I forgot."

  Then Halona bent down and started drawing something in the soil. It was a number. The number twelve.

  "Twelve? What's that supposed to mean?" I thought like crazy. Halona being here had to mean that she wanted me to do something. So did all those images and voices. I closed my eyes and thought of the number twelve.

  "Twelve, twelve, twelve," I mumbled while I tried to envision the number. That was when something amazing happened. The pictures started moving in circles surrounding the number and like a huge puzzle they came in some kind of order and I could decipher something from them. I opened my eyes.

  "The swamps! She's in the Twelve Mile Swamps?" I looked at Halona to see if I could catch any sort of confirmation, but suddenly I had one on my own. An extremely strong one. A very bright and clear picture of Aiyana lying naked in the mud on her back at the river bank. And not only did I see her, I heard her and felt her. It was as if I could feel her every emotion right there. And suddenly another puzzle in my head was solved. I not only knew where she was, I also knew what she was doing there.

  The feeling struck me so violently it caused me to bend over.

  "She's in a lot of pain," I said. "We must hurry."

  Chapter 34

  I called for an ambulance from the house. It took awhile for me to be able to explain how I exactly knew that there was a girl lying in the swamps hurt on the riverbank, but I told them I just knew. That they had to trust me. She was in pain and needed medical attention right away. I was on my way as well, I said. I had to be there to guide them to her. The lady on the phone didn't sound like she believed me much, but luckily she took a chance and sent an ambulance anyway, so when I arrived with Halona in my Corvette the ambulance had also just arrived.

  "We have to hurry," I said as I jumped out of the car. Halona followed me now with her doll in her hand. "She has been in there for several hours."

  "Who is the girl?" the paramedic asked suspiciously.

  "That's her sister. Aiyana is the girl's name. The girl who has been hurt and is in there."

  "Okay. Does anyone know what has happened to Aiyana?" the paramedic asked.

  I took in a deep breath. I knew this would make me a prime suspect of having committed a crime against Aiyana, but I had to tell them. They needed to know what had happened in order to be able to provide the best treatment.

  "She has been shot," I said. "Three times. The bullets hit her in her back, in one of her legs and in her right side."

  The two paramedics never asked how I knew so much detail about her injuries. I guess they figured it wasn't their job. It was something they had to set aside for this moment and leave to the following investigations to deal with. The important thing right now was to find the girl and bring her to the hospital. I didn't need to be a medical student to know her chances for surviving were low. She had been bleeding from her wounds for hours now.

  I showed the paramedics the way into the swamps and guided them towards the river. We followed the trail into the darkest and most impassable area of the swamps where I had gone earlier with Jim. I felt so scared walking there. Not for myself, but for her. For my Aiyana. I tried not to think about it, but if she died, I was the one who had killed her. I didn't even dare to look at Halona's face. She was the one who had once predicted Aiyana's death. Was this what she had seen? Oh the guilt and condemnation I put upon myself. Why had I even gone there with Jim? I knew he wanted the jaguar dead. But how could I have known? How could I have known that ... Aiyana ... that she was ...

  "There she is. I see her," one of the paramedics yelled and started running.

  We all followed him. I remember the fear inside of me, the rising anxiousness that we just might be too late. That it was all my fault if the only woman I had ever loved died a merciless death on this forsaken ground. That if I had only listened to the voices and pictures trying to tell me this a little sooner ... if ... if ... if.

  On the ground in the mud by the river bank just as I had envisioned it, was Aiyana, naked and covered in blood. Her body suddenly looked so incredibly small and fragile. The paleness from the lack of blood made her skin almost transparent. I felt like someone speared me with my own spear-gun and I fell to my knees next to her. Quickly I looked for a pulse on her throat but as desperately as I tried I couldn't find one. My fingers fumbled on her neck pressing frantically on the skin, searching in panic and fear. I couldn't bear to lose her. I just couldn't. No
t her. Not someone I loved so deeply. Not again.

  "Aiyana! No!" I touched her silky cheeks and caressed her wet hair. I leaned over and kissed her forehead while tears rolled down my cheeks. "Please don't," I cried. "Please don't die on me!"

  Halona had stopped a few yards away and as I turned my head and looked at her I could tell she was hyperventilating. Had she known this would happen? I kept asking myself. Had I somehow caused her prophecy to come true? The paramedics quickly took over while I cried and screamed Aiyana's name. They looked worried as they searched for signs of life in the motionless body. Fingers, hands were all over her neck and wrists in the urgent search for that little movement underneath the skin, that small pulse that would tell us she was still alive. One paramedic tried to breathe life into her with mouth-to-mouth. But still there was nothing. He lifted his head again and sighed. Then he pressed on her chest.

  "Come on, goddammit," he said while pressing on her heart with both of his hands to try and make it pump. To try to pump life back into her. Then he breathed air into her mouth again. His movements were frantic now as mine had been, his voice quivering as he tried to call her name, as if she was a fairytale princess who was just asleep when everybody thought she was dead. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to her yet, but my hope was quickly fading. I felt the blood disappear from my face. This couldn't be!

  "I have a pulse," the other paramedic suddenly said. They looked at each other. "It's weak but it is there."

  I turned my head and looked at Halona when her eyes started rolling and her skin went pale. I rose from the ground and ran towards her. Then I grabbed her small shivering body just before it fell to the ground.

  Chapter 35

  "I don't like this place."

  Wyanet looked at me from her chair. I was sitting next to her in the emergency waiting room at the Flagler Hospital, the very same waiting room I had sat in a few hours earlier waiting for news about my best friend. Now it was the woman I loved that was on the operating table where they had fought for her life for two hours.

  Aiyana's entire family had shown up, except for the apparition of the great-grandmother that is, since she could never leave the house. Halona sat in a chair next to her mother with her head on her shoulder. She seemed better now and after a while in the waiting room she had started to move stuff around beginning with magazines and later plastic cups and chairs. All the while the rest of the sisters and the grandmother tried to stop things from moving around so no one would notice. It was always like that when Halona got agitated or upset over something, the grandmother told me.

  "You don't like this hospital?" I asked Wyanet.

  "I don't like any hospitals. If you're not sick when you come in here you most certainly will be. Just think at what they feed people." She exhaled and bowed her head. She covered her face with the palms of her hands. Then she got up from her chair as if she had remembered something. She looked at me. Her determined eyes glowed as she spoke.

  "Walk with me."

  I followed her down the hallway. Once we were alone she spoke with her gently singing voice. "I have a feeling that Aiyana is going to be alright," she said. "I have a hunch about those things. Plus, this wasn't how Halona predicted Aiyana's death to be two years ago. Her time isn't up yet."

  I was relieved to hear that. Wyanet found coffee for both of us. My stomach was way upset to consume anything, but once I had forced the first sip inside it felt good, like my body needed the caffeine.

  "I was figuring that you had a lot of questions by now, and I think it is about time I provided some. Now that you've figured out what Aiyana really is, you deserve to know," Wyanet said while she blew on her steaming cup.

  I nodded and drank again. We found a couple of empty chairs in a secluded area and sat down.

  "Is she ... I don't know how it is even possible, but is she ...?"

  Wyanet interrupted. "Yes Howahkan. She is. She is a were-jaguar. She is half human, half jaguar."

  "So the jaguar that saved me that night from the alligators, that was her? She is the jaguar that I have been seeing in the swamps at night?"

  "Yes. Every night at dusk the transformation comes and she runs to the swamps to hunt. She can't help it or avoid it. It is in her nature, it is in her blood," Wyanet answered.

  I felt my heart beating faster. How had I not seen this? It suddenly made so much sense. I had seen something in those eyes, in those glowing eyes in the night. I had known them, somehow. I had always thought it was only because it was the first thing I’d seen after I woke up from my near-death that I felt so drawn to those eyes.

  "But why didn't she tell me?" I asked.

  "She is not supposed to tell. She carries an ancient secret in her blood, one that goes all the way back to our Timucua ancestors."

  I drank of my coffee while the thoughts piled up in my mind. An ancient Indian secret? "But how? why? I don't understand."

  "When the Spaniards came to Florida in 1513 they came looking for The Fountain of Youth, as they called it. As you probably know, The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years. Even today people from all over the world come to the Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park and drink of the water there thinking it will make them look younger."

  I nodded. "Yeah. I have read about that. I know it is just the place where they believe Ponce de Léon landed back then. It is more like a tribute to him and to your people, the natives."

  "Well, that's a completely other discussion, but what you need to know is the Spaniards never found the fountain. But they weren't wrong about its whereabouts, they were just looking for the wrong thing. See, the Fountain of Youth isn't a fountain. It isn't water that is flowing making people young, it is blood." Wyanet lifted her arm and showed me her veins. "In here, Howahkan. Right in these veins flows the fountain that they have been looking for for centuries. That's why I don't age, that's why my mother doesn't age and that's why neither of my children will ever look much older than their twenties. We simply stop aging. That's also why we keep to ourselves. Once we get too old for how we look, we don't want people to start asking questions. Our job here is to protect the secret. We are a sort of protectors of the fountain if you will. But the main part is to keep it a secret to the rest of the world. It can never be revealed. That and then to pass it on to the next generation so the fountain never dies. It has to keep running in the veins of someone."

  I swallowed the rest of my coffee trying to comprehend all of this new information that was being thrown at me. "But what does that have to do with the jaguar? Are you all jaguars?"

  "No. Only a few get transformed like Aiyana. That is what makes her so special. We all have the Fountain in our blood that gives us special skills, gifts if you will. Everybody in our family is carrier of the gene, but few go through the transformation. And it seems that it gets more and more rare these days. Back in our ancestors time, several in a family would be transformed, but nowadays we can go through several generations without having a transformation. Aiyana has been chosen by the spirits to be this. It is a great honor for her. The rest of us are left with other powers like nightly premonitions and some do telekinesis like Halona. But that is small compared to what Aiyana will be able to."

  "I know she hears people's thoughts," I said. "She hears mine sometimes."

  "That is only the beginning. She is so strong. During the next years she will develop powers that you can't even imagine someone being able to have. Back in our ancestors’ time they believed that the were-jaguar was the only creature able to cross over to the spiritual realm. They believed that a were-jaguar could walk between the two worlds and bring messages from the spirits. They would call them shamans. In order for the shamans to combat whatever evil forces may be threatening, it was necessary for the shamans to transform before they crossed over to the spirit realm. Being a divine creature, as they believed
the jaguar was, they were protected."

  "So Aiyana will be able to do that, too?" I asked and thought of my own cross-over when I had died and had met my mother.

  "We don't know yet. But we'll see. She still doesn't remember much when she transforms back to herself again and returns, but she can tell you all about that later. I'm sure she'll want to."

  "How long has she been like this?"

  "She transformed for the first time when she was sixteen. It was only a few months after her father had died. But back then it wasn't every day. It was something that happened once in a while but we had to keep her in the house at dusk every night to make sure that it didn't suddenly happen while she was among people in public."

  I exhaled deeply and leaned back in my chair. This was a lot to take in at once.

  "I don't think I have slept one single full night since she made that first transformation and started going hunting," Wyanet continued with a sigh. "She has roamed the swamps as the jaguar every night for many years now. The constant worry turned my all my hair gray over night. I knew what she had become, it is just like her father. And I knew what she was destined to do."

  "Her father was one, too?"

  "Yes. And her great-grandmother."

  "How did her father die?" I asked.

  Wyanet burst into laughter. "I know you must have heard all those rumors about it."