Chapter Five
My mouth dropped open in shock and confusion. My head began to spin and my heart pumped furiously. It felt as if I had been kicked in the gut, and I couldn’t breathe.
Valeska was dead.
The words didn’t seem to make sense. It didn’t seem real… My friend, the woman whom I saw as my cousin, was gone. Forever.
I clutched my stomach and doubled over, kneeling just above the sand. I felt as if I was going to be sick. I stared down at the mounds of shingle just underneath me, and fixated on a small patch of grass that was bursting its way through. I tried to regulate my breathing so that I didn’t vomit, and as I did the tears began to stream down my face. I could no longer contain my loud sobs. Valeska was only ten years older than me, and she was dead. A thirty one year old woman who still had her whole life ahead of her, was no longer alive.
Oh God, I prayed desperately, why? Why did this happen?
Diane knelt down next to me and began to stroke my taut back.
“It’s okay,” she soothed. But it wasn’t okay. It was terrible. Valeska was my friend, and now she was dead. Just when I thought that this day couldn’t get any worse, Diane dropped another bombshell on me. My mind raced to my siblings. Madzimoyo was not going to take this well at all. He was the closest to her. He was the reason she had come to the island in the first place, and I knew that he held her dearly in his heart.
“How?” I roared through bitter sobs.
“Not here,” Diane answered sheepishly. But after all of the crying that I had already done today, I was completely dried up. There was nothing left. I couldn’t cry anymore. Now my sadness turned to anger. I rose to my full height in fury.
“Tell me!” I commanded her.
Diane looked puzzled and almost fearful. She must have known that I would never hurt her, but still she recoiled at my booming voice.
“I don’t think I should get you involved in this,” Diane began quietly; “It’s not my place. I’m not your mentor.”
My anger quickly dissolved into annoyance. What was Diane keeping from me?
“Please,” I begged her, “Valeska was my friend. I just want to know what happened to her.”
Diane’s gaze darted towards the sea.
“What I’m going to tell you will… Oh no, I can’t!” She threw her head into her hands in desperation. Now it was my turn to comfort her. I put my left arm around her shoulders and hugged her close to my body.
“It’s been a shock,” I comforted her; “She was your friend too. You loved her.”
“Yes, I did. But it’s not that, Shasa, it’s not only that. I’m just worried that…” Her voice was quivering in fear.
“What is it, Diane?” I encouraged her.
“What I’m going to tell you will have consequences. For you, your family and for the entire world…”
I swallowed. The water from my mouth rubbed down my dry throat like a stone against sand paper. What on earth was she going on about? How could Valeska’s death have such wide reaching and terrible repercussions? And then that’s when it hit me. That’s when I remembered exactly what Valeska was doing before she died.
“You don’t mean to say…?” I began, but Diane cut me off.
“Yes, exactly! It was the Ventus!” Her face shot out of her hands and she stared at me, her eyes full to the brim with hatred. “The Ventus murdered her!”
My head shook in disbelief. That couldn’t be true. Why would the Ventus murder Valeksa? They were Elementals. They had a group of mentors who were training them in the same way we were being trained. For them to murder a member of their own team… It didn’t make any logical sense.
“I don’t believe it!” I cried. Diane’s face dropped.
“I know that it’s hard to believe,” she pleaded, “but you have to! It’s important that you and your siblings know the truth! You see, Valeska, a few weeks ago, she called me… She told me that the Ventus had turned, that they were working for the Inimicus… They were working against the Elementus Populas and she was the only one who had discovered the truth! She had to go on the run, she had to get away from them… She told me that it was too dangerous for her, and that she was going to make her way here… And today I got a phone call from a mutual friend saying that she was killed in England by the Ventus trio!”
Diane took a deep breath, and then grabbed at me and pulled me towards her.
“You’ve got to believe me, Shasa, you’ve just got to!”
As I stared into her bright narrow eyes, I tried to rationalise what I was being told. Both Valeska and Babajide had already told me that Valeska had gone to England to work with the Ventus’ Secondus. That was true. But the idea of the Ventus being turned by the Inimicus was… surprising. I remembered Babajide telling us that we could choose to work for whoever we wanted to, and that it was our choice what we decided to do with our powers. But for a group of Elementals to turn against the rest of us so quickly… They had only been in training, as a team, for a few months! Something just didn’t feel right…
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Diane questioned, her head dropping in dejection.
“It’s not that,” I said in my most soothing tone, “It’s just that it doesn’t add up…!”
“Listen to this, and then you’ll believe me!” Diane shrugged me off of her and then darted into her hut. I could hear her loud footfalls racing through the house, and within seconds she was back outside with me again. She clutched her mobile phone desperately, her hand trembling in anxiousness. She began dialling a number, and within moments she was through to her voicemail and was playing me a message that she had saved. As soon as I heard the voice, I knew it was Valeska. She was speaking in English, a language that I had a pretty decent understanding of.
“Diane, it’s me,” Valeska began. She was whispering, and sounded like she was in danger. “The Ventus: they’re more dangerous than anyone could have anticipated. They’re so strong, and their powers are developing so quickly.” Valeska’s voice crackled slightly from the phone’s receiver. “But it isn’t going to plan. They’re turning against me, against us… I think that they might launch an attack, sometime soon. If I don’t make it out of here alive, Diane, it’s because of the Ventus. They want to kill me, because of Sigwald. It’s Sigwald’s fault. He’s the one who’s controlling them. He’s the one who’s manipulating them. He’s going to get them to kill me. I need your help Diane. Call the others, send a team. I’ll be in Southampton. Meet me there.”
The message ended abruptly, and Diane hung up the phone. She stared at me expectantly.
“Don’t you see?” Diane pleaded.
“Who’s Sigwald?” I asked her.
“Sigwald is the leader of the Ventus Cohors. He’s a mole; he’s the one secretly working for the Inimicus. He’s turned the Ventus against the rest of us… Don’t you see? It’s not the Ventus’ fault. They’re young and foolish. They were only doing what their mentor told them to do. And Valeska figured it all out, and now she’s…”
I shook my head again. It couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t! But even Babajide had told us about the possibility of double agents working within the organisation. In fact, only a few weeks ago he had said that the Supernus had discovered a mole who was working for the Ventus Cohors in England. He had also told us that there had been a battle, on a dock, which the Ventus had been involved in…
The Ventus. I suddenly froze in shock. I hadn’t even thought about it up until now. The Ventus were coming here, to Aqua Island, tomorrow! Once again, the world spun around and around, and I felt as if someone had pulled the sand out from underneath my feet. I had to sit down, so I did. As my bottom scrunched onto the dry sand, I rubbed my forehead with my left hand and began curling my hair around my right index finger. This was all too much to take. Being the Aqua Primus, the leader of the Aqua Elementals, was becoming too much to handle. How was I going to tell my brothers and sister this news? And how were we going to work with the
Ventus when we suspected that they had defected to the enemy? Added to that, our friend was dead, and I had just killed two slave traders on the mainland, and had to make sure that Zeina was safe…
Diane sat next to me and placed her hand on my knee. I stared out at the placid ocean. Things were so much simpler in the water. If only I could dive in and live under the sea forever… But that was never going to happen.
Dear Lord, I prayed to myself, what am I going to do? I need you to guide me. Please Lord, help me to be the leader that my siblings deserve. Please help me to do the right thing…
“Are you okay?” Diane asked me. It was a stupid question.
“No, not really,” I answered honestly.
“You can’t trust them, Shasa, you can’t. They’re too dangerous. They’re murderers now. And people who kill once will only kill again…”
A fact I knew to be true.
“But maybe the Ventus aren’t completely bad,” I considered aloud, “I mean, if their mentor Sigwald really was manipulating them, then perhaps they could be helped. Maybe we could make them see that working for the Inimicus is wrong…”
Diane nodded stubbornly.
“You can’t think that way, Shasa. That’s the problem with you: you’re too nice. Living on this island your whole life… you don’t understand what it’s like out there. People in the real world are cunning and manipulative and cruel and evil. You and your brothers and sister have been sheltered from the real underbelly of society. If you give people an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
I frowned in confusion. I had never heard that expression before. It didn’t sound Spanish, and didn’t seem to translate well. Diane saw the expression on my face and laughed.
“I’m sorry,” she responded in good humour, “you probably don’t know what that means.” her voice returned to the serious tone it had been before. “It means that if you try to think the best in people, they’ll only see that as a weakness. And then they’ll use that weakness against you, to destroy you. Look what happened to Valeska. She probably thought that she could save the Ventus, and now she’s gone, forever…”
Diane paused for a second, and pulled my hands away from my face, tightening them in her grip.
“They killed her, Shasa.”
Diane was right. After seeing and experiencing the full force of the world’s malevolence this afternoon, at the hands of a real monster, I knew too well how evil people could be. But that didn’t mean I thought that they were beyond saving. I wasn’t going to give up on the Ventus, but I would be wary of them. Especially since I was going to meet them tomorrow.
Once again, I shook my head. I just couldn’t believe this. Why couldn’t we just have a normal life? Why did things have to be so difficult? I almost slapped myself in anger. What right did I have to complain? My life was so easy compared to the thousands of others who lived in this country. Thinking about Zeina, and all the other children bought and sold into a life of slavery, made me feel sick to my stomach. It also upset me to think that the same thing could have happened to me and my sister, if we hadn’t been born with our elemental superpowers.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I told Diane as I stood up. I brushed the sand from my legs and pulled her to her feet. “Thanks for listening.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and then gave me a big hug. “Just be careful,” she whispered in my ear, “And don’t trust the Ventus. In fact, trust no one. Not even the Aqua Cohors.”