Chapter 3
Candles on the Water
The concept of mana can extend to any form of magic, not just the branch of Shamanism. Magic is an energy that exists all around us, and the very definition of a witch or a wizard is one who has the ability to harness this energy. Think of it as being similar to living in a home where everyone is either blind or deaf, and you are the only one who still retains all their senses.
Scritch, scritch, scritch…
The limbs of the trees scratched against the window, distracting Kalama from the passage in her copy of Hawaiian Shamanic Studies, even though she could afford no time to be distracted. As part of her summer homework for Shamanism class, Kalama had to pick a research topic and write an essay on it. Not as easy an assignment as it had seemed before, given that her Shamanism class had never had an official textbook, so the paper involved a lot of independent reading and researching the texts themselves.
And even after that was all over, Kalama still had an Astronomy chart; essays for Wandwork, History of Magic, and Defensive Magic; and a plant collection to start for Herbology she hadn’t began yet. She hadn’t even looked at what she needed to do for Potions class.
It could all be over a lot faster, however, if she simply went to her father and…
Kalama shook her head rapidly as she pushed the thought from her mind, although it was not easy. Ever since she had made her promise to Ewa, the decision of whether or not to go back to Kailani in August was all she could think about. And even though the thought of not going back to school seemed awful, it was one that wouldn’t leave her alone. Even as she tried to study, the idea of simply throwing the books out and telling her father that she really would stay with them wouldn’t go away.
It was already July, but she had yet to give her answer. Something inside her wouldn’t allow her to say yes.
Kalama continued to try and push such thoughts from her mind as she went back to her reading.
The concept of mana can be divided into three physical plains: the upper self, the middle self, and the lower self. The upper self, in actuality, is all the magical energy that exists in the world. It is the only way of thinking of yourself in connection to the collective power of the world. The middle self is the energy that exists immediately around you, and what you actually have the ability to harness at any given time.
CRACK!
Kalama jumped at the sudden sound. The tree limb that had only moments ago been scratching against the window had been broken off by the howling wind and was now held only by a small shred of bark. Kalama set her book down and reached the window just in time to see the branch tear from its last strand of bark and blow down the street, carried by the gusts.
When Hawaiian storms hit, they hit hard. The rains had only just started when she sat down to read, the wind barely blowing. But now, the sky was darkened, air howling through the trees and the houses, and the raindrops pounded against the pavement as though they were made of solid stone. The only thing that offered some peace to the outside scene was that although the tropical storms appeared violent, the were normally nothing to worry about. As long as you stayed low until they were over, they weren’t usually dangerous.
Moreover, it gave Kalama an even greater reason to finish her homework.
The lower self is, at the same time, the simplest form of energy, and yet the most complicated to understand. It is the actual energy inside of you, what allows you to harness magical energy itself. What makes it complex is not only the circular logic of the concept, but how this energy passes to some people and not others. Family plays some role in it, but is not the sole role (e.g. Muggleborns). Of course, there is also the concept of Squibs that seems to complicate the subject even further.
Perhaps there is no rhyme or reason to why some are granted the inner self and others-
Suddenly, Kalama’s vision went dark, as did the whole room around her. The storm clouds blocked out the sun, taking away even the hope for natural light. For a moment, she flicked with the switch to her desk lamp light, even though she already knew what had happened. The wind or the lightning or the pelting rain had caused a power outage, and now the entire lower valley was completely devoid of electricity.
“KALAMA!” Ewa shouted from the living room.
“Don’t panic, Ewa,” Kalama called back, slamming her textbook shut. “You know what to do when the power goes out. Round up every candle in the house and I’ll be out to light them in a minute.”
She heard her sister scutter around the house, occasionally colliding with pieces of furniture. Kalama felt blindly across the surface of her desk, searching for her wand. Finally, wedged underneath a copy of Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1), she found the rod: hibiscus and menehune hair.
“Lumos,” she whispered into the dark, the tip of her wand glowing brightly, illuminating the entire bedroom.
Gingerly, she stepped over the messy obstacle course that was her floor, being careful to avoid a dirty plate and half-filled glass as she hopped to the door. The hallway was pit black, not being graced by the minimal light the windows had to offer. Kalama stood still for a moment, debating between left and right, trying to remember where she had heard Ewa’s voice come from.
“Kalama?” Ewa called out to her again.
“Ewa?” Kalama shouted back, waving her wand through the air, cutting through the darkness. “Ewa, where are you?”
“In here.”
“Where’s ‘here’?”
“The living room ‘here’!” Ewa’s frustration laid thickly over the tone of her voice.
Kalama couldn’t help but laugh as she turned left towards the living room. She kept her left hand on the wall, giving an extra feeling of security as her wand hand offer a light she didn’t fully trust. Normally the sight of her lighted wand would give her enough comfort to survive on, but today it wasn’t reassuring enough - soon to be shown for good reason.
“KALAMA!” Ewa jumped out from around the corner, screeching her sister’s name at the top of her lungs. Kalama felt her heart skip three beats and was soon thankful to have her hand steady against the wall, for it was the only thing that kept her from falling flat on the floor. Kalama wanted desperately to yell at her sister for scaring her so, but her voice kept getting caught in her throat, just like her heartbeat seemed to have trouble getting back to normal. She was certain that all the color must have drained from her face too.
Clearly not willing to wait for Kalama to calm down, Ewa yanked on her sister’s arm and led her the rest of the way into the living room. Pointing her wand towards the floor, Kalama was able to find the table just before she would have crashed into it, along with the dozens of candles that Ewa had gathered. Not a single candle seemed to match: some brand new, some with the wick burnt beyond any use. A copper candleholder held four tapered candles, all different colors and different lengths, dripped wax falling all the way down to the base. There were also heavy jarred candles that smelled deeply of exotic fruit, citronella candles that stung Kalama’s nose, and white emergency candles that were scented like clean air.
Ewa handed her sister the first pillared candle and then began feeling around the surface of the coffee table for something to light it with. Kalama, on the other hand, had a much more efficient idea.
“Incendio,” she recited, her wand pointed toward the candlewick, which quickly combusted, giving a dim light that allowed Kalama to at least see her sister’s face, which held the saw quiet sense of awe it always got whenever Kalama had used magic in front of her.
Kalama handed the candle to Ewa before picking up a second candle. She spoke the incantation again and again, until every candle spread across the coffee table was lit. Finally, the living room was enveloped in a warm, red glow, reminding Kalama very much of the lanterns and the torch lights at Kailani. With every candle lit, Ewa would choose a different place in the room to set it: back on the coffee table, on top of the television set. The copper candleholder, with its rainbow of dripped wax, rested between the girls’ last school pictures: Muggle pictures, where the sisters remained as still as statues.
Although the light was still far too poor to do anything besides stare at the walls, at least it was better than fumbling around, searching for one another in the dark. Kalama almost considered using the Lumos charm so she could finish her reading, but at the moment, she didn’t feel it was in her to do homework right now. Kalama set her wand down next to one of the horrid smelling citronella candles, the Lumos charm dissipating as soon as she let go.
“Sit down with me, Kalama,” Ewa begged, taking a seat on the faded material of the living room couch.
Hearing the cracking fear in her little sister’s voice, Kalama did not argue and simply took a seat on the cushion left of Ewa. She picked absent-mindedly at the balls of lint on the upholstery while Ewa scratched at the denim material of her shorts, flinching every time thunder rolled and lightning flashed. The two girls didn’t look at each other for a long time.
“You know, Ewa,” Kalama told her sister, hoping she would be able to distract her, “Mama once told me that you can tell how far away a storm is from you by counting the seconds between the thunder and the lightning.”
Ewa looked up at Kalama, eyes still wide with impending fear, but a small glimmer of interest behind it all.
“One second is the same as one mile,” Kalama went on to explain. “And the more seconds apart the two are, the further away the storm is from you. Do you want to try counting?”
Ewa lowered her eyes back down to stare at the floor, but Kalama was able to make out a small fraction of a nod. She took that as a yes and proceeded to count, even though it was without the help of her sister.
“One one-thousand,” Kalama started counting, only to be interrupted after a second by a loud clap of thunder. Ewa cringed and huddled against her older sister, but Kalama remained stiff and calm, eyes staring at the shadows dancing across the brightly-painted walls.
“One one-thousand,” she began again, her voice soft, with a slight rasp to it, “two one-thousand, three-”
This time, it was the lightning that stopped the series of numbers.
“One one-thousand,” Kalama began yet again, as though she were making it clear to the brewing storm outside that she was not afraid, “two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand-”
Thunder clapped, still loudly, but Kalama didn’t feel the need to count anymore. She had already proved her point, feeling she needed no further evidence to prove the girls’ safety.
“You see,” Kalama said in a reassuring tone. “That storm is plenty far away from us. It can’t hurt us now.”
Ewa seemed to relaxed just slightly, but her posture was still extremely stiff, as though she expected the storm to sneak up on them at any moment, right when Kalama wouldn’t be expecting it. But if Ewa truly was thinking any of these things, she did not share them with Kalama. The two sisters simply sat in silence, watching the shadows and the candlelight flicker across the walls and the floor.
“Well?” Ewa finally said, as the shadows began to cease movement.
“Well, what?” Kalama asked.
Ewa was still staring at the floor the whole time she spoke, but that didn’t stop her from carrying on the conversation.
“Have you decided if you’re going to stay home or not next year?”
Now it was Kalama’s turn to shift stiffly on the cheap material of the sofa. Of all the things she could have talked about with her sister right now, this had to be at the bottom of the list of what she would have liked to discuss.
“Not yet, Ewa.” Kalama tried to brush off the topic as though it were something completely mundane. “It’s been a very busy summer. I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it.”
Ewa focused her eyes on the grains in the hardwood flooring.
“Dad said to me that if you don’t make up you’re mind soon, he’s going to make it up for you.”
Kalama snapped her head to the left, glaring down at her little sister, taking on the embodiment of the phrase ‘killing the messenger’. Ewa must have sensed these feelings, because she flinched as she continued to stare down on the floor.
“Then why doesn’t Dad say those things to me?” Kalama snapped, wanting an answer as though it were gold.
Even in the dim light, Kalama could see Ewa pursing her lips tightly, refusing to divulge anymore secret conversations between Ewa and their dad. Certain that she would not be getting any more information out of her little sister, Kalama pushed herself up off the sofa, bounding over the shadows dancing across her bare feet.
“Hey, where ya going?” Ewa shouted in a whining voice.
“I’m gonna go outside,” she replied.
“But it’s still raining out!”
“I’ll live.”
“What if you get struck by lightning?”
“I-um,” Kalama stammered as she searched her brain for an answer, “witches can’t get struck by lightning, Ewa. It’s part if what makes us magical.”
In truth, Kalama had no idea whether or not witches could get struck by lightning. But she certainly couldn’t tell sister that she just didn’t want to be around her.
It took every piece of strength that Kalama had to push the screen door open against the natural force of the brewing storm. She couldn’t be sure how much common sense a person had to lack to go out into a storm like this, but Kalama was pretty sure that at this moment in time, she certainly fit the bill.
The harsh winds whipped her hair all around her, her wet bangs clinging to the sides of her face and longer strands snapping against her back. Thunder cracked loudly, shaking the physical world below, and lightning danced under the billowing clouds, spreading a ruby glow around the spidery strands. Beads of rain pelted down, near the point of leaving welts on Kalama’s bare skin.
Steadying the porch swing under her, Kalama took a seat against the damp wood and began to kick against the floor.
“You know, Kalama,” Nora Jameson said, turning back to her daughter. “This is probably the exact kind of thing I would have turned to your father for advice for. Not that I don’t already know exactly what he would say…”
“What would he say, Mama?” Kalama asked. She had never been included in ‘the conversation’ before, save for a few minor roles. This time, it seemed to revolve completely around her, and only her.
Her mother leaned back against the back of the swing and let out a deep sigh.
“He would say that when things are at their worst, all we have to cling to is each other,” Kalama’s mother spoke in a relaxed tone, one that her daughter had seen become rarer and rarer in the past few months. “Family, the community, who we are, and who we will become. That is all we can really know we have in times of trial.”
Kalama chewed on her bottom lip as she considered what this wisdom meant. Although she couldn’t remember her father, Joseph, his words seemed to echo truer to her than any words she had ever heard from a living person. If something big and violent was about to occur in the wizarding community, Kalama would have to depend heavily on the community of magic, given she had no living relatives of magic. But she would also have to depend on her family. Even though they had no powers and barely any idea of what she would be facing as a young witch, blood was still thicker than anything.
“Do you think you’d be able to follow your father’s advice?” her mother asked, tugging insistently at her daughter’s shoulders. “Do you think you could promise me that?”
The sky to the west had begun to turn a brilliant scarlet with the setting of the sun, more so to the south than to the north.
“Yeah, Mama,” Kalama agreed with her mother’s terms. “I promise.”
Kalama sat on the porch swing, kicking violently at the wood-plank floor, creating a horribly jerky ride. But Kalama was by no means sitting there to enjoy a nice, relaxing swing. It was the closest thing she had come to throwing a temper tantrum since she was four years old.
Joseph and her mother…they were her true blood family. It was their history she carried now, and their legacy she would carry on; especially Joseph’s. The man who had been her mother’s first true love: and whose crimson blood, and natural power, now ran through her own veins.
But her dad, Will, he had been the one who had helped to raise her from the time she was three. He was the one who held the family together after her mother’s death, and who loved her as though she were his own. And, Ewa, she may have been someone who came along long after the magic had vanished from Kalama’s family, but her little sister was still a part of her. These people were just as much a part of her as the magical abilities she possessed, and she was now fighting to keep them both.
People she was supposed to love, and people she now found herself tearing herself away from…
Then there was an obligation to her mother, who wasn’t even with her anymore, who wanted her to carrying on the traditions of a man who not only wasn’t alive anymore either, but that she didn’t even remember anyway.
Torn between two impossible circumstances, Kalama did the only thing she felt someone in her position could do: she cried. Her hands clutched at the seat of the swing, her fingernails scratching away at the peeling red paint. Tears fell from Kalama’s eyes almost as hard as the rain fell around her.
War Torn by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: A violent storm traps Kalama in the house with her sister, her memories, and a choice that is tearing her in half.
Love ya, Anna!