Making Waves (5 page)

Chapter Four

I
n my dream I was lost in roaring darkness. Lightning flashes showed lurid glimpses of a terrifying dream world. FLASH! Palm trees bent almost double. FLASH! A wooden chair sailing through the air. FLASH! Water rushing - a river? A lake? And again pitch black.

The roaring, rushing nightmare went on for what seemed hours. Nothing was solid. Nothing made sense. Nothing felt real.

Then inside my dream I felt gentle hands take hold of me, lifting me up as if I weighed no more than air. I was laid on something soft and carried through the lashing wind and rain. My rescuers called to each other in a musical dream language, a language I miraculously understood.

“She is here,” they told each other. “She flew here on the wings of the storm. Now the end is coming.”

Another flash showed me a brief, electrifying vision: six or seven concerned faces gazing down at me through the falling rain. They wore strange ornaments made of pearls and seashells. The colours shimmered against their half-naked bodies like beautiful colours you only see in dreams…

I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a large four-poster bed. Velvet curtains had been looped back at one side. An oil lamp made silky gleams on dark polished wood. Everything else was in deep shadow.

There was a strange fog inside my head, making it hard to think.

I didn’t know where I was. And - this was really bad - I didn’t actually know
who
I was!

I heard stealthy creaks. My heart thumped like a rabbit’s. Someone was in my room, and I didn’t know if they were friend or foe.

“Is anyone out there?” I whimpered.

I heard more creaks as someone shifted his or her weight in a chair. Then I heard slow shuffling footsteps. An old black woman peered through my curtains. “Lawd a mercy!” she exclaimed. “You come back to us, Miss Melanie!”

Miss Melanie. That had to be me. I could have cried with relief. She knows who I am, I thought. Now I’ll find out what’s going on.

“Have I been away?” I said huskily. My throat was incredibly sore.

“You been sick, bad bad.”

That must be why I felt so weak, and so strange. This old woman must be my nurse.

“I’m very thirsty,” I croaked.

“Have a sip a dis cordial. But don’t sit up too fas’,” she warned.

The cool drink was blissful, but the effort of drinking wore me out. I collapsed back on my pillows, trembling.

I felt haunted by my horrible nightmare. I wasn’t sure if I was truly awake, or if this was just another episode in the same dream. Nothing seemed fixed or solid or familiar. The room, the old-fashioned bed, the tired old nurse.

I watched her from under my eyelashes, wondering what it was about her that disturbed me. Her eyes are so sad, I thought. Next minute this thought slipped away and I found myself glancing nervously into the corners of the room.

There was something creepy about those shadows, as if they might morph into something else when I wasn’t looking. Something evil.

You’re being pathetic, I told myself. You’re in a big comfy bed in this lovely peaceful room. You’re weak from this mystery illness, that’s all. There’s absolutely nothing to be scared of.

Except that I’d lost my memory
.

The old nurse bustled about, sponging my hot face, bringing clean cool sheets, plumping up pillows.

“This is really sweet of you,” I said.

She gave me a startled look, like I’d said something bizarre.

“I seem to have forgotten your name,” I said apologetically. “This illness has made me feel a bit confused.”

“Dey call mi Quasha,” the old woman said. “But mi true name Quashiba. In Africa times, all girls born on a Sunday get call dat.”

I gasped. “We’re in Africa! I had no idea!”

She laughed. “Dis not Africa! Dis place Fruitful Vale, your uncle’s plantation. You don’ remember Massa Bexford and Lovey meet you at di harbour, drive you here to Fruitful Vale?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember a thing. What happened to me?”

“You got sick on the boat, girl-chile,” she said. “Missus don’ think you gonna live.”

Quashiba told me that on my first night, I’d become delirious and wandered out in a hurricane. But my uncle’s driver, a man called Lovey, found me before I came to any harm.

This was getting more bewildering every minute. How could I have forgotten who I was?

It made me genuinely panicky. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe.

Got to get some air, I thought urgently. Take deep breaths.

“Can you open the shutters?” I asked Quashiba. “It’s a bit stuffy in here.”

There was no glass in the window, just wooden slats you opened or closed. Quashiba pulled a lever, letting in shimmery bars of moonlight. The room filled with the high shrill sounds of crickets. Delicious scents floated in out of the darkness. I lay back on my pillows. The night breeze felt blissful on my sweaty skin. I could see the blue-white pulsing of a star between the wooden slats. And suddenly I knew.

“I’m in
Jamaica
!” I breathed.

Quashiba clapped her hands. “You remember, nuh! You in Jamaica in Fruitful Vale. Your uncle, Massa Josiah Bexford, own all di Ian’ from here to Orange Park.”

I had to turn my face to the wall. Relief at getting my memory back was making me weepy and I didn’t want Quashiba to see. I didn’t belong in this place. I wasn’t even human. I was an undercover angel on a mission to help a friend get back his self-respect. My portal had mysteriously auto-destructed on the way. By a miracle, I’d survived unscathed. Apart from a little touch of cosmic amnesia.

I burrowed into my pillows. Just as soon as I had my strength back, I’d try to track Brice and Lola down. Hopefully it wasn’t too late. Hopefully we could keep our joint date with destiny.

But first, I thought, I’ll have a tiny little snooze…

Angels have fabulous powers of recovery! Next morning I was tucking into a Jamaican-style breakfast on the veranda outside my room.

I’d just started on the yummy fried plantain, when a white lady with a parasol appeared on the steps. My “Aunt Sarah” had heard of my recovery.

“I am relieved to see you are better, niece.” My aunt looked flushed and hot in her tightly-laced gown. I heard her corsets creak as she bent to kiss my cheek. She caught sight of my plate. “What was Quasha thinking!” she exclaimed in disgust. “Bringing you this revolting native food!”

“I asked her to. I love yam and plantain,” I said in surprise.

Aunt Sarah looked faint. “Oh, but my dear, wouldn’t you prefer something less foreign? A cup of beef tea? Or calves’ foot jelly?”

Euw
! The foods my aunt thought suitable for invalids sounded far more weird than yam!

To my relief Aunt Sarah totally accepted that I was the human in my Agency cover story. Though to be quite honest with you, I think she would have talked to anyone. Not to be mean, but she just about talked my ears off, apologising about a million times for not nursing me herself, and hinting at a mysterious loss that had left her very low.

“I fear that in my depressed condition I would have succumbed to the same contagion and become dangerously ill myself,” she said.

I didn’t like to pry into her personal business but I could tell my aunt was hoping for a reaction, so I said sympathetically, “Omigosh, what happened?”

Aunt Sarah dabbed her eyes with a lace hankie. “Little Phoebe died,” she said. “I didn’t know it was possible to shed so many tears.”

Well, I couldn’t just leave it hanging, could I?

“Don’t tell me if it upsets you,” I said in my gentlest voice. “But who was, um, Phoebe?”

“My love bird,” choked Aunt Sarah. “Every time I see that empty cage…” My aunt quickly turned away, her shoulders shaking.

I felt genuinely sorry for her actually. No human should be that lonely, should they?

I thought I’d distract her by asking if I could see around the house. I was still in my nightie, but Aunt Sarah caught hold of my hand like a little girl who wants to be best friends, and led me eagerly along dimly lit corridors. She explained that the shutters had to be kept closed to protect her furniture from the strong Jamaican sunlight. “I had everything sent out from England,” she said proudly.

I think Aunt Sarah probably had more English furniture than they had in England. Stiff English chairs upholstered in flowery satin. Huge oil paintings of glowering English ancestors. Highly polished cabinets crammed with English china and glassware that looked totally unused. It wasn’t a home, I thought. It was a museum.

As we walked through this depressing series of rooms, Aunt Sarah confided how difficult she found life in the tropics; the snakes, the heat, the humidity. “And that terrible hurricane, my dear! I thought the roof was going to blow right off!”

I had an alarming thought. “When
was
the hurricane exactly?”

“A week ago today. You’d just arrived, poor child, when it started to blow.”

Eep
! The Agency would be wondering why I hadn’t called home. I felt furtively under the collar of my nightdress and went weak with relief. My angel tags were still there.

“Have you tried sugar cane yet? You really must!” Aunt Sarah smiled properly for the first time and I was horrified to see gruesome black stumps. Sugar cane was obviously one foreign food my aunt enjoyed to the max.

I’d never seen cane growing, so my aunt took me on to a veranda with a view over cane fields. After the permanent twilight inside the house, my eyes were dazzled by the acres of lush foliage.

“It’s an amazing colour,” I breathed. “Almost blue!”

“When cane stalks turn that blue popinjay colour, it means the cane is ripe. My husband starts harvesting when the Christmas breeze begins to blow.” She gestured at the palm trees busily clacking their fronds like gossipy grannies.

I was confused. “Is it Christmas then?”

My aunt laughed with a flash of her disturbing teeth. “Everything must seem strange to you, my dear.”

“It does seem quite strange,” I said truthfully.

Aunt Sarah patted my shoulder. “It will be good to have some female company. The men only come indoors to eat and sleep. And quarrel,” she added with a sigh.

“Don’t they get on?”

“My nephew, that’s your cousin, Beau, and Mr Bexford are constantly at loggerheads. Mr Bexford’s brother sent Beau out to Jamaica to learn the plantation business. My husband says he is a foolish young hothead. And Beau says—” My aunt stopped herself abruptly. “Listen to me rattling on! Now you are up and about again, we shall be able to talk every day!”

“That will be lovely,” I said brightly.

I really hope I find the others soon, I thought nervously, as my aunt launched into another long story about her difficult nephew. You can’t afford to let yourself get distracted on a mission, or you’d never get anywhere. I was sorry for my aunt but I hadn’t come to Earth to be her full-time companion.

Luckily, Aunt Sarah remembered she had to see the cook about a blancmange or whatever, so I was able to escape. I rushed back to my room, struggled into my seventeenth-century clothes, (with help from Quashiba) and took myself for a walk in the Caribbean sunshine.

I truly don’t know how European women survived in the tropics, wearing that dreadful underwear. I was practically fainting after five minutes. I literally had to rest under a mango tree, like a frail heroine in an old-fashioned book.

It was lovely actually. I could feel calm mango-tree vibes humming inside the knobbly bark of the tree trunk. “Hi tree,” I whispered. “I’m a visiting angel, but you knew that, didn’t you?”

There was no one around, so I took the opportunity to call home. I clasped my angel tags, and tried to tune into my heavenly energy source - and got absolutely
nada
. I couldn’t believe it, I’d been here for days and communications were STILL down!

I could feel myself starting to panic, but I firmly told myself to get a grip. The glitch could be just one way. The Agency might still be able to pick up incoming calls.

I beamed a quick progress report to Angel HQ on the off chance that some junior agent would pick up my signal.

Hi, this is Melanie. Um, I just wanted you to know I’m fine. I had, um, a little setback but don’t worry, I’m back on the case and hopefully I’ll run into the others any time now. Um, later!

Not the most polished performance, but that’s because I’d got distracted halfway through. I could hear spine-tingling harmonies coming and going on the Caribbean breeze. The cane-cutters were singing.

I gazed across fields hazy with heat, to the stooped figures working their way steadily down the rows. The rhythm of the singing perfectly fitted the swing-and-slash motion of the workers, as they hacked down the cane.

I don’t know what it was, but something in their voices brought me out in goose-bumps. I suddenly felt intense emotions welling up inside me. The only word to describe it is
sufferin
g. A pain and suffering too deep for tears.

These weren’t my feelings. I could feel them seeping out of the earth and rocks, and quivering through the living wood of the mango tree. These feelings were coming from the island itself.

It didn’t make sense. Jamaica was the closest thing I’d seen to Heaven on Planet Earth. How could anyone be suffering in Paradise?

I hastily pulled myself together, as I became aware of someone strolling towards me through the heat haze. There was something oddly familiar about him. This person had a new stiff way of walking, and he wore strange, stiff, seventeenth-century clothes, yet he totally reminded me of—

It WAS! It was Brice!!

I rushed to meet him, almost weeping with relief. “Thank goodness you’re safe! I’ve been SO worried!”

I babbled on about the hurricane and my illness, “I’m SO sorry! I must have set our mission back by
aeons
, but I’m fine now. We can get started any time you say!”

I finally stopped for breath. Brice looked surprisingly dashing in his baggy shirt and knee breeches. Plus he totally had seventeenth-century manners down. “Calm yourself, cousin,” he said sternly. “You are not quite recovered, I fear.”