The Mandate of Heaven: Chapter 1

Sam

Forlornly watching the surfers, while feeling sorry for himself, was not how Sam Yen had planned on spending his Saturday afternoon. And yet there he was, sitting on the beach, glum and bored out of his mind, while everyone else was out in the water.

Of all the people in the world to be cursed with the inability to swim, Sam figured that he had to be the unluckiest. Not being able to swim was unheard of for a teen living in Hawaii on the Big Island. It wasn’t that he had aquaphobia. He could wade through the water with ease, while only sometimes looking like a complete idiot. It was when the water got over his head that things became tricky. No matter how many swim lessons he took, he always seemed to end up floundering at the bottom. It was as if he had cement blocks for feet.

All of his friends were currently far out from the beach at the point where the waves were just beginning to take shape. Some of them were lounging on their surfboards, waiting to catch the next swell, while others were just playing in the waves. He could see them dunking each other underwater and diving beneath the rising waves, looking like they were having a blast. For a moment, he considered joining them, but the only way he’d be able to do that was by putting on the water wings that his mom always forced him to bring to the beach.

“Just in case,” she would always say, being well aware of his little swimming issue.

There was no way he was putting on those things. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Among that group of friends were quite a few girls that he wasn’t eager to humiliate himself in front of. Water wings were for babies, not 15-year old young men, as his father had put it.

“Man, this sucks,” Sam mumbled grumpily to himself. “Why’d I even come out here anyway?” He buried his fingers into the sand, clenching and unclenching his fist, turning up the wet sand beneath.

A clod of sand hit the back of Sam’s head. Sand splattered through his hair, and the rest fell down his shirt and swim shorts. He instinctively bowed his head and began scraping the sand out of his dark hair. He scrambled around, ready to strike back with a sand ball of his own.

Martin, his older brother, held up both of his hands in surrender. He was wet from head-to-toe, sand clinging in patches to his feet and calves. Unlike Sam, Martin was a true Hawaiian. Martin could swim and surf better than most high schoolers his age. He was the Alpha Brother. “Don’t shoot,” Martin said with a teasing grin.

Sam threw it anyways, but Martin sidestepped out of the missile’s path with little effort. “You should go out there, Sammy,” Martin said, prodding his brother with his toe. “You’d have fun.”

“You know I can’t,” Sam said irritably. Of all people, Martin knew best just how aquatically handicapped his younger brother was. He’d been in there for almost every single one of Sam’s greatest swimming failures, like the time he’d almost drowned in the kiddy pool when he was seven. If Martin hadn’t been there to pull him out of the water and call an ambulance, Sam would’ve won the world record for Most Pathetic Death.

“You don’t have to go out that far,” Martin said, continuing to goad him. “The water’s really not that deep where everyone’s at. I can touch the bottom.”

Sam gave his brother an appraising look with a critical eye. Martin was at least a foot taller than him. “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “Not today.” Why risk another embarrassing mishap? He was tired of being that one kid that the lifeguards always had to save. Most of the lifeguards knew him by name already, and if not by name, then certainly by reputation.

Martin shrugged, giving up. “Suit yourself.” He quickly took off across the beach toward the water, dodging the many sunbathing tourists. Sam watched his brother plow through the water, until it reached waist height. Then Martin gracefully dove into the waves and reappeared several yards later, gliding through the water and over waves with ease.

Sam growled from frustration and annoyance with himself and Martin. It wasn’t fair that he’d gotten the “hopeless swimmer” genes, while Martin had gotten the “absolutely flawless” ones. It—

His thoughts were interrupted by a low tingling sensation on his right hand. Absentmindedly, he lifted it up and shook it. It had probably fallen asleep. It had that sort of pins and needles tingling sensation. Not unbearable, but not exactly comfortable either.

But as soon as he shook it, the tingling amped up to a burning sensation. Sam cried out in as much surprise as actual pain. He shook his hand furiously, but this failed to alleviate the pain. He slapped it with his left hand. Was it some kind of severe sunburn? He hadn’t been sunburnt since…well, since forever. He buried his fingers into the wet sand that he’d turned over in hopes of soothing the pain.

The pain rose again, this time to an agonizing, searing burn. Sam’s vision flashed from the sudden, startling burst of heat that wormed its way up and down from his fingertips to his wrist.

“Aaaahhhh!” he cried out unintelligibly. The beach was crowded and noisy, so no one even noticed. He wanted to cry for help, but the pain overrode all the functions of his brain.

He staggered to his feet in a haze. Water, he thought. Need water. It was more of a primal instinct than a coherent thought. Somewhere in the back of his tortured mind, instinct shrieked that water soothes burns.

His vision spotty, and his head swimming with agony, Sam stumbled his way through the crowds, once even accidentally stepping on a sunbather’s back. There was no time for an apology though. If he didn’t get to the water, he was afraid he was going to pass out.

As soon as he reached ankle deep water, he collapsed to his hands and feet, completely submerging his arm into the cold water. But the pain did not recede. Instead, it erupted like a volcano, pain coursing its way through his bloodstream, slowly devouring everything in its path.

Several years ago, his seventh grade class had gone on a field trip to the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, and they’d been lucky enough to see a lava flow. He remembered how he’d marveled at how the orange and black liquid oozed like syrup across the blackened crust of the mountain, enveloping everything it touched into its molten flame. The pain streaming beneath his skin was like that lava.

Unable to hold it back any longer, Sam opened his mouth and howled like an animal. He screamed and screamed as if he were dying, because he was absolutely certain that he was.

Then from the horizon, a great flash of light exploded across the sky. The sudden flash of white was so unexpected that although the pain was still alive, his screaming faltered for a second. There was only white across his vision now. The red that had lined his eyesight was gone, replaced now by nothingness.

And then, before his mind could register the panic of blindness as well as the pain, it went dark, and all pain faded into nothingness as well.

Sam’s first thought when he came to his senses was that the bed he was lying on wasn’t his own. His bed had a mattress that felt like a cloud. As far as he could remember, he had never once woken up with a stiff neck before. But this bed that he was lying on now was stiff like a rock, and the pillow didn’t conform to his head and neck like his favorite pillow at home did.

He opened his eyes and sat upright. His sudden motion was met with a tug on his arm. He looked down. He’d seen enough TV shows to recognize the line sticking out of his arm to be an IV needle. The IV’s line roped its way to a hanging drip that hovered over his bed, right next to a heart monitor that was steadily tracking his heart rate, rhythm, blood pressure, oxygenation, and a few other values that were foreign to him.

So the bed definitely wasn’t his. It was a hospital bed. Clearly, he was in a hospital. Sam shook his head. He was still too out of it to think. If Martin were there, he would’ve said something like, “Duh, Sammy. Way to be quick on your feet.”

Sam waited until his mind had caught up, so that he could get his bearings in the room filled with machines and computers that both scared and confused him.

Someone at the beach must’ve ended up calling 911. It had probably been one of the lifeguards. Great, he thought. Everyone probably thinks I was screaming because I was drowning. He would have some explaining to do. Only, he wasn’t exactly sure how to explain what had happened.

“Hello?” he said cautiously. The weakness in his voice surprised him. His throat was hoarse and sore, probably from the screaming match he’d had. Maybe he was sick. Maybe that’s why his hand had flared up like a roman candle. Maybe he was sick and dying. Could he have succumbed to some sort of disease?

“Hello?” he shouted, suddenly panicking.

A woman in blue scrubs, whom he guessed to be a nurse, entered the room with a look of relief across her face. “You’re awake,” she said rather obviously.

“What’s going on?” Sam demanded.

But she was already backing out of the room. “I’ll let your family explain. They’re just outside.” She hurried out the door.

Sam sat up, but the world began to spin clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. He quickly lay back down. So getting up was a no-no. A few years ago, Martin had spun him on a tire swing, until he’d been so dizzy, he’d thrown up. He felt like that now.

“Sam?”

Sam looked up. Just like that, his parents were there by his side. Everything would be all right now that they were here. He could barely contain the relief that flooded through him.

“Mom! Dad!” he said, looking at each of them and feeling himself begin to tear up. Why he wanted to cry, he had no idea. He was just so overwhelmed with inexplicable relief.

His mom knelt by his side and brushed his hair away from his head, barely containing her tears. “Oh, Sam,” she said shakily.

Dad too knelt on his other side and smiled sadly at him. His eyes were red. Sam was shocked. His dad never cried. Or smiled, for that matter. The man had the emotions of a brick.

“What?” Sam said worriedly. “I’m fine. I just feel a little dizzy. I don’t really know what happened though.” He tried sitting up again to prove that he was all right.

Dad placed a hand against Sam’s chest. “Just…just take it easy. We have something to tell you. We wanted you to hear it from us first.” His fingers trembled against Sam’s chest.

Sam looked from his dad to his mom. Both were pale, red eyed, and weary from what looked like long hours of crying. He brusquely pushed his dad’s hand away. “Am I dying?” he shrilled. “Did something happen?”

“No, sweetie,” his mom said gently. “You’re fine.” Her gaze hardened a little bit. “Although you will have some explaining to do later. You got a tattoo without our consent. That’s illegal, Samuel!”

Sam did a double take. “What are you talking about?”

His mom cradled his hand in hers. “What will people say when they see this? They’ll think we let a fifteen-year old get this.”

Sam looked at his hand for the first time since waking up. It seemed nuts that he hadn’t even looked at it, since it had been the source of his excruciating pain, but ever since he’d woken up, things had been a little crazy. Now, he wished he’d looked sooner, because coiling back and forth across his palm, all the way down to his wrist was a tattoo of some kind of black serpent with spines and a few tiny scales. Overall, the tattoo was simple enough, although only a professional tattoo artist could have done the detailing.

“I—” he stammered. “But I didn’t…”

Dad gave his mom an indiscernible look. “We’ll discuss that later.” He looked back at Sam. “We have some bad news.”

Sam hadn’t thought the day could get any more insane, but now his parents were willing to temporarily overlook the fact that a tattoo was on his hand. He’d officially seen everything. He loved his mom, but she was as strict as they could come. Any other day, she would be screaming his ear off about the tattoo. His mind reeling, Sam nodded without saying another word.

His parents took that as a sign to continue. “You and Martin and a lot of other people at the beach were in a terrible accident,” Dad said.

Mom suddenly burst into tears and buried her face into the bedside.

“Lian,” his dad said, rubbing her shoulder and using his brave voice. “It’s…it’s going to be fine. Everything will be fine.”

“What?” Sam demanded. “Just say it! What happened to Martin? What happened?”

“A freak lightning storm, the meteorologists are calling it,” his dad said slowly as if every word hurt him. “It came out of nowhere.”

Sam thought back to right before he’d passed out. There had been a blinding flash of light. He’d assumed it was the light one saw before death. “What happened?” he croaked, although he was pretty sure he knew.

“Sam, when lightning strikes water, the electric current fans out in all directions. Martin, some of your friends, and a few other swimmers at the beach were all in the area where a single lightning bolt struck.”

Sam opened his mouth to say something, but found he couldn’t speak. The words refused to come.

“They’re all here at the hospital now, receiving medical attention. The doctors aren’t sure why you were knocked out too.”

“But is Martin okay now?” Sam blurted out. “He’s going to be fine, right?”

“He’ll live,” was all Dad could say before choking.

“Honey, Martin was underwater when the water struck,” Mom said, taking over.

Sam pictured his brother covered in horrific burns from being completely submerged in the electrically charged water.

Mom must’ve seen something in his face change, because she cupped her hands around his cheeks, like she used to do when he was a toddler. “He is doing better than a lot of the others, because he was underwater at the time. But…” Still cradling his face in her hands, she began to cry again. “Sam, they don’t know if he’ll ever be able to hear again.”