Janelle Corporal
Plaridel, Bulacan, Phillippines
2016, Junior, Creative Writing

The wet mist of the ocean blew into my hair as I played with the ball of water I cupped in my hands. The glassy, marble-shaped sphere wobbled, glimmering against the setting sun in the distance. I sighed, and let the sphere fall to the ground. With a dismissive wave of my hand, the ball of water evaporated into thin air, and I turned my head to face the ocean, sighing.

I used to love my powers, used to fawn over them, even. I had them ever since I was a kid, using them to impress the kids at the schoolyard, to have fun at bath time, to brag to the wide-eyed adults and teachers as they tried not to faint at the floating ball of liquid hanging suspended in the air. I had the will of water to my bidding, and it was no small deal in our little town.

But as the years passed by, my powers became a curse, a burden I had to carry for the past fourteen years. The idea of my magic turned merely into an idea, one no one believed in anymore. What used to be a town legend turned into a tall tale, one retold by fishermen wives and crazy old ladies. The girl who used to be the star and wonder of the village became the sniveling little liar, the attention-seeking brat.

And there was no one else I could be, as I had no more control over my identity. In our little town, the people would take care of that for you. So it was either attention-seeking brat or witch for me.

I gladly took attention-seeking brat.

And so there it was. All evidence and memory of my powers vanished into thin air. All the years of wide eyes and gaping mouths were suddenly erased. My magic ceased to exist, and my parents were suddenly stuck with a freak who only wanted attention.

I was forced to hide my magic. And only at times like these I was allowed to use them; in front of the ocean, behind my favorite rock, and far, far, far away from any evidence of humanity.

“Hello?”

I jumped up from shock, panic gurgling up in my chest. This was it, the end of Clara Pell. (Yes, that’s my name.) If someone found out, I would finally cross the line into witchcraft for sure. I froze, squeezing my eyes shut, waiting for the gasp of realization, waiting for the pitter-patter of running feet, and waiting for the mob that would chase me into the woods with pitchforks and torches.

“Hello? Gee, Clara, you’re getting better at your magic.”

My eyes popped open to see a boy about my age standing in front of me. He had hazel, windswept hair covering part of his face, a lean, narrow figure perfect for diving and swimming, and deep blue eyes that pierced through mine. Sea foam lapped around his ankles, and he had a green, long strand of seaweed wrapped around his wrist. He tilted his head at me, a smile beginning to form on his face.

My mouth gaped at him, and I began to stutter from shock. “Um, how do you know my, err, name?”

He raises his eyebrow at me, and his growing smile turns into a smirk. “Of all the questions you could ask me, that’s the one you choose?” Then his smirk vanishes, replaced by a concerned look on his face. “I’ve been watching you for a while now, and—“

“Wait,” I interrupt, “You’ve been watching me? For a while now?”

“That’s what I said,” He sighs, impatient.

“Do you have no idea how creepy that is? You pop up here, freak me out by knowing my name, tell me you know about my,” I lower my voice, “Magic, and then tell me that you’ve been spying on me, not to mention for a while now! What is this, a sick dream?”

He sighs, obviously exasperated at me, and pulls my arm, dragging me away from the rock, and pushes me to the edge of the seashore. The sea foam flaps around my sneakers, wetting through to my socks, and I frown. Not because my feet are suddenly cold, but because instead of seeing the clear turquoise hue of the salt water, the water suddenly turned into a dark, oily mass. The boy stands behind me, a bit to my right. I turn to face him with questions in my eyes, but I see questions in his. His expression shocks me. He seems to be in awe—of me.

“Hmm, impressive. I’ve never seen a reaction like yours. Others scream, faint, or stumble foolishly into the sand,” he mutters.

My ears were ringing from the shock of hearing the word others, but I shake it off, sure that what he just said was the least of my concerns, and there was more, more, more.

My frustration was simmering off me in waves. I hated the fact that I was suddenly ignorant, that this boy seemed to know better than me, that I had no idea what was bloody going on!

In my rage, I had unconsciously raised an orb of ocean water. When I noticed it, I shrieked, and panicked, letting it go immediately. I was disgusted, and I wanted to get out of the oily black liquid. I didn’t want to touch it, much less make it float.

I stepped away from the water, back unto the seashore. To my surprise, the water became clear again, became the ordinary salt water image I knew. The oily, black water disappeared. I paled, and turned to the boy again. He nodded, confirming what I had just seen, and softly pushed me back into the water.

The turquoise-hinted water flashed, and then shifted back to the oily black mass. The boy sidles up beside me, his eyes flashing with disgust when the sea water foams around his ankles, and turns to face me, saying; “You see it, don’t you?” I nod, and he chews on the inside of his cheek. Silence settles down, and the sound of waves clashing against the sea shore is the only thing to hear.

Finally, he opens his mouth and continues, “The water is black because of pollution. You know that fact about how water is the universal solvent, right?” I give him a slight tip of my head, and he swallows hard. “Well, that black stuff is pollution. All bodies of water has to dissolve every inch of that vileness. You humans throw tons of garbage into the ocean every year. All that trash has to go somewhere, right? So the ocean is forced to dissolve your sewer liquid, your landfills, your mess. And before you know it, you’re swimming in your own garbage.”

“So the black stuff I’m seeing right now—that’s garbage?”

He nods.

“Wait,” I say, “So the entire ocean, or at least, all that I can see, which is up to that horizon, is black. Does that mean that the entire ocean is polluted?”

“Well, statistically, more than 85% is, but yeah. The entire ocean has been polluted by now,” he replies. “It wasn’t always that way, you know. Before, a long time ago, it wasn’t full on black. There would just be faint spots, and the ocean would be nearly as clean as it actually seems to the human eyes. But then technology developed in the late 1900’s, where warfare forced humankind to evolve, and well, the ocean’s now like that,” he sighs.

I lift up an orb of water, and the boy’s words come to mind—pollution. Waste. These are the junk from landfills, sewers–, and yet this is where we get fish from, where we dive and swim. I shudder, and try not to think about how many times I would splash in these waters, cupping it and pouring it over my face.

I step away, and ask; “Why are you telling me this? If you have been spying on me for a while now, you would know that I research everything about water.” (I do that to learn more about my powers. It doesn’t help much. I just learn really gory things like how half of the entire coral reef system is hypothesized to fall apart at the end of the century due to ocean pollution, or how many dead sea life can be found dead or extinct in the next few years.)

I look up at him, and he’s staring towards the sunset, his head cocked to one side. I silence the question in my head, and decide to look at the sunset as well.

And then I realize that he’s not looking at the sunset but at the black oiliness that stretches up to the distance. Then he says; I’m telling you this because you’re a water wielder. You have the power to control water, you have the power to take its will to your bidding. And,” he adds, “You can stop it.”

I clinch my eyebrows together in confusion. “Stop what?”

He smiles, and gestures to the ocean behind him. My eyes widen as I realize what he’s saying.

I frown at him. “Me? You think I can stop ocean pollution? No way, I can’t. I’m only fourteen, there’s only one of me. I can’t single-handedly save the Earth!”

“Well, “he says, a cocky grin growing on his face, “Technically, you won’t be doing it single-handedly. There are others—“

“Oh, no,” I cut in, “Not again with the others. It freaks me out that I can do all this, and then you add the fact that there are more out there—well that’s just crazy.”

“Technically, again, there are just five of us. And that’s including you and me, so we’re just very few.”

“Technically,” I retort, “I’m out. Bye, ocean boy.” I walk back to the shore, away from the boy, ready to walk away from more. The sound of waves crash in the distance, and I turn—to see a huge wave of blackness crashing down on me.

I scream, and then realize too late that that had been a bad idea. Water enters my mouth, and I flail, trying to break through to the surface. My lungs scream for air, air, and all I can see is the black void of pollution, drowning me. Suddenly, the water disappears, and I’m sprawled on the sand, coughing up the blackness, and I just want to vomit knowing that waste was inside me, that garbage had entered my mouth.

The boy runs over, and I know that he had done that. I swat him away and yell at him. “Why did you do that? What is wrong with you?”

He huffs at me. “Look, I’m sorry, but didn’t you see the wave was coming for you? You could have closed your mouth. I just wanted you to listen—”

“Seriously? Didn’t you realize what that wave would have been like in my perspective? That was a black wave looming over me! One more second and I could have died!”

His expression shifts into a desperate one, and he babbles, trying to make me understand. “Don’t you get it? The ocean is DYING. It won’t be this way for much longer. In a few decades, it’s going to be purely black, and all sea life will be endangered. The world needs you.”

“What can I do? I told you, all I can do is manipulate water.”

“Which is power,” he says. “You have power. You can use it. Show it to the others, make them understand. You can manipulate water, you can help stop ocean pollution. It doesn’t matter about your age. They’ll listen—“

“They don’t even believe in me anymore, “ I spit out. “They stifled me for years, they won’t listen.”

“Don’t you think I know that? It happened to me, to the rest of us. They won’t listen, I know. They won’t listen to you, because you’re all alone. They’ll just make up excuses, explain your powers as what they can understand. They do that. They rationalize everything. They’ll rationalize you as a liar. They rationalized me as one. And,” he says bitterly, “They rationalize the ocean pollution to be a natural part of life. They hardly care. They seldom do.

And that’s why I’m here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He smiled. “They can rationalize one water-wielder, but they can’t rationalize two. They’ll have to listen. We can stop this. We can help save the planet, we can finally get rid of the plague that holds back the Earth. We can help stop ocean pollution.”

I smile back, finally getting what he means. We can tell the world about this plague, we can show the world ocean pollution as what it is.

And we’ll start at this very town.

We run to the shore, grabbing orbs of water and levitating them around us. Proof of our magic, proof of the story we will tell the world.

Proof that ocean pollution can, and will be stopped.

Being a water-wielder isn’t just about the magic, I realized. It’s also about how we can use water to change the world.

The boy stops, and I halt. He turns toward me, with a smile lighting up his eyes, and says, “Oh, by the way, my name is Liam.” Then we both smile.

Meeting Liam showed me how much the world can change.

How much WE can change.

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The Water-Wielder