Qaletaqa (42 page)

I didn’t know what she meant until her hand
yanked at her hair, then opened to let the wind carry the strands
away. The blood…I had no idea.

“Uriah, she’s almost done! She’s going to
kill us both!”

“Go, please!” Melody begged.

Turning away from Melody was like having
barbed wire scraped across my entire body. Every inch tore away a
piece of me, a promise of what I could have if I abandoned Claire
and the Matwau, gave up everything for Melody. I almost caved in to
the pull of a perfect future, but Claire saved me.

I never would have heard her if the valley
hadn’t gone completely silent. Her whisper was so quiet, I wasn’t
even sure if I really heard her, but the curve of her lips as she
spoke was so intimately familiar to me I didn’t need to hear her to
know what she said. It was only one word, but that was all I
needed.

“Goodbye.”

Ripping through the ties binding me to
Melody, I ran for Claire. The Matwau ran after me. My legs barreled
across the valley. The holes littering the floor tried to trip me,
but I leapt over them without really seeing. My eyes were fixed on
Claire and the light that surrounded her. She was about to die, to
give up her life for mine, and all I could think as I looked at her
was that she looked like an angel. As I ran I tried to shake the
strands of Melody’s hair out of my hand, but my fingers refused to
open. As hard as I tried they would not budge.

I looked down, sweat and desperation dripping
off my forehead, and tripped. I stumbled and twisted my way back to
my feet. The Matwau was only seconds behind me. My arms flailed and
I caught sight of Melody. Let me go. Her plea had been so simple,
letting go of the strands was not. I didn’t know what was stopping
me. Hearing Claire’s name again was all I needed to know that she
was what I wanted, not Melody. Her life was more important to me
than anything. The Matwau, Melody, the entire world, I would give
it all up to spare Claire from even a moment’s pain. I didn’t
understand why I couldn’t force my fingers to open and drop the
last connection I had to Melody.

I screamed at my inability to let go. Run,
bleed, let me go. Bleed. She said she remembered. Quaile said I had
to sacrifice.

I stopped running.

Stopping short with the Matwau so close
behind me led to him crashing into the back of me. I shoved him
away from me immediately, but he lashed out in anger. I dodged his
first strike, but caught the next one. I wasn’t a fool. I had
already tried and failed to beat him on my own. As soon as I had
enough space I stood up and pulled a pocket knife from my
jeans.

It was small, barely three inches folded.
Unfolded it wasn’t any more impressive. When the Matwau saw it he
actually laughed.

“Are you honestly planning on fighting me
with that?”

“No,” I said, looking over his shoulder to
see just what I expected-Melody holding a fistful of bloody sand
and her wedding ring poised to cut, “this is for the gods.”

We cut, I with my miniature blade, Melody
with her ring. The Matwau stared again, completely caught off
guard. He couldn’t understand why I was hurting myself. I wasn’t
sure I did either, but I trusted Melody. Remembering had been her
singular gift. It had to be good for something.

The blood tainting the sand in Melody’s fist
was mine. I knew that as surely as I knew the hair I was holding
belonged to her. In unison, our power infused blood ran over the
only tokens we had of each other. As it did, I felt something start
to change. The cut I had made was hardly a scratch after what I had
already suffered, but the pain inside my head, my entire body,
built inside of me until it exploded out in a feral scream. My
muscles felt as if they were dissolving in acid, my bones crushed
to powder. It begged me to go back on my choice, but I refused.

Claire was so close. Her life was about to be
extinguished for good. If I died without managing to kill the
Matwau I would die knowing I had done my best. Dying or living with
the knowledge that I had cost Claire her life. Living would send me
into eternal anguish, Hell of my own making. I embraced the pain as
my sacrifice to save Claire’s life. When I did, the feeling changed
again. The pain started to drift away from me. I could almost feel
the weight of it sliding off me, and when I opened my eyes I could
literally see it.

I don’t think anyone in the valley but me and
Melody could see the trail of pain speeding out of our bodies
toward each other. The tendrils flew through the space between us
unseen. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the Matwau had
recovered from his shock. His hand wrapped around my throat,
lifting me from the ground, but I stayed focused on the pain.

I watched the two streaks collide and roil.
They meshed into one entity and I realized it wasn’t pain I was
watching, it was power. Even more surprising of a reality was
seeing it move…right for me. The Matwau’s hand around my throat
made my vision go black, but when the power reached me, we both
felt it. A jolt ran through us like lightning. I went limp under
the impact. The Matwau squeezed harder.

Fear that I was truly about to die gripped
me, but only for a few seconds. That was all it took for the power
to lodge itself deep within my soul. It spread out, reaching my
hands last. At some point during the agony of breaking the bond,
Melody’s hair had slipped from my fingers. It left my hand free to
clamp down on the Matwau’s throat.

I let loose the power that had once burned us
both. Now it was his turn to scream. I felt nothing. Ahiga had
shown me how to shield myself from the killing touch. Before my
power had been flailing around uncontrolled. Now it was focused.
With Claire, my power had instinctively repelled hers, with the
Matwau it sought him out hungrily. Every bit of strength I had
left, every ounce of power poured into him. He collapsed under the
barrage. His hand fell away from my throat and both of my hands
move down to his chest. I had to give up every last bit of power in
order to kill him. I pushed with everything I had, and waited…

…and it wasn’t enough.

Spent, I fell back. I couldn’t kill him.

38: Inside

“Uriah.”

Harvey’s voice itched at my ear, but I didn’t
respond. The Matwau laid sprawled in front of me. All of this, it
couldn’t have been for nothing. Ahiga had been right. He couldn’t
teach me everything.

“Uriah, look at Claire,” Harvey said from
behind me.

I turned, expecting to see Claire back to her
normal self now that my bond to Melody had been broken. When I
looked for her where she had been just a few moments earlier I
didn’t find her. She was lying on the ground, still glowing as
brightly as she had been before.

“Claire!”

The Matwau was forgotten. I trampled over his
legs in order to reach Claire. When I finally laid my hands on her
face, she smiled even though she was trembling from head to
toe.

“Claire, what are you doing? Stop it! Claire,
the bond is already broken. We did it. You don’t have to do this.
Please, Claire.”

Her response was to smile and slip her hand
behind my neck. “You b-broke the b-bond?” she stuttered.

“Yes. Please, you have to stop!”

“It’s not enough,” she said. And then she
pulled me down and kissed me.

For the second time in one day, power poured
into me. There was no lightning or pain this time. Instead of our
powers fighting against each other it felt as if all of Claire’s
love for me had coalesced into ambrosia. It poured over me in the
most blissful experience of my life.

When I finally opened my eyes, Claire sat in
front of me beaming. I stared back, stunned. “How did you…?”

Claire pressed her hands against my face.
“Later. You aren’t done yet, Uriah.”

“But…” I shook my head. It had all been a
waste of time. I had no idea how Claire manage to pull off giving
me her power without killing herself, but even with her power I
knew I couldn’t finish this.

“Claire, I can’t kill him. What Ahiga taught
me, it wasn’t everything. I couldn’t give up my power.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t get rid of it. You
have to tell me what to do,” I begged.

“I can’t. It’s different for me. I could
interact with my power, speak to it almost. All I had to do was
convince it to leave.”

I knew there was more to it than that, but I
didn’t press. I didn’t have time. The Matwau’s body was twitching,
healing. He would be up in a few seconds at most.

“Claire, I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t, either,” she whispered.

Harvey grabbed our shoulders and yanked us
back. The Matwau had regained his feet.

Claire was fearless, but she scrambled behind
me. I wanted to do something similar. The creature I was destined
to defeat squared his ragged body as he faced me. In my periphery I
could see Melody struggling to get away from the Matwau’s creatures
which had taken up their watch once again. Talon was dodging
between the beasts in an attempt to help her escape. Harvey was
frozen between running to his wife and trying to help me. I didn’t
have a lot of faith that he could do either, but whatever his
choice was I didn’t have the time to think about. I was facing down
the Matwau with the key to defeating him locked somewhere inside my
mind.

I didn’t have a lot of faith in myself at
that moment.

“Failure,” the Matwau growled, “you stink of
it, Uriah. You tried to kill me, and you failed. It is stuck so
tightly to you now that it has reached your bones. It is inside of
you now.”

My hand began to shake. My eye twitched. A
strange pain starting building at the base of his neck. The
Matwau’s words, they were familiar. I pressed the heel of my hand
to my forehead. The pain was getting worse. Ahiga had said the same
thing to me, but that wasn’t why the words seemed so familiar. He
said them when I asked why the gods hadn’t sent my dad to teach me
instead of him. Ahiga’s answer was that my dad had already taught
me, that his lesson was inside of me.

“It is inside of you now,” I whispered. As
soon as the words left my mouth, the pain in my head spread like a
blanket over my mind, breaking barriers and letting everything
spill out.

***

The barn was so far away I shouldn’t have
been able to hear anything that was happening in it, but I knew
instinctively that was where the sound had come from.

Standing very still, I listened again. It was
faint, but I could hear my name being called. It sounded like my
dad. There was something wrong with his voice. The sound came
again, louder, more urgent. Something was definitely wrong. He
needed me. An anguished cry sent me rocketing over the fence and
toward the barn. Before the sound faded I had sprinted the entire
distance, stumbling into the barn to find my dad lying on the floor
in agony.

“Dad!” I cried. “What happened? Are you
okay?”

I slid to the floor next to him and lifted
his head into my lap. He tried to speak, but the pain contorted his
face too much. His jaw was locked so tightly I was afraid it would
crack into pieces. I yelled for my mom, but I didn’t know if she
could hear me from inside the house. My heart was racing. I was
almost sure I knew what this was. He clutched at his arm, was
having a hard time breathing, and he was obviously in pain. I knew
the symptoms of a heart attack. I slid his body back to the floor
and started to stand up, trying to keep my panic from showing.

“Dad, wait here,” I said. My voice shook. So
did my hands. “I’m going to go get Mom. We’ll call and ambulance
and get help. I’ll be right back, okay?”

As soon as I moved his eyes opened wide. The
hand that had been clutching his arm reached out and caught my
shirt. He yanked me back to the floor. I tried to pry his hand
free. If I didn’t get help soon he could die.

“Dad, I’ll be right back. Let go,
please!”

“You can’t…go yet…Uriah,” my dad said, his
voice broken as he gasped for air. “I have…to tell you…”

“You can tell me later. I have to get
help!”

“No!” His voice was so forceful that it
stopped me. It almost looked as if the pain had disappeared. The
trembling in the hand that held my t-shirt told the truth. “I have
to…tell you the truth, Uriah.”

“The truth about what?”

“About your purpose.”

“What?”

“Just listen…to me!” he demanded.

I was counting the seconds in my head,
debating whether running off would make him panic, if it would be
worse than waiting a few seconds to hear him out. I didn’t know
what to do.

“Dad, just let me go get Mom,” I begged.

His other head clapped behind my neck and
pulled me down close to him. “I don’t…have time. You aren’t who…you
think you are. You’re a hero, son. I’ve tried to teach you, but…but
there’s one more lesson…you have to learn.”

His face twisted as the pain became too much.
I tried to pull away again, but he held me impossibly tight. I
couldn’t get away without hurting him. I screamed for my mom again
and again. I kept it up until my dad came back to himself and
jerked me around to face him.

“One…more…lesson. The power…you can’t give it
up without embracing it first. It has grown…slowly, but it’s all
there now. As much as you can gain on your own is there. It is
inside you now. You’ll have to…have to give it up, but you
can’t…not until you embrace it first.”

“Dad, what are you talking about? What power?
Just let go of me so I can go get Mom!”

“You know!” he shouted.

The effort curled him up as the pain swept
through him. This was bad. Time was running out. I yelled for my
mom again, as loud as my lungs could manage. When he stopped
convulsing I pulled my dad’s head back onto my lap.