Shaxoa's Gift (25 page)

“I ran into some girls from school. Emily
Yazzie was with them. Her mom kind of let slip what happened with
Quaile,” I said. Both women tsked and shook their heads, but I
doubted anyone who knew the whole story would have been able to
keep quiet for long.

“Emily kind of brought something up that
upset me. I ended up telling her about Daniel, and then she asked
me about Uriah’s Twin Soul.” The word “soul” came out as a squeak.
My mom reached over and took my hand. She squeezed it tightly, but
didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

The three of us knew by then that what Quaile
had told us would undoubtedly come true. Uriah would meet his Twin
Soul one day. When, was my biggest question. When Quaile told us I
would meet my Twin Soul first, I hadn’t believed her, but even if I
had, I would never have expected it to happen so quickly. Who was
to say that Uriah’s meeting wasn’t just days or minutes away as
well?

“What if he meets her while he’s gone?” I
asked.

My mom dropped her eyes, but Lina’s whole
body grew tight. “Don’t talk like that, Claire,” Lina said. Her
words were firm, but the slight quiver in her jaw was not lost on
me.

“What if he meets her and never comes back?”
I asked. I wanted someone to tell me it would never happen, that
Uriah was ten times stronger than me and would never give in to the
bond. I needed reassurance, and Lina did not disappoint.

“Uriah would never turn his back on you,
Claire,” she said. She paused, knowing full well how close that
statement was to a lie, but continued as if her son’s earlier
departure had not actually occurred. “Uriah is strong and he loves
you. I don’t need Quaile to tell me that he’s out searching for a
way to free you from the Twin Soul bond. He’ll be back soon. Even
if he met his Twin Soul somewhere, he would still come back. He
loves you, and you know that.”

Having said what she thought needed to be
said, Lina turned back to the stove. Her hand shook as she stirred
the onions she was browning. She spoke with surety, but how much
did she believe her own words? My mom’s hand brought my gaze back
to her. The corners of her smile turned down just slightly.

“Claire, I believe that Uriah will come back
for you too, no matter what he encounters on his trip, but you have
to realize that life will go on for you regardless of what choices
Uriah makes. Do you understand that?” my mom asked.

I shook my head. “What would be the point of
going on, Mom? I don’t even want to imagine my life without Uriah
in it. He has been my strength ever since we started dating. With
everything Dad has put me through, I don’t know what my life would
be like right now if not for Uriah. I owe him so much.”

My mom tried to smile, but her lips did not
rise very far. “Claire, I understand that Uriah has helped you deal
with your father’s putdowns and schemes, and has loved you and
treated you like the precious gift you are. I understand that, but
he has not lived your life for you.”

Taking my shoulders in her hands, my mom
squeezed reassuringly. “You took his advice and made your life
better. You are a good person, a strong person. I am so glad that
you’ve had Uriah to support you the past few years, but your life
is your own. You decide where your life will go, whether that
includes Uriah, or not.”

I glanced up at Lina. Her expression was so
hard to read. My mom was most concerned with me. She needed to make
sure that I would not take the same out Uriah had almost taken. My
mom would never be able to bear losing one of her children. Lina
was a different story.

She loved her son, and he was all she had
left. She had seen the desperation in his eyes when he couldn’t
promise her that he would persevere. My mom telling me that
everything would be alright even without Uriah in my life was all
well and good for me, but I could tell that Lina was not thinking
only of me. Her eyes seemed to hold the question of whether the
same thing was true for her son.

I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but
the quiver in my lips gave away my matching fear. I had no idea
whether my mom’s words were true anymore than Lina did. The best I
could offer my mom was a hug that allowed me to hide my face over
her shoulder. She seemed to realize that was all I could give and
abandoned her campaign. Lina turned back to the stove to start
serving dinner.

The three of us sat around the table, eating
in near silence. Lina and my mom made a few attempts at
conversation, but it never lasted long. The fear and doubt hovering
in the room pushed out everything else but the bond, never the
torturous bond. Taking bite after bite of the warm fajitas provided
no enjoyment. I ate simply to move the encounter along. I needed to
reach the safety of Uriah’s room. It took all my energy to hold
back my tears.

When my mother finally made her way to her
car, I rushed off to Uriah’s room without a word to Lina. I didn’t
want face her questioning eyes anymore. The conversation before
dinner had weakened me, and the Twin Soul bond could find any
weakness and tear it even wider. Landing on the bed, I dug my face
into Uriah’s pillow. The smell of his body still lingered, but I
could tell it was not as strong as it had been. Finally the tears
fell.

The first dark spots hit the pillow in
singular drops, but soon spread and covered the thin material.
Pushing myself up, I clamped my jaw shut, refusing to allow one
more sob to escape. Not forgetting my discovery earlier that
afternoon, my fingers slipped under my sleeve and bit hard. I
barely felt it even though I knew my grip couldn’t have been any
tighter.

I tried again. A slight twinge broke through
the fear and pounding weight of the bond. I was too far gone. I
couldn’t even bring Uriah’s face to my mind. I brought my hand to
my mouth to stifle the scream I could not hold back. I knew what I
had to do.

I stumbled off the bed, searching the room
for what I needed. Pawing through the random items on top of the
bookshelf, I found nothing. The computer desk lay scattered with
Uriah’s treasures. I remembered seeing something the day before.
Papers and CD cases were knocked away, uncovering a pocket
knife.

I snatched the little chunk of metal off the
desk and flipped out the blade. I pushed up my sleeve and took a
deep breath before letting the biting edge of it slide across my
arm. I felt it. Pain emanated from the thin wound. I let the blade
fall again. The cuts were shallow, but the relief was tremendous.
One by one the grasping strings of the bond receded. Even my fear
was forced away.

Scarlet lines slid down my skin as I plead
for the war inside me to end.

22: Qaletaqa

My hands ached as I poured the last of the
juniper juice into the boiling water. At first the smell had been
pleasant, but now with so many ingredients swirling around, the
scent was making my head spin. That was the last one, though. My
fingers were stained a dull blue, but I couldn’t complain. I was
finished.

I glanced at the clock and heard my stomach
growl. Samantha and Kaya had been quietly working at the table for
hours, poring over books, notes, journals, anything that might hold
a scrap of useful information about the Matwau. Neither of the
sisters noticed that dinnertime had long since passed. I suspected
that they would go on indefinitely if I didn’t interrupt them,
which I did.

“Kaya, Samantha, I think I’m done.”

Their heads popped up in unison. Samantha was
the first to move, hurrying over to the stove to check the boiling
mixture. Her nose wrinkled at the smell, but her gaze was
approving.

“You’ve done a wonderful job, Uriah,” she
said. “We’ll let this simmer for another hour then we’ll take it
off and let it sit overnight. The ingredients need time to bond
with each other and strengthen the potency. We’ll finish it
tomorrow morning.”

Tomorrow morning. I was only hours away from
having the potion, Claire’s salvation. The next day I would be on
my way home to her. My stomach growled again. This time Samantha
heard it. Her eyes flitted to the clock and gasped in surprised. It
was already nine o’clock.

“Oh, Uriah, I’m sorry,” Samantha said. “I
didn’t realize what time it was. Let me find you something to
eat.”

I was about to say I was fine, but her head
had already disappeared into the refrigerator. After a few seconds
of searching, she emerged with a large red pot. Hurrying to the
stove, she set the heavy pan down with a thud and lit the burner
beneath it. The heat roused the mouthwatering scents of cumin and
chili seasoning.

“I hope you don’t mind having left over chili
beans,” Samantha said.

The beans smelled almost as good as my
mother’s. “Chili sounds great,” I said.

“Go sit down, Uriah,” Samantha commanded,
“your feet must be aching by now.”

Feet, back, hands, head, I couldn’t find a
part of me that wasn’t aching. I stared past her to the soft
couches in the living room, but pulled a straight backed wooden
chair out from the table instead. I collapsed into it with a groan.
The stack of unread books still seemed unusually large. I was
amazed that there was even that much information available to them.
Most of them seemed to be journals, probably from past shamans and
villagers.

Picking up the nearest book, I opened it to
the first page and began reading. It was indeed a handwritten
journal, but not from a shaman or Elder, just from a member of the
community. Every entry was a simple accounting of the writer’s
daily activities. Surely there won’t be anything useful in this, I
thought. Too long surrounded by the impossible to dismiss the book,
I continued reading.

I was starting to become interested in the
writer’s simple life when Kaya dropped her book. The slap of the
hardback on the table froze everything in the room. “Kaya,” I
asked, “are you alright?”

“I found it,” she whispered.

Samantha appeared out of nowhere, crouching
by her sister’s side. She handed me the bowl of chili as an
afterthought. “You found what?”

Looking up at me, Kaya said, “I told you that
I felt like I had heard the answer before, but I couldn’t quite
remember, right? Well, this is why I thought I knew.” Her finger
jabbed the book she had dropped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This book was written after the Spaniards
conquered the Tewa and began converting them to Christianity. Some
of the people joined the Spaniard’s faith, but not all, not the
Elders,” Kaya said. “The Spaniards taught a very small number of
the Tewa how to read and write. Afraid that the people would forget
their history, the Elders asked one of these Spaniard trained Tewa
to come to them and dictated some of the teachings and stories they
felt were most precious and in danger of being forgotten.”

“When did you get that?” Samantha asked.

Kaya’s face scrunched in confusion. “I got it
about six months ago from Tyler Perez. He found it in an old box
after his grandmother died,” she said. “How did it end up here?
I’ve been looking for this for months.”

Her sister shook her head. “I don’t know.
Maybe it got left here by mistake when you were helping me with
genealogy a while back. You brought a big stack of old journals and
records with you. It must have gotten mixed in with my books.”

“What does the book say?” I asked, bringing
them back to the point.

“It has the prophecy in it, the one I was
looking for, Uriah, the one about you.”

My body wanted to collapse in on itself. I
wanted to know more about the Matwau, but I balked at the thought
of there being an actual prophecy about me and what I was expected
to do. My future was my own. I would not turn it over to anyone
else.

“The prophecy is exactly what we needed,”
Kaya said.

“Well, read it to us. We’re not going to
stand around all night waiting,” her sister said.

Kaya picked up the book, her expression
growing solemn. Samantha pulled a chair closer to her sister and
sat down. My hands started to itch again, never a good sign.

“Centuries before our time, a shaman of great
power lived among us. Her name was Bhawana. Bhawana had the ability
to foretell the future. She had blessed our people with many great
prophecies, but none as great as this.

“Bhawana was gathering herbs one spring day
when she was swept up in a vision. Before her, she saw the hated
Matwau, the Enemy of Happiness. Bhawana was afraid of this being,
half animal, half man, because she knew he stalked the earth,
seeking out Twin Souls only to cut their lives short before they
could reach the joy of their partner.

“Bhawana hid behind a rock, hoping the Matwau
would not see her. Suddenly she realized that the Matwau was not
alone. He carried a young woman with him. She was not a Tewa girl,
but she was his prisoner. Bhawana knew the laws governing the
Matwau and wondered why he would hold this girl captive rather than
kill her outright.

“Lesser creatures erupted from the trees,
chasing a young man. The boy ran into the valley after the Matwau,
but the Matwau had already escaped to the mesa above him. The
lesser creatures surrounded the boy, refusing to let him pass. The
creatures were surprised when the young man dodged their every
attack, launching his own when they were finally worn thin.

“His great strength took each creature and
thrust it aside. The Matwau howled in rage that the creatures had
failed. He tried to run, but the young man was on top of him before
he could escape. The girl was tossed aside by the Matwau, and the
fight began.

“The battle was bitter, seeming many times
that the young hero would be defeated, but his powerful will bent
against the Matwau, crushing him into the earth until nothing but
dust remained. Staggering in his victory, the young man rushed to
the woman’s side. At their touch, joy spread across the valley.
Bhawana felt the Twin Soul bond form and carry the young couple
away to eternal bliss.