Shaxoa's Gift

by Gladden, DelSheree

  “Have you ever experienced either of those?” I asked. Emily shook her head, but her dreamy look was not diminished in the least. “Well, I’ve never been struck by lightning, but I have fallen from a cliff, and actually it did feel similar. It was terrifying.”

  Emily giggled, thinking I was making a joke. When she realized my sour expression was not part of any joke, her lips snapped closed. I had fallen from a cliff, well off a cliff face I was trying to climb at El Rito almost two weeks ago. The fall had been terrifying until I heard Uriah’s voice. One syllable out of his mouth, and I knew he would save me. I felt the same now. I was still scared beyond belief by the fierce emotions the Twin Soul bond created, but I knew Uriah was out there somewhere. He would save me again.

  “You’re not joking?” Emily asked.

  “No, I’m really not,” I said. My voice was cold and serious. Emily turned to stare out the window.

  “It wasn’t amazing and thrilling like the stories?” she asked.

  Her expression held such total disappointment. I felt a twinge of guilt. I was ruining her dreams about one day meeting her Twin Soul. “Well,” I began, “I guess not everybody has the same reaction.” I pulled up to Emily’s house silently begging her to accept my weak answer and get out of the truck. I might as well have wished to go back in time and refuse the tea that had started the whole mess.

  “What happened?” Emily asked. Her voice changed from questioning to concerned. “Finding your Twin Soul is supposed to be a miraculous event, not something that makes you angry enough to hate the other person.”

  “I didn’t want it,” I said. “I already had my Twin Soul.”

  Emily tilted her head. I could see that she was trying very hard to understand. “But Uriah wasn’t really your Twin Soul.”

  “Have you ever been in love, Emily?”

  Emily blushed fiercely. “I thought I was once.”

  “With who?” I asked. Emily’s whole face turned scarlet. I wanted to laugh at her embarrassment, but I settled for an understanding smile.

  “Uriah?” I asked. She nodded. I laughed hysterically. Emily stared at me like I had gone mad. Behind the laughter, I wondered whether I had gone crazy, too. The stress and fear had me engaged in a very tenuous balancing act. It took several minutes for me to calm myself down.

  “Sorry, Emily, I wasn’t laughing at you.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Really,” I promised, “you have no idea how many times I have tried to tell Uriah what some of the other girls think about him, but he never believes me.”

  “He has never looked at any girl but you,” Emily said, “that’s why I gave up on him. I wasn’t really in love with him anyway. I mean love can’t be one sided, right?”

  “Exactly,” I said. I was thinking of how Daniel had watched me with that adoring expression.

  “What happened?” Emily asked again. She sat quietly, giving me the chance to talk, a chance I realized I needed to take.

  “When I first woke up, all I could think about was Uriah. I was desperate to see him again. The whole time I was asleep, I could feel the bond starting to pull at me, and I ran away from it. I buried myself in memories of Uriah. When I woke up and saw his face, I wanted to dance around the room, but then it hit me, this overwhelming urge to forget him.

  “Then Daniel was there staring at me with this expression so full of love and happiness that I wanted to cry. Instantly I felt this deep feeling of love for him too. But it wasn’t real, Emily. My mind and body were telling me to get away from Uriah and run to Daniel, but my heart still belonged to Uriah. Every second was torture. I could feel my memories of Uriah slipping away as the bond got stronger, but I held onto them with everything I had. I still am. Uriah will be back soon, and he’ll save me from this like he always has.”

  “The bond didn’t feel real?” Emily asked.

  “It felt like I was being told who I could love and who I couldn’t. It made sense in my mind. I mean, if there was a bond that strong between me and Daniel, he had to be the right one for me, right? But the bond couldn’t touch my heart, and you love someone with your heart, not your mind. Not because it makes sense, but because it feels right,” I said. I felt like I was babbling, but I really wanted Emily to understand. I wanted someone to understand and tell me what I was saying made sense.

  “Did your Twin Soul, Daniel, feel the way you did?” Emily asked.

  “No,” I said, “not at all. The second he touched me, he fell madly in love. I felt terrible turning away from him, but I refuse to give Uriah up.”

  Emily looked stunned at what I was saying. “I have never heard a Twin Soul story like this before,” she said. “All my life I have begged Quaile to tell me whether I will meet my Twin Soul, but she refuses to tell me until I approach the Elders and ask permission to marry. Do you think she already knows?”

  “Probably,” I said. There was a clear edge of anger in my voice. “Quaile likes to keep information to herself apparently.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I even want to meet my Twin Soul anymore,” Emily said.

  “I’m sure it does happen like the stories sometimes, Emily,” I said, trying to console her now twisted view of her future. “I don’t know why I’m different, but I’m glad I am. If I met Daniel before I met Uriah, maybe I would have been like everybody else, but I didn’t. Every single bit of pain I’ve been through in the past couple of days is nothing compared to what I would feel if I lost Uriah.”

  “You really love him that much?” she asked.

  I nodded, holding back a wave of tears.

  “What about Uriah’s Twin Soul? I heard Quaile tell my mom that you would both meet your Twin Souls.”

  Uriah’s Twin Soul? I had barely even thought about that little detail since waking up. Would we have to go through this all over again? My breath caught at the possibility. My hands gripped the steering wheel as I fought to control my ever increasing fear. No, I said to myself, whatever Uriah was doing right now, it would save us both. We couldn’t possibly be asked to fight off the power of the Twin Soul bond twice.

  “Uriah is going to fix everything,” I said. My voice came out as a whisper, but I was repeating it fiercely to myself. “He’ll be back soon. I know he will.”

  Emily’s hand reached up to pat my arm sympathetically. “He’ll be home soon,” she said. I expected a note of pity in her voice, but there was none. I heard only confidence, and my heart soaked up her belief. Emily reached for the door handle, but I caught her arm before she could move.

  “Emily, please don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you,” I asked. “I don’t want people knowing the details of what happened. If Dana and Beth want to gloat over Uriah not being my Twin Soul, let them.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, Claire,” Emily promised. Her sincere expression brushed away any fears of deception. I let go of her arm and watched her walk up to her house. She stepped inside with a quick wave.

  Nudging the old engine back to life, I pulled away from Emily’s house. I only made it two blocks before pulling to the side of the road and letting my tears fall. I was trying so hard to understand why Uriah wasn’t back yet, why he refused to tell me what he was doing. I put on a brave face for Lina and Sophia, assuring them that I was fine and ready to push ahead, but each day my resolve weakened no matter what shirt I wore or whose bed I was sleeping in. I couldn’t hold off the bond’s hook and line much longer.

  “Please hurry, Uriah,” I cried. “Please come back to me. I can’t do this alone.”

  20: Fluctuations

  The link between the Matwau and Uriah had been shifting almost constantly throughout the day. The fluctuations were a troubling sign. The Matwau was concerned about what Uriah was doing. He had watched him race off toward Arizona, wondering what he was after. His first thought had been that the boy was seeking out his Twin Soul in an effort to protect her, but the Matwau’s allies had finished searching the whole of Arizona with no sign of the girl.

  He had moved the first team on
to Utah hours ago, and the second team had been sent to search Nevada. He felt confident that they would find some trace of the girl within the next twenty four hours. He was targeting the areas he was most often called to first. After meeting Uriah, the Matwau had come to the conclusion that the reason he had been kept near the southwestern deserts so much during his long life was because he had been drawn to the area where Uriah would appear. Based on this theory, he had formed his plan.

  There was no rhyme or reason to the exact location where Twin Souls were placed when their spirits were born to this world, but in the Matwau’s experience, the strongest Twin Souls were usually born closer together than those with a weaker bond. She would be near Uriah. He knew that the cursed desert was holding her. All he had to do was sift through the grains of sand he hated so much to find her. He would find her. He promised himself that he would find her first.

  The question of what Uriah was doing in Arizona caught back up with him as he pulled himself away from his flawless plans. The Matwau could still feel the link just as strongly as before. Nothing, not even distance, would change that. But something had changed drastically for the young man.

  Normally, he cared little for what was happening in the human world. Leaders changed in the blink of an eye. Fashions and politics changed even faster. What he did remember was his hunts, and something in the back of his mind was pushing him to search his memories of those hunts. The answer to his question was hiding in those memories.

  Following the hunts back in time, he sifted through his victims. Often he would stop to relish his accomplishments when he had nothing to hunt, but now the faces flashed by quickly, and he did not take the time to remember the details. At least not until he came to the face of a young Native American man. The face surprised him. It was not the face of one of his victims. He stopped and pondered why the young man’s face should enter his thoughts. It took several seconds before he remembered the significance of that young Tewa boy.

  Tewa. The recognition sharpened his attention to a finer point. He remembered meeting the boy, shaking his hand, and immediately seeing the instant the boy would meet his Twin Soul. Every time the Matwau came in physical contact with a human, he knew whether they would meet their Twin Soul or not. If they would not, he saw nothing. If a person would meet their Twin Soul, he saw the exact moment they would meet.

  The glimpse gave no indication of when the meeting would happen, but with centuries of practice, the Matwau had learned to decipher the details of each vision. The young man he met that day had a fresh scrape on his right cheek. In the meeting, he saw the same scratch, still new. The Matwau left the young man, but did not go far. Shadowing the boy’s every move, the Matwau watched the boy and his Twin Soul walk within inches of each other later that night. They continued their separate ways, not noticing the faint tug of the Twin Soul bond.

  The two were only a few miles apart. He sat waiting for one of the pair to stray into his hands, but the night passed without a chance for the Matwau to end his hunt. As dawn crept across the stark desert landscape, his chance finally arrived. The young woman emerged from her home, a large bulky camera slung around her neck. She set out in search of something worthy of her lens, but before the first picture was taken, she lay dead in the blood-stained sand.

  The Matwau relished the memory, but only for a second. Then he remembered why the young man’s face had captured his attention in the first place. There were Tewa Indians in Arizona. If there was a group of Tewa in Arizona, they most likely had their own shaman. There was no way for the Matwau to know what this other shaman might know, but the fact that Uriah had raced away from his beloved Claire to speak with her made him wonder.

  What could the other shaman possibly know that Uriah would so desperately need? With the bond between Claire and Daniel already formed, the reason could not have anything to do with Claire. Uriah’s Twin Soul would be the new object of his desire. The Matwau wondered what the shaman could tell Uriah about his Twin Soul.

  The Matwau normally stayed as far away from shamans as possible, but that did not mean he was ignorant of their powers. In centuries past, a powerful shaman could tell a person exactly when and where they would meet their Twin Soul. He had not seen such talent in a very long time, but with Uriah’s arrival, he had heralded in the rebirth of many dead and bewildering talents. The Matwau was willing to entertain the idea that other abilities had also returned.

  Pacing back and forth, he wondered what the shaman in Arizona was telling Uriah at that moment.

  21: Scarlet Lines

  Pulling back into the driveway of Uriah’s house should have brought relief. All I wanted to do was escape to Uriah’s room and bury myself in his memory. The conversation with Emily had broken down the few defenses I had left. Seeing my mom’s car parked in the driveway had me choking back tears and sobs. I couldn’t face her like this. She would know the moment she looked at me how badly I was doing.

  I considered pulling back out of the driveway and heading into the desert hills, but being away from the safety of Uriah’s room was too impossible to even consider. Taking my time, I jammed the gear shift into park and slid the keys out of the ignition. I pulled down the visor and stared into the scratched up mirror on the back. It would be useless to try and hide the fact that I had been crying.

  My dark eyes held jagged red lines throughout. The swollen skin around my eyes was on the verge of bruising from all the times I had rubbed away tears or pressed desperate fists into my eye sockets. My copper cheeks still bore the tracks of fallen tears. I knew I would never make it to the bathroom before one of the three concerned women in the little adobe house would see me.

  All I really needed was some water. Uriah often spent long hours out in the fields during the summer. He knew better than to head out into the hot desert sun without water. A quick search of the truck turned up several unopened bottles of water. A relatively clean rag was shoved behind the seat. I pulled them both out, drenched the rag and held it against my swollen face. The water was cool from being in the shade behind the seat. Breathing slowly, I let the coolness soothe away the signs of my inner struggle.

  Feeling a little less obvious, if not any stronger, I got out of the truck and walked up to the house. The old screen door clattered against the frame when I let it swing closed after me. To my surprise, the living room was completely empty. I remembered then that Sophia would not be back until after dinner. Quiet sounds from the kitchen reached my ears and I sighed.

  I could easily sneak off to Uriah’s bed, but promises to help Lina pushed me toward the kitchen. I knew Uriah’s mother would need help preparing dinner. Dropping the truck keys back on the little table by the door, I trudged into the aroma-filled kitchen.

  My mother was the first to see me. Jumping out of her chair, she rushed over and wrapped me in a hug before pushing me back to size up my condition. Her motherly eyes crinkled with worry.

  “How are you doing, honey?” my mom asked.

  I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  Then it was Lina’s turn. She had abandoned the stove and sent her piercing gaze right through me. “What happened, dear? You look like you’ve been crying.”

  A tear filled laugh escaped, my voice high and strange. “When am I not crying these days?”

  Lina frowned. My mom pulled me into another fierce hug. Guiding me to a chair, she forced me to sit. “What happened, Claire?” she asked.

  “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 th
en 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.