Shaxoa's Gift

by Gladden, DelSheree

  “I do trust him,” I said. “It’s me I don’t trust.”

  Lina’s head tilted to the side as she considered my words. “You’re afraid you’ll give in, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “It’s not a matter of if anymore, it’s when.”

  “You don’t know that, Claire. You’re strong. You can do this. I know you can.”

  “Lina, you don’t understand. If Uriah doesn’t come home soon, there might not be anything left for him to come home to. I’m hanging on by a fingernail,” I said. I had to wipe away fresh tears. “Even with all these reminders, even sleeping in Uriah’s bed and imagining that he was lying next to me, it just isn’t enough. I need more or I won’t make it.”

  “What do you need, Claire?” Lina clasped my hands in hers. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “I need to know what you’re hiding from me. I want to know why all of this is happening. You know, Lina. Please tell me,” I begged.

  She shook her head sadly. “I can’t, Claire. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “Then I need to go.”

  “Please don’t, Claire. Whatever you think you’re going to find by confronting Quaile, you’re wrong. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “If these secrets are about Uriah’s future, then it has everything to do with me, Lina. Whatever is going to happen, I’m going to be there with him.”

  27: More

  Lina had tried to stop me when I left. Taking advantage of her injured leg, I slipped passed her to the living room easily. Sophia was there. My argument with Lina as I escaped the bedroom had drawn her from the kitchen. Lina begged her to stop me from leaving, but once I told Sophia what I was after she stood aside. Her disapproving gaze fell on Lina, who shrank back in the face of her friend’s judgment. It wasn’t until Sophia saw the blood soaking through my sleeve that she made any kind of move to stop me. Seeing her concern, I ducked outside and hopped in Uriah’s truck even faster.

  The drive back to my house seemed to take seconds. Getting out of the truck had to have taken hours. I had rushed to get there, but the sight of my dad’s truck in the driveway held me in place. I couldn’t even count the number of times we had fought with each other. Sometimes he won. Sometimes I did. Those had been about stupid things, though. Clothes, hair, boys, ballet. This fight was more important than anything I had ever faced him down about before. It was a fight I couldn’t afford to lose.

  Lina said the secrets of Uriah’s future had nothing to do with me. She seemed to truly believe that, but I didn’t. I affected Uriah in ways that made no sense if I wasn’t meant to be a part of his story. My dad made the choices he did because he was trying to keep his children from getting tangled in whatever he knew was coming. I wasn’t Uriah’s Twin Soul, but I was connected to him in more ways than love.

  Even with everything I had puzzled out, none of it led back to me breaking my bond with Daniel. My personal war seemed beyond the scope of Uriah’s secrets from the surface. Deep in my heart, I was convinced it wasn’t. Something told me that whatever was going on had much more to do with breaking my link to Daniel than anyone realized.

  It was time to get some answers.

  Stepping into my house, the atmosphere shocked me. Bubbling tension filled every inch of it. It skittered across my skin, making me shiver despite the warmth of summer. For a moment, I couldn’t move or call out. I stood standing in the entryway, stunned. The sound of footsteps marching down the hall finally got to me enough to break the spell. I turned toward the noise just as my dad rounded the corner.

  The haggard quality to his features caught me off guard. Always so perfectly composed, even in his anger, the hunched, nervous way he stood made him look like a stranger to me. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in several days. I had doubted Cole’s words about how frantic and upset my dad was, but now I saw how serious he had been. My dad’s eyes latched onto me, hope lighting them.

  “Claire? You’re back?” he asked.

  “I’m back for answers, Dad.”

  His shoulders shook. It took me a moment to realize he was crying. An odd compulsion to comfort him came over me. It was bizarre, something I had never before felt. I almost stepped over to him.

  “You’re going after him, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

  “If I can figure out where he’s going, yes.”

  He looked up at me. The red running through the whites of his eyes and the tremble in his lips tore at me. “Is there nothing I can say to you that will change your mind?”

  A simple shake of my head brought on more tears from him. I broke. Stepping forward, I placed my hand gently on his shoulder. His head snapped up in surprise. It broke my heart when he looked at my hand on him, comforting him, in such amazement. It shouldn’t have been the first time we faced each other like this. We should have had a lifetime together where he held me in his arms, kissed a skinned knee, or I hugged him and told him I loved him, or sat with him after he’d had a long day. My dad’s hand slipped over mine timidly. I had spent so much of my life hating him. In this one moment, I wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in his arms and hear him tell me it was going to be alright.

  Half of my wish was answered when he pulled me into his arms and cried. “Claire, I don’t want to lose you. Please don’t leave San Juan. Don’t ask me to watch you walk away. Please, Claire.”

  Still buried against his chest, I said, “Dad, I have to go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love Uriah, and I’ll do anything to keep him,” I said.

  Slowly he pulled back and faced me with tears still lingering in his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Claire. You have no idea what you’re going to have to give up if you follow him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll die, Claire. If you follow Uriah, it may very well cost you your life.”

  There was no deceit in his voice, no manipulation to get me to stay. For the first time in maybe my whole life, I knew beyond a doubt that my dad was telling me the truth. I meant what I said about doing anything, but it was still a shock to hear those words come out of his mouth. It took me a moment before I could speak again.

  “Dad, what are you talking about?”

  He pushed out of our embrace gently and turned away. “I can’t explain it, Claire. I promised Quaile I would never tell. I can’t break that promise. She entrusted me with the knowledge because of who I am. I can’t break my promise to her.”

  “Because of who you are?” I asked. I knew he couldn’t be talking about his wealth or businesses. Quaile couldn’t have cared less about that. Stories and reminders from my youth quickly set me right. “She told you because your grandfather was the last chief?”

  “We may not have a real chief anymore, Claire, but I’m the closest this tribe has. They all look to me for leadership. I can’t betray that.”

  Frustration and anger boiled over. “You’re not the chief!” I yelled at him. “I don’t care what Quaile made you promise! I’m going after Uriah with or without your help, Dad. You can either tell me what you know, and maybe save my life, or you can let me walk out of this house blind to what I might face. If I die, it won’t be Uriah’s fault. It will be yours.”

  It was a slap across the face to him. Thinking of others before himself had never been his strong suit. What I said had finally blown past his selfish heart.

  “Deny me and save your prestige, or help me and keep your daughter safe,” I said. “I’ll tell you right now, though, if you don’t help me, Dad, this is the last time I will ever speak to you.”

  His face twisted in agony and indecision. Strength left him entirely, and he slumped to the floor. Still, he didn’t speak. I took a step away from him, determined to leave, but he called out for me with desperation thick enough to stop me.

  “Wait, Claire, I’ll tell you everything. Please don’t go yet,” he begged.

  I turned back to him and offered him my hand. He took it gratefully, but I wasn’t fee
ling the same. Not yet. “Tell me everything.”

  At first his words came slowly, hesitantly. The story of a woman having a vision of a young man who would one day save the world from a dark power slipped past his lips in a near whisper as if he were afraid someone else was listening. The farther he got into the story, though, the more urgent his words became. This young man would destroy the creature that murdered Twin Souls, the creature that had attacked Uriah. The word Qaletaqa rolled over me. I couldn’t explain the familiarity I felt at hearing it. Without my dad having to explain that the prophecy was about Uriah, I already knew it more surely than anything I had ever known before. Retelling the story scared my dad, but to me it brought a strange sense of peace.

  This was who Uriah was. Not a simple rancher, not a freak dropped out of a tribal myth. He was a savior to his people, to the world even. He was everything I had always believed him to be. The confirmation of what I had recognized in Uriah from childhood stilled the raging inside of me. Even the bond seemed to quiet. My dad kept talking, telling me how dangerous it was for Uriah to face down the Matwau. He didn’t seem very optimistic about Uriah’s chances and begged me not to go with him.

  I didn’t even hesitate when he asked me what I was going to do.

  “Claire, do you understand now why I’ve tried so hard to keep you away from him?” he asked. “Are you still going to follow him?”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to let him go, Dad. Nothing you’ve said is going to stop me. If anything it’s convinced me more than ever that I have to find him.”

  He looked completely bewildered. “What do you mean?”

  “I have to go. Uriah is going to need my help. I can’t explain how I know that, but I’m sure of it, Dad.” That knowledge settled over me as soon as who Uriah really was had been revealed. It made little sense to me. What did I have to offer someone as uniquely gifted as Uriah? I had no idea, but I knew he would need me before his battle was over.

  So engrossed in my own thoughts, I hadn’t even noticed my dad’s reaction to my bold statement at first. Only when the silence grew long and deep did I look over and see the shock on his face.

  “How could you possibly know that?” he asked.

  The pure terror in his eyes sent a chill through his body. It frightened me so much I could barely even respond to him. “I…I just said I didn’t know. There’s this feeling … I know I have to help him.”

  His head shook back and forth. “It can’t be true.”

  His voice barely came out as a whisper, but it was enough to sink deep into my mind. I was missing something. He had told me so much of what he knew. Not all of it, though. There were more secrets lurking behind his fear. What else could he know about Uriah that would scare him so much? What he’d already told me was frightening enough. Something finally clicked inside my brain.

  Everything my dad had done, it wasn’t for Uriah. It was for me. He wanted Uriah to kill the Matwau. He actually liked and respected Uriah much more than I had ever imagined. My dad’s interference in my life started before I was even an idea in his mind, before Uriah had ever been born. Before Uriah was born and Quaile told him about who he was, something had prompted him to take precautions. He couldn’t have known when the Qaletaqa would be born. There was something else to his explanation that made him make the choices he did. Marrying my mom had been the beginning of all of this. A beginning I wasn’t sure where it would finish.

  “Dad,” I asked slowly, “why did you marry Mom? Not because you loved her. I want the real reason you thought you had to marry someone who wasn’t Tewa. What were you trying to protect your children from by making sure we weren’t full blood?”

  “I…There was more,” he said, rubbing his weary face.

  “More what?”

  “More than just Bhawana’s prophecy.”

  28: More Hope than Confidence

  It was hard to believe that I’d only left San Juan a few days ago. I saw the low adobe houses rising in front of me and wished I was going home for good. I had decided early in the drive that I wouldn’t call or see Claire before I left. If I let myself hold her, kiss her, I would never want to leave. I could not go to my mom either. She would cry, and try to make me see Claire before leaving. Instead I would go to the one person I trusted least. Quaile.

  Talon had given me the idea before he moved too far away to talk to anymore. I had tossed it away at first. She had lied to me and betrayed me too many times for me to trust her, I had argued, but Talon had held his ground. No matter what else Quaile had done, she had led me to Samantha. She had handed me my only chance to be with Claire. She believed in our plight. She would help me again, even if only to atone for what she had already done.

  It was so hard to let go of the anger I felt toward Quaile. I kept thinking about how different things might have turned out if she had only been honest from the beginning. It took a long while before I was ready to admit to Talon that he was right, but once I did, I knew I had made the right decision. He was too far away by then to hear my admission, but I made it all the same. Passing the first house, I pushed away the link between me and my Twin Soul that was constantly hovering in the back of my mind.

  I could still point in the direction of the woman I had never met, but the initial terror and panic had eventually subsided. Now the link hummed with carefully managed fear. She was safe for the time being. The Matwau was waiting, and he would keep waiting until I showed up. Talon had kept his fears about my decision to himself, but I could feel the tension when we spoke early in the drive back to San Juan. I had to believe I was right. I told myself over and over that she would be okay until I reached her.

  I rolled to a halt at a four-way stop sign near the center of town. I wasn’t sure where I would find Quaile at one o’clock in the afternoon. I didn’t think that the Elders would still be meeting today. Their session should have ended on Sunday, but with everything that had happened recently, it sounded plausible that they may have extended their meetings. Quaile’s home was in the opposite direction.

  I wanted to waste as little time as possible. I also wanted no chance of running into Claire on the street, or my mom. Quaile’s house was the closest option. Turning away from the Council House, I hurried through town. The summer tourist season was approaching its end, but San Juan was bustling. I dodged a biker who thought that because there were no street lights, there were no traffic laws either. Traffic near the park, where the last arts and crafts fair of the summer was being held, slowed my progress to a crawl.

  I contemplated jumping the curb and trying my luck, or maybe darting between the stalled cars. The tourists casually walking across the street while the cars waited stopped me. I didn’t have time to accidentally run someone over. After what seemed like an eternity, traffic started flowing again. Promising myself not to stop again, for any reason, I sped through town to the old dirt road leading to Quaile’s remote home.

  Quaile’s house was several miles from the center of town. Tourists rarely ventured far enough away from the parks and fairs to find themselves near her house. Most people thought Quaile lived so far out of the way to make those who wanted to seek her advice think a little longer about their problem before approaching her. Personally, I thought she hid from the townspeople so she wouldn’t have to answer their questions or solve their problems.

  After meeting Kaya, who was so willing to help others and use her talents to make people’s lives better, Quaile seemed a miserable shrew, hoarding her information and helping only when forced. The beige colored house stood alone. There was no garden, no color, no cheerful decorations, just a plain adobe house. The only structure marring the desolate yard was an old wood-fired kiva that hadn’t been used in decades.

  I climbed off my bike, watching the dust swirl around my shoes as I approached her plain wooden door. Raising my hand, I knocked four times and waited. I heard nothing. Knocking again, I rapped even louder. The soft screech of wood scraping against wood told me that someone had heard
me. Quaile lived alone and rarely entertained guests.

  After several minutes, the door still remained unanswered. I knocked a third time, hard enough that the door rattled in its casing. She was not going to put me off. If I had to bang on her door until it fell in, I would. The shrill ring of the phone interrupted the silence inside. The phone rang again, and again, and again. The sound stopped mid ring, but I heard no voices. The caller must have given up. I wasn’t going to be that easy. I pounded on the door again.

  “Who is it?” Quaile demanded through the door.

  “It’s Uriah Crowe. Open the door, Quaile. I need to speak with you.” I listened for her to move to unlock the door. Seconds of silence ticked away before I heard the deadbolt release. The old brass knob turned slowly. Quaile’s withered face peered out at me.

  “Did you find it?” she asked.

  “Let me in and I’ll tell you what I found,” I said.

  Quaile hesitated, her eyes darting back inside the safety of her home. Placing my hand on the door, I pushed slowly, not enough to knock her over, but enough to make her realize I was serious. With an irritated sigh, Quaile let go of the door and stepped aside. I stepped into the cool living room as well.

  I had spent my youth wondering what horrors Quaile’s house would hold. I was oddly disappointed to finally have the mystery revealed. The ancient wooden floors were scratched and marred. The walls had visible cracks near the ceiling. An old woven rug was the only real decoration in the room. The worn wooden bookcase held a surprisingly small amount of books. I surveyed the room with mild shock. I had truly expected something a little more frightening. Turning away from childhood fantasies, I faced Quaile.

  “What did you find?” Quaile asked.

  Her demanding tone reminded me of why I hadn’t wanted to turn to her in the first place. I had planned to simply leave the potion with as few words of explanation as possible, but coming face to face with Quaile unleashed my frustration. “What I found is a shaman with ten times your talent and a hundred times your compassion. What I found was a Shaxoa who wasn’t a Shaxoa at all, but an intelligent and kind woman trying to understand the reasons behind the dark lore,” I said. Quaile stared at me, unsure of what I was telling her. I sighed. I didn’t have time to berate her. “What I found was a way to sever the Twin Soul bond.”