Qaletaqa

by Gladden, DelSheree

I was about to close the book and take a break when the smudged words caught my attention again. There have been a small number of individuals who have fought against it.

  “They fought against the bond,” I said looking at Uriah.

  He glanced over at me. “What?”

  “Quaile, she knew others before us had fought against the bond. We weren’t the first people not to want our Twin Souls,” I said. I wasn’t totally sure why the words seemed so significant to me, but it felt like something was hiding in those words.

  “Well, did any of them actually beat it?” Uriah asked.

  “No. Not that she knew of, but I don’t think that’s the point.” Something was there, just out of reach.

  “Then what is the point?” He looked back at the road. “If she really thought we would never be able to win against the bond, then that explains why she was so adamant about us not getting married.”

  “Yeah…” I agreed. Why couldn’t I understand this? “It’s just that I thought we were the only ones, that all the other stories were true about Twin Souls. Why wasn’t Quaile more on our side from the beginning?”

  “I guess because fighting had never worked before. Why would she push people toward something she knew would only hurt them?” Uriah asked. His brow pulled together, as if he was unsure of why he was offering a defense for Quaile.

  My frustration slipped out in the form of a quick growl. “But it doesn’t make sense, Uriah. Maybe if we were the only two people in the world, in all of known history that didn’t want our Twin Souls, Quaile would make sense, but we weren’t the only ones.” A crumb of understanding found its way into my mind.

  “Why didn’t she try to find out why some people don’t want the bond? Why didn’t she try to figure out what’s wrong with it?” I asked.

  “Find out what’s wrong with the bond?” Uriah questioned. I watched his eyes narrow as he thought about my questions.

  “What if the bond isn’t really what she thinks it is?”

  Uriah’s eyes popped open and he turned to look at me. I almost expected him to shake his head and dismiss my wandering thoughts, but in that instant it was as if he finally caught the itching worry I felt in my mind.

  “You mean like the bond is a trick, or something bad instead of a good thing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” What did I mean exactly? “I can’t be something bad I guess, not when so many others have found such bliss after experiencing it, and I don’t know if it’s even a trick, but something doesn’t feel right about it. Does that make any sense?”

  Uriah’s agreement was slow and thoughtful, a careful nod. It was a small gesture, but he made it with a level of commitment I knew meant he would not back down until he knew the truth.

  “Maybe we should call Kaya,” he suggested. “Unless you think Quaile would be more helpful. She is the one who gave you the book.”

  I snorted at that suggestion. Yes, Quaile gave me the book, but if she really wanted to be helpful she would have just told me what I needed to know before I left her house. Uriah dug his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and tossed it to me.

  “Kaya’s home number is in the contacts menu. Number one,” he said.

  “You want me to call her?” I had never met Kaya, or her sister. Although I was curious about the two women Uriah had just spent several days with, I wasn’t sure what to say to her. Thanking her for watching out for Uriah and helping him even if the potion didn’t turn out to be what they thought it was would be a good start, but I still hesitated making the call.

  “What do I say to her?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry. I already talked to her yesterday, remember? She already knows you didn’t drink the potion. You don’t have to explain anything, just ask her about the bond, and maybe if she’d be willing to teach you,” he added.

  “The bond first. I’m still not sure about anything else.”

  “Go ahead.” His teasing smile bated me. “Kaya has been dying to talk to you. They made me promise that I’d bring you to meet them after we’re done with all of this. You wouldn’t mind a slight detour on our way home, would you?” Again he smiled, but this one was filled with a promise that we would take that detour together.

  Glad he sounded a little more optimistic than I had heard him in a while, I found Kaya’s number and made the call. The first ring didn’t even have the chance to finish before Kaya answered.

  “Uriah? Is everything okay? Where are you?” she said.

  The concern in her voice and the rapid-fire questions caught me off guard. She sounded as if she was worried sick about Uriah. The apparent closeness of the relationship they had formed would have made me jealous if didn’t know Uriah as well as I did. Shaking away my wandering thoughts, I tried to formulate an intelligent response.

  “Kaya? It’s Claire. Uriah’s Claire.” I grimaced at the last sentence. What other Claire would be calling her on her own phone?

  “Claire? Is Uriah okay?” Kaya asked.

  “Oh, yes, he’s fine. He’s driving so he asked me to call you for him,” I said. “We had a question.”

  “A question about what?” She sounded oddly excited that we had a question. I had thought Uriah was kidding when he said Kaya and Samantha were the reason for the saying “curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Um, a question about the bond, about what it really is,” I said. I knew how dumb that sounded, given that every child in our tribe grew up hearing stories of Twin Souls. Before I had a chance to explain what I meant, Kaya launched into her answer.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that too. The bond never really sat right with me or Sam. It takes away your free will. How could that be right?” Kaya asked.

  “That’s what I thought.” I was so relieved she hadn’t given me the standard answer, but knew what I was getting at right away. I looked over at Uriah to see him laughing quietly.

  “I told you she was an interesting shaman,” he said.

  I nodded and turned my attention back to the phone call. “Well, the reason we were asking was because we’ve been reading a book Quaile gave me…”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish.

  “What book?” Kaya demanded.

  “Um, I’m not sure if it has a name. She said it was a record of all the prophecies and stuff shaman usually passed down orally. She convinced her teacher to let her right it down since less and less people bother to learn their native language.”

  Kaya gasped. “You’re kidding! When you and Uriah come to visit you have to bring that book with you! I’ve been dying to get my hands on the San Juan shamans’ history. Will you bring it?”

  Wow. I had never met anyone so enamored with books and history. “Um, sure, we’ll bring it,” I answered. If we survive the Matwau.

  “Fabulous. Now tell me about what you found in the book.”

  “Well, the book talked about other people who’ve fought the bond. Unfortunately it never worked, but…we’re not the only ones. I feel like something about what Twin Souls are isn’t quite right. Do you know what I mean?”

  I ended my rambling and waited for her response.

  “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want the bond until Uriah, but then again I’ve never met any Twin Souls before,” Kaya said. “I’ve never actually heard of someone who didn’t want the Twin Soul bond, but the woman who taught me sometimes hinted that there might be. She never put much stock into Twin Souls to begin with, though.”

  “Did she ever say anything about Twin Souls that seemed against the usual stories?” I asked. After everything Kaya and Samantha had been able to find out about Uriah’s destiny, I was hopeful that she would be able to answer my question.

  “The only thing she ever said against the bond was that she thought it was odd that there was no origination story for Twin Souls,” Kaya said.

  In Native American mythology there was an origination story for just about everything. I thought back to the dozens of Twin Soul stories I had heard growing up. As I did,
I realized Kaya was right. I had never once heard the story of where Twin Souls came from, of why the soul was split before entering separate human bodies. The pat answer I’d heard all my life was all I had ever been given to explain what a Twin Soul was.

  In a culture where we were taught that rattlesnakes were given their rattling tails to warn the legendary Nah-chu-rú-chu when his traitorous friend who had once turned him into a coyote was near, the lack of a story was more than just bothersome. Everything in our culture had a story and explanation. Why would Twin Souls be any different?

  “I’m guessing you looked for an origination story?” I asked. “Did you ever find one?”

  “No. All I ever found were the stories we all know about Twin Souls. Even the answer we give now, that Twin Souls are two halves of one complete soul split apart before birth has never actually been recorded or attributed to anyone.” Kaya’s irritated sigh reached out over the phone, matching my own feelings.

  “Sam and I have been searching for the answer since we were girls. Even when Uriah was here and we read just about every scrap of paper we had about our beliefs, we found nothing about the origin of Twin Souls,” Kaya said. “There is something not right about what we’ve been taught.”

  “But why would the Elders deceive the people about something like that? What difference could it possibly make whether Twin Souls were different from what we thought? The effect the bond has on people certainly can’t be denied.” I blanched as thoughts of the past few days tried to resurface. Placing a hand on Uriah’s leg was enough to calm my mind and pull me back to my conversation.

  “The bond is real. We know that. So what about the origin of Twin Souls could cause the Elders to lie about it for hundreds of years?” I asked.

  For a few seconds Kaya was quiet. I could hear the gentle clicking of her footsteps as she paced. I waited.

  “It can’t be destined. The bond can’t be something ordained by the gods. If it was, there would be no reason to lie and say it was,” Kaya said. Her tone told me she wasn’t happy with the incompleteness of her answer, but it was all she had to offer.

  “Somebody must have known the truth.”

  It wasn’t written anywhere? Surely it was. I just had to find it. Could it possibly be in this book?

  As if reading my thoughts, Kaya spoke again. “The problem is that even if someone did know the truth, it was probably someone who lived centuries ago. And unfortunately, Tewa have only been keeping written records for about a hundred years. If someone did know, there secret most likely died with them.”

  That was it? There was nothing to find? It was only fear that had kept Bhawana’s vision from being lost to the past, and fear was what was keeping this secret hidden. It had most likely never been written down in the first place. There was nothing to find if it wasn’t in Quaile’s book somewhere.

  “Well, thanks for your help, Kaya,” I said. It was hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

  “Sam and I will keep looking,” Kaya offered.

  I was about to say my goodbyes and hang up when Uriah tapped my shoulder.

  “Hey, let me talk to Kaya. I need to ask her something,” he said.

  “Kaya, Uriah wants to talk to you,” I said before handing over the phone, wondering what else he had figured out and hoping it didn’t have anything to do with my role in his destiny.

  17: Possibilities

  I took the phone from Claire and pressed it to my ear. I would have preferred to have this conversation alone, but there was no helping the situation. It wasn’t that it was something to keep secret from Claire, but more that I wasn’t sure how she would react to the topic. She hadn’t been overly receptive to the idea so far. And since she apparently wasn’t going to ask on her own, I was going to do it for her.

  “Are you there, Uriah?” Kaya asked.

  “Yeah, I’m here.” A quick glance over at Claire assured me that she was listening intently. “Kaya, how did you come into your gifts?” Claire’s mouth turned down, but not in a frown. She was thinking, listening.

  “My gifts? You mean the visions and seeing Twin Souls and everything? Why do you want to know about that?” Kaya asked.

  Always with the questions. I just needed a few quick answers. “I’ll explain in a minute. First, just tell me how your powers developed.”

  “Well, I’ve had very vivid dreams all my life, but it wasn’t until I got into my teens that I started seeing important things in them, things I knew had real meaning. I think I was seventeen before I actually touched someone and saw the possibilities of their future. It scared me half to death, actually.” Kaya let out a little laugh at the memory.

  “So you weren’t able to do everything you can now when you were younger? Does it happen like that for everyone?”

  I knew I was right about Claire. Talon being able to hear her thoughts was a red flag, and so was her being able to sense the bond, but what she read in the book was hard to dispute.

  “It really wasn’t until the shaman before me, Naomi, started teaching me how to focus myself that I began to be able to use my talents more regularly,” Kaya said. “It’s different for every shaman, though. Naomi didn’t even know she had any power until she turned twenty-three and found herself face to face with a grey wolf. The wolf didn’t attack her, of course, and when she told the current shaman about what had happened she immediately started teaching her.”

  I thought over what Kaya had said. Claire’s lack of visions or dreams or other extraordinary talents didn’t put any damper on my idea of her being a shaman.

  “How does someone with power learn to use it?” I asked.

  “Uriah, what is this about?” Kaya had given me her answers, but now she wanted some in return.

  “It’s about Claire. Talon can read her thoughts.”

  Silence.

  “Have there been any other signs?” Kaya asked.

  “Claire can feel the Twin Soul bond. She can sense when my bond to Melody changes,” I said. “Plus… Claire read something in Quaile’s book about how some shaman’s power might try to steal my power. That’s why it hurts me when Claire touches me. My body was warning me to get away from her.”

  More silence.

  “Does Quaile know about any of this?” Kaya asked.

  “I just found out about Talon hearing her thoughts when Claire caught up with me yesterday, and about her feeling the bond this morning. We haven’t talked to Quaile since we left San Juan, but she did give Claire the book. I’m beginning to wonder if she sensed or saw something in Claire,” I said. “Could Claire be a shaman? Do you even call someone a shaman unless they’re chosen by the Elders?” I had a million questions. Claire however still didn’t seem to be as enthusiastic about the possibility as I was.

  Her lips were pressed together in a firm expression. Having only dealt with Quaile, I could understand why she wouldn’t like the idea of following in the footsteps of a shaman.

  The possibility that Claire might hold the same power as Kaya amazed me, but I knew my real reason for asking Kaya right then was because I wanted to know if Claire could learn enough to help us find Melody. Anything that would give us an edge over the Matwau couldn’t be ignored, even if it put Claire in a bad mood.

  “Wow, where to start,” Kaya said. “A person isn’t actually called a shaman until they’re chosen by the Elders, but that has nothing to do with whether Claire could learn to expand her abilities.”

  That was a relief.

  “Could she learn about how to see into the future? Could you teach her?” I asked.

  “Well, I guess so. It won’t be the easiest thing to do over the phone, but I can try.” Kaya paused, and then continued with the familiar excitement of a new challenge in her voice. “Actually it would be really interesting to find out how much I could teach her without ever being in physical contact. Physical contact often helps with focusing and seeing what you need to see. I’ll have to call Sam. She can take notes for me. When should we start?”
>
  There was absolutely nothing that could dampen Kaya’s desire to learn and explore.

  I looked over at Claire. Her face had turned serious. I supposed that she had already guessed Kaya’s answer. Her expression hid what she was thinking from me. I wondered if she was scared to learn, to admit that there was more to her than she believed. I knew that admitting my own uniqueness was no easy task for me.

  “Kaya, just a minute. I need to talk to Claire for a second. Can I call you back in a few minutes?” Claire glanced over at me. She sighed and offered a small smile.

  “Sure, Uriah, just call me when Claire’s ready,” Kaya said.

  I closed the phone and set it in one of the empty cup holders. Claire was the first to speak.

  “Uriah, are you sure about this? Not being a shaman, but asking Kaya for help,” she said. “Do you really know her that well?”

  Putting my arm around her shoulders, I pulled her close to me. Of course I trusted Kaya, but I didn’t think that was really what was bothering Claire. I thought it was the idea of turning into Quaile that had her holding back. How did I convince her of how important her abilities might be without sounding incredibly selfish? We both wanted to be back home in San Juan, but I think we were both terrified of actually reaching the Matwau.

  “Claire, Kaya is nothing like Quaile. She’ll do anything she can to help someone else. And yes, she’s someone you can trust. She’s curious as anything, but she would never betray someone’s trust. She said she would teach you, and I have every faith in her that she’ll do her best to help you figure out how to use your power. No holding back or making decisions for you,” I said. “Please give this a shot. Even if there is something in Quaile’s book to help you it’ll probably be pretty advanced. You’ll need someone to teach you the basics so you can work up to something harder.”

  Claire hung her head, whether in defeat or acceptance I couldn’t tell. “I’m afraid, Uriah. If I take the first step down this path, I don’t think I’ll be able to turn back. And you don’t know where it might lead me.”

  The sudden wisdom and despair in her voice gave me pause. It…sounded like Claire already had some idea of what might lie at the end of her path to becoming a shaman, and didn’t like the destination. How…? I shook my head. None of that made sense. She must be nervous to start. That’s all.