Qaletaqa

by Gladden, DelSheree

  There weren’t that many things they had in common, aside from their love of animals and the outdoors, but their differences didn’t seem to bother Melody any more than they did Harvey. He could easily see himself trying out some of the things she liked to do, like watching documentaries, or painting, or ice skating. There was little doubt in his mind that Melody wouldn’t do the same for him.

  They had spent a combined total of only a few hours together, but Harvey had no problem imagining sharing the rest of his life with her. The most difficult part of being with Melody would be scaling back his affection to keep from scaring her off. Their meals slowly disappeared without either of them really noticing. Harvey barely remembered eating any of the food, but he remembered every word she said. When their desserts were gone, he was sad to see the empty plates.

  Melody, however, grabbed his hand and pulled him from the table when Carlton reappeared and asked if they were ready for some animal encounters.

  “What are we going to see?” she asked as we joined him at entrance to Predator Ridge.

  “We’re going to see the monkeys,” Harvey said.

  “Really?” Her excited squeak made him laugh. He pulled her close, feeling like they had been together for months instead of mere hours.

  They followed Carlton through the zoo, their clicking footsteps mixing in with the gentle rumbling of animals settling in for the night. An autumn breeze followed them down the path, swirling Melody’s dress around her legs and her hair around her shoulders. She kept brushing her bangs out of her eyes, but her smile never left her face. Harvey hoped it stayed there forever.

  They stopped, and Harvey realized that Carlton was already talking, explaining the rules of how to handle the monkeys. Melody was listening very carefully, and Harvey decided he probably should as well.

  It took almost ten minutes to get through the instructions. The rules all seemed pretty simple, things common sense would tell you to do, like not putting their fingers near the monkey’s mouths or feeding them anything Carlton hadn’t approved. Harvey was pretty sure Melody hadn’t stuffed anything from her plate into her pocket to give the capering monkeys, but you never knew. Carlton certainly didn’t know anything about Melody.

  Carlton excused himself for a moment and left to retrieve the monkeys. Melody watched the door, her smile doubling in size when he marched back into the room with two capuchin monkeys perched on his shoulders.

  “All right then, who wants to go first?” he asked.

  Melody looked over at Harvey, her expression begging for permission to jump in line ahead of him. This night was for her. He smiled and motioned for her to take the lead. She quickly stepped up to his friend. The other capuchin got set on Carlton’s should as he began helping Melody. Harvey couldn’t say he was quite as enthusiastic about holding the monkeys as Melody was, he doubted anyone was, but it was fascinating to see them up close. Watching Melody with the squirming monkey proved even more entertaining, though.

  Melody held the furry little creature as if she had been doing it all her life. Harvey suspected that a frisky puppy was little different from a monkey to her. Although puppies probably didn’t climb across her shoulders and pick at her hair very often. Her eyes crinkled in laughter when the monkey did that.

  Harvey watched her for a few more minutes before Melody waved for him to join her. “Harvey, this is so much fun! Get up here so you can hold Camilla.” She gently untangled the monkey’s arms and tail from around her neck and held it in her arms so she could watch Harvey. Carlton stepped back, letting Melody take the lead in showing Harvey how to hold the animal.

  The encounter passed quickly, and enjoyably, and soon they were walking back to where they had come in. Annette met them along the way, asking whether they enjoyed their encounter. Melody’s enthusiastic response made everyone smile. After they were sure Harvey and Melody knew how to get back out of the zoo, Carlton and Annette left them alone again. Harvey led Melody slowly across the courtyard. He was reluctant to let go of her hand.

  “Thank you for tonight,” Melody said, keeping her head down. “I had a really great time.”

  “I’m glad you liked it,” Harvey said. “To be honest, I was a little worried about bringing you here. I thought the zoo might be a little much for a first date.”

  “No, it was great. It didn’t even feel like a first date, actually.” She finally looked up at him with a nervous smile.

  Harvey grinned back at her, thrilled that he hadn’t fabricated the connection between them. “I felt the same way,” he said.

  Her nervousness fell away immediately. Melody pulled his arm around her shoulders and leaned into him. He felt so comfortable with her by his side. When they reached her car, he didn’t want to let her go. Melody hesitated before finally pulling away and digging her keys out of her purse. She didn’t make a move to actually leave, though.

  “Do you want to do this again?” Melody asked. “Not the zoo particularly, but maybe we could catch that movie sometime.”

  Harvey tried to suppress his grin and look halfway casual, but he knew he was failing miserably. “How about tomorrow?”

  Melody’s grin grew to match his. “Sounds great.” She opened her car door, but popped back over to him, planting a quick kiss on his cheek before disappearing into her car. Harvey watched her pull away, already knowing that his time away from her would be spent wishing he was near her again.

  ***

  Harvey’s story lingered in my mind, even after he finished his tale and ended the call to check in with a friend that was helping him with the meeting locations. The memory hadn’t proved quite as painful as I had expected. Sure, the story had me smiling as I could almost feel Melody’s excitement, and I could certainly relate to Harvey’s anxiety about pleasing Melody, but very little of the story pulled me any closer to her. Not until the very end.

  Harvey mentioned the kiss briefly, but even his few words had inspired a sudden surge of jealousy in me. The feeling startled me to the core, but I couldn’t push it away. I barely heard anything after that, and was grateful when Harvey hung up.

  At first I had enjoyed hearing the story, glad Harvey and Melody did share such a deep connection, but the mention of Melody’s chaste kiss awoke a desire to have felt that myself instead of Harvey. What did her lips feel like? How would I have felt at their touch? My heart raced at the thought of seeing her tonight. It would be so easy to find out the answers to those questions. A shift in Claire’s folded legs made me aware of her presence.

  The steering wheel jerked as my hands quickly tightened around it. Shame and guilt sent my heart speeding faster than my previous thoughts ever could have. How could I think about such a thing? With Claire sitting right next to me no less? My eyes were instantly drawn to her carefully covered arms. I knew what hid under the thin cloth. She had risked so much for me, and I had let my heart wander at the mention of one quick kiss. I turned my face quickly away from Claire, as much as I could and still keep my eyes on the road. Claire knew my expressions too well. One look at my face and I could imagine the expression hers would hold.

  I had seen Claire disappointed with me only once before, but it had cut deep enough to make me never want to see that look again. I wondered if maybe I should have let Claire take this task instead of me. Maybe she would have spared me the small detail of the kiss at the end. It was only a peck on the cheek, after all. It couldn’t possibly matter that much to Melody.

  I knew that to be a lie as soon as the thought formed. The first kiss I ever received from Claire was a horribly painful experience due to what I now know was her trying to steal my power, but it was one of the sweetest memories I had of her. I knew then that I would suffer any amount of pain to stay by her side. I knew the power one kiss had to change the course of a life.

  I would retell the story to Melody, exactly as Harvey had told it to me, kiss and all, even if it left me looking for a blade of my own.

  20: Alfalfa and Strawberries

  I l
ooked over at Uriah. The sudden lurch of the car a few seconds earlier had broken my concentration for a moment, but the way Uriah suddenly pulled away from me had me breaking off mid-sentence. He was hunched over a little, like he often did when he was upset. With him turned away from me, I couldn’t tell what was bothering him.

  The fact that he was trying to hide the cause irritated me to no end, but I could hear Kaya saying my name, asking me if I was still there. We were right in the middle of a very strange lesson. I wanted to hang up and drag whatever was bothering Uriah out him, but he had really wanted me to speak with Kaya. He truly believed this would help and not hurt our chances of finding the Matwau’s hidden meeting place. And whether I agreed with him or not, I had promised to try. Uriah’s secret struggle would have to wait.

  “Sorry, Kaya, Uriah distracted me for a minute. What were you saying?” I asked.

  Kaya muttered something about being distracted, but was quick to get back to the lesson.

  “You have to learn to concentrate better, Claire. Learning to use your talents takes a great deal of focus, especially in the beginning,” Kaya said. “Once you’re more practiced it will come more easily, but as new at this as you are, you’ll need every ounce of concentration you can muster.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I wanted to say something about Uriah’s sudden shift in attitude, but that would only make Kaya worry. Then neither of us would be able to concentrate. I needed to focus on the lesson, not gossip. “What would you like me do?”

  “Well first off, I want you to promise you will keep practicing those focusing exercises I taught you. You’ll get nowhere without mastering those first,” Kaya said.

  “I’ll practice as often as I can,” I said. I would, but I was dying to move on to something new. Sitting quietly and emptying my mind wasn’t very easy to do in a moving car, not to mention with several people’s fates and lives hanging on my ability to master this.

  “Uriah mentioned you learning about seeing the possibilities of someone’s future,” Kaya said. “I can guess at the reason for that, so I’ll try, but you have to understand that this is usually one of the last things a student is taught. Because it’s one of the most difficult to master. I am still learning myself.”

  “I understand.” I wasn’t surprised. I had expected as much, but still, my hopes fell a little. I was still not sure whether it would matter since seeing the future didn’t seem to be part of my role, but for the moment at least, Uriah was right. We needed every advantage we could get.

  “Seeing into a person’s future is very similar to trying to find out whether someone will meet their Twin Soul. Unfortunately, that’s not terribly useful since there are so few Twin Souls that will actually meet. I was taught the technique years ago, but never actually got to use it for real until I met Uriah. What is useful is the fact that you can already sense the bond,” Kaya said. She tended to babble a little when she was trying to get out something important. Every once in a while I had to break in and refocus her thoughts.

  “Why is sensing the bond important to seeing someone’s future?” I asked.

  “Well, the bond is really only another form of power, and power is derived from a person’s soul. And since a soul is immortal, you must touch a person’s soul to see the possibilities of their future.” Kaya said it as if it made the most perfect sense in the world. Maybe to her it did.

  “I have to touch someone’s soul? How do I even do that?”

  It sounded absolutely ridiculous, except for the fact that I could feel the bond between Uriah and Melody. The bond emanating from Uriah had felt the tiniest bit…hotter. There was no other way to describe it. I didn’t know whether Kaya felt changes in the bond by degrees of heat, but heat between Uriah and Melody had been fairly steady up until the phone call to Harvey. With a sigh, I put the bond out of my mind and tried to focus on Kaya’s words.

  “The soul is contained within the body, obviously, so the first step is physical contact with a person. At least when you’re learning it is. After years of practice, just being near someone will do the trick. So the first step for you will be to touch the person you want to view.” Kaya paused. “Are you touching Uriah?”

  I hadn’t realized that she wanted me to do it right then. I quickly reached out and touched Uriah’s leg. For some reason he flinched. I pushed that to the back of my mind as well and answered Kaya. “Yes, I’m touching him now.”

  “With Uriah it will be a little easier than on someone else since you have the bond to work with. What do you feel when you touch him. I’m talking about spirit and energy, mind you, not physically. I don’t want to hear any of that,” Kay said with a laugh.

  I did my best not to blush. My first thought had been how strong Uriah’s leg felt, and what other parts of his body I wanted to explore. Focus! Energy. Spirit. Soul.

  “What do you feel?” Kaya asked again.

  “Heat, but that’s mostly just the bond.”

  “Heat, hmm. I felt the bond as more of a vibration than heat,” Kaya said. “It really gave me a headache if I concentrated on it too long.”

  I guess that answered my earlier question.

  “Forget the heat, though. You need to go deeper than that. Touching the bond won’t give you any insights into his future. You have to find the core of his soul,” Kaya said.

  The core of his soul? I had no idea what I was doing, but I tried to ignore the heat of the bond and see if I could feel anything else. Putting aside the bond was no small matter. I couldn’t simply push it away. It was much more like peeling away the layers. The outer layers were hot and intense. Each layer after that was still as hot and intense as the ones before it, but felt different, less substantial.

  I bent all of my energy toward pushing through the bond. My breathing slowed, as did my heartbeat. I felt as if my body was falling asleep, but my mind was still wide awake and active. It was a bewildering sensation to say the least. Shoving away the oddity of what I was doing, I sunk myself deeper into the layers.

  Finally, the heat fell away and I was confronted by a completely new sensation. There was no real way to describe it. It was as if all five of my senses were suddenly heightened. I could feel a gentle resonance, almost a vibration, on my hand. I could hear a soft hum. As I stared down at Uriah’s leg, I could see the faintest pulsing light surrounding him. Even taste and smell were included in the experience. The smell of summer in the alfalfa pastures, and the taste of strawberries filled me.

  I couldn’t help but gasp in sheer amazement.

  Uriah shivered at the same moment and broke my concentration.

  Looking over at me, Uriah asked, “What was that?”

  I just shook my head. Was that was what supposed to happen? Had I really touched Uriah’s soul? Whatever it was, I was anxious to try again. The faint calling of Kaya’s voice from the forgotten cell phone reminded me that she was waiting. I snatched the phone off the seat.

  “Did anything happen? I heard Uriah talking so I guessed you were done,” Kaya said. She waited a few seconds for my response before repeating her question. “Well, what happened?”

  “I…I’m not sure what happened.” The shock of the strange feeling was fleeing faster than I wanted it to, but it was quickly replaced by intense curiosity. Would touching my own soul help me find the basis of my power? Would it help me give it to Uriah when the time came?

  “Tell me what happened,” Kaya said. Her voice was much more commanding than usual. No doubt her curiosity was getting the better of her.

  “Well, I started with the bond. It felt hot, like I told you, but the further I pushed into the bond, the lighter it felt, like it might float away,” I said.

  “Yes, yes, that happened to me too. But what about after you passed through the bond?” Her quickly spoken words were filled with anxious interest.

  “After the bond, it…I don’t really know how to explain it. I could feel and hear this humming, and even see and touch and smell it. It was so overwhelming, but beau
tiful. I want to do it again.” Everything came out in a breathless rush, my fears disappearing as I remembered the beauty of it.

  Kaya sighed. I wasn’t sure if it was in relief or resignation until she spoke. “That’s wonderful, Claire.”

  “Did I do it then?”

  “Almost. You found the edges of the soul, not the core, but that was more than I could do on my first try,” Kaya said.

  She really did sound impressed. I couldn’t help but smile at the praise. Even though the possibility of not being able to break Uriah’s bond terrified me, if I was going to do anything with my power, I needed to get a lot better. Hope that I could at least do something useful with my power before I lost it made me eager to keep going. I was ready to dive back in, but Kaya had another question.

  “What did you smell and taste?” Kaya asked.

  I left myself fall back into the sensations. “I could smell alfalfa, just the way Uriah’s fields smell in late summer, strong and sweet. And I could taste sugary, homegrown strawberries. It tasted exactly like the ones from his mom’s strawberry patch.”

  “The others, the hum and vibration, and the light, those are always the same, but the taste and smell are completely unique to the person. It’s always my favorite part of reaching out to the soul,” Kaya said.

  Strawberries and alfalfa. I smiled. If I had to choose the smell and taste that made me think of Uriah most, those would have been it. He spent most of his life out in the fields with the sheep, and his mom’s strawberries had topped more plates of strawberry shortcake than I could count. It was Uriah’s favorite desert. I wanted to spend the rest of the day wrapped up in those two sensations, but I had another question.

  “How do I find the core?” I asked. Would the feeling be even more intense when I did? That thought was exhilarating and scary at the same time.

  “You just keep going. Keep doing what you were doing,” Kaya said. “When you go deep enough, you’ll find the core. Then you’ll be ready to look for the possibilities.”