Qaletaqa (23 page)

“I can’t, Kaya.”

She sniffed, and rustling of the phone made
me wonder if she was crying. “After everything he’s been through,
and you. That can’t happen. You can’t be taken away from him,
Claire. I can’t stand the idea.”

“I have to try either way,” I said barely
above a whisper, “but do you understand why I can’t?”

“Yes, I won’t mention any of this to
Uriah.”

I wanted to reach through the phone and hug
her. I settled for a quiet thank you. Desire to switch topics and
spare myself anymore talk of my own death pushed me to find
something else to say. My mind, however, was still hung up on the
chance I would never get to break the bond between Uriah and
Melody. Maybe my power would be used up, but if I gave it all to
Uriah, could he use it himself to break the bond?

“Kaya, shamans can touch a soul…and power,” I
said, hoping she would stay on the same track, “but are they the
only ones? Can anyone with power find their source?”

“You mean like Uriah?” Hope bubbled in her
voice. “As far as I know, shaman are the only ones, but Uriah isn’t
like anyone else. Most people with power use it subconsciously, but
Uriah has real control over his. If anyone could do it, he could.
Maybe he could break the bond himself. If he has enough power left
over, and if he truly wanted to.”

It was still such a long shot, an idea that
may come to nothing, but a small spark of hope burned within my
heart. The struggle not to let it show was agonizing. In an attempt
to keep it contained, I changed topics.

“Is there anything else you can teach me
right now?” I asked.

“I did want to talk to you about dreaming,”
Kaya said.

“Dreaming?” I asked. With everything else I
had to work on, adding dreams to the mix might be a bit too much
right now.

“I know you’ve got a lot on your plate
already,” Kaya agreed, “but dreams can be just as useful, sometimes
more useful than anything else I might teach you.”

“But you can’t make yourself have a dream,
can you?” After the horrible twin-soul-bond-induced dreams I had
suffered through, I was really more interested in how to make
yourself stop dreaming. It was a skill I would like to pass along
to Uriah as well. I sighed at that.

I knew Uriah would most likely meet Melody in
that strange in-between place again tonight. I wished I could stop
it because of my own fear, but could never actually do it. She
might be able to tell him something useful, something that would
help us find her. It was a huge risk for them to be together even
there, but it was an even bigger risk to keep them apart. If Melody
died because we couldn’t find her quickly enough, it would destroy
Harvey, and likely Uriah too. Dreams. Did I really want to force
myself into more of them?

“You can’t really make yourself have a dream,
but you can prepare yourself for one, and sometimes influence what
the dream will contain,” Kaya said, unaware of my thoughts. At
least I hoped she was.

“I’m going to give you some exercises to do
before you go to bed tonight.” Kaya paused.

I prayed that she wasn’t going to say
anything else about what I might or might not do before going to
bed tonight. I knew nothing would happen, Uriah had been right
about that, but that didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it, either.
Kaya’s silence lasted a little longer before she finally spoke.

“Anyway, before you go to bed tonight, I want
you to do the same meditation exercises I taught you earlier. When
you reach a focused enough state, start forming a question in your
mind about what you need an answer to. Make it as detailed as
possible. Let it take shape in your mind, in the form of a picture
if you can. And hold onto that until you fall asleep,” she said.
“You may have to try sleeping in a chair to maintain your focus
long enough for the exercise to help.”

“Really? That’s all?” I asked. “I was
expecting something…more.”

“Like some magic words or something?” Kaya
said drily. I snickered. That was exactly what I had been thinking.
Kaya laughed as well.

“Claire, what shamans are able to do has a
lot more to do with spiritual forces than magical ones. Even seeing
the future of a person’s life isn’t magical, it’s spiritual,” Kaya
said more seriously. “Souls are ceaseless. They will never die and
were never really born, either. They simply exist. A person’s soul
knows what lies ahead, because they are part of that future. When
you tap into that soul, you aren’t forcing it to do something with
any kind of spell. You’re simply communicating with it.”

Giving me a chance to take in what she had
said, Kaya remained silent for a while. I had never really
considered the difference between a shaman being magical or
spiritual. It had always seemed to be pretty much the same thing.
Until recently, I didn’t believe in either one. Even having just
attempted to reach out to Uriah’s soul, I still hadn’t considered
by what power I was doing it. I just hoped it worked. Kaya’s
lessons were starting to take on a whole new meaning. I did still
wonder about one thing, though.

“What about the potions? Aren’t they
magical?” I asked.

Kaya seemed to expect the question. “Even
with the potion Uriah made there was nothing magical about it, not
really. The properties of each plant were designed by the gods.
Using them in specific ways and combinations simply unlocks the
potential inside of them. The gods designed them that way.”

I wondered if I was starting to lose my mind
when her reasoning made perfect sense to me. Uriah had told me
about how the potion was made, the grinding and crushing and
cooking, but I had just assumed that he left out any words said or
things done to the mixture to make it sound less unnerving. Now I
understood that there really had been none of that.

“So how does me thinking about what I want to
dream about make me actually dream about it?” I asked.

“It doesn’t always work, it depends on the
strength of the person doing it, but focusing your spiritual energy
opens your mind up to communicating with the universe,” Kaya said.
“If you already have a question prepared, you’re more likely to
receive an answer.”

Again, it made very good sense.

Maybe I really can do this.

21: Ahiga’s
Promise

I hated stopping, but everyone was so tired
and I knew I wouldn’t find the Matwau until he was ready for me to
find him. Not without some vision of where he was leading me.
Stopping for the night was the only real choice. Harvey looked
nearly dead when he practically crawled up the stairs to his room.
I knew all too well how much stress and fear, and too much driving,
could eat away at a person.

I felt ready to drop as well, but Claire sat
on the bed, a picture of serenity and calm. Her eyes were closed.
She sat cross-legged on top of the comforter, breathing in slow,
steadying breaths. She had explained about the exercises Kaya had
taught her, and about her promise to practice them tonight.

My hopes of curling up next to her on the bed
were severely deflated, but that was probably a good thing. I was
dog-tired, but I was sure it wouldn’t take too much to wipe my
weariness away if Claire so much as hinted at doing something
besides meditating. I knew she wouldn’t, though. We had already
agreed not to even talk about it again until after this was all
over. If it was ever over.

I sighed, feeling another wave of exhaustion
roll over me. I wanted to fall into bed and sleep for a week, but
Claire had reminded me about calling my mom. She had been sweet
enough to keep her mom updated on where we were and what we were
doing since she left San Juan. I hadn’t been nearly as good. A bad
habit from my trip to Hano. I knew that if our moms weren’t
together already, Sarah Brant would have definitely called my mom
as soon as she hung up with Claire, so I hadn’t worried about it as
much as I should have.

Claire’s last call to her mom, however, had
ended in my mom snatching the phone out of Sarah’s hand and asking
Claire very politely to have me call her and promising that she
would wring my neck when I got home if I didn’t. Don’t get me
wrong, I wanted to talk to my mom, I just didn’t want her to start
crying about what I was doing like the last time we talked. I knew
Claire had told her mom everything. That meant my mom knew too.
Every depressing detail.

Resigning myself to the inevitable tears, I
searched the hotel room’s plain wooden desk for my phone. I didn’t
see either of our phones. I groaned when I remembered I had plugged
them in to charge back in the truck. And left them there. Glancing
over at Claire, I was going to tell her I had to run down to the
car, but after seeing her focused expression I decided to leave a
note instead.

When I reached the double doors of the hotel,
I hesitated at the door. It wasn’t fear that kept me from moving
this time. I knew that as soon as I stepped outside I would be
greeted by the unappetizing smell of the slaughter houses. Claire
and I had smelled it as soon as we’d gotten into Greeley. At first,
I thought it was manure we were smelling. I couldn’t believe there
would be enough manure in one place to make an entire town reek of
it. Harvey was quick to correct us when we stopped for dinner and
he saw our wrinkled noses. Knowing the smell’s source made it even
worse.

It was a small thing, but on top of
everything else, I didn’t want to deal with it. The smell seemed
like one more device to make this journey intolerable. Where was
the balance the gods claimed they valued so highly now? I pushed
through the doors and stared up at the stars in challenge.

“Why?” I asked the gods, almost yelling. “Why
do you have to make everything as hard as possible for me? I need
help! There is no balance in sending me against a monster I’m not
prepared to fight! Your glorious scheme didn’t pan out like you
thought it would, but what have you done about it? Nothing!”

I dropped my gaze and glared at the pavement
under my feet instead. My words, though, were still aimed at the
gods. “If you want me to kill him, you better tell me what to do.
Otherwise you’re just going to be sending another one of your
children to be slaughtered. Screw fair, I deserve some help after
everything you’ve put me through.”

The silence of a sleeping sky was my only
response. I don’t know what I was expecting. My mind had been
steeped in myth and legend for so long now I actually expected some
kind of answer from them. They hadn’t helped me so far. Why would
they now? I shook my head in disgust at myself and them.

I tried to ignore the stench as I forgot the
unresponsive gods and hurried to my truck. I was unlocking the door
when I saw movement to my right. Reminding myself that I was
standing in a parking lot where other people might have needed to
get back into their cars, I tried to act natural. The last thing I
needed was to pounce on some innocent stranger and have them call
the police.

Still, I shifted so I could see what the
person looked like. I hoped it was a person.

As soon as I caught a glimpse of the large,
copper-skinned man, I dropped to the ground. I had never seen the
man before, but I recognized the wind up of a punch when I saw it.
Thanks to my falling into a crouch like a frightened child, his
fist swung well over my head. I scrambled up to my feet and darted
away from him.

“Hey, man, I’m not going to hurt you. Just
back off, okay?” I knew this wasn’t the Matwau in disguise again.
There was no sickening feeling of centipedes crawling all over my
body, but that didn’t mean the guy wasn’t helping him out. Or he
might just be drunk.

He didn’t look drunk, though. His eyes were
focused and cold. I was starting to lean toward the guy being one
of the Matwau’s helpers. Talking probably wasn’t going to work. So
I squared my stance and prepared myself for another attack. I
wasn’t disappointed.

His fists came at me again, a terrifying
haymaker that I barely dodged, and a jab that caught my shoulder. I
took a steadying step backward and squared my shoulders. This guy
was definitely not drunk. He was a trained fighter. Luckily, so was
I.

I took my own shots, missing the first, but
connecting on the second. My fist slammed into his jaw. It should
have sent him reeling away from me. He should have been in pain.
The man did feel the impact, his head swinging to the left, but he
just bounced back. His long, glossy black hair swirled around his
shoulders. The smile on his face seemed almost pleased. There
wasn’t any doubt left in me about who had sent this guy. What I
couldn’t figure out was why.

Dodging another jab to my head, I went on the
attack, throwing punch after punch. Not all of them landed, but
enough did that after a few minutes the man finally stopped smiling
and started to breathe hard. I wanted to flash him one of his own
strange smiles, but I was breathing too hard myself. Any desire to
smile was wiped off my face when one of the man’s fists made it
past my blocking arms and collided with my jaw. I stumbled back,
trying to right myself before he leapt at me.

When I jerked myself back up I was surprised
to see the man still standing a few feet away from me. Now he was
grinning. This is just another game! I realized.

Fury set me running at the man, shoulder
first. His torso buckled under the blow, but not as much as I had
hoped. He caught himself before falling to the asphalt and batted
me to the side. Resorting to less than fair fighting, I kicked my
leg out as I fell, plowing my foot into the side of his thigh. His
knee pitched sideways and I was quick to follow up with another
sweep of my legs, knocking his feet out from under him.

The man finally went down. I leapt up. Gravel
fell away from my elbows as I jumped across him and rammed my elbow
up against his throat. The man’s hands clamped down on my arms. He
made an effort to pry me off of him, but for some reason I had the
feeling that he was considering me just as hard. The smile was
gone, but the fear of dying was strangely absent.