Shaxoa's Gift (24 page)

“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.