Shaxoa's Gift (34 page)

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.”

Quaile’s body tensed, her face only showing a
small portion of the relief I was expecting. She muttered something
under her breath too quiet for me to catch. “What do you mean you
found a shaman with more talent than I have?” she demanded.

At least she wasn’t trying to deny the part
about compassion. “I meant exactly what I said, Quaile. Kaya is
much more talented than you are, unless you were lying when you
said you didn’t know when Claire and I would meet our Twin
Souls.”

“I wasn’t lying, Uriah. I had no way of
knowing when that would happen,” Quaile said. She was about to
start on one of her angry tirades, then she stopped. “You mean to
tell me that the other shaman knew when you would meet your Twin
Soul?”

“Ten years, Quaile,” I said. “I wouldn’t have
met her for ten years.”

“Ten years.” Quaile sank into the rocking
chair she had been standing next to.

“Ten years. If we had known that, everything
could have been different. You jumped to conclusions, thinking you
were the absolute authority, and look what happened. You caused
this, Quaile.”

Quaile’s eyes darted back up to me. “Uriah, I
had no way of knowing. You can’t expect me to take blame for what I
didn’t know. I thought I was making the right decision. You cannot
blame me for that.”

“It wasn’t your decision to make,
Quaile!”

“I am the shaman. I have to lead the tribe,
Uriah. I have to make the decisions I think are right for the
tribe, for each person,” she said. Her face was defiant, but her
eyes were pleading for understanding.

“Being the shaman doesn’t mean telling
everyone how to live their lives, Quaile. You have to trust people
if you expect them to trust you. You should have let Claire and I
make the choice once you gave us your warnings. You should have
told me about the Matwau and you certainly should have told me that
I was the Qaletaqa.” I waited for her reaction to my last words. I
didn’t have to wait long.

Quaile’s eyes flew open as wide as they could
go. Her ancient hands clutched her skirt, turning her knobby
knuckles pale. “She told you that?” she asked breathlessly.

I didn’t need to answer. I folded my arms
across my chest and waited for her explanation.

“You are the Qaletaqa, the Guardian of the
People.”

My fists balled in fury. When I mentioned the
Qaletaqa, I hadn’t been completely sure Quaile had known, but now
she had revealed herself. She blatantly lied when she said she
didn’t know what her vision meant.

“How long have you known,” I asked.

“Since the day you were born.”

I exploded with rage. “Why didn’t you tell
me?” I asked. “I could have been preparing myself for this. Now I’m
about to run off and face down the Matwau with nothing but my bare
hands and a hope that I’ll find a way to survive. How could you
have kept that to yourself?”

“I…I thought I would have more time. I would
have told you, but only when you needed to know, only when you were
ready,” she said. Her head dropped in shame.

“He’s kidnapped my Twin Soul, Quaile. He has
her right now,” I said.

“What?” Quaile asked. “Now? He has her
now?”

I studied her features. She looked genuinely
shocked. “You didn’t know that?”

“No, I had no idea,” she said. Her eyes
closed in concentration. She gasped after a few seconds and stared
at me. “It’s so faint! The pull of bond, I didn’t even feel it
surrounding you when you walked in.”

Perhaps ten times was too little. Kaya’s
talents dwarfed Quaile’s. “He took her this morning and he’s
holding her as bait. He wants me to come to him so he can kill me.
I can feel where she is. I know she’s scared that he’ll kill
her.”

“Then why are you here?” Quaile asked. She
rose to her feet again. “You have to go to her. There is no time to
waste, Uriah. The Matwau will kill her if you don’t go after her.
You cannot abandon her.”

My eyes narrowed in anger. Quaile claimed she
knew what the right choices were for my life, but she had proved
again how little she knew about me. “Of course I’ll go after her,
Quaile. Do you think I would let her die just to save myself from
confronting the Matwau?”

Quaile looked at me in confusion. “Then what
are you doing here?” she asked.

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the
metal thermos, slamming it on the table. “I had to bring this to
Claire first,” I said. My anger fell away at the sight of it.

“The potion to sever the Twin Soul bond?”
Quaile asked, though I had no idea what else she might think it
was. “Why are you bringing it to me? Why not take it directly to
Claire?”

“I can’t. She has to ask for it, and I can’t
give it to her myself or she’ll feel pressured to drink it,” I
said.

“I didn’t tell her where you were or what you
were doing,” Quaile said.

“I didn’t think you would,” I said. It was
most likely the only time I would find myself grateful for Quaile’s
stinginess. “I can’t ask her to drink this. I can’t ask her to give
up the Twin Soul bond. I would never ask her to give up something
so precious, anyway. It has to be her choice. She has to drink it
freely, with no regrets.”

I studied Quaile’s reaction to the potion and
my words. She was the one who had sent me to Hano. She told me
where to find a way to break the bond. Her belief that Claire and I
should get to be together if we really wanted to, had been what
pushed her to send me to Hano. She wanted us to have the choice.
Relief or happiness should have graced her features, but neither of
those were present. Instead, her mouth turned down and her hand
tightened on the chair arm.

“When I told you about the Hano Shaxoa, I
thought it was a long shot. I had heard rumors of this woman who
claimed not to be a Shaxoa,” Quaile said. “She was said to be
powerful, but untrained. Apparently the Hano Tewa had a very
powerful Shaxoa with them when they left the pueblo. This woman,
Samantha, collected the Shaxoa’s work and decided to study it. She
had no one to teach her, though, no one to warn her of the
consequences of what she was doing.”