Qaletaqa (13 page)

Yungé did die of her illness. She carried her
child to term. Her son was born before her death, but the child’s
name and line were lost because no one but Nampeyo’s children
believed her line had any importance, and pueblo lineages are
tracked matrilineal. The boy’s children would have been linked to
his wife, not him. If that child had been followed I would have
been able to know more easily whether or not I was the chosen
shaman. With no other signs to guide me, I could only wait and
watch.

Shaking my head at the arrogance of one
woman, I turned back to the letter.

“This is what Nampeyo learned.

“The signs of the chosen shaman are
important. There will be a repulsion toward the Qaletaqa. This will
not be based on feeling, but on power. Before the time comes to
work in consort, the powers of shaman and Qaletaqa will oppose each
other, cause pain to one or both. This will happen because their
powers must not join until the appointed time, or all will be
lost.

“The Qaletaqa will be blessed with many gifts
to call animals and bend other to his will, none of which will
affect the chosen shaman. She must be above his influence. Her mind
must be her own so she may make the choice of her own free will and
conscience. This must be because the choice she will be asked to
make will be most difficult. Aiding the Qaletaqa will be no small
task. It will be costly, the most of which may be her life. The
least of which will be her power.”

The sound of Uriah coming out of the bathroom
startled me into shoving the book back into my backpack. I kept my
eyes down as my mind raced. Quaile had handed over the book,
hopeless that it would do any good. She thought it was too late for
me to learn, to even reach Uriah. I almost left, intent on proving
her wrong, but her last words to me refused to let me walk
away.

“
I was wrong, Claire. I was wrong about
the bond. I know how to break the bond.”

She stunned me with those words. I had just
went through torture at her hands, given the Shaxoa’s potion only
to be told it wouldn’t work, told by Quaile that there was no way
to break the bond and forced to turn away my Twin Soul and smother
the bond as best I could. And then she blurted out that she knew
how to break it. I lost all feeling in that moment, going colder as
she explained.

“
It’s all about the power, Claire. You
will have to give it up, sever the link between soul and
power.”

“
But…” I had heard stories of such a thing
being attempted by other shaman. The accounts always ended in
death. Uriah was the one who told me about the young shaman who
tried to transfer her power to her lover in order to save his life.
They both perished in the effort.

“
I’ll die if I try to give up my
power.”

“
No one has ever been able to successfully
cut away their power, but you are different, Claire, special. You
can do this if you are truly the chosen shaman. It’s the only way.
Only a sacrifice worthy of the gods notice could ever have the
power to break the bond. The bond
is
power. It feeds off the
gifts every person is given by the gods. Most gifts are small and
have little power at their core, but heroes and shaman have so much
more. A regular person could never break the bond because they do
not have the power it would take inside of them. Even most shaman
and heroes don’t, but you, Claire, if you truly are the chosen
shaman, you will have the power. You’ll have what it will take to
break the bond forever.”

“
How?” I asked, hope nearly lifting me off
the floor.

That was when Quaile faltered. “I don’t
know. It has never been done before. Never successfully attempted,
but I know it’s possible. After the Matwau is defeated you can use
your power to break the bond between Uriah and his Twin Soul,
between you and Daniel. Search the book, Claire. There is so much
contained in the shamans’ words.”

“
Then why don’t you know how I can give up
my power? You know everything in there!”

“
I know the words, yes, but I have so
little talent. I cannot understand most of what is written. I know
the words, but I cannot use them, cannot comprehend the meaning
behind the power involved. You must have power to know power,
Claire. And I do not.” She closed her eyes, whether in shame or
relief to be handing off the responsibility to someone else, I
didn’t know. “You have the power, Claire. You’ll find the right
path.”

I supposed I should have felt hope at her
words, but I didn’t then, and I didn’t now. Now I felt even more
dismayed than I did standing in her home. After the Matwau was
defeated. That was what Quaile said. I had to use my power to help
Uriah, and then I would be free to give it up. When the Matwau was
gone I could use my power to sever bond, give it up and kill the
source that fed the bond.

After reading Yungé’s letter, I saw now that
Quaile’s hope had crumbled to bits of sand. After the Matwau was
defeated I wouldn’t have any power left. Yungé said I would lose my
power fighting the Matwau with Uriah. She said it would be a
difficult choice. Giving up power I never even knew I had wouldn’t
have been a hard choice for me. Choosing between killing the Matwau
and holding onto the man I loved more than anything in this world
would be agony.

If I didn’t help Uriah kill the Matwau, the
creature would kill him. If I did help him, I would lose Uriah
forever. Despite everything I said to him the night before, despite
the bracelet I had given him to remind him of our future, I knew
the power of the Twin Soul bond. Reality shivered through me like
ice. Uriah would never be able to resist without my help.

12: Brittle Yellow
Pages

I thought Phoenix traffic was bad. Denver was
ten times worse. I sat at the edge of the hotel parking lot, the
engine idling loudly as I waited for a chance to merge into the
onslaught of dancing cars. Looking far down the road, I spotted an
opening and hoped it wouldn’t be swallowed up before it reached
me.

The gap edged closer. I jammed the
accelerator down and leapt onto the street. Even then, the driver
of the car I pulled in front of waved his hands angrily at me. I
wasn’t trying to irritate him, but I was pretty sure I would have
spent the whole day waiting if I hadn’t cut him off. I tried to
wave an apology to the driver, but he was already ranting at
someone else.

“What was with the driver behind us?” Claire
asked.

“I guess I cut him off a little,” I said. “I
couldn’t help it, though.”

Claire looked up with a frown. “No, not that
guy, the one behind us in the parking lot. In the blue sedan. When
we pulled out he tossed his hands up and slammed them back down on
the steering wheel.”

“He was probably just ticked off there wasn’t
enough room for him to get out too.”

Claire was still staring out the window at
the parking lot behind us. She smiled. “He finally got out.”
Turning back to me, her smile disappeared. “So where are we
headed?”

That was the question. Harvey had called
earlier, but the list of places where the forest met the desert was
so long he’d given up naming all of them halfway through. He
promised to keep working, but I wasn’t sure how fruitful his search
would be. I could tell he was jumping out of his skin for news of
Melody, so I told him about my seeing Melody the night before. He
wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but any news was better
than sitting and waiting. It took some effort to get him to hang
up. I think he would have tried to stay on the phone the entire
time we were searching if I would have let him.

The information Melody had been able to give
me really wasn’t very helpful. She thought they had gone down in
elevation, but Estes Park was right in the middle of the Rocky
Mountains. Pretty much everything was lower than that. I was forced
to rely on the pull of the bond, something I really did not want to
do. Following the bond around blindly meant walking into whatever
traps the Matwau was busy laying for me. Still, I had no other
choice.

“Uriah?” Claire asked.

“North,” I said. That was the best I could
do.

“North.” Her frown deepened. “I wish we had
some idea of what he was planning.”

“So do I.”

Claire sat in the passenger’s seat, our
backpacks occupying the space between us. I wanted her closer.
Reaching out, I tugged on her hand. Claire understood what I was
asking for and started moving the backpacks. My bag made it to the
floor without incident, but when Claire reached for her own bag,
she didn’t realize it was open. The front of the bag lurched open
and spilled out its contents.

“Dangit,” Claire mumbled as she started
picking up the items. Socks, toiletries, a hairbrush, it was all
dropped back in the bag.

When she started to shove an old leather book
back in I grabbed her arm. “Is that it?”

Claire hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Have you looked at it yet?”

“A little, while you were taking your shower.
I’m not sure what it is. Quaile didn’t bother to explain it, of
course, but it isn’t a journal. At least I don’t think so. It
looked more like she was rewriting someone else’s words.”

She turned to look at me with an odd
expression. Fear, or maybe wariness. “The little bit I read didn’t
make a lot of sense, but Quaile seemed to think it was
important.”

“Well, I have no idea how long we’re going to
be wandering around Colorado,” I said, “so we might as well start
reading. Is it even in English?”

“Most of it,” Claire said. She opened the
worn cover, her eyes darting over the poorly scrawled words. “Some
of the words are Tewa, but I recognized most of them thanks to my
dad forcing me to learn.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that there’s
a map to where the Matwau’s going in there somewhere?”

My attempt at humor went unnoticed. Claire’s
eyes flitted back and forth as she read the words. She saw nothing
else. Several minutes passed before she looked back up. I met her
gaze, curious and a little amused at her sudden studious attitude.
We spent countless afternoons at my kitchen table doing homework,
but Claire always had a hard time focusing. There were always too
many other things she wanted to do.

“Sorry,” Claire says. “It’s…barely
comprehensible, but somehow still fascinating. It talks about
you.”

“It does?” Could it really hold some of the
secrets I was searching for? I got a quick stranglehold on my hope.
Trust that anything involving me could be that easy evaporated as
soon as it had formed.

Flipping back to the front of the book,
Claire noticed something scrawled inside the cover and pointed at
it. “I didn’t see this earlier. I think Quaile must have come back
and written this here later on. The first pages are old,
prophecies, but this Quaile wanted right at the front.

“What does it say?”

Claire answered with Quaile’s words.

“He has finally come. The promised Qaletaqa
was born today. I was called to attend the birth of Notah and Lina
Crowe’s child, their first. Their last as well. This couple will
not be blessed with any other children. The infant, Uriah, is
enough.

“I have carried the secrets of our tribe with
me these long years. I will finally have peace when the day comes
to tell him of his destiny. So much of our history has fallen into
myth and legend, bedtime stories for children. This child will
bring it all back. What others call myths will rise to challenge
him, but I truly believe he will prevail. I have to believe. The
Qaletaqa is here.”

I pounded my fist against the steering wheel
in frustration. “Why didn’t she tell me? All this knowledge, all
this wisdom, and she never said a word to me before I left to go
find Daniel. And even then it was as little as possible.”

“I think she was waiting for some sign that
you were ready. She kept looking for hints of your power, but she
was too blind to see it.”

“I’m supposed to defeat the most evil,
horrible creature on this planet, save countless people from being
killed by the Matwau, and I get stuck with Quaile as the shaman
that’s supposed to help me!” I shook my head in frustration. Claire
withstood my tantrum, only grimacing and tucking herself into the
seat more deeply.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her, “I didn’t mean to
take my frustration out on you. I just would have thought the gods
would have planned this better, given me someone who was actually
going to help me through this instead of Quaile.”

“Maybe you’ll have more help than you think,”
Claire offered quietly.

I looked over at her, and finally saw the
strange, huddled quality to her posture. Always so strong and ready
for a fight, this new side of her frightened me. If Claire lost
faith in me, I didn’t know if I would be able to get through this.
Slipping my arm around her shoulder, I pulled her closer to me.
“I’m sure you’re right. You never know where help is going to come
from, I guess. We’ll find a way.”

The only response I got from her was a
nod.

“Why don’t you read more of the book? Maybe
we’ll find something useful,” I suggested. Even just looking at the
book gave me more hope, but Claire seemed less enthusiastic. I
watched as she flipped chunks of pages aside. Curious about why she
wouldn’t just start at the beginning of the book, I was about to
ask her when she spoke.

“Whoa, look at this, Uriah. This isn’t the
first time your family has had a run-in with the Matwau.”

“What?” If that was true, why hadn’t I ever
heard about the Matwau before running into him in Phoenix?

“Yeah, your grandparents, the ones that were
Twin Souls. Listen to what Quaile says.”