After the End

15 JUNEAU

I HAVE BEEN HIDING IN MY ROOM—MY “CABIN”— since we embarked two days ago. As soon as we launched, I found the ship’s self-service dining area and stocked up on enough bread, fruit, and plastic-wrapped sandwiches to last me a few days. I haven’t ventured out since then.

I have never felt loneliness before. Even the time I got snowed in overnight on a hunting trip, I knew my father and clan were waiting for me, and actually enjoyed the time alone. Not now. I want to be home in my yurt with my father and dogs, knowing that Kenai’s and Nome’s families are within shouting distance. I hate this room where everything is made of plastic, on a boat in the middle of an unending ocean, among complete strangers.

I glance over at the photo of my parents, which is propped atop a tiny table. It is surrounded by the remaining supplies from the emergency shelter and the pile of things I brought from Whit’s yurt: feathers, fur, stones, powders, dried plants, and books. The objects are familiar. Soothing.

I return to the book I am reading on the history of the Gaia Movement of the 1960s. It’s about how earth is a superorganism, which I know was one of the theories that led Whit to the discovery of the Yara and the tapping of its powers. Normally I’m not allowed to browse freely through his books—he has me on a learning schedule and is very strict about revealing things in “the right order.” So this book is new to me, and I am greedily gobbling up every tidbit of new information.

I set the book down on my bunk to get a bottle of water, and when I come back, the pages have flipped to the front. I begin turning back to my place, but I see something that makes me hesitate. I go back to the copyright page.

The book was published in 2002.

I stare at the number. And then I drop the book, recoiling as if it had transformed into a rattlesnake. I stumble to my feet and back up as far as I can, wedging myself into a corner of the room.

My head spins and I feel like I’m going to keel over. Unthinkable thoughts keep careening around inside my mind. The elders said they escaped just before war broke out in the spring of 1984. Yet Whit had a book published in 2002.

Suddenly, I remember the expression on my father’s face whenever I asked him about the war. About his and my mother’s flight to safety. He never looked me in the eye when he told me that story. I always thought it was because the memories disturbed him. But that wasn’t why.

It was because there was no war.

He knew. They all knew, and someone—probably Whit—had even gone off-territory to get this book. The elders lied to us. Whit lied to us. My father… lied to me.

For the last twenty-four hours, my heart has known what my mind couldn’t admit. They knew.

I sink to the floor. Putting my head between my knees, I wrap my arms around my folded legs and rock back and forth. My mouth is dry and metallic tasting.

If the fundamental elements of my life—who I am, why and where my clan lived as we did… are all lies, then what can I believe? I have no idea what is truth and what is fiction. I have been brainwashed my entire childhood.

I’m all I’ve got now. I can’t trust anyone.