After the End

21 JUNEAU

HE IS QUITE LIKELY THE STUPIDEST BOY I HAVE ever met.

No, strike that. Not stupid. He actually seems smart enough. He has a good vocabulary when he makes an effort to use it. And I can tell he listens to every word I say and stores it away for later. Why?

Like Frankie said, he’s got an ulterior motive. Miles needs me as much as I need him. He’s got secrets. But so do I. Even though my oracle told me to be honest with him, that doesn’t mean I have to tell him my whole life story—not unless he asks. So I won’t expect him to do the same.

I change my assessment from stupid to naive. It’s clear he’s lived a sheltered life. And not just sheltered in the fact that he hasn’t been brought up in the wilderness like I have. He has lived what Dennis would call “a fortunate life, unfortunately for the rest of the world.” The blissfully ignorant spawn of the rich.

After wandering the streets of Seattle for a week, the difference between rich and poor is obvious to me. Compared to those I met who were living rough, Miles’s studiedly casual clothes, educated speech, and flippantly confident way he carries himself all point to money that he hasn’t had to earn himself.

I glance back at the flames and wonder if he didn’t know how to build a fire or if he was just too lazy to be bothered. I don’t understand why Frankie said he was necessary. He seems like the last person on earth I would actually need right now. If Miles couldn’t drive, he would be complete deadweight.

He actually insisted on sleeping in the car until I informed him that the scented skull and crossbones hanging from the rearview mirror and bags of chips and cookies stashed in the backseat were likely to attract bears, and that a bear could easily peel a car door off with its claws.

It’s the first time I’ve seen him move fast. He ripped the little fragrant skull off the mirror, scooped the bags out of the backseat, and set off at top speed into the woods with them, returning ten minutes later empty-handed. And although he left the windows down to air the car out, he didn’t hesitate to bunk down in the tent when I told him it was safer.

I wait impatiently for him to fall asleep. Finally, when I haven’t seen him move for a while, I fish the bag of firepowder out of my pack. Carefully measuring out a small silvery handful, I throw the powdered mica mixture onto the flames. “Dad,” I say, and visualizing my father’s face, stare just up and to the right of the licking flames.

Nothing happens, and a thread of worry pulls tight in my chest. Like I said to Miles, besides Reading my oracle, I couldn’t Read a thing in Seattle. And I don’t know if it had anything to do with being in a city. Thankfully, I was able to perform that minor Conjure and make fire in his cell phone. But it feels like something is changing, either in me, or in my connection to the Yara.

I actually started feeling the change during those tortuous five days on the boat to Seattle. A black fog of doubt settling over everything I know. If the elders lied about the war, could the Yara just be another of their fictions? But something even deeper in me reassures me that the Yara exists. It’s just my connection to it that feels like it is slipping away.

I banish those thoughts from my mind and concentrate on the fire. It takes a while, but finally an image appears. It’s exactly as I saw it in the vision: an arid landscape with cacti in the foreground and rock formations in the distance. Although it is nighttime, the moon glows brightly, illuminating the scene.

I see a group of small buildings made of clay or dirt. I remember seeing something similar in the EB—in an article on Native Americans—and try to remember in which part of America they were located. Surrounding the group of buildings is a high fence topped with barbed wire. It stretches into the distance before hitting a corner and continuing on as far as I can see in another direction. A perimeter fence. My people are being kept in captivity.

As I watch, my father emerges from one of the huts, arms wrapped around himself. He walks a little ways, and then stops and looks up at the moon. His expression is wistful. Worried. I know he’s thinking about me. I wonder if the reason he came out was because he somehow felt me Read him.

I have been thinking about my father and the whole clan so much over the last couple of weeks that, now that I see him, I am bombarded with a volley of conflicting feelings. One part of me wants to throw myself on him and hug him tight and not let go.

Another part wants to scream. To shake him. To ask why he lied to me. Why, since Whit began training me when I was five, the clan Sage perpetuated the lies. Why the adults misled the children. Why they brainwashed us to think that an outside world didn’t exist and to hide like cornered rabbits from a danger that was never there. Because of this conspiracy of lies kept by the adults—the family—I always trusted, my whole life has been a farce.

My eyes sting, and I brush away an angry tear. I fumble around in the pack until my fingers find my fire opal. Pulling it out, I hold it in my palm and grind it against the ground. “Dad,” I say. Nothing. He is too far away for me to Read his emotions. Or maybe I’m just too furious to connect to the Yara.

I wonder for the hundredth time how much of what I learned was part of the web of lies my father and the other clan elders spun around us, and how much was true. Their betrayal still hurts so fiercely that it burns a hole in my chest, but at least I know I still have the Yara. Other than that, I’m not sure what I believe anymore. I am unanchored. Adrift in this new world.

I turn my focus back to my father, whose figure stands immobile in the desert scene. “I’m okay, Dad,” I say, although I know he can’t hear me. I swallow the lump in my throat. “And I’m coming to get you.”