After the End

27 JUNEAU

WE’RE PASSING OVER THE LINE FROM WASHINGTON into Oregon when Poe starts shifting around in the backseat. He flaps his wings a couple of times, and then goes into full-fledged panic, banging against the window, shedding feathers, and squawking like someone’s squeezing him.

Miles throws his arm up to shelter his face, and the car swerves wildly. The giant wheels of a truck we were passing come inches from my window and I yell, “Miles! Truck!”

Cursing, he yanks the wheel and we veer away from the truck just as it lets out an earsplitting honk.

“Is anyone behind us?” Miles shouts.

“No,” I yell back, and he crouches down, ducking out of reach of the flailing wings to steer over to the side of the road. I crawl into the backseat with Poe and wrestle with him until I get ahold of him, folding his wings in and pulling him firmly against my chest. His heart flutters wildly against my fingertips. I try to still his panic by closing my eyes and slowing my own heartbeat, but it has no effect on him. No longer able to struggle, his eyes roll in panic.

Something is trying to pull him out of the car. I concentrate and attempt to tap into the Yara, but I am getting absolutely nothing. Please, I think. I pull my opal out from under my shirt and press it tightly against the bird. Nothing. A minute passes, and Poe starts to struggle again and there… finally it comes, my lips and fingers tingling as I make the connection. “Thank you,” I whisper, as my mind is filled with Poe’s emotions. Fear. Possession. After a second, I recognize what he’s feeling from something we studied in our wildlife lessons with Kenai’s dad. Ravens have an ability to remember where they have hidden food. And Poe has the overwhelming feeling that another bird has found his cache. He is desperate to fly there and protect his food.

I can just guess who is messing with his little bird mind, and try to picture where it is that Poe wants to go. I see the same clearing that I saw before—the place Whit released Poe with the note for me. He must have lost my trail and gone back to where he started to wait for the bird’s return and get a clear picture of where I am. A flare of anger ignites in my chest.

I still don’t understand what Whit is doing, but I am the last of my clan running free, and he wants to help the bad guys capture me too. Over my dead body, I think, and wonder if it will actually get to that point if I resist. I don’t plan on letting him find me to test that question.

Poe feels my anger, and our fragile connection is broken. He flaps to break free from my grasp, so I pick up the T-shirt he was sitting on and wrap it around him, like I’ve seen the clan mothers do with their flailing babies. Once he is swaddled and can’t move an inch, he gives up. He shudders once, and then his wild eyes close and he seems to sleep. I place him on the floor, tucking Miles’s other dirty clothes around him like a nest.

The car has stopped and Miles is staring at me, eyes wide, lips pressed tightly together. I crawl out of the back and into the front, strapping myself in. “He’s okay now,” I say, but instead of putting the car in gear, Miles turns it off.

“Why was the bird having a panic attack?” he asks, his voice a note higher than normal.

“Whit was trying to get him to come back and tell him where we are,” I say, and then, seeing a twitch in Miles’s right eyebrow, correct myself. “I mean, Whit was going to read his memory to see where we had gone.”

Miles nods, his eyebrow still twitching. “So you used my shirt as a straitjacket.”

“It’s called swaddling,” I said. “It’s to calm him.”

“Because that’s what you do when you’re ‘close to the Yara,’” Miles says, ending in a spooky voice; then his lips form that sarcastic smile that makes me want to punch him.

“No, that’s what you do when your baby’s freaking out. So, Poe’s a raven—I inter-species extrapolated. And it worked. What would you have done?”

“Rolled down the window,” Miles says. “Let the bird go before it shits all over my backseat.” He gestures to two white splats on the upholstery and looks mildly upset.

I roll my eyes and pull out the atlas. “We need to get off this main road. When Whit realizes that Poe’s not coming back, he will come after us. And if we were headed in the right direction—toward my clan—this would be one of the obvious routes we would take.” I trace our path on the map and find a junction where two small roads veer off and away from the highway, one meandering past a lake before it joins back up with the larger road near Idaho.

There’s a road sign within view, and I compare it to the map and calculate how far we are from the turnoff. “We’ll keep driving another sixty miles and then exit,” I say, and then wait.

Miles sighs and turns the key in the ignition. I’m going to have to tell him more. I need him to understand what’s happening or else… Or else what? a voice says in my mind. Or else he might leave me. And I still need him, I think, cursing the fact that, for some reason, I need this boy to help rescue my clan.