After the End

29 JUNEAU

WHEN I FINISH, MILES SITS THERE STUNNED, HIS mouth hanging half-open and his eyebrows frozen in the up position. Finally he remembers how to talk. “And now?” he asks.

“And now something’s happening to my skills. Since yesterday, I can barely Read. I certainly can’t Conjure. I can’t even get anything from Poe, and we’ve already had a connection.”

“Can I see some of this stuff you use?” he asks, and it strikes me that while I was speaking he dropped his sarcastic, incredulous manner and is actually being sincere. He might not believe what I say is true, but he believes I’m telling him what I think is true. I don’t have to Read him to know that.

Whit taught me to read body language—to be perceptive about the way people unconsciously show their feelings and thoughts through gestures and facial expressions. For the first time, Miles has let down his guard. He’s taken the first step to trusting me.

So I reciprocate. I show him my pack. He watches as I pull out the firepowder, the stones, the herbs and animal furs and bones, and asks me what each one is used for. It’s strange—I have the feeling that in showing him, I’m betraying my people… disclosing their secrets. Just in case, I keep my explanations intentionally vague.

And I don’t pull out the precious stones and gold nuggets. Whit specifically ordered that those always be hidden from outsiders. Though Whit is a traitor, his advice is sound. Frankie warned me not to trust Miles. All I need is City Boy to take off with the car, my money, and my gold, and I am well and truly stranded. I watch as he inspects a pouch of pounded hawthorn root, smelling it and wrinkling his nose.

“You’re carrying quite a lot of… stuff with you,” Miles says finally.

“I know,” I say. “Whit has a different use for all of these. I don’t really need most of them. I use my opal for almost everything except fire-Reading. But when Whit’s around, I use them just to make him happy.”

“Why would that make him happy?” Miles asks.

I squirm, not comfortable about what I’m going to say. “I Read better than Whit. He’s already taught me everything he can about Reading, and I’m picking up the Conjuring on my own. He’s the one who discovered the human connection with the Yara and has worked hard to find the different ways to connect for different reasons. I’m starting to feel like maybe he’s wrong, and that all these totems just complicate things, but I wouldn’t ever dare tell him that.” I fiddle with the rabbit feet and brush the soft amulet against my cheek.

“Whit is the one who came up with all this?” he asks.

“Yes, although a lot of what he found he says he gathered from traditions all over the world, especially eastern—like Buddhism and Hinduism. That was apparently all the rage in America back in the sixties. I read about Catholics using rosaries or icons to focus and Buddhists using prayer beads or mandalas or candles. I think these objects”—I gesture to the pile of stuff—“serve the same purpose for Whit. But I’ve begun to suspect that the objects themselves aren’t important. It seems more like the intent behind their use, the will of the user, makes the difference.”

“Then why do you still use the firepowder and your opal?” Miles asks.

“Just because I have my theory doesn’t mean I trust it to work,” I say. “Those are only things I’ve been thinking about. But my connection to the Yara seems to be getting weaker and weaker. I wouldn’t dare try to change the rules now.” I realize that I’ve been petting my opal comfortingly as I have been talking, and press it against my chest to reassure myself that it is still there, my link to the collective unconscious of the superorganism. The Yara.

I feel the need to change the subject and, reaching back into the pack, pull out the Gaia Movement book. Flipping to the back, I pull out the photo I’ve carried with me all the way from Denali. “These are my parents,” I say, handing it to him.

“Old picture?” he asks, peering at it.

“Before I was born,” I confirm.

As he studies it, I notice something different about him. There’s a softness that I haven’t seen before. And I realize it’s because he’s let his guard down. He actually looks kind.

Once again I see him through Nome’s eyes. “Checking him out,” she would say. He is handsome in a refined, pampered way, not earthy and rugged like Kenai. The lines of his face—his cheekbones, his chin, his aquiline nose—are as strong and defined as if they were carved from sculpting clay with a fettling knife.

He glances back and forth between me and the picture, comparing my face to those of my parents. And as his lake-green eyes flit over my features, something in me stirs. It feels like the tug in my chest that happened every time I stepped out of my yurt in the morning and witnessed the beauty of Mount Denali towering over our village. Even though I had grown up there and had seen the same view every day, I never failed to be overwhelmed by its splendor.

That’s it, I think. That’s the familiar tug inside me. Miles is beautiful. Without thinking, I raise my hand to my chest and press it with my palm like I did every morning, pushing the emotion back in so it wouldn’t spill out.

A leader must be strong. Must not let emotion affect action, I remind myself. I was soon to become clan Sage. I had responsibilities.

I have responsibilities. The realization startles me from my reverie. My goal is to find and save my people. I rise to my feet. I can’t allow myself to be sidetracked from the most important thing in my life.

The safety of my clan depends on my doing everything I can to find them. Not spending time chatting with a teenage boy who was kicked out of school for something even he admits was idiotic.

Miles takes my standing as a sign that the show-and-tell session is over and rises to his feet. He hands the photo back to me. “You look just like your mom,” he says.

“Thanks. Everyone says that we’d look like twins—if she hadn’t died when I was five,” I reply evenly, tucking the photo back into the book.

Miles hesitates, and then says, “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. I don’t actually remember her that well. My dad raised me with the help of the clan, and Whit’s been my mentor ever since Mom died.”

“So your dad must be what, in his fifties now? He looks pretty young here.” He points to the photo.

I laugh. “He’s fifty-eight. And he looks the same now as he did in the picture.”

“Except that he’s probably got gray hair and wrinkles,” Miles says.

“No. My dad’s one with the Yara. He hasn’t aged a day since this picture was taken,” I insist.

Miles narrows his eyes. “Yeah, right,” he says with a little twist of his lips. And just like that, his wall is back up and I can see that he hasn’t believed a word I have said. I’m supremely glad I stopped myself from going into more detail about the Yara. From trusting him with my beliefs.

“Are we going to have dinner tonight?” he asks, while it’s clear that his real question is, “When are you going to cook for me?”

“Not hungry,” I say, and then realize I’m famished. “If you want dinner, you cook. At least that’ll guarantee you won’t be forced to ingest lizard tonight.” I can’t help the frost in my voice.

He shakes his head sourly, as if he regrets having listened to me for the last half hour. Grumbling, he heads to the car to rifle through the groceries in the trunk.

It doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m lying. I know it’s true. Walking around in Seattle, seeing elderly and sick people, made me feel I had been living in a utopia in Alaska. After the Rite completes our union with the Yara, no one experiences aging. No one dies, unless it’s in an accident like my mother’s or the elder who was killed by the bear. Here in this outside world, everyone is disconnected from the Yara. They can become old, get sick, and die.

I wonder if our special relationship with the Yara has anything to do with the disappearance of my clan. If someone wants what we have. But how would they have even known about us? We’ve been in hiding for decades.

Whit, I think. Everything comes back to him. It’s still too hard to imagine that he engineered the capture of my clan. But maybe he talked about us when he was out in the world. Maybe he unwittingly betrayed us.