After the End

45 JUNEAU

BY NIGHTTIME I’M DESPERATE TO LEAVE. BEING cut off from all communication with my clan makes me feel so out of control I can barely sit still.

Tallie helps me limp outside, draws a circle on the ground with a stick, and tells me to throw Beauregard’s bones while thinking about my father. This reminds me so much of contacting the Yara that it makes me wonder once again if there is more than one way—Whit’s way—to Read and Conjure. And that Tallie’s just using a different method and vocabulary to get the same results from the same source. Although the thought is destabilizing, it also appeals to me. I take the dried old bones in both hands and toss them inside the circle.

Tallie squats down and studies them. She runs her finger along a series of small bones lying perpendicular to one another. “I don’t know why, Juneau, but it looks like your quest ends here, right now, at my house.”

“What?” I ask, aghast.

“You’ve deviated from the path you’re supposed to take, here.” She points to a bone in the series. “This one is off-kilter, and if you don’t put it straight, you won’t go any further.”

She looks at me. “If you had to divide your journey into major steps, maybe into important Readings, how would it go?”

I think. “Well, first I fire-Read and saw Whit near the ocean. Then, once in Anchorage, my oracle directed me to Seattle. Which is where this old man told me how to find Miles, and said I had to be honest with him, but not to trust him. And… oh.”

“What?” Tallie asks, hand on her hip.

“He said that Miles was the one to take me far,” I say in a small voice.

“Looks like he hasn’t taken you far enough,” she says. “You’re going to have to tuck your tail and go find him. Convince him to keep going with you.”

“But his dad is out to get me for some strange reason.” Something strikes me for the first time. “What if Miles’s dad is actually working with Whit and his men? What if Miles’s dad is the one who kidnapped my clan?”

Tallie shrugs. “Whatever the case, it looks like you’ve got your work cut out. You have to, one, find the boy; two, convince him to forgive you for drugging him and stealing his car; and three, persuade him not to hand you over to his dad.”

I gape at her. “But without my ability to Read, how in the world am I supposed to find him?”

“Well, that’ll be a good incentive to get your abilities back. If Whit sent that bird to find you, do you think you could send it to find Miles?” she asks.

I nod. “I’ve tried that before, with a much smaller distance, and it worked.”

“Well then, that’s your next step. As soon as you’re ready, you let me know. I can hike over to the general store. Mikey over there’ll let me borrow his pickup truck, and I can get within a half-mile of here if I go back-road. Then I’ll take you to wherever the bird tells you to go. How’s that?”

“I’ll do my best” is all I say. Although the last twenty-four hours with Tallie have raised my spirits, I’m still awash in a sea of doubt. What we talked about this afternoon was like a wake-up call. I know there is some truth in what I’ve been taught. But it’s going to take time to sift through it all and decide what I truly believe. What makes sense. And I don’t have time to spare.

As if reading my mind, Tallie says, “If you’re anything like me, it’s going to take years to sort everything out in your head.” She drapes an arm around my shoulders. “But one thing at a time. Just focus right now on the thing you need. We’ll try to find your Miles tomorrow.”

Tallie gathers up the bones and places them gently back into their pouch. And then, leaving me outside with Poe on his special leash, she goes inside. Through a cabin window, I see her settle into the armchair with a book.

She knows what she believes and has built a life around it. I’m jealous of the simplicity of the path she’s chosen and, for a second, wish I was back in our village in Alaska, where the only goal was survival, and I was sure of what I believed. I almost wouldn’t mind being lied to… if I never discovered the lie in the first place. Live oblivious of the deception.

Life is easier in black and white. It’s the ambiguity of a world defined in grays that has stripped me of my confidence and left me powerless.