After the End (16 page)
“Did it work?” she asks. I shake my head.
She sighs, and then gets up and grabs me a couch pillow to put under my foot. Digging through a cupboard, she takes out a plastic-lined box and scoops something out. “Clay from the riverbed,” she says, and comes back to sprawl beside me in front of the fire. “I think better when my hands are working.” She rolls it around between her palms.
“So when you were telling me your life story there, you ended up with your theory that you’ve lost your powers because you’ve lost faith in the Yara. But since you’ve been explaining to me how it all functions, I’ve noticed just how much you do seem to believe in it. Your face kind of lights up when you talk about it.
“However, with all that postapocalyptic crap that your elders were feeding you and the other kids, I don’t blame you for doubting everything you ever learned. But you can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, as they say. This is an important time for you, Juneau. You have other people to think about. You have a whole clan that’s depending on you. So you owe them to think a little bit harder about this.”
The clay is now squished into an oblong shape, and her thumbs are kneading it like she’s giving it a massage. “What I’ve just heard is that this one man came up with the whole idea of the Yara—”
“Whit based it on the Gaia philosophy,” I interject.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she says, and pats the top of the clay with the ball of her hand with little slapping noises until it’s flat. “He gathered the info. He made sense out of it. He mined other belief systems for what would go with it. And sounds like he did a pretty good job synthesizing it all to make it something that is a powerful tool for you and your people. But that doesn’t mean he knows everything.”
I consider what she’s said. “You know what I’ve been thinking about, Tallie? How all the totems Whit uses for Reading and Conjuring, even though he claims they’re all necessary, they seem to detract from the pure connection between me and the Yara. Why do I have to go through something—whether a stone or the rabbits’ feet? I should be able to go directly to the Yara to ask what I want. All the bells and whistles might be extraneous.”
“Doubt everything, Juneau. Doubt everything at least once. What you decide to keep, you’ll be able to be confident of. And what you decide to ditch, you will replace with what your instincts tell you is true. You’ve been living in a crystal tower that just had the foundations knocked out from under it. Which sucks. But now it’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to wallow around in the wreckage or rebuild something sturdier. Nothing better than making something with your own hands,” she says, gesturing around at the house she built. “Or, in your case, with your own mind.”
She smiles at me. “Now that I’m done with my lecture, here is your reward for listening.” She hands me the ball of clay, and suddenly I’m looking at a miniature version of myself. High cheekbones, full-moon eyes, and spiky hair made by pinching the clay dozens of times. She’s even made the starburst in my right eye.
“Hey, you’re really good,” I say.
She shrugs but looks pleased. “When I’m not building log cabins, I’m an amateur sculptor.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“No, thank you,” she responds. “I think we just now fulfilled Beauregard’s prophecy. You taught me something, or attempted to. . . . I’m going to keep working on the fire-Reading thing until I make it work. And in exchange, I gave you something to mull over, drawn from my own hard-earned life experience. I’d say we’re pretty even.”
I AWAKE TO THE SOUND OF THE CLEANING LADY unlocking my door. “Checkout was a half hour ago,” she says, and stands there with her fist on her hip like she’s kicking me out.
“Uh, could I have five minutes to get up and get dressed?” I ask. She makes a puffing noise and backs out, but leaves the door cracked open. I glance over at the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock on the bedside table. Eleven thirty a.m. My first night in what feels like forever in a real bed instead of on the hard ground, and I want to sleep all day.
And then I remember why I’m here and leap out of bed, pulling yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt on and running out to the car. I was so tired last night I didn’t even bother to bring my suitcase in with me.
Okay, Miles, think. Redding and Portman will already be in Salt Lake City by now. Whit and his men . . . who knows where they are? And Juneau? She could be anywhere between that service station and Salt Lake City. It’s useless to try to search for her in between, when I know that the city is her goal. She’ll turn up there sooner or later.
I pop the trunk, fish out the cereal and a bottle of cranberry juice. Juneau had never seen it before, so of course she had to buy a six-pack, and I remember her excitement with a smile. For the next three hours I eat dry Cap’n Crunch out of the box and take swigs of Ocean Spray (which do not mix well) as I drive to Salt Lake City.
But once I’m in the city, I have no clue of where to even start looking for her. I try to think like she does. She had talked about that prophecy of the serpent and the city by the undrinkable water and seemed to think that she would find the next piece of the puzzle once she arrived. But what would she look for? Where would she go to find a sign?
I drive around the downtown area, looking for anything that catches my eye. Temple Square. Capitol Hill. The shopping district. All I can think is that modernity freaks her out, so she would probably head to a park or the lakefront. My stomach’s growling, so I park the car and go into a sandwich shop and order some food. I’ll eat next to the waterfront. When I give the cashier my credit card, it comes back as declined.
“Try it again,” I say, and end up having to pay with cash. I’ve got twenty bucks left in my wallet, so I head to an ATM. It eats my card. When I go into the bank, the teller tells me that my card has been reported as stolen. And then I know.
“What the hell, Dad!” I yell into the pay phone.
“Watch your language, young man,” he growls. “I told you to come directly home. What are you doing in Salt Lake City?”
“How do you even know where I am?” I yell.
“My assistant, Sam, is tracking your card use.”
“He reported it as stolen!”
“I’ll have him rectify that as soon as you reassure me that you are on your way to L.A. and I will see you here tomorrow.”
“I’m not coming home. I’m staying here until I find the girl.”
“If you do, Miles Blackwell, you can forget about Yale. I have my men on this, and I don’t want you messing it up.”
“But, Dad,” I begin. The phone line clicks as my dad hangs up.
I head back to the car, flipping through my wallet as I walk. Twenty bucks to my name and my dad’s Shell card, which can only buy me gas. I’m not leaving. I’m not going home, but where am I going to stay? I’m not Juneau—I can’t survive off the land. What am I going to do until I find her—snare pigeons with my phone charger and cook them over a campfire in the public park?
I press the button to unlock my car, accidentally popping the trunk open. Walking around to slam it shut, I see something I had completely forgotten was back there: the tent and camping supplies.
I glance around at the stunning mountain scenery surrounding the city and smile. I can’t afford a hotel room, but I can sure as hell camp.
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 farther.”
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 a special security leash she devised, 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.
I SPEND THE REST OF THAT DAY AND ALL THE next wandering around Salt Lake City. Anytime I’m not scanning the city’s most popular spots for her, I’m in the library, using their computers to research the stories she told me.
It turns out that her Whittier Graves made headlines in the ’70s. He was part of a group of scientists who were deeply involved in the Gaia Movement. They were all about the protection of the planet: preserving endangered species, curbing climate change, disarming nuclear weapons, and the like. Several articles refer to the fact that Whit and some colleagues disappeared during a research trip in South America. And that’s it. After 1984 there is no more mention of him.
I bet he planted the rumor about South America before going to Alaska just to throw everyone off their trail. A bunch of tree-hugging hippies seceding from society doesn’t seem so far out. But the whole WWIII thing sounds more like those cults who move to another country and drink poisoned Kool-Aid. It’s all about mind control. Brainwashing. Juneau’s story is making more and more sense to me.
I SPEND THAT NIGHT RESTING MY ANKLE AND thinking about things. Showing Tallie all the amulets and totems we use for Reading and Conjuring had sparked something in my mind. As had Tallie’s advice to doubt everything and think for myself.
I think that Whit got some things wrong. I don’t need a crutch to Read or Conjure. I don’t need something material to link me with the Yara. I am a living being who is close to the Yara—I should be able to access it directly. Myself. And for once, I take my opal necklace off when I sleep. Okay, it was within reaching distance of me on the floor, but I felt it was a step. I was going to be stronger, and that strength would come from me.
The next morning when I awake, Tallie is gone. Breakfast is laid out on the table, with a note next to it saying, “Off to find wheels.” I eat and dress, then wait outside with Poe until we see a red pickup truck pull up to the clearing at the bottom of the mountain in the distance.
I scramble out the door, and though I’m trying to be careful with my ankle, practically run down the side of the mountain. Tallie meets me halfway. She eyes my sack, which has been packed since the previous night, and then my face, red with exertion and drawn with my impatience to get started.
She plants her fists on her hips. “You sure you don’t want to hang out just a few more days?”
“Um, I, uh . . . ,” I start saying before I realize that she’s making fun of me. “I’m one hundred percent sure, even though you’ve been the best host.”
“Then let’s go,” says Tallie, taking my pack from me and swinging it into the back of the truck. “Let’s get you back on your path.”
