After the End(12)

She turns and catches my gaze but, after casting a curious glance at me and the dogs, ignores us as she goes along her way. I spy a fenced-off area of grass and trees, make a beeline for it, and take refuge on a bench. I sit there with the dogs as the city comes alive. Until I can watch people come and go without my heart racing.

A man sits down on a bench across from me, sets down a steaming white cup next to him, and pulls out a newspaper. I tell the dogs to stay and walk over. He looks at me, and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. I can tell I look odd to him. No one else I’ve seen is dressed in furs and skins. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“Where are we?”

He looks around us and back at me. “In a park,” he says, shrugging.

“I know we’re in a park,” I say, “but what city is this?”

“Anchorage,” he responds. He narrows his eyes like he thinks it’s a trick question, and then his expression changes to concern. “Are you lost?” he asks.

“No,” I say, and whistle for the dogs, who flank me in seconds flat. We begin to leave the park, but I hesitate. When I turn back around, I see the man is still watching me, and I have to ask.

“Tell me—how did this city escape the war?”

“What war?” he asks, intrigued.

“World War III. The Last War. The War of 1984,” I reply, identifying it in every way I know.

He opens his mouth and out spill the words that, since last night, I have suspected were true. “There hasn’t been a World War III,” he says, “knock on wood,” and he raps his knuckle against the park bench.

I feel a wave of nausea wash over me. I have to sit down. My face and palms feel clammy, and I think I’m going to throw up. I return to my park bench and put my head between my knees until the nausea passes. I see the man leave, throwing a worried look my way before pushing through the metal gate and disappearing. I try to reason through what he told me.

There was no war. I still can’t believe we were so close to this city, yet we knew nothing. How could my father and the other elders have been so mistaken?

There’s no way they could know what happened, I realize. They’ve been isolating themselves for thirty years.

I push these thoughts aside. I have to find my clan. Even if their kidnappers aren’t brigands, they took my people and killed our animals. And I still have to find Whit. I need a clear sign to know what to do.

And suddenly the right person comes along. Someone whose thoughts are free of the restrictions of reality. Whose mind is open enough to access the collective unconscious shared by all humans past, present, and future.

She is an old woman dressed in a coat of rags. She pushes her way through the iron gate, dragging behind her a metal cart piled high with strange objects: old shoes, stacks of paper, aluminum cans laced on a string that clatter as they drag behind her.

She crosses the park and, seeing me, approaches. Beckett and Neruda glue themselves to either leg but don’t growl. She stops at the other end of my bench and slowly lowers herself to sit. Stowing her cart next to her, she pats it lovingly, like it is a baby in a carriage instead of a mountain of garbage. Then, turning, she looks vaguely in my direction. Her expression is glazed-over. Opaque.

“The men—they put a movie camera inside my television and watched everything I did,” she says matter-of-factly. “They even put a camera in my shower.”

I ignore her disheveled appearance and paranoid speech and see her for what she is. A gift from the Yara. “Can I hold your hand?” I ask. She hesitates, and suspicion flashes across her face. Leaning forward, she holds my gaze in hers. Then, finding what she is looking for, she gives a satisfied nod and pulls her right glove off. Removing my mittens, I take her gnarled, chapped hand in my own and hold my opal in the other.

“Thank you,” I say, “for being my connection to the Yara. I need to ask you some questions. Very important questions. Are you willing to answer them for me?”

“Of course, dear.” The woman’s eyes begin to look more focused, and a serene expression settles upon her face.

“I am looking for a friend. His name is Whittier Graves. I am picturing him in my mind right now. Can you see him?”

The old lady closes her eyes abruptly and then, opening them slowly, focuses on a spot in midair to the left of my head. “I see your friend,” she says.

“Where is he?”

“He is on a boat. Leaving our harbor.” She lifts her free hand and gives a distracted wave toward the invisible boat floating over my shoulder.

“What!” I exclaim, and then quickly control my emotions before I pass the shock on to my oracle. “When did he get on the boat?” I ask, my heart pounding painfully, but my voice as steady as I can manage.