Nothing happens, and a thread of worry pulls tight in my chest. Like I said to Miles, besides Reading my oracle, I couldn’t Read a thing in Seattle. And I don’t know if it had anything to do with being in a city. Thankfully, I was able to perform that minor Conjure and make fire in his cell phone. But it feels like something is changing, either in me, or in my connection to the Yara.
I actually started feeling the change during those tortuous five days on the boat to Seattle. A black fog of doubt settling over everything I know. If the elders lied about the war, could the Yara just be another of their fictions? But something even deeper in me reassures me that the Yara exists. It’s just my connection to it that feels like it is slipping away.
I banish those thoughts from my mind and concentrate on the fire. It takes a while, but finally an image appears. It’s exactly as I saw it in the vision: an arid landscape with cacti in the foreground and rock formations in the distance. Although it is nighttime, the moon glows brightly, illuminating the scene.
I see a group of small buildings made of clay or dirt. I remember seeing something similar in the EB—in an article on Native Americans—and try to remember in which part of America they were located. Surrounding the group of buildings is a high fence topped with barbed wire. It stretches into the distance before hitting a corner and continuing on as far as I can see in another direction. A perimeter fence. My people are being kept in captivity.
As I watch, my father emerges from one of the huts, arms wrapped around himself. He walks a little ways, and then stops and looks up at the moon. His expression is wistful. Worried. I know he’s thinking about me. I wonder if the reason he came out was because he somehow felt me Read him.
I have been thinking about my father and the whole clan so much over the last couple of weeks that, now that I see him, I am bombarded with a volley of conflicting feelings. One part of me wants to throw myself on him and hug him tight and not let go.
Another part wants to scream. To shake him. To ask why he lied to me. Why, since Whit began training me when I was five, the clan Sage perpetuated the lies. Why the adults misled the children. Why they brainwashed us to think that an outside world didn’t exist and to hide like cornered rabbits from a danger that was never there. Because of this conspiracy of lies kept by the adults—the family—I always trusted, my whole life has been a farce.
My eyes sting, and I brush away an angry tear. I fumble around in the pack until my fingers find my fire opal. Pulling it out, I hold it in my palm and grind it against the ground. “Dad,” I say. Nothing. He is too far away for me to Read his emotions. Or maybe I’m just too furious to connect to the Yara.
I wonder for the hundredth time how much of what I learned was part of the web of lies my father and the other clan elders spun around us, and how much was true. Their betrayal still hurts so fiercely that it burns a hole in my chest, but at least I know I still have the Yara. Other than that, I’m not sure what I believe anymore. I am unanchored. Adrift in this new world.
I turn my focus back to my father, whose figure stands immobile in the desert scene. “I’m okay, Dad,” I say, although I know he can’t hear me. I swallow the lump in my throat. “And I’m coming to get you.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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22
MILES
SHE TALKS IN HER SLEEP. SHE MENTIONS A COUPLE of writers—Beckett and Neruda—and some other names I don’t recognize, just kind of mumbling like people do in their sleep. She talks about “brigands,” like she’s afraid of them. Then she says something about her dad, and in a tortured voice she moans, “Why?”
And she looks so vulnerable—so normal—for a second, despite her tragic haircut, that I actually feel like hugging her. Telling her things will be okay, even though I don’t know exactly what’s going on with her.
And then I remember that she is not only the top-priority focus of my father’s manhunt but is dangerous and most likely mentally unstable. I stay on my side of the tent.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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23
JUNEAU
MY SLEEP IS PLAGUED BY NIGHTMARES. EVERY night the same image appears: brigands descending on my clan’s encampment. Dressed in torn leather and blood-matted furs, their eyes glowing green with radiation. Using an assortment of handmade weapons as well as high-tech guns, they swarm my village, killing first the dogs, who rush out to protect us, and then my clan. I stand there in the midst of the slaughter, paralyzed. Unable to react. And then I hear my father’s voice calling to me: “Use the Yara, Juneau. Use your gifts.”