After the End(41)

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.



UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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30


MILES




“SO TELL ME, WHAT’S THE LAST READING OR CONJURING or whatever that you successfully did?” I take a bite of the crispy potato that I, yes I, Miles Blackwell, cooked wrapped in aluminum foil in the campfire. In fact, I cooked tonight’s whole meal.

All right, so the first can of beef stew exploded. How was I supposed to know you can’t cook food in the can? Luckily, we had a few backups, so I opened them and heated them up in a pan.

“Why does it matter?” Juneau asks, blowing on the piece of steaming beef speared on her fork. “You won’t believe a word of it anyway.”

“True,” I respond, holding my spoon up for emphasis. “However, in debate team, I was often tapped to play devil’s advocate. So I don’t mind suspending disbelief if it’s going to, one, get you out of your lethal mood and, two, let us leave this creepy waterfront. It’s starting to remind me of the Jason-infested lake in Friday the 13th.” I glance over the fire to see Juneau’s familiar expression of incomprehension, and my heart falls. “Why do I even try with the cultural references?” I moan.

“I don’t know, why do you?” she snaps. And then says, “Reading Poe’s emotions in the car yesterday.”

“That was the last time you felt like you read?” I clarify, making an effort to keep up with her conversation hopping.

“Yes, although it took me a long time to connect,” she states. “I’m used to it being immediate.”

“Then when was the last time it was immediate?” I ask.

“When I Read the fire at Mount Rainier.”

“Okay,” I say. “So what’s happened between then and now?”

She looks at me blankly and shakes her head.

I think. “How about Whit?” I ask. “When the bird didn’t come back to him, do you think he could have blocked you from connecting to the Yara?” I try my best not to let a sarcastic inflection creep into my words. If she thinks I’m making fun of her, she’ll clam right up and this conversation will be over. Along with my effort to soften her up so that we can leave.

She sets her bowl on the ground and shakes her head pensively. “That would be like blocking me from breathing the air around me. ‘No one can come between human beings and the Yara except the disbelief of humans themselves.’ That’s a direct quote from Whit,” I say.

I’m feeling sorry for her again. She really believes this crap. I have an overwhelming urge to hold her hand and tell her that it’s okay. That she’s been brainwashed, and the longer she’s away from the hippie cult the more normal she’ll get.

“Well then, maybe you’re blocking your own connection to the Yara,” I offer, feeling slightly proud of myself for making sense out of her cult gibberish. “Maybe now that you’re away from the influence of Whit and your dad, you’re beginning to doubt the things they taught you. Which would totally make sense, seeing that they lied about World War III and all.” I am only trying to draw logical conclusions from her completely illogical beliefs, but she looks like I just slapped her.

“Or maybe it’s not that at all,” I offer weakly. “Maybe the farther you get from your land, the less of a connection with the Yara you have?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head in a how-could-you-possibly-know-anything-about-it gesture. “The Yara isn’t just in Alaska. It’s everywhere.”