After the End(69)

It is in pondering these things that sleep tugs me like a current and pulls me under.


I awake to an empty tent. Pushing the flap outward, I see Juneau sitting with her back toward me. In her lifted hand she holds a small rock. And just below it is an egg-sized stone, which is floating in midair about a foot off the ground. Though I feel like retreating—closing the flap and hiding out in the tent—I push through and stand.

Hearing me, Juneau turns. “Good morning,” she says, and then looks back to her floating rock as if it is nothing out of the ordinary. It slowly lowers until it’s an inch off the ground, and then drops the rest of the distance with a soft thud.

I look around at the campsite. Something is missing, and for a moment I don’t know what it is. “The bird,” I say finally. “Where’s Poe?”

“Gone,” she says. “He was gone when I got up at dawn and hasn’t come back.”

“Do you think he went to Whit?” I ask.

“Either that or he got bored hanging around with us,” she replies, but the way she presses her lips together shows she doesn’t believe he would voluntarily leave.

I lower myself to sit near her by the burned-out campfire. “So what’s the deal with the levitating rocks?”

“Practice,” she says.

“Why? Seems like after last night’s disappearing act, you definitely have your powers back.”

“They aren’t powers,” Juneau insists. “Reading is making my will known to the Yara in order to get an answer. Conjuring is actually affecting the nature of something: making Poe want to find you, camouflaging myself, breaking your phone. But before leaving Alaska, I had barely done any Conjuring. So I’m experimenting.”

“Whatever you say,” I respond. “But let me ask you . . . why didn’t you ever show me anything before, when you saw I didn’t believe you?”

“Because you don’t toy with the Yara. You only use it as a tool. For a purpose. At least, that’s what Whit taught me. He would have thought it was being frivolous to use it just to prove myself.”

“And your purpose in levitating a rock?” I ask skeptically.

“Maybe I don’t care what Whit thinks anymore,” she says, and there’s the cold look in her eye again.

“You’re going renegade?” I ask, daring to give a slight smile.

Juneau laughs. “Yes, actually. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Tallie and I talked about it—about finding truth by taking only what you believe from your upbringing, leaving behind what doesn’t work for you. So that’s what I’m doing with the Yara. Last night I saw that I don’t need the crutch of an amulet. That my link to the Yara is stronger without an object interfering with my connection. Now I just have to find out what I can actually do with the connection I have.”

“Can I try?” I ask. She hands me the rock, and I hold it above the smooth stone. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I was Conjuring the elements in the stones so that they became magnetic.”

I hand the rock back to her without trying. “Okay. I’m officially out-magicked.”

“Like I said, it’s a whole way of living, of thinking. I’m sure you could do this. It might just take a while.”

“And eating Pop-Tarts for breakfast helps you be one with nature,” I say, nodding to the empty foil wrappers near her feet.

“Like you said,” she laughs, “I’m going renegade.”

“Nothing against your balanced nutrition plan, but do you think we could go into town to get a real breakfast?”

Juneau stands. “Tallie and I passed a place on the way up here last night.”

“Um, I think we’re both forgetting something important,” I say, rising and brushing leaves off the back of my jeans. “The car. Fried by Invisigirl.”

“I fixed it,” she says. “At least, I think I did. You might as well try it out.”

“What’d you do?” I ask, picturing her using her hands as jumper cables or performing some kind of automotive healing ritual.

“That’s a good question. I don’t understand the mechanics of a car. The connection through the Yara is a connection to nature’s collective unconscious. I considered what force of nature could affect a car’s engine, but not ruin it permanently, and decided I’d try humidity. I thought ‘Make something important wet,’ and the image that popped into my mind was these little cylinders, half-white, half-silver. I could see that electricity or sparks come off one end of them to help make the car go. So last night I asked the Yara to pull all the water in the surrounding air to their surface, and they stopped working.”