After the End(88)

“You have to swallow this,” I say, and scoop the blood mixture into his mouth. I pick up the canteen of water and pour it down his throat, washing the concoction down with it. He sputters and coughs, but keeps the powder and liquid down.

“Miles Blackwell, do you hear me?” I say.

“Yes,” Miles responds.

“Do you agree to become one with the Yara? To dedicate your life to the earth and the force that binds every living thing to one another?”

“Juneau,” breathes Miles. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Miles, do you agree to trade your life of eighty years for one of many hundred?”

Miles pries one eye open and lets it rest on me. He speaks, but his voice has no force behind it, and I have to lean down to hear him. “If I don’t, do I die?” he breathes.

I touch my hand to his chest, and though my body is numb and my spirit calm from the trance, I feel my eyes cloud with tears. “You might die anyway. But this is my best try,” I confess.

“Then I do, Juneau,” he says, and his voice is a mere whisper.

I position myself near his head. With my other hand I begin combing his wavy hair with my fingers as I wait for the mixture to take effect—for the death-sleep to come. Miles’s breaths become increasingly shallower until he breathes his last breath and becomes still. Tears flood my eyes as I lean over and kiss his still-warm lips. And then I go to sit in the open door of the shack.

I close my eyes as my spirit disconnects from the Yara. I feel myself emerge from the otherworldly haze of my trance. And as I do, the weight of the decision I just made presses down on me, crippling me with fear. What have I done?

The only thing you could do, I tell myself. I open my eyes and look out upon the landscape before me—the flat, barren wasteland with rolling red hills far in the distance.

Besides the desert animals, I am the only living, breathing thing for miles around. I sit in the doorway and wait.