After the End

by Amy Plum

  “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.”

  “Those little cylinder things are called spark plugs,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says, mentally filing away the term. “This morning I pictured them drying out. So it should work.”

  I shake my head in wonder. “Should I pack up the tent or leave it?” I ask.

  “I’m hoping we’ll figure out your last prophecy today,” she says, spreading the ashes of the fire outward with her tennis shoe. “And if we do, we have to be ready to follow it immediately.”

  I begin pulling out the tent poles and folding them up. I can’t help smiling to myself as I do. This camping thing is definitely more fun with Juneau around.

  Ten minutes later, we’re in the car. I turn the key in the ignition, and the engine fires right up. I glance over at Juneau and lift an eyebrow, impressed.

  “Dry spark plugs,” Juneau says, looking proud of herself.

  I turn the car around and begin driving down the dirt path toward the main road. “So if you used water on the spark plugs, what did you use to fry my phone?” I ask.

  “Fire,” she replies. “It’s funny you use the word ‘fry,’ because that’s exactly what I pictured. I melted something inside.”

  “I am guessing you can’t reverse that,” I say, nodding to my iPhone under the dashboard.

  “Nope,” she confirms, tapping it with her fingernail. “As amusing as it is to watch you play with it, you might as well throw it out.”

  A half hour later we sit in a booth at Ruth’s Diner, eating stacks of buttermilk pancakes smothered in strawberries. Juneau’s actually drinking a coffee, although she’s transformed it into tan-colored sludge by adding almost a whole carton of half-and-half. She grimaces as she takes a swig.

  “You don’t have to drink coffee,” I say. “Some people drink tea for breakfast. I mean, no one I know, but . . .”

  “Trying to integrate,” she says, one eye narrowed and her nose wrinkled in distaste. But I can tell her mind isn’t on our breakfast beverages. Her thoughts are miles away. She sits there, zoned out for a moment, and then shakes her head.

  “I just can’t stop thinking about how the elders could lie to their own children for all those years.”

  “Instead of asking how, maybe you should ask why,” I say. “I imagine that your elders were good people, and if they lied to you, there must be a reason.”

  “I’ve gone over so many scenarios in my mind already,” she admits. “Their conviction about the harm that mankind is doing to the earth makes sense. I mean it’s well founded. But why not just move us out to the middle of nowhere and tell us that’s the reason? Why make up such an elaborate lie?”

  “They didn’t want you to leave,” I suggest. “If they kept you in that small area of the country, they must have had a motive for why they didn’t want you to come into contact with the rest of society. Like fear of persecution. Or a secret they felt they have to hide. And both of those could be reasons they would be kidnapped. Although kidnapping dozens of people is kind of extreme.”

  “The lies they told were pretty extreme too.”

  “True.”

  We both fall silent but something is nagging at me—pulling on the corner of my mind. “Okay,” I say finally. “Why don’t we start with something obvious? Like your ‘starburst,’ as you call it. Tell me more about that.”

  “All the children in our clan have them. They show our closeness to the Yara.”

  “But the elders are supposed to be near the Yara too, and they don’t have them, do they?”

  “No,” she answers. “Their explanation was that we were the first generation of children to be born with complete immersion in the Yara. Children of Gaia—of the earth. They were all practicing it when they arrived in Alaska. And we were brought up knowing nothing else.”

  “Does that actually make sense to you?” I say, as gently as I can. Because it sounds like a total crock of shit to me.

  “Now that I’m explaining it to you, and knowing that the elders lied about other things, no. It doesn’t make sense. We just trusted that explanation because . . . why would we question something they told us?”

  “If every single child born into the clan has the eye starburst, maybe your parents and their friends were all exposed to something in Alaska. Like radiation, or something in the water. But that’s still strange, because why would they lie to you about it? I would think they’d try to figure out what happened and call it what it is: a genetic mutation.” I hear the words come out of my mouth and then drop my fork and reach forward to grab her hand. “I mean, a nice genetic mutation, of course, not like you’re freakish or anything.”

  She smiles halfheartedly and puts her other hand on mine to show she’s not upset, before pulling her hands back to her lap.

  “Is there anything else that is different about you?” I ask, picking up a piece of crispy bacon and biting off a big, greasy chunk.

  “I’ve told you before, but you didn’t believe me.”

  “Well, tell me again. Before, I was an ass. Now . . . well, I’m still an ass, but an ass who is willing to learn.”

  “Miles, we don’t get sick. And w
e don’t age.”

  I draw in a sharp breath, inhaling a chunk of bacon down my windpipe, and it takes me a couple of minutes and a glass of water to cough it back up and start breathing normally again. “I remember you saying that before,” I finally squeak. “But at that point I thought you were schizophrenic. Could you repeat that?”

  “We don’t get sick. And we don’t age.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t age?”

  “We grow to adulthood and then just don’t get any older.”

  “And no disease?” I ask.

  “No. I mean, people break bones and that kind of thing. It’s not like we’re supernatural. But we don’t get ill.”

  I hesitate, and Juneau reads the question in my eyes. “My mother died when her sled broke through lake ice,” she says, and looks down at the table.

  I nod and wish I were sitting in the booth beside her so that I could hug her. From the lonely look on her face, I think she’d let me. “So I’m guessing the elders explained this immunity to disease and death by telling you it’s from being close to the Yara,” I say.

  She doesn’t answer.

  And suddenly everything falls together in my mind. The realization of what this is all about hits me like a head-on collision. “Juneau,” I say, and the urgency in my voice makes her look up at me. “I think we’re getting somewhere with the ‘Why were they kidnapped?’ question. Don’t get sick and don’t age? Who wouldn’t want some of that? My dad, for one, obviously.”

  “But it’s not a drug, like you said he was looking for. It’s a whole way of being. Of living.” Juneau looks upset. Like reality is becoming clear to her as well.

  “Living out in nature has nothing to do with health and aging,” I prod.

  “No? Eating well doesn’t make you live longer? Clean air and water and growing and killing your own food doesn’t make for better health?” Her voice is defensive, but her expression is pleading. She’s still holding on to the “truth” she’s been taught.

  “Of course it does,” I concede. “But Juneau, one generation of healthy living doesn’t wipe out disease, and definitely doesn’t make you immortal. That is where your logical thinking stops and brainwashing kicks in.”

  Her eyes get all glittery, and she looks like she’s about to cry. She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw. “I don’t feel like talking about it anymore.”

  “That’s okay. That’s fine,” I say, and fishing for something to change the subject, I say, “Hey. What about the riddle you hadn’t figured out? What was it anyway?”

  Juneau takes a deep breath and looks grateful for the switch in topic. “Your exact words were, ‘You will go to the place you always dreamed of as a child.’”

  “And?”

  She shakes her head and begins playing with her napkin, folding it over and over into smaller and smaller squares. “It’s impossible to figure out. I dreamed of going just about everywhere as a child. Except Salt Lake City, that is.”

  “Well, if under-the-influence me made the prophecy about the serpent and the lake, it must be a specific place here in Salt Lake City. Why don’t we drive around and see if anything jogs your memory?”

  “Good idea,” Juneau says, and plops her origami napkin in the middle of the lake of maple syrup on her plate before standing to leave.

  When we get to the car, she turns to me and in her solemn, grown-up way says, “Hey, Miles?”

  “Yes, Juneau?” I respond.

  “Thank you. For believing me. For wanting to help.” Her lips curve into a smile and her eyes crinkle, and I want to hug her so badly my arms ache. But she turns and opens her door. As she gets in she looks at me and says, “Just . . . thanks.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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  ..................................................................

  51

  JUNEAU

  WE’VE BEEN DRIVING IN CIRCLES AROUND THE city for the last hour. Miles keeps a sharp eye out for his father’s security team, while I look for any place I could have dreamt of going as a child. Nothing is ringing a bell for me. Finally, Miles suggests that we get out of the car and walk. “We could park over by the library that I went to yesterday,” he says.

  And it clicks. “The library!” I say. “The library’s the place I always dreamed of as a child.”

  “A library?” He looks astonished. “Out of everywhere in the world you could pick as a child, you wanted to go to a library.”

  “Where would you have picked?” I ask defensively.

  “Disneyland,” he admits.

  I laugh. “Miles, in my childhood Disneyland wasn’t an option. We had a hundred and thirty books in our clan. I know, because I read every single one of them at least five times. I practically memorized Moby-Dick. Reading was the only way I was allowed to escape. And I wanted more. In the EB, I mean in our encyclopedia, there was this illustration of the domed reading room at the British Library, with books going up the walls so high that they had ladders to reach them. That was the place I dreamed of going.”

  “We’re going to the British Library?” Miles looks worried.

  “No. Oracle-you brought us to Salt Lake City, not to London,” I remind him. “Whatever sign we’re looking for or Reading I’m supposed to do, it’s got to be in the Salt Lake City Library.”

  “You haven’t seen the public library,” Miles grumbles. “It’s huge. We could spend weeks looking through all the books and find nothing.”

  We pull up to a massive glass-paned building in the center of town. “See,” says Miles. “How are we going to find anything in that . . . monument if we don’t even know what we’re looking for?”

  “Well, hopefully we’ll get a nudge from the Yara,” I reply. “Otherwise, we could be looking around for a long time.”

  We walk into a huge atrium lined with shops and trees and topped with glass several stories up. Sunlight is streaming down, illuminating the entire interior of the building. Miles and I stand there gaping at the enormous, brightly lit foyer.

  “Let’s sit down,” I suggest.

  “Um, all right,” he says, looking overwhelmed.

  We walk over to a table under a potted tree, and the heat from the glass-filtered sun toasts my back as I take in the layout of the building. There are five floors, and it looks like the middle three hold most of the books. Winding staircases take people from one floor to the next. I look through the transparent walls of the ground floor toward the outside and see two big lake-like basins of water hugging the curve of the building.

  “That’s where we need to start,” I say, pointing to the water. Standing, I lead Miles through another doorway and into the building’s courtyard.

  The water ripples green, reflecting the glass and concrete of the building. “What are you going to do?” Miles asks with the slightest hint of discomfort.

  “I’m going to Read the water,” I answer. “It’s kind of like when I Read fire—I can get images from it, and it’s good for finding hidden things.”

  Miles nods. “I’m just going to take your word for it.”

  I reach automatically for my opal and then remember that I don’t need it. I loop the necklace over my head and hand it to Miles. “Could you hold this for me?” I ask.

  “Anything to feel helpful,” he says, and tucks it into his back pocket.

  The simple fact of separating myself from the opal has made me feel strong. It’s lit a flame of confidence in me, and I know without a doubt that I will be able to do this. I reach for the Yara, and my mind connects with it almost instantly, stunning me with its force.

  I breathe out and focus on the surface of the water . . . on the reflection of the floors and floors of books, and my attention is caught by a flash of orange. I stare directly at it, and as I do, it is as if a magnifying glass is being held above the water, and the orange grows and becomes a book in a bookcase, its thick spine shining like a beacon in the glistening water.

  Without
breaking my gaze, I lean down and feel around at my feet until I’m grasping a small, flat stone. Turning slightly to the side, I flick my wrist and skip the stone across the surface of the water. “One, two,” I count, and the stone veers off to the left before plunging into the depths of the basin.

  I turn to Miles, who is watching me expectantly. “Three skips,” I say. “It’s on the third floor, left-hand side. A big book with an orange spine. Let’s go!”

  Miles looks bemused but says, “You’re the boss!”

  Taking his hand, I dash into the library entry. We sprint up two flights of stairs, and head down the corridor toward the shelves on the left. “Don’t run,” an elderly man chastises as I speed past, and I slow to a fast walk.

  “It’s probably near the window,” I say, and lead him toward the glass wall. We begin going up and down the aisles, and then there it is, near the window reflected in the water three floors below.

  “Over here, Miles,” I say, but he’s already arrived and is running his finger down a row of books.

  “Okay,” I say, and read the tag on the shelf aloud. “‘Geography and Travel, North America, Southwest.’”

  “No way,” says Miles, and turns to me with this huge smile on his face. “The water led us to your Wild West!”

  I slip the orange book out from its spot. “Scenic Landscapes of New Mexico,” I read.

  Miles runs his finger along the other spines. “The whole shelf’s about New Mexico.” He looks up at me, incredulous, “Due southeast of Seattle. You were right!”

  I smile back. “Looks like we know where we’re headed!”

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  52

  JUNEAU

  MILES AND I HUDDLE OVER A U.S. ROAD MAP THAT we pull from a neighboring shelf, and study the roads between Salt Lake City and New Mexico.