After the End Read online

  “A word of advice, girlie,” the man calls as I open the door and gulp in the frosty outdoor air. I glance back at him, and his face has changed. He got what he wanted and his greed is satisfied, so he is happy. “Take out that weird contact lens, cut the hair, and lose the dogs.”

  I nod at him and let Beckett and Neruda run outside. “And if I were you,” he yells, as I shut the door behind me, “I would get as far as you can—as fast as you can—out of town.”

  I decide to take his advice. At least what I understood of it. Whit’s captors are sure to be watching the harbor, so it will be my last stop. Before that, I have a lot to do.

  The woman in Beulah’s Hair Emporium takes one look at the huskies and calls, “It’s cold outside, so the dogs can come in, but they have to stay by the door. We have sanitation regulations, you know.”

  I flick my finger, and they immediately drop to lie next to each other under a potted tree. “Wow, you’ve got yourself some obedient dogs there,” Beulah (I suppose) says, and instructing me to hang my coat on a rack, leads me to a chair. “What would you like, dear?”

  I point to one of the giant hairstyle photos hanging on the wall.

  Beulah gapes at me. “Oh, honey, you can’t mean that. You have such beautiful long hair.” I stare back at her, determined.

  A half hour later the dogs and I leave. My hair looks just like the boy’s in the picture.

  On the same street as Beulah’s Hair Emporium is a large, bright clothes store called the Gap. I leave the dogs at the door and follow the MEN’S DEPARTMENT signs. The artificial light and mirrors make me dizzy, but I deep-breathe and walk downstairs to an underground floor. The stale air makes it feel like a spot-lit tomb.

  I leave twenty minutes later wearing all-new clothes, a baseball cap, and a black parka. My new synthetic backpack bulges with five shirts, a red “hoodie,” three sweaters, and three pairs of jeans. After buying some hiking boots at a shop next door, I drape my bulky fur parka and hand-stitched leather rucksack over a garbage can outside and hope that someone like the old lady in the park will find it.

  Then the dogs and I head to our final destination together.

  “These are beautiful huskies. Can’t say I’ve seen their exact markings anywhere on the sled-dog circuits. Where did you buy them?”

  The woman ruffles Beckett’s fur with her fingers and peers up from where she crouches on one knee in front of him.

  “My family’s been raising them for a few generations.”

  “What’s your family’s name?”

  “Will you take care of my dogs for me?” I cross my arms over my chest. My heart hurts so much it feels like my brain is bleeding.

  She stands. “Our boarding fees are five hundred dollars per month for one dog. For two it’s nine hundred. I take care of these dogs like they’re my own kids.”

  “That’s what the woman at Beulah’s said.” My voice cracks. I can tell that Beckett and Neruda like her and, from that alone, I know she can be trusted.

  “How long do you plan on leaving them?” she asks, her tone softening as she sees my emotion.

  I clear my throat. I won’t cry in front of this stranger. “I don’t know. But I will be back for them.” I dig through my backpack, count the money quickly, and place it in her hand. “Here’s three thousand dollars.”

  “That’s a lot of cash to be carrying . . . ,” the woman begins to say, and then gasps when she sees what I place in her hand on top of the money.

  “And that’s insurance,” I continue. “In case I don’t make it back in three months. I want to know that these dogs will be well cared for and stay with you for the rest of their lives.”

  “I can’t take that!” The woman’s face is white with shock.

  “Trade it for cash if the money runs out. Otherwise, you can return it to me when I come back for the dogs.” I sink to my knees between Beckett and Neruda and pull their furry heads toward me. I can’t stop the tears now; they are streaming down my face. “Good-bye, friends,” I whisper.

  And then, standing, I turn and walk out of the kennel, leaving its astonished director holding a gold nugget more than double the size of what I sold to the gold dealer.

  * * *

  The harbor’s ticket office is a small boxlike building with windows that look like mirrors from the outside but that are see-through on the inside. Above a counter hangs a board listing destinations, dates, and times. For the last few hours I have pushed from my mind every thought but those that facilitate my departure. But now, seeing three dozen cities listed on the departures board, my shock returns in full force. All those cities that we thought were destroyed in the war still exist.

  I imagine how astonished my father must have been a few days ago when he discovered that the war never happened. All the protective measures we took to avoid brigands were in vain. Our isolationist mentality kept us from discovering that an outside world still existed.

  The flame in my chest burns brighter. Once I’m reunited with my clan, we will discover together what’s actually happened to the world during the last three decades. But right now I have to find them.

  I scan the names of the cities as I consider which could possibly be the answer to my oracle’s cryptic clue, “You must go to your source.” And then I see it. Seattle. That’s where my parents came from. Where they lived before I was born. It is my source, in a manner of speaking. And there’s a boat leaving for the city today.

  “How much is a ticket to Seattle?” I ask the teenage boy behind the counter. I keep my eyes lowered. The startled reactions of the salespeople and the woman at the kennels when they saw me up close have confirmed to me that my starburst is not a common occurrence in the outside world. No one I’ve come across has eyes like mine, and Whit’s captors even used it to describe me.

  “Round-trip that’ll be one thousand ninety-four dollars,” the boy says, “two thousand if you want a private cabin.”

  “I only need to go one way,” I say, digging into my pack for money. “How long does it take?”

  “Four days, eight hours,” he responds. “When do you want to leave?”

  “Today.”

  “You’re in luck. We have a boat embarking in a half hour,” he says, pointing to a shiny blue-and-white ship at the far end of the harbor. A thrill passes through me as I realize that I will actually be riding on a boat. A few days ago, I wouldn’t have ever expected to see one. I feel like I’m in a dream—like I’ve suddenly been popped into some sort of strange new world.

  A long line of people pull rolling suitcases up the boat’s lowered gangplank. I hoist my pack onto my back and shove the ticket the boy gives me into my parka pocket. “Have a good trip,” he says in a voice that indicates he couldn’t care less whether my trip is good or not.

  I am three steps away from the ticket office when I see the men. They are dressed the same as the ones who held Whit in the fire-Reading vision. And they are seated yards away from the loading ferry.

  Slowly, I back up behind the edge of the ticket office, careful not to draw their attention. Once I’m out of sight, I poke my head out to watch them and am paralyzed by fear. They are checking out every passenger who gets on the boat. Carefully.

  I reach automatically for my dogs. It takes a second for me to remember that I no longer have Beckett and Neruda for protection, and at that thought I’m struck breathless by grief. They couldn’t help against these men anyway, I tell myself, remembering the bloody masses of fur throughout our village. I suck the cold air into my lungs and accept the fact that from now on, I am truly on my own.

  I peer into the mirrored window beside me. I look like an adolescent boy. It’s only when I speak that I give myself away. Even so, I wonder how quickly it will take these men to figure out that the adolescent boy boarding the ferry by himself is actually the girl they’re searching for. Not long, I think.

  I remove the baseball cap and run my fingers through my spiky hair. It is short—really short—but it’s still b
lack. And it’s not like I was able to change my height—I’m still five foot five and fine-boned. From where they’re sitting, they’ll be too far away to notice my eyes. But if they come within a few feet of me, they’re sure to see the starburst.

  My neck muscles tense as my fear is replaced with anger. At myself. For being naive enough to believe that I could fool my pursuers with these weak attempts at a transformation.

  Transformation. The word plants a seed of inspiration in my mind, which springs into a fully formed idea. I plunge my hand into the backpack and rummage around until my fingers touch a soft lump of fur. I pull it from the pack to see Whit’s rabbits’-feet amulet: one foot white and another brown, bound together by a thin copper wire. The snowshoe hare in its winter and summer incarnations. I think back to the day when he taught me about transformation.

  “An animal that changes color with the season. Nature’s metamorphosis. Can you get any more magical than that?” Whit said as he instructed me to bind the two feet together. “Camouflage is one of nature’s most crafty defenses,” he continued. “A temporary form of metamorphosis. Watch what the Yara allows, Juneau.” And taking the rabbit feet between his fingers he suddenly—and startlingly—changed color. His skin turned a dark earthen color like the yurt around him, and his hair transformed from black to chestnut brown. Even his hazel eyes morphed into a deep chocolate color. Then, setting the furry amulet down on the table, he instantly changed back.

  “This is the amulet I use when I camouflage the yurts from brigands. You’ll need to know how. Try it,” he said, handing me the amulet, and showed me how to use it by visualizing the rabbit’s seasonal transformation.

  That is the only Conjuring I have done by myself. Whit demonstrated things for me but was waiting until I turned twenty and underwent the Rite before letting me Conjure on my own.

  Whit had explained that because Conjuring actually has an effect on nature, unlike Reading, it shouldn’t be used lightly.

  But now I have no choice. I have to try. I hold the furry amulet between my fingers and open myself to the Yara. As usual, I feel the tingling the second my mind taps into the stream of nature’s consciousness, and begin picturing a snowshoe hare in summer with rusty brown fur and mahogany eyes.

  I speed time up, flashing through a few months, and watch the animal forage for soft flower buds in the browning tundra grasses. I watch its fur begin its transformation just before winter’s first snowfall, and soon its pelt is pure white, except for the black tufts tipping its ears.

  I switch my focus to my image in the mirrored glass and watch, astonished, as my body begins to take on the colors of the snowy harbor around me. My suntanned skin fades to milky white. My black hair transforms to a pearl-white blond. And as I lean toward the mirror I see that my eyes match those of the rabbit whose feet I hold: dark brown, almost black. No starburst in sight.

  Size, I think. Make me bigger. Taller. But my shape in the reflection stays the same. This is the extent of the Conjuring. Now I must make it last long enough to get me safely past the men and into the boat.

  I swing the pack onto my back and stride purposefully toward the boat, adding what I imagine to be a boyish gait to my steps. My stomach twists itself in knots as I near the men, but I keep my gaze steadfastly on the ferry and try to ignore them.

  I near the base of the gangplank. My palm has coated the rabbits’ feet in sweat, and my heart hammers painfully in my chest. I feel the men’s eyes on me, studying my face as I wait my turn behind an elderly couple wearing fur-lined cowboy hats. My throat clenches as I see one of the men get up and walk toward me until he stands only a couple of feet away.

  I can’t help myself: I look his way. As soon as his eyes meet mine, the aggressive hunch of his shoulders relaxes. He crosses his arms and nods at me, and then turns to go back to his partner. I am so numb with fear that I can barely move forward when the couple in front of me steps onto the boat. But I manage to hand my ticket to the woman at the door, and climbing into the artificially lit room beyond, I slump onto the first bench I see. Dropping the amulet, I feel my rabbit-invoked disguise disappear, and I become myself again.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  14

  MILES

  I GET HOME TO FIND AN EMPTY HOUSE. THERE’S A note on the kitchen counter.

  Miles, I’ve got a family emergency. Left you a casserole for tonight and will stop by tomorrow to check on you. Give me a call if you need anything.

  Mrs. Kirby

  I finally have a weekend alone . . . no, make that a long weekend, since on Monday the office is closed for a holiday. Three days to myself. I load my plate with chicken casserole and settle in front of the TV. I notice a light on in Dad’s office and go to turn it off, only to see that it’s the glow from his computer screen. When I touch the mouse, his screen saver disappears to show his open email account. Several unread messages sit in his in-box, and the subject of the last one is Re: the girl.

  I click on it and read the two-sentence message it holds. Source says she’s taken a boat from Anchorage to Seattle. Sending men there.

  I mark it as unread so Dad won’t know I saw it. It’ll come up on his cell phone anyway.

  I turn the screen off and go back to the couch. And sit motionless for about five minutes. Because an idea’s forming in my head that’s too crazy to entertain. But maybe Dad won’t find out. If I keep checking in with Mrs. Kirby by phone, I could be gone for the whole weekend, and back to work on Tuesday without anyone knowing.

  This could actually work. I mean, they’re looking for a teenage girl. Who better to find her than another teenager?

  And then my rational mind kicks in. I check the distance on my iPhone—it’s a nineteen-hour drive from L.A. And Seattle’s a big city. And I’m not only grounded, I’m on lockdown—only allowed to leave the house to go to work and back.

  But if I can pull this off, Dad will be so impressed that he might excuse me from the whole mail-room torture scheme. He might even pull strings to get me into Yale in the fall. And with that thought, I’m decided.

  I scarf down the casserole and then throw some clothes in a suitcase. I don’t need much. I’ll only be gone for three days.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  15

  JUNEAU

  I HAVE BEEN HIDING IN MY ROOM—MY “CABIN”— since we embarked two days ago. As soon as we launched, I found the ship’s self-service dining area and stocked up on enough bread, fruit, and plastic-wrapped sandwiches to last me a few days. I haven’t ventured out since then.

  I have never felt loneliness before. Even the time I got snowed in overnight on a hunting trip, I knew my father and clan were waiting for me, and actually enjoyed the time alone. Not now. I want to be home in my yurt with my father and dogs, knowing that Kenai’s and Nome’s families are within shouting distance. I hate this room where everything is made of plastic, on a boat in the middle of an unending ocean, among complete strangers.

  I glance over at the photo of my parents, which is propped atop a tiny table. It is surrounded by the remaining supplies from the emergency shelter and the pile of things I brought from Whit’s yurt: feathers, fur, stones, powders, dried plants, and books. The objects are familiar. Soothing.

  I return to the book I am reading on the history of the Gaia Movement of the 1960s. It’s about how earth is a superorganism, which I know was one of the theories that led Whit to the discovery of the Yara and the tapping of its powers. Normally I’m not allowed to browse freely through his books—he has me on a learning schedule and is very strict about revealing things in “the right order.” So this book is new to me, and I am greedily gobbling up every tidbit of new information.

  I set the book down on my bunk to get a b
ottle of water, and when I come back, the pages have flipped to the front. I begin turning back to my place, but I see something that makes me hesitate. I go back to the copyright page.

  The book was published in 2002.

  I stare at the number. And then I drop the book, recoiling as if it had transformed into a rattlesnake. I stumble to my feet and back up as far as I can, wedging myself into a corner of the room.

  My head spins and I feel like I’m going to keel over. Unthinkable thoughts keep careening around inside my mind. The elders said they escaped just before war broke out in the spring of 1984. Yet Whit had a book published in 2002.

  Suddenly, I remember the expression on my father’s face whenever I asked him about the war. About his and my mother’s flight to safety. He never looked me in the eye when he told me that story. I always thought it was because the memories disturbed him. But that wasn’t why.

  It was because there was no war.

  He knew. They all knew, and someone—probably Whit—had even gone off-territory to get this book. The elders lied to us. Whit lied to us. My father . . . lied to me.

  For the last twenty-four hours, my heart has known what my mind couldn’t admit. They knew.

  I sink to the floor. Putting my head between my knees, I wrap my arms around my folded legs and rock back and forth. My mouth is dry and metallic tasting.

  If the fundamental elements of my life—who I am, why and where my clan lived as we did . . . are all lies, then what can I believe? I have no idea what is truth and what is fiction. I have been brainwashed my entire childhood.

  I’m all I’ve got now. I can’t trust anyone.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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