Until the Beginning by Amy Plum
DEDICATION
For Gretchen, for survival,
and for closing the book on our own Alaska
EPIGRAPH
“I’M A SCIENTIST, NOT A THEOLOGIAN. I DON’T know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.”
—James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
1. Juneau
2. Miles
3. Juneau
4. Miles
5. Juneau
6. Miles
7. Juneau
8. Miles
9. Juneau
10. Miles
11. Juneau
12. Miles
13. Juneau
14. Miles
15. Juneau
16. Miles
17. Juneau
18. Miles
19. Juneau
20. Miles
21. Juneau
22. Miles
23. Juneau
24. Miles
25. Juneau
26. Miles
27. Juneau
28. Miles
29. Juneau
30. Miles
31. Juneau
32. Miles
33. Juneau
34. Miles
35. Juneau
36. Miles
37. Juneau
38. Miles
39. Juneau
40. Miles
41. Juneau
42. Miles
43. Juneau
44. Miles
45. Juneau
46. Miles
47. Juneau
48. Miles
49. Juneau
50. Miles
51. Juneau
52. Miles
53. Juneau
54. Miles
55. Juneau
Acknowledgments
Back Ads
About the Author
Books by Amy Plum
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
JUNEAU
MILES HAS BEEN DEAD FOR ONE HOUR. I DO NOT know if it is true death—if he died of blood loss after I dug the bullet out of him—or if this is the death-sleep that I summoned by giving him the Rite. There is only one way to find out, and that is to wait seven more hours and see if he starts breathing again.
I rise and leave my post at the door. Turning away from the blazing red of the sunbaked desert, I enter the cool darkness of the one-room shack. My vision swims as my eyes adjust, and it is a few seconds before I can see him. Not him. His shell.
The vacuum left by his spirit’s departure pulls me across the room, and I stand over him, looking down at his naked body. He is a study in white and red: The little bit of skin that isn’t smeared with clotted blood is the shade of curdled milk. Honey-colored curls brush his paste-white forehead. His lips are parted, his jaw loose. Blood is smudged across his cheek, but whether it is his or mine I don’t know.
I hold up my palm and see that blood still oozes from where I cut myself with the ceremonial knife. The contents of my bag are strewn across the floor. I squat down, and from the pile of stones, dried herbs, and feathers, I pull a strip of cotton and wrap it tightly around my hand to bind my wound.
And with that small, final act of caring for myself, I am suddenly drained of my adrenaline-fueled vigilance. My defenses finally down, the full force of what I have done strikes me. I sit down on the floor, resting my head in my hands.
I may have killed this boy. I may have sent him away forever.
I performed a ritual on him—gave him a powerful drug—that has only been used on members of my clan. On people who were ready for it, whose spirits already embraced the Yara. Who looked to Gaia for strength.
And Miles . . . he is not strong. He wants to be. There is much in him that is good. But he hasn’t even started thinking about his place on earth . . . his part in the superorganism that makes up Gaia.
Never mind spiritual strength; all of my previous Rite-travelers were in perfect physical condition when I led them into death-sleep. They weren’t like Miles, barely conscious with a bullet freshly dug out of his side. He had lost a lot of blood. Was already dying.
What have I done?
Miles could be lost in death, unable to find his way back. Unable to recognize the signposts along his path. That is . . . if he is actually in death-sleep and didn’t undergo true death before the Rite took effect.
I push myself to my feet. I can’t lose hope. I must treat Miles as if he were any other Rite-traveler. He did take the vow. He agreed to become one with the Yara. To dedicate his life to the earth and the force that binds every living thing together. And to trade his short human life for one that could last hundreds of years, if not more.
He agreed to it all. But it was a spontaneous decision, made in a desperate moment. What would happen to him if it wasn’t truly sincere?
“He chose it,” I say to reassure myself. In the dead quiet my words sound hollow. Meaningless.
I walk across the room to him and begin humming the Song of the Path. And as I do, I am pulled back into the trancelike state that cocoons me when I perform the Rite. I leave my fear behind and immerse myself in what I am supposed to do. What I was taught to do.
The candles forming a halo around his head flicker their last, casting an eerie light on his marble face. I blow them out one by one as I walk in a circular path around his body. One candle for each turn.
My breath slows as the last candle goes dark and I begin singing the words, willing Miles to move toward death’s gate. To approach it, to brush it with his fingertips, and then to turn and come back to land of the living. To me.
I untie the cloths binding the gold nuggets to the soles of his feet as the words drop from my lips. I replace the stones to their leather bag and stow them carefully in my backpack. And still I sing.
Like my clan members who I accompanied, I am Miles’s companion in this Rite. Someone who knows him and cares about him. Who will ease his passage to the hinterlands of death and back to life—a different life—one without aging or disease.
I take his cold, bloody fingers and unwrap them from the moonstones they clasp. I tuck the gems into my bag, and continue working methodically, packing everything away: all of the herbs and minerals, the agate cup and blade, the leftover candles and matches. All the while, my words take Miles down the Stony Path toward the River.
When I’m done, I continue caring for Miles, peeling back the bandage I made by wrapping my shirt around his chest. Blood no longer flows from the bullet hole. I wonder if he will start bleeding again if I move him, and if he does, if it will make any difference.
I smooth back his hair, feeling his cold forehead under my fingertips. I brush his eyelids closed as I sing of what he will see on the Path, and touch his chin to shut his mouth. And then I do something I never did to my other Rite-travelers. I kiss him. I touch my warm mouth to his cold one and, closing my eyes, wish that I could transfer my life to him. That my spirit could slip out from between my lips and reignite his extinguished flame.
I have never known love—at least, nothing other than a child’s love for her parents or the fierce love of friendship. So I don’t know how to label what I feel for Miles. There is something there. An unopened bud. And I hope with all my heart that it won’t die before it’s able to start blooming. Before I can even tell what kind of flower it will be.
More emotion than I have let myself feel for a long time threatens to overwhelm me. For once, I allow it to come. My tears fall onto Miles’s cheeks. Crying is a foreign thing to me, but I let it happen. Until finally, something shifts inside me and the
I take a deep breath and rise to my feet. It’s time to go. I have to get him—us—away from here. I’ve done everything I can do to help him begin his path. I can continue the Song later.
I lean over the lifeless corpse of this boy who made me cry. And, though I know he can’t hear me, I fold my arms across my chest and speak loudly and clearly. I speak to the Miles I know—the rebel, the boy who loves to break the rules. I dare him to take his wild, unfocused defiance and direct it toward the task he faces.
“Miles Blackwell,” I challenge. “You better the hell live.”
2
MILES
THE SCENE . . . IT KEEPS REPLAYING AS I SLEEP, over and over again like it’s on loop.
It starts once again, as from the darkness I hear her voice. “Miles,” she says, and it’s like a pure musical note piercing through the thick fog enveloping me. “Miles, are you still here with me?”
My mouth is already open. All I have to do is push out the words, but it is like shoving a boulder up a hill to get them out. “I think so.” I want to see her, but my eyes won’t focus. She is an angel radiating a light so intense it has blurred her features.
“You have to swallow this,” she says. I feel something warm touching my lips and a tangy paste being smeared onto my tongue, and then a flood of water cascading over my mouth, my face. I swallow automatically, and then choke and cough, spasms racking my body. She wipes my mouth with something soft.
The musical notes come again, penetrating the haze. “Miles Blackwell, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” I hear myself respond.
She says something about the Yara. About my becoming one with it. About dedicating my life to the earth. I hear the words but they bounce off me, like I’m made of rubber. My words scratch against my throat. “Juneau, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Miles, do you agree to trade your life of eighty years for one of many hundred?” she continues.
And now my mind is clear enough that her words make sense. Juneau is giving me the Rite. She is giving me the drug that my father is so desperate for. She’s trying to turn me immortal. I wrench my eyes back open, and there she is, shining like a supernova. “If I don’t, do I die?” I ask.
“You might die anyway. But this is my best try,” she confesses, and her eyes are tipped with flames. Flashing. Shining in the candlelight.
I fight to get the words out, but my voice is like dust. “Then I do, Juneau.”
She moves around me and settles my head in her lap. She combs my hair with her fingers, and it feels like she’s stroking my soul. Kneading it into a peaceful rest. I have been holding on so tightly that when I let go and breathe my last breath, it is a comfort. It is a relief.
Before the scene replays once again, there is a pause. It’s long enough for me to formulate my thoughts into questions: Did this really happen? And if so, where am I now?
3
JUNEAU
ALTHOUGH WE’RE HIDDEN FROM THE MAIN ROAD, this deserted cabin a half hour outside Los Angeles won’t hide us from our pursuers for long.
I breathe deeply until the hypnotic daze that floated me peacefully through the Rite evaporates and my mind is once again sharp and clear.
I assess Miles as I would a kill: height, weight, and shape of the animal needing to be shifted. Miles is probably six foot one and has an athletic build.
Even though I’m strong, he’s close to a foot taller than me. It will be like transporting a yearling deer. If I had my dogs and my leather puller, it wouldn’t take more than a minute, I think, and the husky-shaped hole in my chest threatens to reopen before I slap a bandage on it and resolve to think of them later.
I walk outside and cross the dusty yard to the car. The sun beats the desert around me into shimmering submission. Sweat beads on my forehead and under my arms as I drive the car as close as I can to the porch and dig a sleeping bag out of the trunk. Nothing moves in this punishing heat except a couple of lizards scuttling from one hole in the ground to another.
Once back in the cabin’s dark coolness, I unzip the sleeping bag and spread it out next to Miles’s body. And then, as carefully as I can, I roll him onto it, pull the loose side over him, and zip it up around him.
Grasping the top of the sleeping bag, I drag Miles out of the cabin onto the porch until he’s next to the car, and open the back door. Wiping sweat from my eyes, I rummage through a box of tools in the trunk and find a length of thick, flat cord labeled TOW STRAP. Like a spider binds her victim, I wrap it up and down around Miles’s sleeping-bag shroud. Then stringing the cord in through the backseat, and out the front seat, I anchor it to one of the posts holding up the shack’s front porch roof. Using the same principle as my husky-puller-dogsled technique, I drive the car forward a few feet, and Miles’s body is shifted from the porch partway into the backseat. I’m able to wrangle him the rest of the way in.
Jogging back to the cabin, I grab my bag and give the empty room one last glance before closing the door. I don’t want to leave any trace of our having been there, but seeing the pool of blood staining the floor, I realize the futility of that plan.
I toss my pack into the front seat and unzip the top of the sleeping bag. Miles’s mouth has fallen back open and his eyes stare blindly at the car’s upholstered ceiling. I close them gently and hum a few more notes of the Song.
Before sliding into the driver’s seat, I scan the horizon, and instantly my heart is in my throat. There is smoke—way off in the distance—in the direction we came from. I wonder what is burning. And then, suddenly and terrifyingly, I understand. It’s a car, and it’s heading directly toward us. It’s still a long ways off, but I can see the flash of metal and the cloud of dirt kicked up by its wheels.
Immobilized by panic, I force myself to think. I need to hide us. In a split second I know what I have to do. I must Conjure the camouflage Whit used to hide our village from the outside world. Or, as he explained it to me back then, to protect us from the brigands when he Read they were coming. This was his most difficult Conjure—camouflaging the whole village and keeping it hidden until danger passed. But I need to reproduce it. I have camouflaged myself before, but have no idea if I can expand it outside myself to include the car and even the cabin if possible.
I try to remember what Whit did, and realize that the totem he used to Conjure the metamorphosis was the snowshoe hare feet. The one I tossed into a fire just days ago.
It doesn’t matter, I remind myself. You don’t need Whit’s material crutches to Conjure the Yara. You only need your faith in your link with it. I think of the powerful connections I’ve experienced since I stopped using totems, and know I can do this. But I will need to push aside the fear and grief of the last few hours in order to concentrate.
I focus on slowing my racing heartbeat and spread my arms wide. I direct my mind to contact the Yara, and feel the lightning bolt of power when I connect with it. I call on the energy that flows through all things and imagine myself changing . . . transforming into the colors around me, which in this case is a uniform reddish dirt brown. I look down and see that not only my skin but my tank top and jeans have taken on the desert’s brown. I blend in perfectly with my environment.
Now the car, I think, and imagine the Yara stretching out from me like a net and wrapping around the car. A dot of earthen red appears on one door, then spreads quickly to envelop the whole thing. Miles’s car fades into the background and disappears.
My confidence is grounded. I can do this. I focus the Yara’s energy on the cabin. I wait. Nothing happens, and the car is getting closer, maybe even close enough to see the cabin. And if they see it, they might stop to check it out and discover the pool of blood—evidence of how recently we were here.
My heart races, and I fight to maintain my calm. Metamorphose! I urge, and I feel a spark of electricity burning through my veins like flames. And as I watch, the shack disappears. We are now, for all practical purposes, i
As the car approaches, I recognize the man riding in the passenger side. It is Murray Blackwell, head of Blackwell Pharmaceutical and father of the boy lying dead beside me. He must have mobilized this search party as soon as he discovered his son abducted me from his own house, where he was keeping me prisoner.
And all for a drug, I think. All because he wants to know the “formula” for the elixir—Amrit, as he called it—that I use to perform the Rite. He and whoever kidnapped my clan are desperate to get it. “Another example of violence spawned by capitalism,” I can almost hear Dennis say—one of his favorite refrains in our Past Civilizations lessons. Now the infernal machine wants to suck us into its cogs and wheels, and I’m the only one left to fight it.
A burly man sits behind the wheel beside Mr. Blackwell, and the two security guards who kidnapped me from Salt Lake City are in the backseat, craning their heads to survey the barren landscape. The car moves so slowly that it seems like an hour before they pass us and are following the dirt road over the crest of a ridge.
I don’t dare breathe. The Conjure weighs heavily on me. I’m pouring with sweat now, my clothes clammy against my skin. I flex my fingers and roll my head to both sides to avoid freezing up completely, and wait. In a couple of minutes, the car reappears at the top of the ridge. Its passengers scan the horizon, searching for what is right in front of them.
This time the car passes mere feet from me. Mr. Blackwell’s eyes meet mine for just a second, and although he can’t see me, panic scorches a jagged hole in the pit of my stomach. He looks away, and I can once again breathe. I wait until the car is out of sight, once more just a plume of dust on the horizon, before I let go of the Conjure. The car, the cabin, and I slowly infuse with our true colors. I lean back against the car, trembling from the effort and residual fear. They were so close.
But I had done it. I worked a major Conjure, and did it without a totem. A flash of hope bursts through me. I am capable of more than I imagined. My father’s words come back to me, “You’re a prodigy in the Yara, Juneau. Just like your mother was.”