Until the Beginning by Amy Plum
“Oh, wouldn’t you love to know . . . crow lover,” I reply.
She bursts out laughing. And the look of pure happiness in her eyes makes everything that has happened, and everything that we are still facing, unquestionably worth it.
15
JUNEAU
ALTHOUGH MILES SAYS HE’S AFRAID HE WON’T BE able to sleep, he starts nodding off right after a short but successful round of target practice. I send him to the tent, but remain by the fire so I can Read it as it burns itself out.
This time, I go through my entire list of names. Everyone of interest. When I Read for Dad, I see inside the same adobe hut, where he lies on a cot staring at the ceiling, a candle flickering on the floor next to his palette.
It is dark in Tallie’s cabin, the windows softly illuminated by the glow of moonlight.
Miles’s dad is sitting in front of a computer screen in his office at the top of the Blackwell building. The lights of L.A. twinkle through the glass walls surrounding him.
Whit is out of the hospital. There’s a thick white bandage around his head. He’s sitting, writing, at a desk in what looks like a hotel room. On his way to hunt me down, I think. But if he plans on sleeping tonight then, by Gaia, so will I. We both know where I’m heading. Now it’s just a question of avoiding him while I figure out how to free my clan. A faceoff is inevitable. I just want to delay it for as long as possible.
I check in with my friend Nome and see her sitting outside under the stars, talking to Kenai. “I’m coming,” I whisper, and wish they could hear me. I could see them as early as tomorrow, if Miles and I get lucky. My heart is sore with missing them—the pain is even more acute now that they’re within reach.
I look away from the dying flames and feel suddenly and completely overwhelmed. As if in allowing one small hole for my loneliness to trickle through, I’ve knocked down a dam and my feelings are flooding out. I don’t let myself cry, though. I’m afraid that if I start, I won’t be able to stop.
I wrap my arms tightly around myself as I remember life in the clan. How I was never alone unless I really wanted to be. Unlike now. It’s me against the world . . . against the bad guys, and unless I win, I might never see my clan again.
I think of the heavily armed guards with Whit, and it occurs to me that I might die. I remind myself that I’m the one everyone seems so concerned about catching. They all want something from me. So maybe I’m too valuable for them to kill. I can only hope that this is enough to protect me.
I glance over at the tent, and remember that I’m not alone. Miles is with me. He chose to come with me, although neither of us understood at the time what that would involve. He cares enough about me to go against his father. To leave his home.
I scatter the embers with a stick and make my way to the tent. Looking inside, I see Miles’s outstretched form. He’s sleeping in his T-shirt and boxers, his bloody jeans folded up in the corner. His face is peaceful, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Like he’s just any eighteen-year-old on a road trip.
I long for that kind of freedom. To be a regular person. Not someone on whom the lives of forty people depend. Not someone who is being hunted across the country because I carry a secret other people will kill to get. I feel the weight of my burden, heavier than ever. I wish I could sleep and never wake up. But that isn’t my fate. That’s not why I was given my gifts.
Crouching, I climb into the tent and zip the door closed behind me. I sit down next to Miles and stroke his light brown curls with my fingertips. I want to tell him how I feel. To explain the responsibility I’ve always felt toward my father and my clan. To have someone to share the burden with.
“Miles?” I ask, and his eyelids flutter open.
“Juneau,” he says, waiting.
“I . . . I can’t . . .” is as far as I get. I have spent too long keeping those feelings to myself. Hiding my emotions from even my friends. The words disappear on my lips.
Miles sits up. His eyes brush my face, reading the set of my mouth, the pain in my eyes. “You’re worried,” he whispers, and I nod. If it were only that simple. He wraps his arms around me and draws me in to him, hugging me and stroking my hair until I push him softly away.
“I don’t want comfort,” I explain. “I want to erase everything. To chase reality away. I want . . . I need to escape. Just for a moment.” The words are spilling out—unplanned, unfocused—but their meaning doesn’t matter. Miles understands.
I lean toward him, and he meets me halfway. His lips brush mine and set off a firestorm of sensations inside me—feelings so powerful that I have no doubt that more is involved than just a boy and a girl kissing. It’s the Yara, whipping around us like a wind. Sweeping us into its current and filling us with its fire.
Miles pulls me to him until my chest presses tightly against his, but I want to be closer. I run my hands under his shirt, and he lets go of me for as long as it takes him to rip it off. My fingertips crackle with invisible sparks as I run my hands over his bare skin.
His eyes widen with surprise: The fireworks set off by the touch of our skin are obviously something new to him. I pull him back down so he lies beside me. We watch each other from inches apart, weaving our arms and legs and bodies together into a tangle of us. And then I kiss him and the world falls away.
We are two tiny dots on the surface of the planet, so close that we look like one. One with each other. One with the earth. Joined together, we are both set free.
16
MILES
I WAKE UP NAKED IN AN EMPTY TENT. I GROPE around until I find my clothes, and pull on underwear, jeans, and the T-shirt Juneau bought me. Running my hands through my hair I try to pat down my bedhead before unzipping the door and stepping out into the oasis of trees where Juneau pitched our camp.
Flashes of sunlight bounce off the surface of rapidly moving water just yards away, and I catch a glimpse of Juneau’s red tank top from where she crouches next to the river. An enormous smile hijacks my face as I think of last night, and hope to God that things won’t be awkward between us. I push my way through thick bushes to the river’s edge.
She turns and, seeing me, puts her hands on her hips. Her expression is one that’s new for me—an intimate but teasing smile acknowledging that last night actually happened and wasn’t just the best dream I’ve ever had. “So . . . did you sleep well?” she asks.
“I think I could call last night Death-Sleep 2: The Sequel,” I admit, and not knowing whether or not I should go up and kiss her, I stick my hands in my pockets and wait for a sign from her.
She looks like she wants to laugh, and extends a hand to me. Deciding to do what’s natural, I take her hand and pull her in for a hug. She feels like pure joy in my arms. I wonder if that’s how I feel to her. “Are you still worried?” I ask.
She leans back and looks at me, amused. She shakes her head. “No, somehow I got distracted last night. And this morning I poured all my worry into coming up with a plan.”
Pulling away from me, she squats down next to the water. The moment I could have kissed her has passed—she’s reverted back to all-business Juneau and doesn’t seem the kissy type—and I’m left with a stab of regret. Mainly over the fact that I wish I could take her back to the tent and see if the magical effects were a figment of my extremely happy imagination or if the sparks and fireworks and electrical shocks were actually real. Although last night wasn’t my first, it was definitely the only time sex had been a pyrotechnic extravaganza.
And then it occurs to me: This could be part of the earth magic. The Yara. Juneau and I hadn’t been alone. “The force that binds all living things,” or however the hell Juneau describes it, had been in the tent with us. And though it’s a freakily bizarre idea, it’s also kind of hot. Juneau interrupts this enticing train of thought by pointing to something in the river.
“Can you see the picture on the water?” she asks, and points to a flat stretch of water cascading off a rock and reflecting the morning sun. I focus
“It’s okay,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting you to. Just wanted to be sure. What I see is the area where my clan is.” She gestures toward the patch of still water. “Far from their group of huts—but I can’t tell exactly how far—there’s a huge mansion-like house. And in front of it are some camouflaged guards, like the ones who were with Whit.”
She peers intently at the water, her forehead creasing in concern. “But this is the weird part. In another area of the fenced-in space it looks like there are wild animals roaming around.” She turns to me. “Do they have lions in New Mexico?”
“They probably have coyotes like we do in California and maybe cougars. But lions . . . I doubt it.”
Juneau purses her lips and looks back at the water. “No, I definitely see a couple of lions. And a zebra.”
“A zebra? Are you sure the water’s showing you New Mexico?” I ask, trying not to sound skeptical.
“Positive,” she replies, and turns back to me. “It’s all part of a huge fenced-in area that encloses the desertlike land where my clan is, stretching all of the way up into faraway hills with sparse trees, where the animals are.”
“Okay,” I concede. “So what’s the plan?”
Juneau weaves her fingers through mine and I try to ignore the current running between us and concentrate on what she’s saying as she leads me away from the water, back toward the camp. “There are armed guards driving around in jeeps,” she explains, as we edge by a bush of prickly leaves that sting me through my jeans. “So we can’t just scale the fence and wander through. But we could follow the fence around the perimeter until we find my clan. Their huts are definitely visible from the fence—I’ve seen it behind them in all of my Readings. We need to get there first, though, and see it for ourselves before we plan our strategy.”
I stop and rub my stinging leg. “You’re saying ‘we’ as if I’m going to be a part of the strategizing,” I point out. “After all of the stupid things I’ve done, you’re going to trust me to help you come up with a plan?” Okay, I know I’m digging for compliments, but maybe after all we’ve been through I need a bit of encouragement.
Juneau lifts an eyebrow. “You’ve learned to make a fire, pitch a tent, and cook since I met you. And you didn’t do too badly at target practice yesterday. At this point I’m considering you an asset.”
“Why, thank you,” I reply, satisfied now that I’ve gotten the back pat I needed.
“Plus, I’ll bet you’re good for more than that,” she adds. “I saw metal boxes at several places along the top of the fences. With lights on them. Do you know what they do?”
“That probably means the fences are electrified,” I say.
“As in, if you touch it, it shocks you?” she asks.
“Exactly.”
Juneau brushes a branch out of her way and turns to me. “See. You’re a definite asset. Yes, we’re going to be creeping around in the wilderness, which is my domain. But we’re doing it in a modern world that I still haven’t gotten close to understanding. Your domain. Like my Seattle oracle so prophetically put it, I need you just as much as you need me.” And she gives me a smile that fills up all the empty places inside me.
We emerge from the trees into our clearing, and Juneau kneels down next to the atlas. “Here’s where the point on Whit’s map was,” she says, tracing a barren-looking area with her finger, and then moving it to the left where some green appears on the map. “It’s not far from where this tree line starts. That’s got to be it. At least, that general area. My clan can’t be too far away. Maybe a three-hour drive.”
Juneau crosses her arms, staring at the map. “Are you okay?” I ask.
She nods. “I’m fine. But from what I saw, my clan is being guarded by men who are well armed and well organized. We can’t take them head-on. We’ll have to come up with a plan to whisk my people out from under their noses. We can strategize while we drive.” She sits down and begins pulling food out of the grocery bags.
“Breakfast, then we go?” I ask.
Juneau closes her eyes. Her worry is almost palpable. I want to take it from her—to see her in one of the rare moments where she forgets her “mission” and seems almost carefree.
She exhales, and then raises her face toward mine. “How about kiss me first, and then breakfast, and then we go.”
“Gladly,” I respond. I take her face in my hands and kiss her softly. “How did you know what I was thinking?” I murmur.
“You’re easy to read,” she replies, and then asks, “So why didn’t you kiss me when you wanted to . . . by the river? You were trying to be sensitive, right? Or polite?”
“Gentlemanly,” I add to her list.
“That’s nice,” she says with a bemused smile, “but you forget I was raised in the wilderness. No gentlemen for miles around. Only wild men. And savages.”
“So are you saying you’d rather I just grab you and kiss you whenever I feel like it, regardless of the seriousness of the moment or the level of danger we’re in?”
She crosses her arms and cocks her head to one side. “That depends. Can I assume that, as it would in my world, what happened in the tent last night signifies something?”
“What, exactly, would it signify in your world?” I ask, supremely enjoying the direction this conversation has taken.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that we’re together?” Juneau suggests.
I rub my chin, pensively. “Together?” I ask, looking confused.
“A couple,” Juneau clarifies, a dangerous sparkle in her eye.
“Hmm, yes. I think that in my society, one could assume from what happened in the tent last night that we are, indeed, a couple,” I say.
“Then, yes, you are allowed to grab and kiss me whenever you wish,” she concludes, daring me.
As Juneau knows by now, I never turn down a dare.
17
JUNEAU
MILES WANTS TO DRIVE, SO I LET HIM TAKE OVER while I trace our progress on the map. As we leave the bosque and head east, the strip of lush green land bordering the Rio Grande turns abruptly brown. The kind of barren brown that I had always imagined the earth looked like outside our hidden Alaskan paradise. An apocalyptic brown that suggests nothing’s ever going to grow here again.
“We need to stop for gas,” Miles says, and like magic a sign for a gas station appears ahead. We pull into the gravel courtyard of Pump-n-Shop, and Miles starts filling the tank.
We ate the last of the food this morning, and since I don’t know how long it will take to run surveillance on my people’s captors before we can act, I decide to stock up on supplies. I work my way through the grocery section, picking out milk, cereal, and bread, as well as packaged cinnamon rolls and canned soups and beans.
“What, no Pop-Tarts?” Miles remarks as he joins me in front of the cash register, where an old man is typing in the prices of my items.
“Didn’t have them,” I say. “But I think this should make up for it.” I hold up a six-pack of Snickers.
“I’m not sure how environmentally correct your elders would consider this stash.” Miles gestures to the pile of groceries and gives me a wry smile.
This grin, which used to make me want to slap him, now fills me full of bubbles—I feel ready to burst. In just ten days he’s swapped the antagonistic jabs for affectionate teasing. It’s not hard to choose which I prefer.
“Look at the selection,” I say, gesturing toward the sparsely populated shelves. “If we could stay in one place for a little while, I’d have a garden up and growing in no time. But since we’re on the run, I’ll take what I can get.”
Miles smiles broadly. There’s something jubilant in his expression . . . like now that it’s established that we’re together, he’s supremely proud to be with me. He winks and then leans forward on the counter and ask
“A zoo?” the old man asks, confused.
“If we wanted to see something like, I don’t know, lions and zebras, is there anything like that around?” Miles asks.
“There’s a zoo back in Albuquerque,” the man says, lifting up his cowboy hat and scratching the fuzz of hair that’s squished down underneath. “No zoo around here, though.”
Miles nods. “Thanks,” he says, and picks up the bags as I count out the cash for the gas and groceries.
“Although, if you wanted to shoot yourself some zebras, there’s a crazy Texan who runs a hunting range over southeast of Vaughn,” the man continues. “Don’t know who he’s paying off to look the other way, but he’s got all sorts of wild animals over there. Fancy-pants businessmen fly in and pay top dollar just to shoot themselves some antelope or some such bullshit.”
Miles lifts an eyebrow and peers at me out the side of his eye.
“You say he’s south of Vaughn?” I confirm, my heart racing.
The man pulls an area map out of a rack next to the cash register, and unfolds it on the counter. He picks up a pen, then hesitates. “You gonna buy this?” he asks, looking up from the map.
I nod.
“Okay, then,” he says. “Here’s us.” He draws a star on the east-west road we’re on and, then moving the pen southwest to an area that looks completely bare besides a patch of green in one corner, he outlines a large rectangle.
“He’s got himself this huge tract of land stretching from the desert south of Vaughn up into the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains here,” he explains, pointing to the green part. It’s in the same general area that I had guessed at in our atlas.
He shoves the map toward me. “That’ll be five bucks,” he says, and I add another bill to the money on the counter.
“Says he’s able to reproduce the animals’ ‘natural habitat,’” the man continues, wiggling his fingers in the air like quotation marks. “Natural habitat, my ass,” he mutters to himself, handing me my change and slamming the cash register drawer closed with a jingle of coins.