Until the Beginning (3 page)

ONE SECOND THE BRIGHT SUN IS WARMING MY
wings, and the next I am standing on two legs in total darkness. The far-off words of the song grow faint and then stop, and a voice—her voice—whispers. “This is where I leave you, Miles. I can’t go any farther. Be brave.”

“What do I do now?” I ask, but I’m alone.

A little ways ahead, at foot level, a line of light appears. I approach, groping through the void until I touch a hard surface. Sweeping with my fingertips, my right hand brushes something round and cold. A doorknob. I turn it, and walk into a room that I know better than any other. A room that has haunted my dreams for the past year.

I enter, leaving the door open behind me. I glance back at the darkness. It looks almost inviting now. Anything’s better
than what I’m about to see.

I scan the room. Everything is in place. The framed family photos on the dresser, the scattered chinks of light from the blown-glass chandelier, the mayhem of empty medicine bottles on the bedside table. I take another step, and grief pierces my heart like a knife blade. I know what I will find.

She’s there. On the far side of the bed, curled up on the ground in a fetal position. She lies in a puddle of vomit. It’s spread out around her head in a halo of foamy bile.

“Mom.” My voice is muffled by the thick layers of sadness padding every square inch of the room. Only the rhythmic chattering of my mother’s teeth indicates that she’s alive.

This is the worst part—the part where I try to go to her, but can’t. Where I am stopped by an invisible wall. Where I pound helplessly on it with my fists, screaming at her, screaming for help, but unable to go to her.

But this time is different. My bare feet continue across the thickly carpeted floor. The wall has disappeared. I approach her, crouching down to touch her sweat-drenched hair, and I know what has changed. Why I am allowed past the wall. My mother and I are in the same place: the still and quiet space between our world and the next. Standing on the edge of the precipice. We are both about to die.

THE LANDSCAPE GROWS HARSHER AS WE APPROACH
the Arizona border, and signs for Mojave National Preserve begin to appear along the highway. I think back to Mount Rainier, where Miles and I camped. A national park means a lot of out-of-the-way places to hide, which is exactly what we need if Miles is going to wake.

If
. That word is like a punch to my gut, and the misgivings I’ve dammed up for the past few hours flood in to drown me.

If
. How can two little letters hold so much importance? Wield so much power? How is a single stunted syllable able to threaten a world of pain and simultaneously dangle a glimmering, flashing jewel of hope?

If
Miles awakes, he will be a changed person. He will have the gift of life: free of disease and aging.
If
he doesn’t, then the one
person who matters most to me—outside my clan, of course—will be gone. Abruptly. And forever.

I banish the thought from my mind. I glance automatically at the clock on the dashboard and register the fact that it is 5:30 p.m. This is the second time I’ve used a clock in one day, and I feel the shame of compromise. The sun, moon, and horizon are all I’ve needed in the past.

I’m in a new world now
, I reason. I should use every modern tool I’m given. If I can add my own skills to the tools the outside world has developed, I will be in a position of strength, instead of handicapped by my lack of knowledge—like I was in the airplane or in Mr. Blackwell’s office at the top of a skyscraper. I must master the rules of this new world. I’ll need every possible advantage to face the unknown enemy who kidnapped my clan.

At the next national park sign I pull off the main road and begin traveling north, following arrows toward Mitchell Caverns. When I reach a fork in the road, I turn away from the tourist site and head east toward some unmarked rock formations. Dark red earth swoops down from one tall mesa and back up into another flat-topped mountain. Gray rocks are stacked around them like children’s blocks. I drive around them and park in their shadows. No one can see us unless they go off-road like I did.

I climb out of the truck into what looks like the surface of another planet. The rock formations look alien, and although there is vegetation—clumps of sagebrush in gray, green, and parched yellow—it look like it’s been tossed carelessly around instead of held to the ground by roots. The earth seems too dry
to sustain life. I walk around the truck and open the tailgate. Climbing into the truck bed, I crouch beside the sleeping bag and unzip it.

My heart lurches when I see his face.

Miles’s skin has taken on a sickly purple color. His eyes have begun to film over, white cloud spread over the lake green. This hasn’t happened before. The Rite-travelers’ bodies never deteriorated. Although I feel a stab of panic, I reassure myself that this case is different. It was hot in the back of the truck, and besides . . . my clan members were in perfect health. Miles was already dying.
This has to work
.

I close his eyelids, smooth back the honey-colored curls, and kiss him lightly on his mottled forehead. “Please come back, Miles,” I urge, and continue unzipping the bag, exposing his overheated corpse to the cooler air in the shadow of the rocks.

He looks too vulnerable, lying there naked. I pull his bloodstained clothes out of my backpack and dress him, shuffling his limp body back and forth until I’ve got him in underwear and jeans. I stand back to look at my work, and something in my heart tugs. An unfamiliar ache that confirms just how much this boy means to me.

I pull myself away and begin setting up camp, pitching the tent between the truck and the rocks. Although we’re hidden, my senses are on high alert. I realize that I’m reacting as I did in Alaska: on continual lookout for brigands. Ready to defend myself against survivors of an apocalypse that never happened. Even though my real-life enemies are nothing like the desperate
marauders of my nightmares, they are more frightening because I don’t know what to expect from them. They are unknown entities using unfamiliar methods.

Without thinking, I reach for my crossbow and then remember that it’s gone. I dropped it during the scuffle with Whit’s men in Salt Lake City. I can make myself another one if I find some suitable wood. In the absence of my preferred weapon, I get out my bowie knife and set it beside the fire. Its steel will be my security tonight.

I glance up at the sky. It’s a couple of hours before sunset. Suddenly ravenous, I remember that I haven’t eaten since morning. I am too exhausted to make a fire, so I end up eating beef stew straight out of the can, and finish it off with a small stack of crackers.

The disappearing sun fills the sky with reds, oranges, and pinks that are almost as stunning as a borealis back home. Scanning the horizon one last time for cars or wandering travelers, I unfurl a sheet inside the tent and lie down. Miles still has hours to go before he will awake (because he
will
awake) and I need to rest while I can. Minutes pass as I stare at the top of the tent, immune to sleep. Finally I give in to what I want, scoop up my covering, and return to the truck.

Spreading my blanket by the sleeping bag, I lie down next to Miles. I scoot back until I feel him behind me, then close my eyes and sleep.

I awaken with a start. A noise just came from somewhere nearby. A whisper. I sit up and scan the sky until I find the North Star and the moon. Their positions tell me that it’s somewhere between ten and eleven. Miles should have awakened by now.

I place my hand over his mouth and nose. He’s not breathing.

My heart swells painfully. Becomes the size of a balloon. Threatens to pop.

I know I did the Rite correctly, but what if he had lost too much blood before it took effect? Tears scrape the back of my eyes, and I lower my head to rest it on his chest. And I hear something. A heartbeat.

I sit back up, and watch as Miles’s lips twitch and his mouth opens. He takes a sudden breath, filling his lungs with air before coughing it back out.

“Miles!” I yell.

“Juneau,” he whispers. “I can’t move.” His words are ragged. Forced. His eyes remain closed.

“It’s okay, Miles,” I urge. I’m so overcome with emotion, I can barely speak. I wipe a tear away. “You just woke from death-sleep. You won’t be able to move for a while.”

“I can’t see,” he says, and I reach over and open his eyes. The white film, though still there, is clearing up.

“It’s you,” he breathes.

I lean over and kiss him lightly. “You’re alive.”

“Thanks to you and your New Age juju,” he says through stiff lips. I laugh and flush with relief. Death has not changed Miles.

“You’re part of that juju now,” I respond. “You’re one with the Yara, Miles. You’re not going to die for a very long time.”

He closes his eyes and is able to open them again. After a long moment he says, “I had dreams about that, while I was . . . dead or whatever.”

I nod, and want to ask him about his Path. Every Rite-traveler comes back with different tales. The settings rarely vary, but their experiences on the Path are as different as the person traveling it. And with Miles’s past . . . with his situation . . . I can’t even imagine what he had to face. But I won’t ask now. He needs time to understand what all of it means. To accept what has happened to him.

He scans the night sky. “The last time I was conscious we were in my buddies’ old drinking shack outside L.A.,” he says.

“We’re a few hours away, in the Mojave, hiding from your dad and Whit.”

His eyes meet mine. “Have you seen them?”

“Yes,” I respond. “Your dad and his men drove past the cabin, but I camouflaged us. They didn’t see a thing.”

“Good party trick,” he says, and that old teasing smile spreads across his lips. He’s regaining control of his facial muscles. “What about Whit?” he asks.

“If he survived the crash and managed to get the jeep back on the road, he’ll be after us, too. But we’re well hidden, and you’re going to want to sleep pretty much nonstop for the next few days.”

Miles’s eyes move left and right. “Where am I lying?” he asks.

“In the back of a Chevrolet pickup truck.”

“Which you got by . . . ,” he prompts.

“. . . trading it for your car.”

A bemused smile forms on Miles’s mouth. “You traded my BMW for a Chevy pickup?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Let’s just say that the other guy must be pretty damn happy.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I needed a car no one would recognize.”

“It’s okay,” Miles says. “My Beamer didn’t really suit you anyway. But this Chevy . . . yeah, I can see you driving one of these. I mean, if there are no available dogsleds.”

I smile and throw my arms around him, pulling him up off the truck bed. “You wouldn’t take advantage of a temporarily paralyzed guy, would you?” he asks, his voice muffled by my shoulder.

“Of course not!” I say, pulling away with mock horror.

“That wasn’t a question,” he says, his eyes shining with mischief. “It was a request.”

I smile. And leaning forward, I kiss him.

I’M BACK. AT LEAST I THINK I AM. MAYBE THIS IS
hippy-dippy New Age me, and as soon as I can move again I’ll start craving tofu and Birkenstocks.

I’m just glad I’m here. Juneau saved me. Back there in the cabin I could literally feel my life flowing out of me. I know I passed out a couple of times, and each time I came to feeling less connected. Like I was becoming immune to gravity and might just float off into space.

And as I began to drift, one thought outweighed all the rest: I didn’t want to die. Not just because I was afraid of death. But because what was previously a pretty empty existence for me has finally begun to take on some meaning. And it’s all because of the girl lying next to me in the back of this
pickup truck. Juneau.

I guess that means she’s saved me twice: from death and from myself. I’m in her debt. But this is one debt I’m going to enjoy repaying.

WITHIN MINUTES, MILES DRIFTS OFF TO SLEEP. I
wish I could lie back down, press myself close to him, and shut off all of my worry and fatigue for a few short hours. But I have a lot to do before he recovers. And once he does, we must be ready to leave.

Recovery from death-sleep varies from person to person. Everyone awakens paralyzed, but since I’ve helped Whit perform the Rite, I have seen people walking in as few as three days and as many as six. Which means I have no idea how long Miles will be incapacitated.

Although it would be pretty much impossible for Mr. Blackwell to find us here, Whit might be able to Read and Conjure his way straight to us. So my first step is to find out where he is, and in order to do that I’m going to need a fire.

I scan the bone-dry landscape, and spot a few lone trees against the moonlit horizon. I can’t tell how far away they are, and am hesitant to leave Miles here by himself. So I take him with me, driving a mile that would have been easy to walk. I make the ride as smooth as possible, even though I know I he won’t awake.

I worried that my bowie knife wouldn’t be sharp enough to cut through thick branches. But in the end, I don’t have to hack limbs off—I find a couple of smallish trees lying dead on the ground. They are brittle enough to break apart with my hands. Once I gather enough wood, I load it into the back of the truck, propping the branches across the truck bed from Miles so that he won’t get banged up in his sleep.

Back at the camp, I build a small fire—just big enough for my purpose. I sit down in front of it and slow my breathing, focusing on each heartbeat as I slip into the state I need to connect to the Yara.

My body actually shudders with the jolt of the connection, and energy fills me with what feels like a burning light. Now that I have stopped using totems to link to the Yara, my connections have been increasingly stronger. I try to ignore the power coursing through me and focus on the Reading. “Whittier Graves,” I say, and stare at the tip of the flames, just above the blaze. And, after a second or two, I see him.

Whit lies in a bed in a white room, his head and arms wrapped thick in bandages. Next to him is a rolling tray with a pitcher of water on it.

Whit was injured in the wreck, and is being kept in some type
of medical clinic or hospital. Which means he’s not after me. For the moment.

My anger mounts as I watch him. He’s a traitor. Using me and my clan as a “field test” so that he could sell the drug—the powerful mix of herbs, powdered minerals, and blood that we use in the Rite—to the outside world.

I wonder how much the other elders knew of what Whit was doing. I am more convinced than ever that the elixir was the reason they hid us all in the Alaskan wilderness. It was because of the Amrit that they made up the story they told us about an apocalypse. They didn’t want us to leave. But why?

Maybe they wanted to hide the fact that they didn’t age from the outside world. But that could have gone undetected for years. Having studied clan history, I know the date that they gave us for the onset of World War III, 1984, coincided with the birth of the first child to clan elders. Did they hide because they discovered Amrit caused a visible mutation in their offspring? That seemed a little more plausible. But even so, isn’t it easier to hide a few children than entire families of well-connected scientists and theorists?

Maybe they needed the time to see how a second generation of Amrit users would fare. They wanted to make sure that the children’s mutations were limited to the gold starburst in our eyes. As for Whit, he must have decided that if the elixir didn’t prove to have more serious side effects, he would expose our secret . . . for a price.

I can’t imagine that my parents were in on Whit’s plans. I can’t imagine them bringing me into this world as a field test.

My parents loved me. And they loved the rest of the clan. They would never do something that would expose our people to harm. Especially if it was just to make a profit in the commercial world that they shunned.

As my thoughts return to the here and now, I see that Whit’s image has disappeared from the flames. I concentrate once more, picturing Miles’s father in my head. “Mr. Blackwell,” I say, and watch the flames. Nothing happens. I wonder if it only works with people I am close to. I never had to test this before—I knew all of my clan members as well as I knew myself.

I try my father, but only see the dark interior of an adobe hut. He must be asleep.

I try one more name. “Tallie,” I say, and up from the fire rises the image of a woman with long curly hair the same color as the flames. She sits with a book in her one-room cabin, before her own blazing hearth. And just beside her, peering into the flames as if he himself could Read, is a black raven, as big as a cat.

Poe. I can’t stop the smile that comes at the sight of him. I miss my huskies, Neruda and Beckett. They were such a fundamental part of my everyday life that I feel naked—exposed—without them. And although nothing can fill the hole that they left, I was a little less lonely the few days Poe was with me.

As I look closer, I notice something different about the room. A rectangle of white cloth hangs on the wall to the side of the kitchen, and in large letters across the top is written
JUNEAU
. Intrigued, I focus on the handwritten sign.

BEAUREGARD’S BONES SAID YOU’D BE CHECKING IN. BIRD
MISSES YOU. SO DO I. TAKE CARE
. A wide smile stretches across my face. How like Tallie to write me a note after reading her possum bones. She feels like an adopted aunt. A slightly crazy one: the best kind. She misses me. And so does Poe.

I wish I could call him back to me right now. And as that thought crosses my mind, the bird in the fire flaps his wings and squawks. Tallie glances up from her book, and then looks around the room as if she senses I am there. Which is impossible, I know. But for a second our connection is so strong that I can almost feel the warmth of her fire and smell the freshly cut pine branches. “You take care, too,” I whisper. I let my connection to the Yara fade until the image in the flames disappears and the night is silent once again.

The fire burns low before I finally rise to go to the tent. I lie down but can’t sleep. I want to be in the back of the truck, next to Miles, but am afraid of waking him. He needs sleep. Opening his eyes and talking as quickly as he did is a good sign. He’s already responding faster than most Rite-travelers. Although we need to get as far away from Whit, Mr. Blackwell, and their people as we can, Miles’s recovery will be faster if his rest is uninterrupted.

My body is tired, but in my mind ideas are hopping and spitting like beads of water on a hot skillet. I leave the tent and add a few sticks to the fire, blowing on the embers until flames lick upward. Taking a thick branch I had set aside, I get out my knife and begin stripping the bark. I sing as I carve—a post-Rite song that the children sing around the yurt—and hope the words and melody will reach Miles and comfort him.