After the End

I remove the baseball cap and run my fingers through my spiky hair. It is short—really short—but it’s still black. 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 sunta

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.

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.

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.