After the End

“He hasn’t moved all night, watching over you like your own avian bodyguard,” comes a voice from across the room. And—snap—I remember where I am.

“Good morning, Tallie,” I say.

She adds a log from the woodpile to the stove. “Breakfast?” she asks.

“Yes, please,” I respond, and she sets a tray on the low table in front of the couch: eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice.

“Are you a coffee or tea person?” she asks. Her pajamas have disappeared, and she is dressed in jeans and a lumberjack shirt, with her fiery hair tamed and tied in a knot behind her head.

“Chicory, actually,” I answer.

She makes a face like she bit into a sour berry. “Ugh. Nasty stuff. My ex-mother-in-law used to drink chicory. Tea it is, then.” And in a minute she’s back.

She pulls the armchair up to the table and pours two mugs of tea.

I swallow a bite of toast and ask, “You don’t have animals, do you?”

“I don’t like pets,” she says, eyeing Poe. “I have enough work around here without having to worry about codependent furry things.”

“No, I mean where do you get the bacon and eggs?”

“Oh. There’s a general store ten miles away. I hike in twice a week and do handyman jobs for them in exchange for the supplies I can’t forage for myself. I’m self-contained, self-sustained, and I don’t have to pay taxes that go to nice people getting killed in senseless wars.”

“Now I understand why you make yourself invisible,” I say.

“Yeah, I’m a conscientious objector to just about everything,” she says with a grin. “No electricity, no phone or internet, no car. And, contrary to what you’re witnessing right now, I’m normally pretty antisocial.”

I wash down a piece of honey-smeared toast with a gulp of strong tea and ask, “How did you find me? You said you were expecting me.”

“Oh, that,” she says, and lifts her eyebrows mysteriously. “I threw the bones.”

I pause, a forkful of eggs lifted halfway to my mouth. “You threw the bones?”

She opens a drawer in the table between us and takes out a rust-red leather pouch, and then, loosening its drawstrings, spills a handful of dried, bleached animal bones onto the table. “My great-grandma Lula-Mae’s possum bones, passed to her daughter, who passed them to my mom, who passed them to me. Along with double-X chromosomes, all the women in my family possess the Sight. That’s them over there,” she says, nodding to a table in the corner that holds framed photographs. “I call them my goddesses.”

She begins arranging the bones in a circular pattern on the table. “I throw Lula-Mae’s bones every morning, to keep in practice. Outside on the ground, mind you. Not here on the table. They have to touch earth. Yesterday they looked sort of like this.” A few of the bones cross each other in places, and others are lined up parallel. “I won’t go into all the boring details, but it told me a visitor was coming around midnight, and that this wasn’t a hunter, as usual, but someone being hunted.”

She points to the two skeletal hands, which are sitting one next to the other, thumb bones touching. “This told me that my visitor would be like me. ‘Touched’ like my women. Are you psychic? Or into divination?”

“Kind of,” I admit.

She studies me carefully, like the bones in my face are just as readable as those of the long-dead possum spread before us. Seemingly satisfied, she looks back down and resumes her explanation.

“It also told me that we both have something to teach the other.” She picks up her mug and watches me over the raised rim as she takes a sip. I don’t know what to say, so I keep my mouth shut.

“But the way the tailbones fell”—she points at a few disjointed bones—“it suggests that you have an important mission. That people’s lives or destinies may lie in your hands.” Her face is all seriousness now, and she waits for my response.

I swallow hard and meet her eyes. “My father and clan have been kidnapped and are being held against their will somewhere. I am trying to find them. To rescue them.” She holds my gaze before leaning back, staring at a point behind me on the wall and rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

Something occurs to me. “Why did you ask me if I was from the future?”

She snaps back into the here and now. “Hmm? Oh. The end of the tail sticking out of the circle. It’s sticking out of time, or out of the world. So I figured that I should be on the lookout for either a UFO landing in my front yard, or some kind of time machine bringing you here from the future.” She laughs.

“Well, you could definitely say I’m from another world,” I allow.

“Yes, I figured you were the one when I saw you through my telescope.” She nods toward an expensive-looking model standing next to the window, pointed down the mountain. “And then I confirmed it when I shone the light in your eye and saw that gold sun-looking iris. Looked pretty alien to me. What is it? A genetic mutation?”

My mouth dropped open. “You’re the first person who hasn’t thought it was a contact lens.”

“Well, you didn’t take it out last night. And it doesn’t really match the renouncing-your-femininity theme you’re rocking.”

“I was trying to disguise myself as a boy to avoid my pursuers,” I admit.

“Looks like that didn’t work out very well for you,” she says, amused. “You need to lose the Gap Boy look, by the way, if you want to maintain that disguise. It makes you lumpy, not boyish. Anyway that’s my story. I want to hear yours, but let’s see how that ankle’s doing first.”

I pull the blanket off my lap and prop my bare foot on the side of the table. Tallie whistles. “That’s not as bad as it looked last night. A little more rest, and you should be up and about in a day or so.”

“Couldn’t we just wrap it tightly? I really need to go. Like I said, I’m looking for my clan, and although I think that they’re safe for the moment, who knows what will happen?” My voice rises slightly as I explain, and I’m suddenly fighting tears. I pick up my mug and take a big swig of tea, swallow, exhale, and feel better.

“Do you know where they are?” Tallie asks.

“I know what the place looks like. And I know it’s southeast of here. And still pretty far.”

Tallie nods and thinks on it. “Well, you’re not going to be much use to anyone if you’re hobbling around on one foot. And whoever’s chasing you will probably be hanging around the area for a while before they give up, so it’s better you stay hidden for the day.”

She begins scooping up the possum bones and placing them carefully into the pouch. “And then there’s Beauregard here, who says we have something to teach each other.”

“Beauregard?” I ask, incredulous.

“Lula-Mae named the possum after her first husband. Don’t even ask.”

I mask a laugh as Tallie continues. “Have you learned anything from me that’s going to help you save your folks?”

I shake my head.

“Okay, well, it’s your turn. Tell all. Or at least all that you feel like telling.”

I hesitate, not because I don’t trust her but because I don’t know where to start. My story still feels so fresh and painful after spilling it to Miles—after seeing him brush it off as fantasy. My stomach twists when I think of him. It’s not like I ever really trusted him. But I entrusted him with my story. And he betrayed me. You betrayed him, too, I remind myself.

Tallie sees my indecision and leans over to pat my hand. “You know what? I find late morning the perfect time for fishing. I’m going to go catch us our lunch, and you can have some time to yourself.”

And when she returns a few hours later with a stringful of river trout, I’m ready to talk.

“So now your power is gone,” Tallie concludes when I’m finished. We’ve just eaten lunch, and our lips are both stained from blackberries. She scoops the last spoonful of purple cream out of the bowl into her mouth.