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.