Until the Beginning by Amy Plum
DEDICATION
For Gretchen, for survival,
and for closing the book on our own Alaska
EPIGRAPH
“I’M A SCIENTIST, NOT A THEOLOGIAN. I DON’T know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.”
—James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis
1
JUNEAU
MILES HAS BEEN DEAD FOR ONE HOUR. I DO NOT know if it is true death—if he died of blood loss after I dug the bullet out of him—or if this is the death-sleep that I summoned by giving him the Rite. There is only one way to find out, and that is to wait seven more hours and see if he starts breathing again.
I rise and leave my post at the door. Turning away from the blazing red of the sunbaked desert, I enter the cool darkness of the one-room shack. My vision swims as my eyes adjust, and it is a few seconds before I can see him. Not him. His shell.
The vacuum left by his spirit’s departure pulls me across the room, and I stand over him, looking down at his naked body. He is a study in white and red: The little bit of skin that isn’t smeared with clotted blood is the shade of curdled milk. Honey-colored curls brush his paste-white forehead. His lips are parted, his jaw loose. Blood is smudged across his cheek, but whether it is his or mine I don’t know.
I hold up my palm and see that blood still oozes from where I cut myself with the ceremonial knife. The contents of my bag are strewn across the floor. I squat down, and from the pile of stones, dried herbs, and feathers, I pull a strip of cotton and wrap it tightly around my hand to bind my wound.
And with that small, final act of caring for myself, I am suddenly drained of my adrenaline-fueled vigilance. My defenses finally down, the full force of what I have done strikes me. I sit down on the floor, resting my head in my hands.
I may have killed this boy. I may have sent him away forever.
I performed a ritual on him—gave him a powerful drug—that has only been used on members of my clan. On people who were ready for it, whose spirits already embraced the Yara. Who looked to Gaia for strength.
And Miles . . . he is not strong. He wants to be. There is much in him that is good. But he hasn’t even started thinking about his place on earth . . . his part in the superorganism that makes up Gaia.
Never mind spiritual strength; all of my previous Rite-travelers were in perfect physical condition when I led them into death-sleep. They weren’t like Miles, barely conscious with a bullet freshly dug out of his side. He had lost a lot of blood. Was already dying.
What have I done?
Miles could be lost in death, unable to find his way back. Unable to recognize the signposts along his path. That is . . . if he is actually in death-sleep and didn’t undergo true death before the Rite took effect.
I push myself to my feet. I can’t lose hope. I must treat Miles as if he were any other Rite-traveler. He did take the vow. He agreed to become one with the Yara. To dedicate his life to the earth and the force that binds every living thing together. And to trade his short human life for one that could last hundreds of years, if not more.
He agreed to it all. But it was a spontaneous decision, made in a desperate moment. What would happen to him if it wasn’t truly sincere?
“He chose it,” I say to reassure myself. In the dead quiet my words sound hollow. Meaningless.
I walk across the room to him and begin humming the Song of the Path. And as I do, I am pulled back into the trancelike state that cocoons me when I perform the Rite. I leave my fear behind and immerse myself in what I am supposed to do. What I was taught to do.
The candles forming a halo around his head flicker their last, casting an eerie light on his marble face. I blow them out one by one as I walk in a circular path around his body. One candle for each turn.
My breath slows as the last candle goes dark and I begin singing the words, willing Miles to move toward death’s gate. To approach it, to brush it with his fingertips, and then to turn and come back to land of the living. To me.
I untie the cloths binding the gold nuggets to the soles of his feet as the words drop from my lips. I replace the stones to their leather bag and stow them carefully in my backpack. And still I sing.
Like my clan members who I accompanied, I am Miles’s companion in this Rite. Someone who knows him and cares about him. Who will ease his passage to the hinterlands of death and back to life—a different life—one without aging or disease.