My heart races, and I fight to maintain my calm. Metamorphose! I urge, and I feel a spark of electricity burning through my veins like flames. And as I watch, the shack disappears. We are now, for all practical purposes, invisible.
As the car approaches, I recognize the man riding in the passenger side. It is Murray Blackwell, head of Blackwell Pharmaceutical and father of the boy lying dead beside me. He must have mobilized this search party as soon as he discovered his son abducted me from his own house, where he was keeping me prisoner.
And all for a drug, I think. All because he wants to know the “formula” for the elixir—Amrit, as he called it—that I use to perform the Rite. He and whoever kidnapped my clan are desperate to get it. “Another example of violence spawned by capitalism,” I can almost hear Dennis say—one of his favorite refrains in our Past Civilizations lessons. Now the infernal machine wants to suck us into its cogs and wheels, and I’m the only one left to fight it.
A burly man sits behind the wheel beside Mr. Blackwell, and the two security guards who kidnapped me from Salt Lake City are in the backseat, craning their heads to survey the barren landscape. The car moves so slowly that it seems like an hour before they pass us and are following the dirt road over the crest of a ridge.
I don’t dare breathe. The Conjure weighs heavily on me. I’m pouring with sweat now, my clothes clammy against my skin. I flex my fingers and roll my head to both sides to avoid freezing up completely, and wait. In a couple of minutes, the car reappears at the top of the ridge. Its passengers scan the horizon, searching for what is right in front of them.
This time the car passes mere feet from me. Mr. Blackwell’s eyes meet mine for just a second, and although he can’t see me, panic scorches a jagged hole in the pit of my stomach. He looks away, and I can once again breathe. I wait until the car is out of sight, once more just a plume of dust on the horizon, before I let go of the Conjure. The car, the cabin, and I slowly infuse with our true colors. I lean back against the car, trembling from the effort and residual fear. They were so close.
But I had done it. I worked a major Conjure, and did it without a totem. A flash of hope bursts through me. I am capable of more than I imagined. My father’s words come back to me, “You’re a prodigy in the Yara, Juneau. Just like your mother was.”
Whit kept so much from me, claiming that he was waiting until I was older. Until I had undergone the Rite myself. But I don’t need his permission anymore. I don’t need his questionable expertise, cobbled together from other belief systems and trial and error. I am ready to explore the Yara on my own terms.
My battle against my clan’s kidnappers is just beginning. But instead of apprehension, I feel excitement. I’ve had a powerful weapon at my fingertips my whole life, and I’m finally learning to wield it. I feel unstoppable.
4
MILES
I AM BEING DRAGGED ALONG A CURRENT, FLOATING in a wide river with tall trees on either side. My body is pulled under and pops back up as if I were nothing but a twig floating on the surface of a stream. I am unafraid, my senses bathed by the sound of the rushing water and the touch of the cool liquid. Only the smell of the sparkling pure air in this dream world is missing—absent because I do not breathe.
Someone is next to me. I can’t turn my head, but I know it’s Juneau. She rides the river beside me. From somewhere far away I hear music. Singing. An exotic tune, the words of which I can’t quite capture, but their purpose is clear. The song, like the silent girl beside me, accompanies me. Wraps me in its security. Its confidence. Others have been here before, and the song accompanied them, too.
A roaring noise grows louder every second—it is hollow, like the noise inside a seashell. The trees on either side of us disappear gradually, the riverbanks flattening out until finally I am thrust with great force out of the mouth of the river into an ocean so wide that no shore is visible. I can feel my body dissolving in the saltwater waves that toss me back and forth, and still Juneau is there. Staying close.
My body melts away until there is nothing left but a small white ball, feathers, beak, and a flash of light. And like that, I am sprung into the air. The words of the song grow clearer, and I sense another bird keeping pace with me, just outside my vision. I flap my wings, banking steeply as we climb together, high over the endless ocean. We catch the wind and soar.
5
JUNEAU