Amy Plum - After the End

Ten minutes pass and all I can hear is the hiss of my sled’s blades through the snow as we fly over the open field toward the track leading around the base of the mountain. The cold wind burns my cheeks, and I tighten the strings of my coat’s fur collar around my face.

We still have another twenty minutes before we reach the foothills. I was almost to the boundary when I found the bull caribou I had Read in my vision. It’s a good thing the animal stopped when it did, because I would never venture outside. Even a kill this size wouldn’t be worth the risk.

Suddenly, out of the silence comes the flapping sound again, closer and louder than before, confirming that I’m going in the right direction. But the source of the noise is still invisible. The mechanical rhythm of the eagle wings seems to hover and then becomes more distant. It’s got to be behind the mountain, I think, and my worry blooms into panic.

I pull hard on the dogs’ reins, and they come to an abrupt stop. Jumping off the sled, I use my mittened hand to clear the snow, scooping it away until I have a patch of wet ground. Jerking my pendant on its leather thong over my head, I pull my mitten off with my teeth and press my fire opal, still warm from my skin, between my palm and the sodden grass. I close my eyes and picture my father in my mind, and the earth speaks to me.

My mind is frozen by my father’s ice-cold panic. Petrified by his fear. As I feel his emotions, bile rises up my esophagus and burns my throat. I leap up, spitting and wiping my damp hand on my parka.

We must go faster , I think. Pulling my knife from my belt, I cut the caribou free. “Hike!” I yell. The dogs hear the fear in my voice and run like they never have before. The deer shifts and then slides off the back of the sled onto the ground, and, freed of its weight, we are off like an arrow across the snow.

Almost an hour later we finally pull over the hill into my village’s valley. My throat has been clenched so tightly that it’s been hard to breathe, but upon seeing the yurts safe and sound, smoke puffing out of the chimney holes, my breath spills out of me. I feel dizzy as oxygen floods my brain.

But as I survey the scene more carefully I see no movement in the camp. I lift my fingers to my lips and whistle the note that everyone knows is mine. The one that always wins me cries of “It’s Juneau! She’s back!” from the children who run to see what I have brought from a hunt. But this time I am greeted by silence. And then I notice the disorder of the camp.

Tools and weapons are scattered around the ground. The clothes drying on the line have all been blown to the mouth of the woods and are hanging in the trees, flapping around like flags. Baskets are overturned, grain and beans spilled over the hard-packed ground. The sides of the two closest yurts have been ripped from their posts, and the canvases are snapping back and forth in the breeze. It looks like a great wind has passed through.

Beckett and Neruda begin to growl, the fur on their backs bristling. I unclip them, and they race for our yurt. They disappear through the flaps and are back out a second later, puffing and barking frantically. As they begin sniffing around the empty camp, I plunge through our entrance to see my father’s desk knocked upside down and his books and papers scattered over the floor.

He’s gone. My heart stops, and then as I look down at the ground it slams hard against my ribs, forcing a cry from my throat. In the soft dirt floor, in my father’s careful block lettering, is written: JUNEAU, RUN!

WELCOME TO WEEK TWO OF MY OWN PRIVATE hell.

As I push the mail cart through the swinging double doors, I move from fragranced air and mood music into the mail room’s sweat/glue combo stench and bad-eighties-hair rock.

“Hey, Junior,” says Steve, a fortysomething burnout with a ponytail. “What’s up with the uniform?”

I look down at the regulation company yellow short-sleeved shirt that I’m wearing over a pair of jeans and shrug.

“I gave you blue slacks,” he says. “You’re supposed to wear them.”

“Yeah, but you see, Steve, there’s this thing called a washing machine. And sometimes you’re supposed to put your clothes in there so you don’t smell bad. Since you only gave me one pair of ‘slacks’”—I can’t even say that word without flinching—“I don’t have a spare.”

“Dude, that’s what weekends are for. I wear my uniform during the week, and then wash it on the weekend.”

From the permanent sweat marks under his pits, I have my doubts as to the frequency of his laundry habits. But I just stand there and stare at him, unblinking, until he looks away and starts fiddling with the radio dial. “Your dad said I’m supposed to treat you like everyone else,” he says, not looking at me, “and that means wearing your uniform.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, avoiding sarcasm in my tone but meaning it with all my heart.

I should be in school getting ready for graduation. Partying my ass off like the rest of my classmates. If it weren’t for Ms. Cochran, I would be coasting through the last six weeks of high school and easily into my spot at Yale.

And if it weren’t for my dad, I’d be at home watching Comedy Central. “Working in the mail room, you’ll be getting to know the business from the ground up,” he said. “Prove you’re responsible and I’ll make sure they let you into Yale for second semester. But until then, you work forty hours a week, minimum wage, no screwing around.”

His motivation is as transparent as glass. He wants me to see what life will look like if I don’t “shape up.” That, unless I change, I will be doomed to become Steve, spending my days sorting envelopes and wallowing in self-importance from bossing around lowly mail-room staff.

There’s got to be another way to prove myself to Dad instead of being stuck here for the next nine months. Even a few more weeks in this hellhole and my brain will explode. Or I’ll kill Steve. I imagine wrapping his hair around his neck and pulling hard. Death by ponytail. It could happen.

THE DOGS ARE HOWLING. I STUMBLE OUT OF OUR yurt and toward their sound. They are in Nome’s yurt, standing above a mass of fur and blood. Her huskies. They’ve been shot. I choke back tears: I knew these dogs as well as I know my own.

We have one rifle among the clan, and it is only used in the very rare occasion of a bear attack. Our few bullets are dispensed sparingly. But the casings scattered on the floor around me are not from our gun. Flying machines? Guns? These brigands are terrifyingly well-equipped.

I run out of Nome’s yurt and into Kenai’s. Empty. There is another heap of bloody fur behind that yurt, and at the mouth of the woods I see more dead huskies. But no people. I check all twenty yurts, saving Whit’s for last.

Our Sage’s fire is out, his hearth cold. I stand there, confused, until I remember that he left yesterday for his retreat. The cave on the far side of Denali where he goes a few times a year to “refresh his brain,” as he calls it. He has never taken me, but I know where it is. With all the exploring that Nome, Kenai, and I have done, there isn’t an inch of our territory that I haven’t seen.

My heart pinches as I think of my best friends and where they might be right now. What unknown danger are they, my father, and the rest of my clan facing? If they’re even still alive. I shake my head and refuse to allow that thought to fix itself in my mind.

I’ve got to get to Whit. Even though he didn’t foresee this attack, maybe he’ll know what happened. I take my big pack from my shelf in the back of Whit’s yurt. The one I use on our daylong lessons, when we travel into the woods to search for the plants and minerals used for the Rite.