“Eyes on the road!” Miles yells, and grabs the steering wheel.
Nome adjusts the car and peers at me through the rearview mirror. “If you’re not leader, who’s going to be? Me?”
“Gaia help us,” murmurs Kenai, and Nome gives him an indignant “hey!”
Kenai nudges me gently. “Can I assume these emergency driving lessons mean you definitely can’t be talked into coming to Roswell with us?”
I shake my head. “No, but I’d like you to go—to help with the regrouping of the clan. Stay while decisions are being made. Decide where you want to go. And once everyone makes their choices, I want you to come find me and tell me.”
“I know the reasons you gave the group for not coming,” Kenai says, “but there’s more, isn’t there?”
I lean my head back against the seat and sigh. “They’re going to make me be leader whether I want to or not. If I go to Roswell, everyone will look to me for direction. I don’t even want to be a factor in their decision-making. I can’t be there.” I look Kenai in the eyes, and see that he understands. Agrees, even. “I’ll decide what I’m going to do, though, once I hear the decision of the clan.”
We ride in silence, until a few minutes later Miles has Nome pull over to the side of the road, and shows her how to put the car in park. Kenai takes the driver’s seat, and Nome climbs into the back with me, leaning over first for a meaning-laden hug. Kenai pulls onto the road with a jerk, and I quickly show her how to put the seat belt on.
She watches me with wide eyes. “Where will you go?”
At this, Miles turns around, and a whole wordless conversation takes place between us. Finally he says, “I’m going wherever you’re going.”
“Are you sure?” I make my expression blank and wait. It doesn’t matter what I want, this decision is up to him.
He nods, showing me that his choice is made. “Besides, you need me. I’m your oracle—how are you going to figure out what to do without me?” He raises one eyebrow, and I can’t help but crack a smile.
The tension broken, Nome says, “Okay, then, Oracle. Enlighten us as to what Juneau is planning.”
Miles flashes a smile at me. “I don’t have to say it as a riddle, do I?”
I laugh. “No. I prefer straight-out prediction, please.”
He makes sure Kenai is doing okay with the driving, and then turns back to us. He squints, as if he’s looking at something far in the distance, and strokes his chin seriously. “I see a very cold place in Miles and Juneau’s immediate future. A road trip to Alaska. A plane would be more convenient, of course, but since Juneau has no ID”—Miles glances at Nome and clarifies—“identification papers, without even taking into account her acute hatred of air travel, they will travel by car and boat.”
He looks at me for reassurance, and I grin. “Sounds good so far. Go on.”
“Once in the land of tundra, they will proceed immediately to a certain dog shelter, where a very joyful reunion will take place.”
Tears spring to my eyes, and I cover my mouth to hold in my emotion. Miles pretends he doesn’t see and continues.
“With their enthusiastic dog companions, Juneau and Miles will venture to the emergency shelter and on to the yurt encampment to retrieve everything of value, thus ensuring the economic future of the clan.”
I compose myself and say to Nome and Kenai, “He’s right. With what I’ve seen our gold can buy, we’ll all have enough for a good start in this new world.”
“And finally,” Miles says, wrapping up, “the companions make their way back to the mainland, traveling to Utah to stay with a crazy mountain woman in her ecologically correct cabin in the woods, allowing Juneau time to . . .” He hesitates and glances at Nome and Kenai.
“Go ahead and say it,” I urge.
“De-brainwash—” Miles chances.
“We could all use some of that!” Kenai says, roaring with laughter, and the car swerves slightly before he straightens it out.
Miles smiles and continues, “While she awaits word from her faithful friends about the fate of her clan members. The end.”
“Bravo!” Nome shouts, and we both give him a round of applause.
Miles looks pleased with himself. “Did I get close?” he asks me.
I’m awestruck by his accuracy. Fake oracle prophecies aside, this boy really knows me. “It’s exactly what I was thinking,” I reply.
“What did I tell you?” Miles says. “You need me.” He shrugs, as though it’s obvious, and turns to point at something ahead of us.
Our headlights illuminate the forest-green pickup truck ahead, and Kenai pulls smoothly over to park next to it. As we get out of the car, a cawing noise comes from above, and Poe swoops down to land on the roof of the pickup. “Look who’s been following us,” I say to Miles. “You didn’t figure him into the prophecy.”
“Well, of course he’s coming with us,” Miles says, shrugging as if it were obvious. “What would a trip to Alaska be without our favorite messenger raven?”
“How about you?” I ask Nome and Kenai. “Have you thought about what you’ll do when this is over?”
Kenai looks at Nome, and back at me. “We’ve been talking about it since we were kidnapped: what we would do in every possible scenario. We decided that if we all got out of there alive, we would set out on our own for a while, hopefully with you and”—he makes a welcome gesture toward Miles—“with whatever random men you happened to pick up along the way, of course.” Miles rolls his eyes but nods, accepting the sidekick role.
Nome speaks up. “At first, we were both pretty bitter and twisted. We’ve forgiven our parents now . . . at least we’ve started to. But we both think we need time away from them. They and the other elders are still learning how to live with themselves.” She wrinkles her nose. “It could be messy.”
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“Why don’t we consult the oracle?” Nome suggests, and nudges Miles.
“Let’s see,” he says, and closes his eyes. “After you two bring the clan’s news to Juneau, we form our own mini-clan and take off for a year or so on an epic road trip of adventure.” He opens one eye to see my reaction, but quickly closes it again as Nome throws herself on him, hugging him around the neck.
“I am totally up for that plan,” Kenai says, nodding in approval.
“Me too,” says Nome, and leans back to look Miles in the face. “You are perfect for Juneau. And, seeing that I’ve known her since we were both toddlers, I don’t give that compliment lightly.” She leans in to kiss him on the cheek, and then skips away with the keys to the car, which Miles had been holding in his hand. “I’m driving first!” she crows, dangling the keys in front of Kenai before leaping into the driver’s seat and slamming the door behind her.
Kenai sticks his hand out to Miles, who shakes it, much to Kenai’s amusement. I look at him quizzically. “Inside joke,” he tells me, and then gives me one of his signature Kenai bear hugs. “We’ll get directions from Tallie,” he says. “See you in Utah. Stay safe.”
He disappears into the car, and the tires screech as Nome turns around and heads back in the direction we came from.
“We couldn’t have taken the Rolls?” Miles asks.
“Would it stand out parked at the foot of a mountain in Utah?” I respond.
“Point taken,” he says, sighing, and watches until the car disappears around a corner.
Poe caws loudly, and flies from the top of the pickup to land on my shoulder. Miles takes the truck keys out of his pocket and holds them out, offering. I shake my head. “You drive,” I say. “I have a lot to think about.”
We get into the pickup. Poe perches on the seatback between us, and immediately begins cleaning his feathers. “Is he like our bird-child now?” Miles asks, nudging Poe closer to me get the tail out of his face.
“As long as he wants to hang around,” I say with a smile. Miles shrugs his acceptance and starts the engine. He pulls out into the road and turns the truc
k around to steer us back toward Albuquerque.
We drive in silence for a few minutes before I speak. “There were some things you left out of that prophecy,” I say.
“I know,” Miles admits. “I only said the things I was sure of. I left out the rest.”
“Like . . . ,” I prod.
“Amrit,” he replies. “I know what a negative thing it is to you now that Whit sold your people out to make a buck off it.”
“Or make his name from it,” I add. Miles just nods. Waits.
I sigh. “Part of me wants to never make it again. To make the Rite a thing of the past. But I know I want to use it first.”
Miles breathes a sigh of relief. I take his hand. “Because of you. Because of my people. Because it’s what I’ve shaped my life around. I’ll offer it to Nome and Kenai, too . . . for the same reasons.”
“How about . . . other people?” Miles asks, and something in his voice tells me exactly who he is thinking of. His mother. I’ve thought about her, too.
Could Amrit cure mental illness? What if it didn’t and she took it? Would it consign her to hundreds of years, or more, of unabated depression? I choose my words carefully. “That’s something we’ll both have to think about.”
“Would you like to meet her?” Miles asks, glancing over at me.
“I was thinking that could be the first stop on our epic road trip of adventure,” I say. He puts his arm around me and pulls me close.
“So what about Yale?” I ask.
“Looks like I’m going to have plenty of time to get a degree,” he replies. “Or ten. I don’t need to start right away.”
I lean my head on his shoulder and watch the landscape speed by. We drive in silence for a while before Miles speaks again. “This is a weird place to be in. For both of us, but more for you than for me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“When we were talking about an epic road trip, I thought of how your life up to now is already like an epic story. Your old life in Alaska is like an entire book that you’ve already worked your way through from start to finish. It’s over. Done. I know you’ll want to read it and reread it until you understand what happened—to make sense out of everything. But pretty soon you’ll be able to close it and move on to a new one. One you haven’t even cracked open. It’s your new life. Just about to start.”
My heart is in my throat—I can’t even talk. This boy knows me better than I know myself.
“So we’re in a weird place right now,” he concludes. “It’s a no-man’s-land between two epic stories. After the end of one . . . waiting until the beginning of the next.”
“What kind of book will the new one be?” I ask, leaning back to look at him—this muddy, brave, wise boy who doesn’t even resemble the person he was a few weeks ago. He earned my respect. He earned my friendship. And now he has earned my love.
“A mystery,” he replies with a grin, “with a kick-ass heroine, a hero who is so hopelessly into her that he’ll follow any crazy plan she suggests, and a bit of magic and action thrown in to keep things interesting.”
I can’t help but beam. “Mysteries are my favorite.”
Miles gives me his quirky smile. “Finally it looks like we’ve got something in common.” He pulls me close to him, and we begin our drive across America. Away from the darkness of our old lives and toward the bright sparkling future of the new.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK WAS NOT CONCEIVED IN A VOID. MY own childhood provided me with a fierce will to survive and a need to search for my own path to truth. Although I didn’t have Miles, Poe, and the Yara to accompany me on that path, there were others who helped me along my way: Madeleine L’Engle, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Helprin, Charles Williams, Ray Bradbury, Walker Percy, George MacDonald, Anne McCaffrey, and a host of others. These individuals helped me escape my internal world and learn to see the one outside me through different eyes. They saved me. Books saved me. Story saved me.
As for bringing the story of another survivor and truth-seeker to the page, I want to thank Tara Weikum and Christopher Hernandez for helping me organize my thoughts on Juneau, and prodding me about the ideas that weren’t quite true until I took them further. Thank you for your guidance and wise advice.
Once again, thank you to my agent, Stacey Glick, for finding the perfect home for Juneau and Miles.
My friend and beta reader Claudia Depkin had the patience and grace to read the story chunk by chunk as I churned it out, and then read it all over again . . . several times. Thank you for your encouragement and feedback, Claudia. Gratitude as well to fellow writer and wereboar sister Anna Carey for reading, reassuring, and advising.
Thank you to my assistant, Alana, for all of her help in organizing me, proofreading, coming up with discussion group questions, and all of the other tasks I set for her. I forgive you for leaving me for university, and have no doubt you have a very bright future, whether in books, physics, or whatever else you put your mind to.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to Until the Beginning’s final package. Copyeditors Melinda Weigel, Alexandra Alexo, and Anne Heausler helped clean things up inside, while the outside was treated with grandeur and beauty by Jenna Stempel, Alison Donalty, and Craig Shields.
There were several batcaves used in the making of Until the Beginning: besides my regular haunt in Paris was a brownstone in Brooklyn with Lisa Steiner; a cozy flat on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, with Lisa O’Donnell; a home in the desert in Lake Havasu, Arizona, with my cousin Diana Canfield; and a convent-school-turned-artist-retreat near Reims, France, the Performing Arts Forum, run by the indefatigable Jan Ritsema. It seems that one must travel in order to create a road-trip book.
Finally, and most important, I want to thank my readers for loving my stories and for telling me so. Your enthusiasm and support means everything to me.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Louis Fabries
AMY PLUM is the international bestselling author of After the End and the Die for Me series. She spent her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, her twenties in Chicago and Paris, and several more years in London, New York, and the Loire Valley. Now she lives in Paris and swears she’ll never move again. You can visit Amy online at www.amyplumbooks.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
BOOKS BY AMY PLUM
After the End
Until the Beginning
The Die for Me series
Die for Me
Until I Die
If I Should Die
Die for Her: A Die for Me Digital Novella
Die Once More: A Die for Me Digital Novella
CREDITS
Cover art © 2015 by Craig Shields
COPYRIGHT
James Lovelock quote taken from an interview first appearing in Salon.com, at http://www.Salon.com. An online version remains in the Salon archives.
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
UNTIL THE BEGINNING. Copyright © 2015 by Amy Plum. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of Harper
Collins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plum, Amy.
Until the beginning / Amy Plum. — First edition.
pages cm
Sequel to: After the end.
Summary: “With the help of her friend Miles, Juneau continues her desperate search to find and rescue her clan, but the same forces that abducted her people are after her because, unbeknownst to Juneau, she is the answer to unraveling an ancient secret that could change the world”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-222563-4 (hardcover)
EPub Edition March 2015 ISBN 9780062225658
[1. Extrasensory perception—Fiction. 2. Nature—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P7287Up 2015 2014038504
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
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15 16 17 18 19 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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