“What’d you do?” I ask, picturing her using her hands as jumper cables or performing some kind of automotive healing ritual.
“That’s a good question. I don’t understand the mechanics of a car. The connection through the Yara is a connection to nature’s collective unconscious. I considered what force of nature could affect a car’s engine, but not ruin it permanently, and decided I’d try humidity. I thought ‘Make something important wet,’ and the image that popped into my mind was these little cylinders, half-white, half-silver. I could see that electricity or sparks come off one end of them to help make the car go. So last night I asked the Yara to pull all the water in the surrounding air to their surface, and they stopped working.”
“Those little cylinder things are called spark plugs,” I say.
“Okay,” she says, mentally filing away the term. “This morning I pictured them drying out. So it should work.”
I shake my head in wonder. “Should I pack up the tent or leave it?” I ask.
“I’m hoping we’ll figure out your last prophecy today,” she says, spreading the ashes of the fire outward with her tennis shoe. “And if we do, we have to be ready to follow it immediately.”
I begin pulling out the tent poles and folding them up. I can’t help smiling to myself as I do. This camping thing is definitely more fun with Juneau around.
Ten minutes later, we’re in the car. I turn the key in the ignition, and the engine fires right up. I glance over at Juneau and lift an eyebrow, impressed.
“Dry spark plugs,” Juneau says, looking proud of herself.
I turn the car around and begin driving down the dirt path toward the main road. “So if you used water on the spark plugs, what did you use to fry my phone?” I ask.
“Fire,” she replies. “It’s funny you use the word ‘fry,’ because that’s exactly what I pictured. I melted something inside.”
“I am guessing you can’t reverse that,” I say, nodding to my iPhone under the dashboard.
“Nope,” she confirms, tapping it with her fingernail. “As amusing as it is to watch you play with it, you might as well throw it out.”
A half hour later we sit in a booth at Ruth’s Diner, eating stacks of buttermilk pancakes smothered in strawberries. Juneau’s actually drinking a coffee, although she’s transformed it into tan-colored sludge by adding almost a whole carton of half-and-half. She grimaces as she takes a swig.
“You don’t have to drink coffee,” I say. “Some people drink tea for breakfast. I mean, no one I know, but . . .”
“Trying to integrate,” she says, one eye narrowed and her nose wrinkled in distaste. But I can tell her mind isn’t on our breakfast beverages. Her thoughts are miles away. She sits there, zoned out for a moment, and then shakes her head.
“I just can’t stop thinking about how the elders could lie to their own children for all those years.”
“Instead of asking how, maybe you should ask why,” I say. “I imagine that your elders were good people, and if they lied to you, there must be a reason.”
“I’ve gone over so many scenarios in my mind already,” she admits. “Their conviction about the harm that mankind is doing to the earth makes sense. I mean it’s well founded. But why not just move us out to the middle of nowhere and tell us that’s the reason? Why make up such an elaborate lie?”
“They didn’t want you to leave,” I suggest. “If they kept you in that small area of the country, they must have had a motive for why they didn’t want you to come into contact with the rest of society. Like fear of persecution. Or a secret they felt they had to hide. And both of those could be reasons they would be kidnapped. Although kidnapping dozens of people is kind of extreme.”
“The lies they told were pretty extreme too.”
“True.”
We both fall silent but something is nagging at me—pulling on the corner of my mind. “Okay,” I say finally. “Why don’t we start with something obvious? Like your ‘starburst,’ as you call it. Tell me more about that.”
“All the children in our clan have them. They show our closeness to the Yara.”
“But the elders are supposed to be near the Yara too, and they don’t have them, do they?”
“No,” she answers. “Their explanation was that we were the first generation of children to be born with complete immersion in the Yara. Children of Gaia—of the earth. They were all practicing it when they arrived in Alaska. And we were brought up knowing nothing else.”
“Does that actually make sense to you?” I say, as gently as I can. Because it sounds like a total crock of shit to me.