Until the Beginning by Plum Amy

Author:Plum, Amy [Plum, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-24T07:00:00+00:00

29

JUNEAU

THE SUN IS DIRECTLY OVERHEAD WHEN I DECIDE to stop. I’m not tired, but I’ve spotted a group of trees far off on the horizon, and am heading directly for them. I know I should eat something and give my body time to rest. I might not find shelter again.

I jog for another twenty minutes before reaching the motley group of dried-out trees. Swinging my pack to the ground, I throw myself down in a patch of shade cast by the anemic tree branches. I close my eyes and after a few seconds I doze off.

I awake in alarm—there’s something scratching at my chest. Sitting up abruptly, I send Poe flapping off me and onto the ground nearby. “Poe, you scared me to death,” I scold.

He cocks his head to one side and lets out three loud caws. Fair enough, I think, I scared him, too. I check the sun. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour. Wiping caked-on dirt from the side of my mouth, I fumble with my bag and take a long swig of water from the canteen.

Then, unfolding the pouch on Poe’s back, I draw out a small bundle of papers and shuffle through them. Three printed sheets. Tallie’s done her work.

I pull out a rabbit leg and, handing Poe a small piece, eat as I read. The first sheet is an area map that is similar to the one I left with Miles. “It’s all I could find” is written at the bottom of the page in red ink. “Hunting range isn’t advertised on the internet. I only found it mentioned in a couple of articles on wild-game hunting. Both referred to it as a ‘well-kept secret.’”

The second page reads “Forbes 1000” at the top, and shows a photo of a man wearing a suit with cowboy boots and a hat. The name under the picture is Randall Bradford “Hunt” Avery III, and the article beneath talks about how he transferred his father’s Texas-based oil business into an offshore drilling outfit, more than tripling his father’s fortune. It mentions a couple of ex-wives with children, and refers to him as a “playboy.”

On the last sheet, Tallie has written “from Wikipedia” across the top. Several paragraphs follow, starting with this:

Amrita (Sanskrit: IAST: amta) is a Sanskrit word that literally means “immortality,” and is often referred to in texts as nectar. The word’s earliest occurrence is in the Rigveda as the drink that confers immortality upon the gods.

Well, that confirms why Whit and my parents named the elixir what they did. I scan down the page for anything else of interest, and my attention is caught by this:

A Vajrayana text describes the origin of amrita . . . In this version, the monster Rahu steals the amrita and is blasted by Vajrapani’s thunderbolt. As Rahu has already drunk the amrita he cannot die but his blood, dripping onto the surface of this earth, causes all kinds of medicinal plants to grow. At the behest of all the Buddhas, Vajrapani reassembles Rahu who eventually becomes a protector of Buddhism.

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