Zenith

by Julie Bertagna

  He couldn’t tell Candleriggs what else Mara said.

  If my power dies, don’t give up on me. If something happens, if we lose contact, don’t ever give up.

  What’s wrong? he kept asking. What happened that night you disappeared?

  I’m running low on power, she said. I’m – I – I don’t know what’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. Just don’t give up on me, promise?

  He promised, of course he did. There was nothing else he could do.

  Now he has found the snake sign but when will he find Mara again? Fox is filled with a terrible foreboding. All he can do is wait on the Bridge to Nowhere and hope that she comes.

  ANGEL ON THE RISE

  There are skeletons in the nooks and crannies of the deep caves, and the scattered belongings of the people they once were. Broken watches, jewellery, unfathomable gadgets from the past, all kinds of useless stuff. Useful things too. Clothes and shoes and blankets, pots and plates, empty cans, knives and spoons, plastic bottles and bags.

  The urchins have found a collection of small metal and coloured plastic boxes, some of which still magic up a flame when a switch is flicked. Ibrox sniffs the unfamiliar oil that fuels them, impressed at these ingenious fireboxes of the old world.

  Mara shudders at the thought that the skeletons were once the same people who carved the story of the world’s drowning on to the cave wall, though she overcomes her qualms and gratefully pulls on their warm clothes. Did they die here waiting for winter to pass? Their remains can’t be buried. The ground is solid rock. So the urchins play with the skulls and bones, turning them into bats and balls, guns and swords, and sticks to batter out a drum bash on the rocks.

  The urchins make treasure hoards of the bright litter they find scrunched on the ground. They dress up in motley assortments of clothes, drape themselves in jewellery and broken watches and take apart the gadgets to see what’s inside.

  Scarwell has moved into a cave of her own, a low cavern along one of the tunnels that branch off from the moon cave. She has filled it with precarious bone-heaps, gruesome things that scare the other urchins off her treasure hoard, each one topped by a skull with a gleaming pair of firestone eyes. In the middle of them sits her constant companion, the plastic apeman from the drowned museum, who is almost as big as herself. He looks strangely at home in his cavern, hunched over Scarwell’s treasure, surrounded by human bones.

  It was Scarwell who made the skull lanterns, by turning skulls upside down and burning small chunks of driftwood soaked in fish oil inside. Everyone was horrified, but the darkness of the mountain and the outside world had crept into the moon cave. It seemed to sap the thunder of the waterfalls and the soft moon glow that lives in the cavern rock. Now Scarwell’s skull lanterns are a welcome, if grotesque, source of light.

  Ibrox, whose fire-making tricks have been dwindling fast, hoards all the fireboxes that still have dregs of fuel. Every so often, he uses one of the fireboxes to spark the embers of the fire. It’s the signal for everyone to gather in semblance of the Treenesters’ old sunup and sundown ritual. No one can be bothered to shout out their names any more but they gather together and Gorbal reads from A Tale of Two Cities or a snippet from Tuck’s book, or he unwraps a poem or story from his own head and warms it by the fire. The ache of their empty stomachs fades a little as they fly on the wings of the words, escaping their entombment in the caves. They fall asleep with the story infused in their dreams.

  Human sounds, a sneeze or shout, begin to jangle nerves and graze the ear like grit. There’s no longer any sense of day or night, hours or minutes. Time hibernates in the long night of winter, nestled in the beat of a heart.

  And then . . .

  A wind enters the cavern with a clean, sharp scent that cuts through sleep. Everyone wakens.

  ‘That’s not a sea wind,’ says Pollock. He jumps up from his sea-grass mattress, alert. ‘No scent of salt.’

  ‘A tree wind,’ whispers Mol, more hopeful than sure.

  ‘Smells green,’ Ibrox agrees.

  ‘We’ll track it,’ says Pollock. Possil has already disappeared into the cave tunnels, quick on its trail.

  Tuck sniffs the air. He’s never breathed any that isn’t salty with sea.

  Mara knows the green scent of grass in the wind. This wind is fresh yet it comes from deep inside the tunnels, not from the cave mouth. It can only come from somewhere beyond the mountain.

  From the interior?

  If that’s where the green wind comes from, Mara is sure there must be a way through. And they need to find it soon or they might end up as a litter of skulls and bones too.

  She should go with Pollock and Possil and follow the wind, right now, to wherever it comes from but she’s so tired. Her mind keeps slithering into sleep. Later, once she’s slept, then she’ll track the wind.

  But something keeps nudging Mara out of sleep. She tries to ignore it but every time she is about to drop off it nudges her once more. She lies in the dark, wondering what it is. Not a noise, but a movement in the pit of her stomach. The strangest sensation. Not pain. Mara rolls on to her back, places a hand on the spot, feels it again. It’s like . . . like a key turning in a lock. Mara’s heart beats like a clock. There’s a strong taste in her mouth again. Something to do with the sulphurous tang in the air from the hot spring? It makes fish and seaweed taste of metal and she can hardly eat them, though that’s all there is and she’s hungry all the time. Her eyelids, the soles of her feet, the insides of her wrists, every part of her tingles, as if her skin has grown too thin and her nerve endings are raw. Sore and tender, she sits up. The ghostly glow of the cavern seems to seep inside her fuzzy head.

  ‘M-Mol?’

  She almost called for her mum. Her voice echoes around the caves. Mol doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s gone tree-wind-tracking with Pollock and Possil.

  There’s a grunt from across the cave.

  ‘Mara?’ Mol’s voice croaks with sleepiness.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Mara whispers. ‘I don’t feel right. I saw stuff in the cyberwizz – things I shouldn’t have looked at . . .’

  The darkness hisses with her whispers. She hears Gorbals mutter in his sleep. Beside her, Rowan is snoring lightly. Suddenly Mol is beside her. She puts a cool hand on Mara’s forehead.

  ‘What things did you see?’

  ‘Things from the past. My home. My Granny Mary and Tain.’

  ‘Dreams, Mara. You’ve just had a bad dream. There’s no fever. I don’t think you’re ill.’

  ‘I feel so strange. Not sick, just strange.’

  Mol takes a breath, lets it out, long and slow. She puts her mouth to Mara’s ear.

  ‘Are you still bleeding every moon?’

  Mara lets the words sink in. Her heart hammers.

  ‘We can’t see the moon,’ she mutters. Then, in a whisper, ‘No, but so much has happened and we’re half starved . . .’

  Mol takes her hand and pulls her over to the low ember fire. ‘It is the strangest feeling,’ she whispers. ‘Like moth wings or tiny fish.’

  ‘Like a key turning,’ breathes Mara, ‘deep inside.’

  Mol nods. ‘And you dream a lot too. Strange dreams.’ She squeezes Mara’s hand. ‘You’re not sick, you’re full of life.’

  Mara feels a cold hand grip the key that’s still turning, slowly, slowly, deep inside.

  No.

  ‘I can’t be . . .’

  And yet she knows she is.

  ‘It’s only a baby,’ whispers Mol. ‘Don’t be scared of that.’

  A baby.

  ‘I can’t, Mol. It’s too scary. What’ll I do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ says Mol. ‘Stop panicking. The baby grows itself. How can you be scared of a baby after all you’ve been through?’

  ‘What if something goes wrong?’ Mara has a sharp memory of the cold waiting and wandering in the field of windmills as a trail of grim faces rushed into the cottage during her little brother Corey’s difficult birth. Most of all, she rem
embers the sound of her mother’s agony mixed with the moan of the wind. ‘No one here knows anything about babies.’

  Molendinar’s eyes drop. ‘I know.’

  ‘I wish Broomielaw was here.’

  ‘Me too,’ admits Mol. ‘But listen, Mara, I helped with her birth and it was a tough one. We got there, though. Broomie and Clay were . . .’ She falters, bites her lip. ‘They were fine in the end,’ she says firmly. ‘You will be too.’

  ‘I want my mum.’

  Mol squeezes her hand tighter still. ‘I know. But I’m here. Mara, this is not a bad thing, it’s good. We need new, strong blood. We need to grow new people.’

  Mara hears the ring of relief, as well as friendship, in the other girl’s voice and she knows why. It’s to do with Tuck. Mol’s heart is in her eyes whenever she looks at Tuck. Everyone can see that; everyone but Tuck. And Mara knows who’s to blame for that. She is, because Tuck only has eyes for her. But once Tuck finds out she’s going to have a baby . . . Mara sighs. Well, he’s bound to feel differently then.

  ‘It’s new life,’ Mol whispers, ‘something warm and good, like finding the hot spring in the middle of the killing cold. My mother used to say that wherever a devil is roused, you’ll always find an angel on the rise. You’ll always have a bit of your Fox now. Think of that.’

  Think of Fox, not Tuck, is what she means.

  Back in her bed, Mara’s thoughts whirl. She’s having a baby. Fox’s baby. The idea is so enormous and strange, but when the slow, fluttery key-turning comes again, a feeling as clear and sharp as the green wind rushes through her and the dread seeps away.

  Like the green wind, the baby is the key to the future. The baby is the way through.

  Mol is right. She will always have a bit of Fox now. Part of him is alive inside her, closer than ever, growing into a baby that they have made.

  The women on her island used to call every newborn baby a tiny miracle and Mara never gave it any thought, never understood. Now she does.

  Amid the bones and primeval dark of the Earth, her own tiny miracle has bloomed. A miracle that links her across the waves of time to Granny Mary and Tain on the island. And to Fox in his netherworld tower, an ocean away.

  THE SILENCE OF THE FALLS

  Pollock stops dead. The torch flame flickers on the rugged rock of the cave tunnel.

  ‘Listen.’

  The others strain to hear.

  Mara shrugs. ‘Can’t hear anything.’

  ‘That’s it,’ says Pollock. ‘There’s nothing. There should be a waterfall here, louder than the biggest roar of thunder I’ve ever heard. It made a wind that nearly blew me off my feet.’

  They listen again but there’s only the jangling of the urchins’ jewellery. Their arms and legs are adorned with dead watches and flip-top wrist phones, old world junk that Granny Mary and Tain used to hoard under their beds.

  Wing is a ridiculous sight, zipped in a big blue snow suit he found in one of the tunnels, rattling with neck chains hung with the ring tops from empty cans, his ears plugged into a gadget that’s long dead. He is almost up to her shoulder now, Mara sees, and wonders how he has grown having had so little food for so long in these dark caves.

  ‘Shh!’ Pollock hisses fiercely and everyone stands stock still.

  ‘Maybe this is the wrong tunnel,’ Rowan suggests.

  Pollock lowers the torch to show two human leg bones, one crossed over the other. ‘I left crosses to mark the way. I’ve been tracking these tunnels ever since we got here.’

  ‘A waterfall can’t disappear,’ says Mara.

  ‘No,’ says Pollock. ‘But it can freeze. Haven’t you noticed they’ve all grown quiet? The streams of water that run along the floor of the tunnels are only trickles now because the waterfalls have turned to ice. It’s only the hot spring that keeps our floor from icing up.’

  ‘We must be right in the heart of the winter,’ says Mara, shocked at what she has missed. She has been so eaten up with worry about the baby that she was glad when the din of the waterfalls dimmed, and didn’t even ask why. She never even noticed the streams had shrunk or wondered why the others were melting slabs of ice to drink. She has been too caught up in herself.

  ‘We could all die here,’ she says quietly.

  ‘Not if we find a way through,’ Pollock responds.

  ‘You think this is the way?’

  Pollock nods. ‘It’s the way through to somewhere. Don’t know where though. The scent of fresh wind used to be strong in this tunnel and I used to see a star here. Sometimes it peeked at me through a waterfall chute.’ He shows them the skeleton hand he’s placed on a rock, its ringed forefinger pointing to the ceiling of the cave. ‘But it’s gone and the water’s gone too. The chute must be iced up, high in the mountain.’

  ‘The wind came from beyond the waterfall,’ adds Possil, ‘from a place where the air is full of the smell of plants and earth, not salty sea.’

  Mara feels a sharp surge of hope. If only Possil and Pollock are right.

  They follow the bone trail further until the cave tunnel ends in a solid wall. Possil bends and lights the skull lantern left from a previous visit. Pollock lifts the torch and the wall gleams with ice.

  ‘This is it!’

  The wall is not rock. Mara can see from the gleam cast by the skull light that it is solid ice. The huge waterfall has frozen into a thick wall that blocks the way through to the place of the green wind.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Disappointment is as sharp as the burst of hope. But she will not cry. The situation is too desperate for tears.

  Pollock sighs. ‘Wait for spring.’

  ‘Spring?’

  The baby will be born in the spring. She can’t give birth in these deathly caves.

  Rowan picks up a sharp-edged rock from the ground and one of the long bones Pollock used to mark the way through the cave tunnels. He places the rock at the end of the bone and frowns.

  He steps forward and stabs the ice wall with the rock. A splinter of ice shears off. He holds the bone in one hand, the sharp rock in the other.

  ‘We’ll make axes,’ he says. ‘We’ll hack our way through.’

  Mara has spent what feels like weeks collecting flat rocks from the floor of the caves and tunnels, chipping them into axe heads then binding them on to bones with tough seaweed rope. Sorting out long, strong bones from the piles in the caves then filing and sharpening the axe heads with other rocks has become an intense craft that takes her mind off her worries. Her first axes were wobbly, useless things but this last one looks good and strong.

  But not as good as Tuck’s. Mara watches his nimble fingers weave intricate braids of seaweed up the bone handle and around the axe head. He knots the braid and cuts it with a flash of his cutlass. His finished axe is a beautiful thing, thinks Mara, unlike her clumsy, functional tools.

  ‘Come with me?’ she urges. Tuck shakes his head. His trip in the World Wind has not shifted his fear of the mountain. He will endure long treks through the tunnels to the cave mouth to fish and collect seaweed and driftwood, but he refuses to go any deeper into the Earth.

  So Mara follows Pollock’s trail of fire stones and crossed bones to deliver the axes to the frozen waterfall where the others are trying to hack a tunnel through the solid wall of ice.

  Rowan tries out a few axes. Mara wants to tell him that she made the axe he settles on but he is in a brittle, sullen mood and she can’t help thinking he deliberately did not choose Tuck’s, even though his axes are clearly the best.

  It’s only when Mara picks up an axe that he looks at her then grabs it off her, chucking it on the ground with a gruff no. Mol pulls her away from the ice wall.

  ‘You can’t, silly. You have to take care of yourself.’

  Mara looks from Mol to Rowan. Has she told him? Does he know?

  The axes smash the ice into chips and daggers. Mara yelps as a splinter hits her in the face. She backs off, a trickle of blood on her cheek, leaving Rowan and the others to
attack the ice wall. As she thinks of what she needs to tell Fox, before the cyberwizz finally dies for the rest of the winter, she feels as if the ice splinter has slipped into her bloodstream and lodged in her heart.

  THE OTHER SIDE OF WINTER

  ‘Fox . . . power’s dying . . . you there . . . ?’

  Fox zips along the Bridge to Nowhere. Mara is here again, at last. He’s been worried sick. Every night he waits on the broken bridge and the one time he almost sleeps through midnight, she’s here, waiting for him. Her eyes and her voice are scared. Her electronic image flickers. Her lips are moving but now he can’t hear her speak. Fox moves closer and tries to lip-read.

  What is it? I don’t know what you’re saying.

  She reaches out an arm to him. Fades. And then she’s gone.

  Fox waits, heart thumping, but she doesn’t come back. There’s nothing to do except wait. A moment seems to stretch for hours. He can’t bear it. She’s gone.

  Fox commands his godgem to save and re-run Mara’s image, but his lip-reading skills are no better this time around. Yet there’s a way to decode anything. Fox digs up a program that will make an electronic cipher translate her silent words. He runs the program and now Mara speaks to him in an alien voice.

  ‘Someving I need to tell you bevore my bower diezzz,’ the bland voice of the cipher says through Mara’s lips.

  It’s not perfect. Some of the sounds are wonky, but he can make sense of it, just about.

  ‘A – a bavey,’ Mara stutters, ‘in the zpring. I’m zorry – zzzzz – power’z going. Can’t recharge till the zun comez dack in the zpring and by ven . . . well, by ven . . . zzzzzzZZZ . . . the bavey . . . sssssssss.’

  The cipher voice breaks up, buzzing and hissing. Mara’s face flickers. He holds the look in her eyes until she fades out.

  ‘Above you.’