Zenith

by Julie Bertagna

BROKEN MIRRORS

  Once everyone has had their fill of rich seal meat and is yawning, Tuck slides up close to Mara.

  She turns to him with a tired smile. ‘There’s no power left, Tuck.’

  ‘It’s dead?’

  ‘Till spring. It needs sunlight.’

  ‘Me too,’ sighs Tuck.

  He digs in his pocket and holds out a closed fist to Mara.

  She looks at it, puzzled.

  Tuck turns his hand over and opens the palm. Mara leans forward to see. A small, three-cornered mirror, the shape of a boat sail, lies in the palm of his hand.

  ‘The box,’ says Tuck. ‘Your little box with the mirror inside. Let me see.’

  ‘Why?’

  Tuck only smiles, so she rummages in her backpack and finds the wooden box Tain made for Granny Mary so many years ago. He gave it to Mara for her fifteenth birthday, her last birthday on the island, the last of her birthdays he’d ever see. She runs her fingers over the beautiful carvings on the lid, glad she didn’t know that then.

  ‘Open it,’ Tuck urges.

  In the instant she opens the lid, Mara understands.

  On the inside of the box lid is a broken mirror. Mara remembers the moment she kicked it by accident across her bedroom, in a fit of temper, soon after Tain gave it to her. The mirror was left with a jagged crack across one corner but all the crashes and bumps the little box has taken in her backpack since then have crumbled the broken corner into fragments.

  Tuck takes the box and blows away the fragments of mirror. He presses his three-cornered mirror into the lid. It’s not perfect; he has to force it and there are gaps where the edges don’t quite meet and the dark grain of wood shows.

  ‘That’s amazing.’ Mara stares. ‘It almost fits. Where did you find it?’

  ‘My Grumpa gave it to me.’

  Tuck pauses. ‘You keep it,’ he says. ‘It belongs there. It bridges the break just fine.’

  Mara looks into his eyes. ‘Thanks, Tuck.’

  ‘The wizz machine,’ he hesitates. ‘Mol said it holds the secrets of the past.’

  Mara nods, looking at her reflection in the broken mirror for the first time in months. Eyes like midnight, Dad used to say, but there’s an indefinable darkness that was never there before. The patched-up mirror makes a jagged tear across her face.

  ‘What are the secrets of the past?’

  Mara looks up and catches the hungry look on Tuck’s face. She shrugs.

  ‘Things people used to know before the world drowned. I’ll show you when my power comes back.’

  ‘Tell me now.’ Tuck persists. ‘What kinds of things? I want to know what else is inside the globe. What do you know about the past?’

  Mara’s heart jumps. The words are an uncanny echo of what Fox said to her the very first time they met in the Weave. She puts the thought from her mind and tries to answer Tuck, but that only takes her back to that disastrous trip with Fox on the World Wind and the chilling warning of the lone voice from the NASA satellite.

  ‘People knew the world was growing hot,’ she remembers. ‘They knew the ice caps were melting and the oceans would rise but they ignored it. They made it all happen, I think.’

  ‘The world’s not hot.’ Tuck touches her face with cold fingers and she laughs.

  ‘Not here, right now. But the top of the world used to be a land packed with snow all year round.’

  ‘This is the top of the world?’ Tuck looks amazed.

  Mara nods, remembering what Granny Mary told her and what she has worked out. ‘Once upon a time the sea out there was solid ice. You could stand at the North Pole. It’s still freezing cold in winter because there’s no sun but it’ll warm up in summer. It must do or the ice caps wouldn’t ever have melted. In summer, there’s no night. Imagine it, Tuck. We can lie in the sun all night long.’

  In the summer, she will be able to meet Fox on the bridge all day and all night if she wants and never run out of power.

  ‘Why did the world grow hot?’ Tuck persists.

  Mara shakes her head. She cannot explain something she barely understands herself. Then she has an idea.

  She picks up a skull lantern and takes it over to the carvings on the cave wall. Gorbals is snuggling down to sleep but Mara calls him over and lifts the lantern to light up the story preserved in the rock.

  ‘We should learn this story, Gorbals. The people who left this wanted us to know.’

  Gorbals studies the carving with large, tired, owlish eyes. He scratches his head till his hair stands on end.

  ‘Can you make it into a story? Tonight? Before we go?’

  Slowly, Gorbals nods. ‘Gather everyone around. I think I know this story. My mother told it to me.’

  Once everyone is gathered, grumping and yawning, the urchins squabbling with tiredness, Gorbals begins.

  ‘Once upon a time, before the world’s drowning, people lived in cities that covered the lands of the Earth.’ Gorbals points to the picture of the city. ‘At night, the lights of the buildings and cars and buses and trains and planes sparkled like stars. But the sky grew dull with the dust and dirt from the city. Soon, it grew jealous of the city’s sparkling lights. So the sky cried out to its mother sun and brother wind and sister ocean and asked them to brew up a storm of weather to punish the people of the world who had stolen its glory. And so they did.

  ‘The sun beat hard upon the Earth. The wind and the ocean brewed up terrible storms. The people of the world cried for mercy and the weather answered that all would be well if they gave up their sparkling lights to the sky. But the people would not.

  ‘So the sun burned ever hotter and the wind blew harder and the ocean rose up and snatched the lights of the world in its arms. Then the wind flung the world’s lights up into the sky!

  ‘And they’re still hanging there, above us, like stars – all the lights that once lit up the world.’

  There’s an awed silence when Gorbals’s story ends. The skull lights shiver on the moon-cave wall.

  ‘Maybe one day they’ll fall back to Earth,’ says Fir.

  It might not be exactly right, thinks Mara, but it’s a strong and beautiful story that everyone will remember. It’ll have to do for now.

  ‘This story – is it a message from our landcestors?’ Tuck asks, as the others settle back down to sleep.

  Mara’s eyes crinkle, puzzled. ‘Our what . . . ?’ Then she understands and smiles. ‘Yes, it’s a message from the past.’

  Tuck leans close and lands a kiss on her mouth.

  His lips are cold and unexpected. Mara jerks back, crashing her head on the cave wall.

  ‘Don’t.’

  Now Tuck looks as if he’s the one who cracked his head.

  Mara steals a glance at him. All the salt crystals in his hair and his eyelashes are gone, though she still hears the wind and the ocean in his voice.

  ‘I’m having a baby,’ she falters. ‘I love someone else.’

  Tuck’s hand strays to the cutlass handle. Mara sees and stares.

  ‘Who?’ he demands. ‘Rowan?’

  Mara shakes her head. ‘He’s an ocean away.’

  Tuck relaxes. His hand slips from the cutlass. ‘Well, that’s no good. I’m right here.’

  But when he tries to pull her close Mara pushes him away. Tuck shifts from foot to foot, unsure of his ground.

  In the glow of the moon cave her hair gleams like an ocean slicked with oil. The skull light flickers in her dark eyes. She’s feisty like his Ma but soft-faced like his little sister Beth. And she knows things about the Earth and the past like his Grumpa did. She’s a Lander with the ocean in her island blood. Her kiss tasted of the sea. Tuck knows she’s the one for him, baby or not.

  Yet she pushed him away.

  He is not Fox.

  But he’s here and Fox is not. And more than that, there’s something about Tuck she understands – a wayward spirit, a restless curiosity that has brought them both to this cave at the ends of the Earth. And yet . . . />
  He’s not Fox.

  His kiss wasn’t cold and strange like Tuck’s. Fox’s kiss was a golden beam of energy that shot right through her and still tingles deep inside whenever she thinks about him. It’s the difference between the moon and the sun.

  And yet she is drawn to Tuck, this stranger she has found in a strange land who has something of the same fire in him as Fox, as herself, and who comes from her ocean world.

  Mara lies down, exhausted by clashing thoughts and feelings and by the urgent, kicking life force of the baby. A thought nudges her. But she is sliding into sleep and it slips away.

  Tuck waits until the fire is at its lowest ebb and every skull lantern has died. He slips as quietly as he can from the heap of rustling seaweed mats that are his bed and glances around the wide cavern. All asleep. He double-checks Rowan. He’s snoring lightly. Ibrox is snoring hard. Before he turns to his task, Tuck creeps over and lifts the lid of a pot beside the fire. He delves into the hoard of light-makers that Ibrox stores inside the pot and takes the silver one he’s had his eye on. It’s a match for his silver eyebox. Tuck does a quick count. Eleven left. Ibrox won’t miss one.

  Now Tuck creeps over to Mara. He slides a hand between her body and the cave wall until he feels the bag that’s wedged there. Gently now. He unzips the bag and slips his hand inside, feels the intricate carvings on the lid of the wooden box, the one with his broken mirror inside. But that’s not what he wants. Ah, here it is. Tuck rolls out the globe and slips it into a deep pocket of his windwrap.

  He’s not looting, he’s just taking a loan.

  Man is a rope over an abyss.

  Nietzsche

  A MOMENT LEANING OUT OF TIME

  Young Clyde, thin as a stick, crawls through the tunnel in the frozen waterfall. Everyone holds their breath, willing him to reach the other side. When he returns he is vague and nervy about what lies there. It’s hard to see in the dark, he says. Mara’s heart sinks. She’d been hoping there would be the miracle of light at the other side. How deep into winter or close to spring they are, she can’t guess. Time has lost itself in the unending dark maze of the caves.

  There might be light in the morning, she tells herself. This might be the middle of the night.

  ‘Ready?’ Rowan looks from face to face. ‘Take it slowly. It’ll be a tight squeeze.’

  Mara is sure he is speaking to her most of all. She feels heavy and huge. Her sealskin coat has grown too tight and she had to swap it for a roomier parka they found in the tunnels. She has a horror of getting stuck.

  But she will get through. She must.

  A tense silence falls as they line up to crawl through the tunnel in the wall of ice. Then Mol bends down with a cry and reaches into a nook of the cave. ‘What’s this?’

  She pulls out a box covered with frozen moss and slime. Grabbing an axe, she kneels down to prise the lid open.

  ‘What does this say?’

  Mara tries to see but it’s hard to bend with the bulk of the baby inside. Mol jumps up and shows her the name on the box.

  ‘Tupperware,’ Mara reads. ‘Rowan, didn’t your mum have one of these? She used to keep oatcakes in it.’

  Rowan looks over her shoulder and his face softens as he looks at the box. ‘She wouldn’t throw it out. It belonged to my great-grandmother. It kept things fresh.’

  Something inside the box shifts and rattles. There’s a tight band around it that stretches and pings when Mol pulls it off.

  ‘Keep that,’ says Pollock, grabbing the stretchy band with interest.

  It’s not easy to prise off a lid that has been stuck fast for an age with winter ice and summer slime, but Mol shrugs off help. At last she breaks open the lid and stares into the box.

  ‘What is it?’ Mara demands, as Mol begins to cry in great, heaving sobs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gulps. ‘I lost all my cuttings from our Hill of Doves when the ship sank and I never thought I’d find anything to grow again.’

  Mol holds out the Tupperware box for the others to see. It’s full of seeds. The cold and the Tupperware seal have preserved them. Most still look good enough to plant.

  Mara crouches beside Mol, ignoring her aching back. She hugs her friend tight. It’s not just the lost cuttings or this unexpected gift Mol is crying for. All the grief pent up inside for her lost life and for the loss of Candleriggs and Broomielaw and Clay and Partick has come pouring out over the box of seeds.

  ‘They must have been left here for you.’ Ibrox puts a fire-grizzled hand on Mol’s head then pulls her to her feet. She seals the lid of the seedbox and tucks it securely inside her skin coat.

  The skull light catches on words that have been gouged into the cave wall, right above the nook where Mol found the box. Mara peers at the message left in the stone:

  THIS IS NOT HERE

  But the seedbox is.

  ‘A sign set in stone,’ Mol exclaims. ‘What does it say?’

  Mara reads it out and they puzzle over the odd words.

  ‘Was it written by the people who died here?’ Mara wonders. ‘Or by those who made it through?’

  A jittery silence falls once again and Mara wishes she hadn’t voiced her thought.

  Pollock goes first. A hundred heartbeats pass before they hear him yell.

  ‘OK?’ Possil shouts into the ice tunnel.

  ‘Ooooo,’ Pollock’s voice echoes back.

  Possil sits back on his heels. ‘He’s through. Who’s next? Hey, one at a time. No shoving, you lot!’ he barks at the urchins. ‘Scarwell, you can’t take him!’

  But Scarwell is already shoving her apeman into the hole in the ice. Where she goes, he goes too.

  The urchins scrabble through the tunnel after her, rattling with all the old world junk they have stuffed into the pockets of their clothes. One by one the others crawl through, with the caves’ hoard of pots and utensils strapped to their backs. Tuck counts them as they go. Twelve Treenesters, seven urchins. Now only Mara, Rowan and Tuck himself are left.

  He shifts anxiously from foot to foot.

  ‘Mara, you go now.’ Rowan gives her a quick hug. ‘Take it easy. You’ll be fine.’

  She crawls into the tight space. The frozen air nips her face. Her back aches with the baby’s weight. The tunnel presses in on all sides and she can only move slowly, her hands and knees slipping on the ice. Behind her, the light from the skull lanterns grows dim. She comes to a dark bend in the tunnel, can’t seem to get around it. Can’t move forward or back. Can’t see a thing. She panics.

  ‘I’m stuck!’

  Rowan calls to her and though she can’t hear what he says the sound of his voice calms her. She begins to slide her body around the curve of the bend, to push herself forward limb by limb. Before she knows it, Gorbals and Pollock are pulling her out at the other end.

  Gasping and sweating, she leans against cold rock.

  Starlight stings her eyes. The moon is in full sail above dark peaks. Mara stares at the enormous sky. They are at the other side of the mountain. They have made it through!

  ‘All right?’ Pollock is gripping her arm. ‘But don’t move. We’re on a little shelf. Five steps from here the Earth falls away. I threw down a stone and it took ten fast heartbeats to land. If those ratkins don’t stop squabbling, they’re going to fall over the edge.’

  Down beyond the ledge is a darkness so dense it might be made of rock. Mara speaks sharply to the urchins to make them sit still. Rowan emerges from the ice and now there’s only Tuck to come.

  As they wait, the niggling thought that sleep nudged out of Mara’s mind pops up again – the thought that Tuck must have been rummaging in her bag and looking at all her things. How else had he known she had a box with a broken mirror inside?

  He can’t go into the tunnel. He just can’t.

  The skull light glints on whorls of water stunned into ice. It looks like a frozen wave. Waves don’t stay still, every gypsea knows that; they come crashing down. Every time Tuck tries to push his
head into the tunnel fear sends him ricocheting back into the cave like the band that pinged off Mol’s box of seeds. There is not a sniff of salt or sea in the air.

  He can’t go through. He’s too much of a gypsea to live deep in the Earth, so far from the sea. But not much of a pirate or he’d be able to kill his fear. Yet he must force himself through the tunnel or he’ll be left behind on his own.

  To stir up his courage, Tuck rips his cutlass from its scabbard and clangs it once, twice, three hard times on the ice then lets out his best pirate yell.

  The frozen waterfall answers with a deep, rumbling growl.

  ‘Where’s he got to?’ Rowan is down on his hands and knees at the tunnel. A clang echoes through the ice. ‘Tuck, what’s up? Come on!’

  ‘Listen,’ cries Mol. ‘What’s he saying?’

  Tuck is yelling something from the other end, but they can’t hear what.

  The Earth gives a roar so fierce Tuck’s knees give way.

  This is not here, say the words above the nook of rock in front of him. It’s the last thing he sees before the skull lantern is smashed by the fist of the Earth.

  ‘He’s scared,’ Mol cries, ‘You’ve seen how he is. The tunnels and caves terrify him, just like the ocean terrified us because we were Treenesters, used to our netherworld. It’s the other way round for him. He must have taken fright. We need to go back and get him.’

  From deep inside the mountain comes a rumble. In moments it has grown into a ferocious roar.

  ‘Urth!’ Pollock steals Tuck’s favourite curse. ‘Everybody move! Keep close to the rock wall but get away from here!’

  ‘What’s happening? Tuck!’

  Possil grabs Mol and forces her to follow the others round a sharp bend. Mara is crushed between Rowan and the mountain as rock and ice hurtles down on to the shelf of rock they all stood on just moments before. Beyond the roar of the landslide, they hear the rocks and ice falling into the black abyss. They land so very far below they sound as harmless as a handful of pebbles chucked on a shore.