They pull out onto the steamy waters on rafts, a small exodus of them, paddling through a network of steeples and small islands, flitting in and out of the mosaic of sunlight and shadow made by the sky tunnels of New Mungo. They pass under the Bridge to Nowhere, which is packed with urchins climbing in and out of the rusted carcass of an ancient vehicle that Mara recognizes as a bus. They use the broken edge of the bridge as a giant diving board, jumping recklessly off it into the murky waters.
As the heat grows, the Treenesters untie much of their plastic clothing. There is no breath of wind and the great wall seems to act like a pressure pot with the metallic network of the sky city a huge grill, cooking the netherworld under slabs of midday heat. Only Candleriggs in her earthen clothing seems comfortable.
“Is it far?” Mara pants, as she throws off her jacket, dizzy from lack of food and water. “This is unbearable.”
Candleriggs pulls a leather pouch from a deep pocket in her cloak, takes a stopper out of it, and offers it to Mara.
“Drink,” she says.
Mara takes a thirsty gulp. Flavor fills her parched mouth, a sensation so intense it seems to surge through her nerve channels to make the skin tingle on the back of her neck and her eyes prickle. The thick liquid fills her with a soothing glow. She drinks again, deeply. It’s sharp yet sweet; thirst-quenching and soothing. It’s delicious.
“What is it?” Mara gasps, forcing herself to stop before she guzzles the whole lot.
“Hupplesup,” says Candleriggs. “Honey, herb, and crab apple mead. A little will settle you, enough will make you happy, and too much will put you to sleep.”
“Unless you’re Pollock,” says Gorbals, “then you’ll drink so much it sets you on fire and you want to fight everyone, even the ducks.”
Everyone laughs except a lazy-eyed youth who Mara supposes must be Pollock. He glares thunderously at the back of Gorbals’s head.
Gorbals points ahead now as a gigantic black wizard hat—a massive steeple—emerges from the steam. It sits upon the great central tower of a dark, castlelike building that must be on a hill because most of it rises clear out of the water. Across from it lies the half-drowned remains of a wide building that’s topped with turrets and towers and honeycombed with windows and archways. The Treenesters’s fleet of rafts steers right up to the turreted building.
“What are these places?” Mara asks. She cannot take her eyes off the great black wizard hat that seems to be made out of a spectacular latticework of stone and air.
“These are the places of the stone-telling. The old places where the drowned world left us signs and stories in the stone,” says Gorbals. “Now, look up there—look at the statue of Thenew!”
He points up to an archway in one of the turrets. There, set in ancient stone, is the figure of a young woman. One hand grasps a hammer, in the other she holds a small boat, and in her lap lies an open book. Her feet are entwined with the great stone-carved roots of a tree and her eyes seem to look out beyond the city walls. Mara looks up at the face and stops breathing.
The face in the stone is her own.
“It’s a coincidence,” Mara protests. “It just happens to look a bit like me.”
But despite the thick heat, the statue makes her shiver. Even though age has made an ugly crack all across one side of the face, Mara can see that Thenew looks a lot like her. The statue is a stone mirror of her own features. She wants to turn away from it yet she can’t.
“This face that’s yours isn’t just here,” says Gorbals. “It’s set in stone all over the drowned city.”
The Treenesters stare and Mara can’t escape the mass of owl eyes that peer at her through the dim and steamy light.
“How could it be me? It’s impossible. This building is centuries old. I’m only fifteen.”
They continue to stare, as if they are awaiting some kind of pronouncement from her.
“What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?” Mara begins to feel panicky and helpless.
Old Candleriggs touches her arm gently. “If you don’t know what you are here for then we will do as we have always done.”
“What’s that?” Mara asks.
“Wait,” says Candleriggs. “The stone-telling will make sure that whatever is to be, will be. You are here now. What is set in stone will happen.”
But what is set in stone? Mara wonders as she looks back up at the stone girl who shares her face. “It’s just a statue,” she insists, yet she can’t tear her eyes from the uncanny image of herself.
Candleriggs raises a bony hand and points to an engraving on another part of the building. “Look at this story in the stone. It shows a fish with a ring, a bell, a bird, and a tree. This story is all over the city, in so many places. This is the story we live by. We believe in the day when these things will come together. When that happens the stone-telling shall be, and we will be free from this deathly underworld. We will be free to find our true home in the world. Now that you are here it must begin, because The-new is the key to the whole story. And you are the image of Thenew.”
“That’s not the same as being her!” Mara protests, but quiets and feels another shiver run through her as the Treenesters begin a soft chant:
“The fish with the ring,
The bell and the bird and the tree.
When these all come together
Then the stone-telling shall be.”
“I still don’t understand. What exactly is the stone-telling?” Mara asks. “What’s the fish with the ring and everything?”
“We don’t know until it happens,” says Gorbals. “We thought you would know and you would tell us.”
“But I don’t,” says Mara helplessly.
“You’re the face in the Stone. You should know,” says Gorbals, a touch accusingly.
“Well, I don’t,” Mara repeats. “I’m sorry, but doesn’t that prove I’m not who you think I am? If I was I’d know what this was all about.”
“Not necessarily,” says Candleriggs. “We are all pilgrims in our own lives. Nobody knows what lies on the path of their journey until it happens. And our journey back to the trees should start now,” she tells the others, glancing up through the thick network of New Mungo to the sky beyond. “There’s a dangerous look to the sky and I feel the calm before a storm.”
The Treenesters obey Candleriggs instantly. Mara takes one last glance at her stone image as the rafts turn for home. Tain could always feel a storm coming, she remembers. It must be to do with having lived so long; you know the world by instinct. The air is intense and heavy. It could do with a good storm to clear it. Mara trails her hand in the water to feel some coolness on her skin. She no longer cares about the sewage that it might contain, she is too hot. The waters of the drowned city are less dirty than those outside and they don’t smell like the open drain of the boat camp. Yet a nasty, sour odor hangs in the air.
Mara wrinkles her nose. It smells like bad breath.
“Listen and I’ll tell Mara the legend of Thenew,” says Candleriggs. All across the small fleet of rafts the Tree-nesters settle themselves comfortably. “Once upon a time there was a girl who lived on an island,” she begins, and Mara’s skin prickles as she hears the tale of Thenew, the pregnant daughter of an ancient king who was wrongfully cast out of her homeland in a ramshackle raft. But the wind wafted her to a safe harbor on a new land and there she gave birth to a son who grew up to found a whole new city.
“His name was Mungo,” says Candleriggs, “and the city he founded now lies drowned underneath us. But his name lives on in the city in the sky.”
She turns to Mara. “Thenew was the name of Mungo’s mother. She is the stone face that’s to be found all over the old city, alongside the fish with the ring, the bell, the bird, and the tree. She is the one who began the story. Without her the old city would never have been founded here. And you are the face of Thenew, Mara—the one who will begin a new story for us. You are our savior.”
“But she is someth
ing else too!” cries Gorbals. “She is the bell—Mara Bell!”
“The bell that begins a new day.” Candleriggs nods thoughtfully.
Mara turns away from the keen expectation of the Treenesters. She leans over the side of the raft to drip cool water on her face. She doesn’t know what to think. After everything that has happened it’s all too strange, too mind-blowing, far too much. She spots something floating on the water and focuses her attention on that instead. It’s a book! The next paddle thrust should bring it within reach. Mara lunges out and makes a grab as the raft surges forward. But the paper is so sodden that the book falls apart in her fingers and she is left holding a bunch of loose pages.
“Look!” she cries to the others. “A book!”
“There are lots,” says Broomielaw, shyly. She has hardly spoken to Mara since this morning. Ever since Candleriggs decided she was the Face in the Stone, the Treenesters have been treating Mara as if she is a special being, an angel fallen to Earth.
“The books spill out of the bad place,” Broomielaw points to the tall black tower topped with the great wizard hat, “and litter the water. We dry them out to burn on our fire.”
“You burn them!” gasps Mara. “But they’re full of stories and all sorts of things—pictures and ideas.”
Imagine Rowan’s horror if he knew that, thinks Mara; then a far worse horror strikes her as she remembers her last sight of him in the boat camp. Is he still alive? She wills him to stay alive until she can think of some way to help him. If only she could magic him through the city wall, right now.
“We don’t need books,” Candleriggs tells her curtly, but Mara is grateful to have her awful thoughts interrupted. “We have plenty of our own stories and good, strong minds to hold them in and we can make more if we want them. And we have Gorbals to make us poems.”
“Maybe Gorbals needs books,” laughs Pollock, the lazy-eyed young Treenester who lolls beside Broomielaw, playing with her baby. “Even his memory is clumsy!”
“I don’t need books, I only need words!” Gorbals declares. “He twists around to glare at Pollock but his sudden movement rocks the raft precariously. “Don’t you insult me—you spend all your time crawling in the bushes like a ratbasher!”
“I’m a hunter—but you’re no poet,” snarls Pollock, anger coloring his face at the ratbasher insult. “You’re just a clumsy no-good who works with words because he can’t do real man’s work, like hunting.”
“It takes a lifetime to become a poet. I could learn to hunt in a day. You might be a hunter but you’re a thief too!” Gorbals explodes.
“What I’ve got’s all mine,” sneers Pollock.
“Pollock, stop it!” whispers Broomielaw. Her head is bowed but Mara can see the distress on her face and wonders.
“Pollock Halfgood, try to live up to your name,” orders Candleriggs. “Or I will change it to Nogood At All. Stop your nasty tongue. Do you want your fighting to land us all in the water—your baby too? She turns to Gorbals. “And you, calm down and sit still. A poet should put all his energy into words, not pride-fighting. Are you planning to be with us in time for sundown or do we do it all ourselves like we had to this morning?”
Gorbals sits down, shamefaced, and Pollock manages to stop his tongue, but they throw each other thunderous looks until the raft bumps up against the Treenesters’s island.
“Would you like to look at this book once I dry it out?” Mara asks Gorbals, gently shaking the water from it as they walk up through the stunted apple orchard to the large trees near the top of the Hill of Doves.
Gorbals doesn’t even glance at the wet pages, just stares furiously after Pollock. “Necrotty rat!” he spits out.
“Gorbals!” Broomielaw is horrified. “The Face in the Stone was speaking to you.” But she looks at the book as if a venomous snake might slither from its sodden pages.
“Please don’t call me that.” Mara smiles uneasily at the girl. “I’m not the Face in the Stone. Believe me. Just call me Mara.”
Broomielaw bites her lip. “Mara, then. We’re about to prepare a meal—will you stay?” They have reached the grove of trees at the top of the Hill of Doves. She kneels and pulls out a handful of carrots and potatoes and herbs from a clay pot that sits in the nook of the oak tree. “It feels like a big storm is coming,” says Broomielaw. “Candleriggs says please would you nest with us tonight? You’ll be safe here.”
Mara looks up at the trees. Nest? What does she mean? She remembers Gorbals asking where her nest was …and then she sees them—huge, human-sized nests in the branches of the trees. She stares up at them in astonishment.
Her attention is brought back to earth by the smell of cooking. Mara’s stomach aches and groans at the sight of Broomielaw and the others preparing their meal. When was the last time she ate? The hupplesup is the nearest thing to nourishment she’s had in days. She’s weak and trembling with exhaustion and hunger. The leaves in the trees tremble too with the change in the air, and the water is restless. Mara listens to the doves calling nervously to each other. There’s definitely a storm coming; she can feel the vibration in the air, smell the oddly metallic scent of it in the wind.
Again, she thinks of Rowan and the others in the boat camp. Will they be safe in a storm? Now that she is safe, how can she help them? Tomorrow she must think hard about that. But tonight there’s someone here in the netherworld that she must look out for—Wing, the little birdlike urchin.
“I need to find the child who brought me here,” she tells Broomielaw. “He was hurt—I need to see if he’s all right.”
Mara has been so caught up with the Treenesters that she hasn’t seen Wing all day.
“A little one from your island?” asks Broomielaw, concerned.
“No, one of the abandoned children. There’s a horde of them up in the cathedral.”
“A ratbasher?” Broomielaw’s face wrinkles in disgust. “Keep away from those wild, dirty creatures. They’re dangerous little animals, full of sicknesses they catch from the waters and the rats they play with in the ruins. They breed when they’re little more than children but thankfully they die before they’re much out of childhood, or else they’re taken. I won’t have any of them near my baby!” Broomielaw seems to remember that she is talking to the legendary Face in the Stone and falls silent, her cheeks on fire.
Mara frowns. “Wing isn’t a rat-whatever, he’s just a child with no one to look after him. And I won’t let him die—I’m going to look after him. I know they’re strange children but you’re all strange to me. You’re not like my own people.”
“They’re horrible little things,” Broomielaw insists. “But please tell us about your people,” she says eagerly, as she chops the vegetables roughly with a slate knife. “We’ve got things to do now but please tell us your story at sundown.”
“There might be no sundown tonight if there’s a bad storm coming,” warns Gorbals, sniffing the air and peering tentatively through New Mungo to the distant sky. “It might be straight to nest.”
“Then I must find Wing,” cries Mara. “If there’s a bad storm coming I want to know he’s safe.” A thought suddenly strikes her. “Broomielaw, if the Face in the Stone asks the Treenesters to give shelter to the child who brought me here to you, you would do that, surely?”
Broomielaw lowers her eyes. Still, she hesitates. “Of course,” she says at last. “Oh, but be careful!” she warns as Mara races down the Hill of Doves to the rafts.
The world turns electric. The sky flashes and booms. The ferocity of it makes New Mungo shudder. And now the thought of the ancient stone face that mirrors her own no longer makes Mara shiver; now the idea of it sends a wild-powered current surging through her.
It’s just the storm in me, she tells herself, then has a fleeting moment of wonder. What if it were all true and I really am what they say?
Whatever it is, for the first time since leaving the island, she feels alive again.
THE BASH
In the gloomy
daylight of the netherworld the cathedral is full of dim color and shadows. Mara peers through the tints cast by the shattered stained glass windows that reach up to the vast, vaulted ceiling. A million sparkling motes of dust drift like minuscule floating lanterns. Even amid the noisy games and quarrels of the urchins there’s a sense of peace, pure and deep, distilled by centuries of stone.
Now she sees Wing. He’s perched close to the feet of one of the statues that shelter in alcoves all around the cathedral. The man’s gentle stone face smiles down at him from under a crown of thorns, beatifically oblivious to the pain of the thorns and to the rabble of hundreds of naked, dirt-caked urchins. Wing has strewn gifts of colored glass chips all around the feet of the statue and smiles up as if he believes the stone man is real.
Mara thinks back to the stories that belonged to the old religion on Wing. This man, with his crown of thorns, was supposed to be the son of God, yet somehow he could not, or did not, save himself from a torturous death on a cross. Mara could never understand that story—why would anyone who was able to save themselves choose not to?
“Wing!” she calls over to the mesmerized urchin. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry I left you. See, I met some people here, they live in the trees on another island…”
Mara stops. What’s the use? He can’t understand a word. She looks around the cathedral, at the mess of junk and debris the urchins have littered everywhere.
“Are you hungry? Have you eaten?” She gestures to her mouth and rubs her stomach to show what she means.
Wing holds out a dead pigeon that he has torn apart. In disgust, Mara sees the tiny head the child grasps in his other hand, the blood and juices that run down his chin and chest. He’s eating the bird raw. But an even worse horror is her own hunger, so strong and vicious it overpowers her revulsion at Wing’s barbarity. Mara turns away before she rips the bird from his hands and begins to tear into its raw flesh herself.
Screams erupt behind her and Mara spins around to see a girl of about ten attacking a younger child, trying to pull a green plastic bottle out of her hands. Bright litter is the urchins’s playstuff; it’s gathered in little piles all over the cathedral, sorted into colors. Groups of children play and fight and squabble over it. But this girl’s attack is ferocious.
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