Exodus

by Julie Bertagna

  It’s a secret door.

  Mara tugs it full open and steps inside. And is deflated. It’s just a walk-in cupboard. Why bother with a secret door to an empty cupboard? But no, set in the back wall of the cupboard is another door, smaller still. Mara tugs that too, half-expecting to find another cupboard within that, a door to yet another door. But this door won’t budge. There are rusted bolts at the top and bottom and a key stuck fast in a lock. Mara looks along the book stacks and, selecting the sturdiest hardback she can find, bashes open the stuck bolts. Then, wrapping her fingers in her jacket sleeve for protection, she breaks the ancient tryst of key and lock, and at last the door bursts open.

  Mara steps up out into the open spire that sits at the top of the great steeple. Wind blasts her and she gazes upward in amazement. She is standing at the center of a huge cone, an immense network of stone and air.

  I’m right inside the great wizard hat!

  Just above her head hangs the most colossal bell. Facing her is yet another spiraling staircase. But this one is only for the most brave—or the most foolhardy. It’s an impossibly sheer and narrow staircase that winds up through thin air. It spirals all the way up, past the giant bell, to the utmost tip of the steeple. Beyond which is nowhere. Why risk life and limb to climb to the top of the steeple when there is nowhere else to go except oblivion or straight back down again? Mara puts her foot on the first step of the staircase, testing it. On the other hand, why not?

  Just a few steps, just to see if I can, just to prove I haven’t lost all my nerve and courage…

  She begins to climb. Storms have long since smashed the wooden handrail to useless stumps. The wind throws punches, making her climb even more precarious. The entire staircase is a danger zone. One careless step, a loose stone, even an instant of dizziness could prove fatal.

  “Mara!”

  Shock-white as a ghost, Gorbals peers around the door frame.

  “What are you doing? Get back down here!”

  “Come and get me,” grins Mara, shakily, from her perch high above him.

  “Down, Mara,” pleads Gorbals. “Now!”

  Mara is almost at the top. What a waste to get so far and no more. Ignoring Gorbals, she climbs the final coil of the spiral, then looks out beyond the steeple. It’s a big mistake. The drowned world spins and sways beneath her, the sky city lurches above. Mara grips tight, unable to move. She can just hear Gorbals’s voice over the thundering beat of her own blood.

  “I can’t come any higher, Mara. The stairs are too unsteady and both our weights might be too much. Just step back one foot at a time.”

  Mara closes her eyes tight shut and begins to climb slowly backward, step by trembling step, the gap between each a timeless moment of terror, until at last Gorbals grabs her and pulls her safely to the ground.

  He is furious. “Mara, are you mad? What were you doing?”

  She needs to cry but can only laugh. Fear has turned her body into a rubbery, useless thing. She sits huddled beside Gorbals, trying to calm herself. What did she think she was doing?

  A crack of low afternoon sun finds a patch in the cloud and breaks over the city wall. Suddenly the dark world is aglow. Gorbals stares out at the golden panorama of the netherworld. Then he gasps and stands up, pointing over to the city wall.

  “Look! I can see over the wall and the world is alive! It’s all glitter and sparkle!”

  Mara stands up to see. “It’s the ocean,” she tells him.

  “The ocean!” breathes Gorbals, his owl-eyes wide with astonishment. “But I thought it would be a dark and deathly thing, like it said in the poem. I never imagined it would be beautiful.”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful,” says Mara wistfully. “And the wide-open sky—Gorbals, wait till you see that on starlit nights or full of sunset or stacked with gigantic clouds.”

  “But will I ever see it?” says Gorbals. “Or will I be trapped in here all my days?”

  Mara sees the hunger in her friend’s eyes for the outside world he has never seen. She grips his hand. “Just you wait,” she tells him.

  From inside the steeple there’s a clear view of New Mungo’s central towers where the supply ships harbor. How, Mara puzzles again, can they get a ship out of there and through the city gate? And even if they could, how could they navigate it all the way to Greenland?

  It’s useless, Mara decides. Then she looks over to the city wall, so high there’s no sign of the boat camp that lies on the other side of it. But it’s there, so she must keep trying to think of a way.

  The rooftops of the drowned city have risen from the low tide like the sunken hulls of ships. Below, a tall flagpole with its ancient flag now a faded, tattered rag creaks like the great mast of a sailing boat, trapped within the netherworld.

  “We must go now, Mara,” says Gorbals anxiously. “It’s getting late and the Bash will begin soon.”

  They make their way back to the glugging, water-filled caverns of the undercroft where they have anchored their raft. Urgently, Gorbals begins to paddle across the shadowed and sun-streaked waters.

  “We’ll be all right,” Mara tells Gorbals. “The urchins are more interested in their bashing than in us.”

  “It’s not just the ratbashers,” he begins, “it’s—”

  A sudden grim howl fills the netherworld. Mara jumps with fear. Over at the great towers of New Mungo, lights crash upon the waters. The noise and glare are horrendous.

  “The sky people!” yells Gorbals. “We must find somewhere to hide!”

  He digs his oar into the water and they surge up on a wave, right onto the roadway of the Bridge to Nowhere that rises like an arm from the sea and ends in midair.

  “The bus!” cries Mara, and they race for cover into the battered rusty shell of the bus that was abandoned there so long ago. Through a window frame they watch a fleet of police waterbikes and speedboats scream across the netherworld. The blaring battalion roars past, sirens and searchlights full-on.

  “They’re headed for the cathedral,” says Gorbals.

  “The urchins!” Mara gasps. “Oh, no!”

  “Wondrous hive!” Gorbals rages at the sky city. “Where dark reptiles congregate. Oh cold and careless barren blast! No, Mara!” he yells as, before he can stop her, she begins to race back down the Bridge to Nowhere and jumps on the raft they abandoned on its crumbling arm.

  Horrified, Gorbals runs after her and jumps on alongside as she rows out into the churning wake of the sea police.

  WIPEOUT

  Crouching deep among thick reeds at the water’s edge, around behind the cathedral, they are safe—at least for the moment. Gorbals grips Mara hard by the arms to make sure she doesn’t dash out of the cover of the reeds and run up through the gravestones toward the front door of the cathedral, where the sea police have gathered in a blare of lights and sirens.

  “Mara, we can’t go any closer. It’s too dangerous. We need to get away from here, now, before they find us. The ratkin might not even be here—he could be anywhere. But even if he is here, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “I can’t let them get Wing! I can’t.”

  “There are lots of them and only two of us. What can we do? They’ll only take us or kill us!”

  “My family died, Gorbals—my little brother was only six—he was like Wing,” sobs Mara. “Then my best friend died. My other friend, Rowan, might be dead too. I couldn’t help any of them and it was my fault because I brought them here. So I can’t do nothing now and let Wing and the other children die too!”

  “You didn’t let anyone die, Mara. It’s what happened. There was nothing you could do.”

  Children’s screams and gunfire erupt from the cathedral.

  “I can’t bear it!”

  Mara tears free fom Gorbals and fights her way through the reeds. There is a curse and then a splash behind her as he follows. Mara darts between the gravestones on the hillside and manages to make it safely to the rear of the cathedral. She grabs a broken-off chunk
of gravestone and hurls it through a window set low in the wall of the cathedral. Gorbals helps her kick in the last shards of colored glass and she drops down through the window frame into darkness.

  Above her head, in the main hall of the cathedral, is the most sickening noise; terrible screams and wails, crashings and gunfire. Now that she’s here she knows it’s useless. There’s nothing she can do.

  Mara sobs. “Gorbals, they’re killing them.”

  But Gorbals doesn’t answer. Mara peers into the darkness. Gorbals is not there.

  The horror seems never ending. At last the screams and gunfire end. Mara sits in the dark, too shocked and terrified to move. All of a sudden she knows she is not alone.

  “Gorbals?” she whispers.

  There’s no answer. She jumps as she sees the two liquid points of light that are fixed upon her. Two eye beams. Mara holds her breath and peers into the dark. Then she sees the shape of pointed ears, hears the flick of a tail on the dusty floor. With a shock, Mara realizes she is staring into the eyes of a fox.

  Its presence somehow brings her back to life. Keeping her movements smooth and unhurried, Mara manages to build a precarious ladder out of the chapel’s broken pews to reach the high window she smashed through. Shaking, she clambers up and emerges out into the thick gloom of the empty hilltop. The sirens of the sea police are just a faint echo upon the water.

  Mara walks around to the front of the cathedral. She takes a deep breath and forces herself to push open the heavy oak door. Nausea hits her as she steps inside. It’s empty; a terrible ringing emptiness that seems to reverberate from the vast stone. Then she sees that it’s not entirely empty.

  “Wing!” she sobs as she sees the shadow of a small, crumpled body on the floor. She rushes over—but it’s not Wing, it’s another little one. Mara begins to shake violently, seeing the broken, bloodied bodies that lie here and there among the pillars. She makes herself check each and every one. Just as she thinks she’s finished her awful task she sees a shoe sticking out from behind one of the ancient tombs. Tentatively, Mara walks around the tomb—urchins don’t wear shoes.

  The shoe belongs to one of the sea police. Mara checks the pulse in his wrist. Dead. Good! She is about to turn away when something makes her bend to ease the awkward angle of one of the lifeless arms. And as she leans over the body she sees with a shock that it is a young woman. Who can’t be more than eighteen or twenty, not much older than she. Mara stands up, shaken by a confusion of emotions.

  Then she slams back out through the oak door and stands blankly among the gravestones, feeling sick to her soul.

  Somehow she makes herself move. Somehow she finds the raft stuck among the reed beds. Somehow she gets herself across the water to the Treenesters’ island and stumbles up the Hill of Doves.

  There is complete silence within the grove of trees. Mara cries out in panic.

  “We’re here, Mara!” Broomielaw calls from the branches. Mara hears the rustle and thump as the Tree-nesters jump down from the safety of their nests.

  “We were so worried about you!” Molendinar hugs her tight.

  “But where is Gorbals?” cries Broomielaw.

  Mara stares at her. “But he came back here, didn’t he? He must have.” Though how could he, without the raft?

  No one answers. Through the dimness, the owl eyes of the Treenesters stare at her and Mara stares back with equal horror.

  Broomielaw bursts out sobbing, and Mara turns away. She sinks to the ground and covers her face with her hands. It can’t be true! The sky people can’t have taken Gorbals!

  Mara cannot face the others. Once again her actions have led someone she cares for into disaster. She climbs the beech tree and burrows deep within her nest, so ashamed and guilt-stricken and terrified for Gorbals she can hardly bear it.

  After a while someone climbs up into the nest beside her. She hears Clayslaps’s soft baby breath at her ear and looks around.

  “Cuddle him. It’ll help,” whispers Broomielaw, settling little Clayslaps’s soft, sleepy body next to her. Mara hugs the baby tight and close and after a while his live warmth soothes her a little.

  “Gorbals might be scared and hiding, or hurt, somewhere on the cathedral island. Some of the others have armed themselves and gone to check,” Broomielaw tells her quietly.

  “I can hear them now!” Candleriggs calls up. “They’re back.”

  Mara jumps out of the nest and runs down the hill but there is no Gorbals, only the grim-faced Treenesters. Ibrox shakes his head. “We checked all the bodies, looked everywhere,” he says. “He’s been taken, not killed.”

  Mara looks up at the sky city. Taken to be a slave worker for the New World? Wing too? She slumps upon the ground.

  “It’s not your fault, Mara,” says Molendinar.

  But Mara knows that she made Gorbals go to the cathedral island instead of taking cover as he begged her to.

  Night falls like a coffin lid. The sea moves in the slowest of shudders; the only light in its blackness is the cold, reflected gleam of New Mungo. The Treenesters sit in silence around the sunfire.

  “Eat, Mara,” urges Broomielaw, but the girl herself has not eaten and is trembling violently.

  “She’s too full of nettles and thorns,” says Ibrox, pushing his food away. “Me too.”

  “Tell us a story, Candleriggs,” pleads Broomielaw. “We need one so badly tonight.”

  “Yes,” murmur the others. “A story, Candleriggs, a story.”

  “I’ve no heart for stories tonight,” sighs the old woman. “I’m too sickened by a New World that builds its empire out of such cruelty and decides its citizens are the only true human beings in the world—that the rest of us are no better than vermin.” Candleriggs stares from eyes that are sunk in folds of time. “There are some stories that should never be told.”

  The old woman falls silent and brooding.

  Mara rouses herself. She finds her voice. “But maybe now is the time,” she ventures.

  Candleriggs looks up at her and Mara flinches at the bitterness in the old woman’s face.

  “Maybe you’re right, Mara. Maybe now it’s time for this story,” she cries out at last. Her voice is harsh and strong. “Treenesters, I’ll tell you a cruel story for the cruelest of nights.”

  The Treenesters gather closer, nervously.

  “Once upon a time,” Candleriggs begins, “I gave my heart to a young man who was full of dreams. We had so many grand dreams for the future in the old place of learning, the university on the hill. The place you find your books,” she tells Mara. “But the Century of Storms came with a fury that blew our future away.”

  Candleriggs sighs deeply.

  “We were students of natural engineering—the science of the future, it was called back then. Caledon, my love, was the most brilliant student of us all, always dreaming up the most incredible structures that were inspired by the patterns of nature. Cal was snapped up by the World Task Force that had been set up to tackle the floods. He had sent them his ideas for sky cities that would withstand the floods—I remember I almost laughed at those first designs of his; they looked so impossible. But it was possible, as you can see.”

  Everyone glances upward at the vast structure that looms overhead. Candleriggs continues.

  “Cal believed we should leave Earth and our problems behind, that we could be reborn as creatures of the sky. Human angels, that’s what he said we’d be. It seemed such a brilliant dream at first but it soon turned into a nightmare. When I saw the edge of that nightmare I told him to stop, or I tried to—but it was useless. We were both young and stubborn and angry and his dream had filled him with a ruthlessness that turned his heart to stone.”

  Mara is seared by the pain she recognizes in the old woman’s face.

  “Learning was the fuel that made his dream possible. Learning took him too far beyond the real world, far beyond his true self.” Candleriggs looks blankly into the dark. “The university was the place of his learning.
If it wasn’t for the ideas that he found in its books there would be no bars between our world and the sky, no wall to trap us inside and the others outside, no police to steal slaves to build that empire in the sky. So do you see now why I hate the university and all that’s in it?” Her head droops and her voice shakes. “That necrotten place turned the boy I once loved with all my heart into the man who dreamed up the cruel sky cities of the New World!”

  The Treenesters sit like statues, in stunned silence. But Mara ventures to ask something that is desperately bothering her.

  “Candleriggs, he did save lots of people—those cities hold thousands and they built lots more sky cities all across the world, didn’t they? So his idea saved thousands upon thousands who would have drowned. He couldn’t save the whole world. But, Candleriggs, why didn’t he save you? Why are you out here when you should be in the New World, with him?”

  “In the beginning,” says Candleriggs, “the New World was meant to be for everyone—yes, I’m sure that was what Cal wanted. He wanted to save as many people as he could. But in the scorching hot summers of the ’30s and ’40s the oceans rose faster than anyone ever expected. All the predictions had been wrong. And all the political agreements that were supposed to prevent global warming had long fallen through. The world’s governments couldn’t seem to agree on anything—or stick to any treaties that they did manage to agree on. Suddenly it was all too late. Great floods struck, all over the world. At first, Europe escaped the worst. But when the floods devastated New York and Tokyo, two of the world’s most powerful cities, there was mass panic. Governments began to collapse everywhere. Economies crashed and everything that held society together started to fall apart. The people lost control. It was as if the world was a great ship, suddenly wrecked and sinking fast. I couldn’t begin to describe the terror and chaos of that time.

  “The first of the New World sky cities was just built. New Mungo was the prototype—Cal insisted the very first was to be built upon his home city. People were now living as far inland as they could, or up on the highest parts of the old city, crammed together in the tower blocks and hills, on rooftops, anywhere they could find refuge from the rising sea. We had watched in amazement as the huge towers and all the sky tunnels were built at impossible speed, high above our heads. They were so strange, terrifying… and wonderful. Everyone felt full of hope then—we were all going to be saved. By now, Cal was no longer my Cal. He had become a very powerful young man—the one who owned the idea of the New World. His idea had spread as quickly as the oceans had risen. All over the planet, governments tried to reclaim the confidence of the people by building their own sky cities as quickly as possible. Then…”