Pathfinder

by Julie Bertagna

  “The sun is almost gone and you two are bickering yet again,” growls Candleriggs. “Well, read this poet from long ago, Gorbals. Let’s hear if his words are treasure—or poison.”

  As the sun drops and light dies in the sky, the din of the Bash recedes. Gorbals flicks through the pages, stops suddenly, and peers close at the book.

  “The Ruined City,” he announces. “I’ll read from this.”

  The Treenesters fall still and quiet and settle themselves within the ember glow of the fire. Gorbals begins to read.

  “And still this city of the dead

  Gives echo to no human tread.”

  Mara is covered in goosebumps as the words form pictures.

  “And when the sun is red and low,

  And glaring in the molten skies,

  A shadow huge these columns throw,

  That like some dark, colossal hand.…”

  How could he know? wonders Mara. What uncanny future dream did that poet have so long ago?

  “Day rises with an angry glance,

  As if to blight the stagnant air,

  And hurls his fierce and fiery lance,

  On that doomed city’s forehead bare.

  The sunset’s wild and wandering hair

  Streams backward like a comet’s mane,

  And from the deep and sullen glare

  The shuddering columns crouch in vain,

  While through the wreck of wrathful years

  The grim hyena stalks and sneers.”

  “He knows our city,” nods Broomielaw in the silence that follows. “But what’s a hyena?”

  “It’s a creature that makes a horrible noise like screaming laughter,” says Candleriggs.

  “Well, we know them, don’t we?” Ibrox says to Mara. “We hear the grim hyena screaming every time the door in the wall opens and the white ships come through. They’re the orange sky people that invade our world and take away the ratbashers.”

  The sea police, thinks Mara, with their orange uniforms and hyenalike sirens. “They take the urchins away? Where to?”

  “Up to the city in the sky,” says Gorbals.

  “What for?” asks Mara.

  “They use them for work because the ratbashers can swim in the deep water. And they can climb fast and high like rats,” says Possil. “Pollock and I sometimes see them when we go on our travels to the dangerous parts of the islands on the other side of the water, near the sky towers or the door in the great wall.”

  “But they’re pests, those ratbashers,” adds Pollock, curling his lip. “It’s good that the sky people take them away and make some use of them. I might have to start culling them myself if they didn’t.”

  Mara is outraged at Pollock’s brutality but she controls her anger because she needs to know more.

  “What work are they used for?”

  Possil and Pollock look at each other vaguely.

  “Tunnels,” yawns Pollock.

  “Bridges,” shrugs Possil.

  Mara thinks back to the Pickings in the boat camp and feels sick. If the people in the sky city use urchins like Wing as slave labor then is that also why they pick out the young and strong from the boat camp? To be slaves? Mara remembers the spine-chilling feeling she had when the Pickers came around the boat camp and feels sure she is right.

  Above them, the city gleams. A maze of starlight glistens far beyond. Stars like diamonds.

  “And souls flash out, like stars of God,” murmurs Gorbals.

  “From the midnight of the mire.

  No palace is theirs, no castle great,

  No princely, pillared hall.”

  Mara thinks of the wealth of dreams that lie abandoned among the pillared halls of the university. If the New World uses the refugees of the lost, drowned world as slaves to build its empire, then it’s a vile and necrotten place and she wants no part of it, ever. She wants to rip that city out of the sky.

  Tomorrow she will search again for information on the mountainous lands of the Arctic where the Athapaskans live. She will search and search until she finds the answer she needs. She is struck by an image of Rowan huddled inside his blanket in the boat camp and hopes harder than ever that he’s still alive.

  She’d better find that answer fast.

  Mara watches Broomielaw feed her baby from her own body. The girl looks blissful, in a state of grace that Mara doesn’t understand, yet envies. Now Broomielaw puts the baby down to sleep and smiles at Mara.

  “Clayslaps will see his two hundredth sunup tomorrow,” she announces proudly as she rocks his swinging nest to the sway of the wild and windy music some of the others are playing on the weird instruments they fashion out of twigs, bones, and feathers, bits of metal, and plastic and glass.

  “We’ll celebrate him,” announces Candleriggs. The old woman has recovered from her earlier upset. She holds up the round object she is molding out of intricately woven grasses. “See, Broomielaw, I’m making him a soft play ball.”

  Broomielaw smiles and lifts up a clay cup that Mara has watched her shape and dry and stain red with berry juice. “I’ve made him his first cup.” She turns to Mara. “How many sunups have you seen, Mara? Maybe a thousand less than me, I think.”

  “How many since I came here?” Mara looks blank.

  “No, I mean how many have you lived?” smiles Broomielaw.

  “How could I know that?” laughs Mara.

  “You don’t know?” says Broomielaw. “I’ve seen six thousand six hundred and thirty-four sunups.”

  “I’ve seen six thousand two hundred and seventy-eight,” says Gorbals. “Candleriggs has seen over thirty thousand.”

  “Where I come from we count in years,” says Mara. “I’m fifteen years old.”

  “Years?” says Gorbals frowning. “My mother told me about years when I was little—a year is something to do with the sun.”

  “A year is from one winter to the next,” says Mara, trying to remember whether Earth circled the sun, or if it was the other way around. The more books she reads, the more frustrated she is about how little she knows of the world.

  Gorbals shakes his head. “A year is too long to hold in mind but you can hold a day easily enough.”

  “But it’s too hard to remember days,” says Mara.

  “It’s easy,” says Gorbals. “You just add one on after another. And at the end of each day you can look at how you lived it. You could never do that with a year, it’s too big.”

  “The Earth works in years. So do we,” Mara explains.

  “People live by sunups and sundowns,” insists Gorbals. “Now, a hedgehog or a squirrel might count its life in years because they sleep in winter and wake in summer but we sleep at sundown and wake at sunup. So we are part of the story of days.”

  Pollock is stretched on the ground tearing into a roasted rabbit. He gives Broomielaw a dismissive wave with a rabbit leg. There is something in those eyes of his, huge eyes as lazy as stagnant water, that Mara dislikes. She can’t understand why Broomielaw has anything to do with him. Though Clayslaps is his baby too, and he’ll swing his little nest from time to time, jingling his wind chime, all care of the baby is done by Broomielaw. He prefers to go on night hunts with Possil, the nervy, fidgety one, then sleep all day. Mara’s not sure if she likes Possil either, but she will need their hunting skills if the plan that’s taking shape in her mind is to work.

  “I wanted to ask Pollock something,” says Mara.

  “Pollock?” says Gorbals, sending him a filthy look. “He’s good for nothing unless it’s bad.”

  Pollock hurls his ravished rabbit leg in return for the look, and it bounces off Gorbals’ head, to Pollock’s loud delight. Gorbals grabs a branch and looks ready to thwack Pollock with it until Ibrox intervenes and threatens to roast them both on the fire if they don’t behave.

  “What’s between Gorbals and Pollock?” Mara whispers to Broomielaw. “They seem to hate each other.”

  Broomielaw’s gentle face stiffens. She leans over to p
rod the fire. “Me,” she answers, indistinctly. “I’m between them.”

  “You?” says Mara, astonished. “But how?”

  Broomielaw leans closer to Mara so that their conversation is private.

  “Once Gorbals loved me but I turned his love to ash,” Broomielaw says sadly. “There’s nothing I can do now. He hates Pollock, though he’s kind enough to me and Clayslaps, I suppose. I can’t blame him.”

  “What happened?”

  Broomielaw glances nervously at Gorbals and Pollock but they are both now safely occupied.

  “One night,” she whispers, “instead of nesting I went off with Pollock. I was restless and the night was too warm. The skies were like blue glass. It was high summer when they never darken and it seemed a shame to waste such a night. Gorbals was busy as usual with a head full of poems and I—I was lonely and fed up. Pollock began telling me about a tiny island way over by the golden pod that flies up to the sky, a place we never go near because it’s too dangerous. The sky people kill anyone they find there who’s not from their world.

  “Pollock told me he knew a hidden route to the island, over the path of an old bridge that only appears at low tide. He said we could go there and watch the ship that comes in through the great door in the wall—the door you came through. He told me the island was full of secrets and magic, the kind of magic you want on a night like that. He described a strange plant which only grows on that island, a special herb, and he made me want to try it. So I went with him to the island. I was curious and it sounded exciting.

  “But the herb was strong and dangerous. It magicked me out of myself and into a dream where Pollock seemed much more than he really is. In the morning I felt dull-headed and sick, and Pollock was just Pollock again. I wanted to run away from him and forget everything that had happened. I didn’t want Gorbals to know, and I made Pollock promise not to tell him. But I couldn’t keep it a secret because little Clayslaps came from the magic of that strange night. And so that’s what is between them.”

  “He’s ruined your life,” says Mara flatly. “He stole it. Gorbals is right, he is a thief.”

  “It’s not ruined,” says Broomielaw. “Clayslaps is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. It was my own fault that I lost myself in a false enchantment.”

  “But you still love Gorbals?” Mara asks.

  “It doesn’t matter if I do,” says Broomielaw bitterly. “He has built a great wall around his heart to keep me out! A wall made of words.”

  Molendinar shakes her head and sighs over the pot of herbs she is grinding. Mara puts a gentle hand on Broomielaw’s shoulder. She doesn’t know what to say.

  “What did you want to ask Pollock?” says Broomielaw. Her gentle face is flushed with distress yet she manages a small smile.

  “I want him to do some hunting for me,” answers Mara.

  “Well, he’s eaten a whole rabbit, so he’s happy,” notes Molendinar dryly, “and he’s had plenty of hupplesup too. He’s more of a pest than ever when he’s been guzzling hupplesup, but you’re the Face in the Stone, after all, so he might watch his tongue.”

  Mara looks at Pollock keenly. He feels her gaze on him and shoots a sly glance at her, frowning and fidgeting. “It wasn’t me, it was Possil!” he bursts out. “He looked at it while you were away today.”

  “I did not!” yelps Possil. “It was you, Pollock. You said, let’s—”

  Possil flinches as Pollock shoots him a venomous glare.

  “You looked at my magic machine?” Mara guesses. “It has your fingerprints all over it, Pollock.”

  Pollock wriggles as if he’s caught in a trap.

  “You mean you sneaked into my bag and looked at my belongings while I was away?”

  “Pollock!” gasps Broomielaw, outraged.

  “Well, I need you to help me with something,” Mara tells Pollock. “If you agree to do what I want we’ll forget about it.”

  “You will do as Mara asks, Pollock Halfgood,” Candleriggs declares, “to make up for your prying. I’ll give you one last chance to live up to your name before I change it to Nogood. Do you hear me?”

  Pollock nods sullenly.

  “I want you to catch me a sky person,” says Mara.

  The others gasp. Pollock sits up.

  “Dead or alive?” he whispers. He looks at Mara, his pale, sullen eyes now wide and gleaming.

  “Alive,” says Mara. “I just need their clothes. Then you’ll let them go.”

  “Difficult,” says Pollock, looking at Possil.

  “Very difficult,” echoes fidgety Possil. “You see, to catch something it must be within your grasp. That’s the trick. To get it in your grasp you have to sneak up on it. But there’s nobody can sneak better than Possil,” says Possil.

  “Or you get it to fall into your trap.” Pollock’s sly smile spreads across his face and he makes a snapping sound with his fingers. “It’s all about knowing what kind of trap is best for the one you want to catch. The right kind of trap, that’s the trick. And there’s nobody sets a better trap than Pollock,” says Pollock.

  Mara hears a sharp gasp from Broomielaw.

  “Think like a spider,” he continues. “A spider has the best ambush tricks I’ve ever seen, the most beautiful traps in the world. They never run after anyone. They get their catch to walk right into their pretty trap every time.”

  Broomielaw stifles a sob, gets to her feet, and disappears into the trees. Mara can’t help herself—she bounds over and kicks Pollock. He yells in shock. Then Mara grabs a mothlight and runs after Broomielaw, following the sound of her sobs. At the top of the hill behind the ruined building Mara catches up with her.

  “I hate him,” Broomielaw cries. “I have his baby but I was just a bit of hunting practice. I fell right into his pretty trap.”

  “He’s a bigger rat than any ratkin,” says Mara. “I kicked him—hard. Do you think that’s part of the stone-telling, Broomielaw? The Face in the Stone kicks Pollock the rat?”

  Broomielaw giggles through her tears. Then she beckons to Mara. “Come and see this. It’s secret.”

  The netherworld is full of the slow moans and whispers of New Mungo’s windspires. Broomielaw’s owlish vision takes her quickly and easily through the dark. Mara hurries after her through the trees, beating moth-hungry bats off the twig lantern with a stick. Owls sit among the branches like white phantoms, hooting softly, dropping from the trees like dead weights when they spy a mouse. Glowworms and fireflies are the only points of light beyond the fluttery lantern and Mara yearns to be back at the bonfire preparing to nest. Where is Broomielaw taking her?

  At last they stop at a thick spread of bramble bushes. Broomielaw reaches under the thorns and berries and tugs out a large, flat, plastic-wrapped board. She unfastens the plastic and reveals a huge broken mirror. Mara looks closer and sees that it’s a mosaic of tiny glass and mirror fragments that have been painstakingly jigsawed together. The light of the moonmoths makes a flickery magic upon its crazy patterns.

  “Did you do this?”

  “Yes,” says Broomielaw. “You see, my life is not all ruined. I have my baby and I’ve still held on to the dream of who I am. I just don’t have much time for it these days. Clayslaps takes up all my time and energy but maybe he can help me once he’s grown a bit.”

  “What is it?” says Mara, fingering the massive mosaic in awe.

  “Sunpower. For a long time I’ve been dreaming of ways to hold the sun in our world, to use its power. This mirror is my idea to catch the sun each morning and beam it straight on to our fire and light it. I don’t have the settings right yet and it’s not strong enough in winter and the sun changes its place a little each morning. But one day I’ll get it right. I have another dream—to forge metal panels to catch the sun’s heat.” Broomielaw pulls out a plastic bag, heavy with flat-hammered metal odds and ends. “That’s not even begun yet. But one day we could have fire and hot water ready for us when we wake each morning. There are other things
I’ve thought of…”

  As Broomielaw trails off into thought, Mara remembers what bothered her as she walked through the vast halls of the university, looking at the portraits of the golden names. There were no dreamswomen. Apart from the odd mythical figure or queen, not one of the golden names had belonged to a woman. All the great dreamers had been men.

  Now Mara sees how it could have happened. The women might have dreamed just as hard—as hard as Broomielaw does now—but their dreams had become all tangled up with the knit of ordinary life, with meal making and babycare and nest building. Yet wasn’t precious little Clayslaps more wonderful than anything dreamed up by those golden names?

  “You must keep working on this,” Mara urges. “It’s really good.”

  Broomielaw looks at Mara with hope glimmering in her eyes. And Mara sees the power the girl takes from her words because she thinks it’s the wish of the Face in the Stone.

  “Don’t give up on it.”

  “I won’t,” murmurs Broomielaw, fingering her mirror mosaic. “I won’t ever, now. Me and Clayslaps, we’ll do it together.”

  As they return to the grove to nest, Mara wonders how many of those golden names in the great halls had dreamswomen as mothers—women who helped them find and follow a dream. Maybe one day, long into the future, Clayslaps would be famous for the dream of sunpower begun by his mother. But would Broomielaw be remembered too?

  If I have anything to do with it, she will, Mara vows.

  And what about her own dream? The plan that she is trying to dream up is beginning to take shape, bit by bit, like a great mosaic. A plan that just might save them all and find them a future. But there are still crucial missing pieces that she cannot find, that she must find. Mara sits for a moment at the foot of the beech tree she nests in and tries to believe that there really is a future on this drowned Earth. Beneath her, the grass is ribbed with great tree roots. She lies flat on her back and looks at the skyward-reaching branches of the tree, mirrored by the roots that reach deep into the Earth. Each tree is an explosion of life. The planet is alive! She must hold on to that belief.

  She still can’t believe in the stone-telling or that she is the Face in the Stone, but it’s odd—this plan of hers, if she can really bring it all together, will save the Tree-nesters, just as they believe she is meant to. Just as if she really is the Face in the Stone.