Free at last!
Something clicks in Mara’s mind, like a key turning gently in its lock. She looks at the Treenesters, enclosed within the fluttery glow of their moth lanterns, then at little birdlike Wing and his friends as they play upon the huge fish anchor. And with a huge shock she sees that maybe it has all come together—the fish with the ring, the bird, the tree. And she is Mara Bell.
Has the stone-telling really happened, after all?
Dizzied by the thought, Mara leans against the ship’s rail. She doesn’t know what to think, doesn’t know if she ever will. And now she wonders if it matters, in the end. What does matter is that the future has been unlocked. She and Fox each hold a key to the future in their hands. But all this—the death of her family, losing Fox, and everything else—will have been worthless if she doesn’t try as hard as she can to hold on to a sure sense of what is fair and right. Mara relives that terrible moment outside the city walls when her own fear and panic, her overriding instinct to save herself, showed her how Caledon and the New World ended up as they did.
She turns toward the future. The Pole Star blazes in front. The bow of the ship cuts a clean white line through the dark ocean, guided by the star’s torch. The ship’s speed is exciting; the cold sea spray invigorating. Mara feels truly alive, full of hope and loss, pain and exhilaration. She thinks of the legend of Thenew and imagines that wretched young girl, banished from her homeland and set adrift upon the ocean in a ramshackle raft, all alone, with a child growing inside her. Yet she chanced upon land and Thenew’s child, Mungo, grew up to found a whole new city—the ruins of which now lie drowned under New Mungo, the sky city that still bears his name.
Well, I’m not all alone and adrift in a ramshackle raft. I’m on a solid ship and I know where I’m going. I’ve got the Treenesters and Rowan and the urchins. All we need to do is find a bit of high land. It’s there in the North, in the green land of the people. I’m sure it is.
And she still has Fox, in a way. Tonight she’ll wait, way out on the edges of the Weave, on the Bridge to Nowhere, and hope, with all the energy she owns, that he’ll be there too.
Gorbals comes to stand beside her. Mara smiles at her friend.
“I’m afraid I gave your poems away to someone who needed them,” she confesses.
“That’s just what they’re for,” Gorbals smiles back. He follows her intent gaze out into the darkness.
The world’s wind touches her face. The night is empty and enormous. There’s no ship or land in sight, nothing at all but ocean and the huge hush of the stars.
“What are you looking for, Mara?” Gorbals asks curiously.
“Miracles,” she says.
About the Author
JULIE BERTAGNA started her career as a teacher and freelance feature writer for major Scottish newspapers and has established a reputation as an author of powerful and original fiction for young readers. Pathfinder was inspired by a newspaper article about global warming and is now published in several languages around the world. Julie lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband and daughter. Visit her website at www.juliebertagna.com.
Books By Julie Bertagna
The Raging Earth series
Pathfinder
Firespark
The Story Behind the Story
An author’s note
In 1999, a snippet of news that should have stopped the world in its tracks caught my eye. Two South Pacific islands had disappeared under the sea. Many more were at risk. For decades, the islanders had been trying to alert the world to the rising ocean. Now they were faced with moving entire villages inland, hut by hut. Mass evacuation loomed. But where to? Stuck in a corner of a newspaper, the islanders’ plea to the world hit a wall of disinterest.
Back then, the scenario of a drowning world seemed a farfetched fantasy. I did some research on global warming and what I found out made my heart stop. The stories that spark my imagination are about individuals on the edge, on the cusp of change, and the plight of these islanders began to haunt my imagination. Sometimes you don’t choose the stories; they choose you. And so I came to write Pathfinder and its sequel, Firespark, the future story of a drowned Earth. Now global warming is on every front page. By 2100, the year of my future story, global warming is forecast to destroy the lives of over 100 million people and create the greatest refugee crisis the world has ever known. It’s all too much, too terrible to take in. Especially if you’re young and your life lies ahead. It’s your future at stake. Best just plug in the iPod, have a laugh on YouTube, and hope the grown-ups sort it out in time. And yet . . . the response from young readers to Pathfinder and book two, Firespark, has been astonishing.
As a teenager I devoured fiction that asked big, hard questions about the world. Back then, there was little fiction written specially for young adults, so I leaped from Alan Garner’s and Ursula Le Guin’s fantasies to science fiction like Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and John Wyndham’s (the melting ice caps in The Kraken Wakes now seem eerily prescient). Books like these forged my imagination. They were prisms through which you could explore the issues and apocalyptic terrors of the time. Humanity has a rendezvous with destiny. As former president Jacques Chirac said, our house is burning down. Our future depends on us turning a new page in the human epic and imagining a whole new way of being in the world. Science is key, but fiction can offer a map, flashlight, and compass through terrors and dreams.
Traveling into an imagined future is both thrilling and terrifying. Returning to the here and now, the world seems to have shifted on its axis. Things don’t feel quite the same. And now, I’m setting off again to continue this epic story. Imagining what may be doesn’t mean it will be. But asking questions about the future is a powerful thing to do. The future is not set in stone. In realworld, the day ticks by at its normal pace. Time traveling, I feel as if some mischievous time lord reset the clocks. Each morning I zip away, a hundred years into the future, then crash-land back in the here and now, thinking an hour has passed—and wonder why I feel dizzy, my coffee is cold, I’m starving, and my body’s gone numb. I’ve been writing so intensely that the day has flown past. It’s deep into the afternoon. On the evening news, the freak weather on the screen seems to belong to the Century of Storm that I imagined in Pathfinder. On the radio, I hear politicians squandering precious time, arguing over global warming, debating what they should, could, might, and probably won’t do. Almost ten years on, the plight of those South Pacific islanders is now even more desperate. Evacuation plans are tied up in red tape. No one wants the world’s first climate change refugees. Often these days, as I surface from writing, I feel I’m caught within a fragile membrane that separates what is from what may be. The future seems to have arrived a lot sooner than expected. These are the last words of the prologue in Pathfinder:
Stand at the fragile moment before the devastation
begins, and wonder: is this where we stand now,
right here on the brink?
Reading Group Guide for
PATHFINDER
1. How does the concept of home play a role in the book? Why has Candleriggs named all the Treenesters after places from the drowned world? How does Mara feel when she gives the urchins names from Wing? Do you think the people struggling to survive in the seas below the sky cities would prefer the New World to the places they left behind? Why or why not?
2. Why are the people of Wing afraid to face their future? What do they risk and lose by ignoring Tain’s warnings? Why do you think they eventually listen to Mara when she publicly agrees with Tain?
3. When Mara voices surprise that the Treenesters have done nothing to save themselves from drowning, Gorbals replies, “‘We live our lives and watch for the signs of whatever will happen. It’s all we can do’”. How does this attitude mirror the islanders’ unwillingness to leave Wing? Is the fear to leave home universal? What about the reluctance to face change? Why is Mara able to overcome these fears?
4. What role
does faith play in Pathfinder? At the beginning of the book, Tain tells Mara that “‘there’s no great miracle going to save us’”. How does this sentiment relate to the Treenesters’ belief that Mara is the Face in the Stone? Is it Mara’s fate to help those the New World left behind?
5. Fox tells Mara that, in the New World, “‘The past is banished. It’s been deleted. All anyone ever thinks of is here and now. There is only the power of now’”. Why don’t the Grand Fathers of All want their people to study history? What is the value of learning about the past?
6. When so many of Wing’s inhabitants die on the way to New Mungo, Mara feels a huge sense of guilt. Are these losses Mara s fault? How does she cope with her feelings? When Fox tells Mara that, because he knows the truth it is his duty to share it, he says, “‘If I don’t stand against it, then I’m part of it. . . . Caledon s cruelty becomes mine. From this point on, for the rest of my life, I’ll be guilty too’”. How do Mara s and Fox s feelings of responsibility impact their actions?
7. At the end of the book, the supply ship is almost capsized by other refugees anxious to escape the horrors of the floating city outside New Mungo. Mara feels an impulse to save herself and her friends, rather than risk their safety and help the others. How does this experience help Mara understand the strict rules of the New World? How far will people go to protect themselves?
8. There are three distinct places described in Pathfinder: the New World, realworld, and the Weave. When Mara first speaks to Fox in the Weave, she asks how to find the sky cities in “realworld”. After Mara finally reaches New Mungo, does she still consider the New World “real”? In what ways are citizens of the New World unaware of realworld? Why is it important that Mara and Fox are the only two characters in the book who have experienced all three locations? What do they learn in each space?
9. Knowledge is both revered and reviled in Pathfinder. Why is Candleriggs so against the Treenesters reading books or visiting the museum in the drowned city under New Mungo? When Mara explores the university, what does she learn about the world s past? Does she find hope in the books she locates there? How does she remind Candleriggs that knowledge itself is never to blame? What point do you think the author is trying to make about how people interpret facts today?
10. When Broomielaw shows Mara her sunpower mosaic, Mara is struck with the thought that there were few women represented in the ancient museum. She realizes that “their dreams had become all tangled up with the knit of ordinary life” and urges Broomielaw to continue her special work. Is Mara ever delayed from her purpose by day-to-day survival? How does Mara’s gender affect her journey? Do you think she will continue to fight for the refugees future on the front lines, or will she take a secondary role like Broomielaw does?
11. In many ways Pathfinder is a cautionary tale. Mara comes to a disturbing conclusion when discussing the past with Gorbals. She says, “‘Our ancestors stole our future’”. What is the author trying to tell us? What do we owe to our planet? What do we owe to future generations? If Mara could go back and speak with people in our time, what do you think she would say? Do you think anyone would listen?
12. Pathfinder is the first book in a trilogy. What do you think will happen next in the story? Why?
The desperate search for a haven and new beginning
reaches new heights in Julie Bertagna’s compelling
sequel to PATHFINDER . . .
Turn the page for a sneak peek . . .
FIRESPARK Sneak Peak
MARA
Dawn reveals a brutal ocean, a roaring gray desert of sea.
“Mara.”
The ocean is so loud it almost drowns out Rowan’s voice.
Mara turns from the ship’s bow where she has been all night, though there’s been nothing to see but the dark. And now, as day breaks, there is nothing but gray. She tries to smile at Rowan, but the blasting wind has made her face feel as rigid as stone.
Rowan throws a dirty blanket around her shoulders and hands her a plastic packet full of powdery yellow stuff.
NOOSOUP, she reads on the garish label.
“Gulp it down fast with some water.” Rowan makes a face and hands her a water bottle. “Horrible. But it’s food. There’s crates full of it below in the hold.”
Mara wipes her wind-streamed eyes with the blanket, smearing her cheeks with its dirt. She scrapes a dark tangle of hair from her face and grimaces as she puts the packet to her lips, recoiling from the synthetic smell. But she’s weak with hunger so she forces it down.
“Now,” says Rowan, as she wipes her mouth, “tell me what happened. You vanished from the boat camp. I thought you must be dead. But here you are with a fleet of ships in a mass break-out from the city.” His haggard face breaks into a grin. “I’m impressed.”
Mara returns a wry smile, but it disappears as she begins her extraordinary tale.
After the loss of her family on the journey to the New World, then more deaths in the boat camp around the city walls, Mara wished she were dead too. She was the one who convinced her people to flee their sinking island and make an exodus to the sky-scraping city of New Mungo. But inside the city walls she found a drowned netherworld at the foot of New Mungo’s great towers. There Gorbals, Broomielaw, Candleriggs, Molendinar, and the others survived as Treenesters in the ruins of a lost city. Mara saw the rooftops glimmering with ghostly phosphorescence under the sea. When Gorbals and the urchins were snatched by the sea police, Mara stole into the sky city to find them. And there she met Fox, the grandson of Caledon, the architect of the New World.
“Fox didn’t know about the boat camp,” Mara insists. “He knew nothing about the outside world. The City Fathers make sure of that. Up in New Mungo,” she remembers, “it’s like living on an island in the sky. You forget about the outside world, just like we did on Wing.”
“If refugees arrived on Wing, we wouldn’t have built a great big wall to keep them out,” Rowan retorts.
“What if thousands landed on our shores? What would we have done?”
After a long moment, filled by the roar of the sea, Rowan returns to the here and now.
“How on Earth did you steal a fleet of ships?”
“Fox wiped out the city’s communications. It was a big risk but he—he—”
Mara bites her lip, hoping the noise of the wind and the ocean drowned out the tremor in her voice.
“The grandson of the man who created the New World helped you break out of the city?” Rowan looks puzzled.
“Fox wants to change his world. That’s why he had to stay.” She feels Rowan’s eyes studying her face, trying to read the meaning behind the catch in her voice. Mara rushes on; there’s plenty more to tell. Rowan looks increasingly bewildered as Mara tells him about the statue in the netherworld that is her image and the story the Treenesters say is carved into the drowned city’s stone. It’s a promise left by their ancestors, they believe, that one day they would be rescued from the deathly netherworld. When Mara arrived and they saw her face, the face in the stone, they were convinced that she must be the one to do that.
And strangely enough, she has. Though whether they will all find a home in the world, luck and fate will decide.
Mara has still to tell the tragic story of Candleriggs, the ancient Treenester, but Rowan looks exhausted and so is she. It’s far too much to tell all at once.
And there are some things too painful to tell.
“It’s crazy,” says Rowan. “Our life on Wing was so hard and there were people dying in the boat camp and living in trees. Yet all the while the people of the New World were . . . are . . .” He breaks off and swallows hard, beyond words.
“Living in castles in the sky,” Mara finishes. “In luxury you wouldn’t believe, built by slaves the people know nothing about.”
“So who do they think built their walls and towers? Who builds bridges all across the sea?” Rowan demands. There’s a spark of anger in his weary eyes.
“They never think abou
t that.” Mara grabs his arm. “If you’d ever been inside a sky city you’d see why. Rowan, it’s amazing . . .”
In her mind’s eye she sees the vast cybercathedral that seemed to be created out of light and air, the silver sky tunnels sparking with speed-skaters, the wild and savage beauty of the Noos.
Rowan is frowning into the wind. “This Fox . . .”
Mara’s heart skips a beat, but she is rescued from questions she is not ready to answer by a sudden cry. She turns to see her friend, Broomielaw, struggling across the heaving deck with her baby in his papoose on her back.
“What if the world is all ocean?” says Broomielaw, crashing into Mara. They grip on to each other as the ship rolls up over a wave. The other girl’s large eyes are shadowed and scared. “What if there’s no land? What if this is all there is? ocean and ocean and ocean. I don’t like it, Mara. I hate this wild world. I wish we were all back inside the wall on the Hill of Doves, safe and sound in our trees.”
Mara keeps a steadying arm across the sleep-slumped baby on Broomielaw’s back.
“You weren’t safe,” she reminds her friend. “The sea was rising. Sooner or later, it’ll swallow up the Hill of Doves just like it swallowed my island, and then what would you have done? There’s land, Broomielaw, I’m sure there is, at the top of the world. It’s in my book.”
“What if it’s a drowned land too?”
It chills Mara’s heart, that thought.
“And it’s only the word of an old b—” Broomielaw grimaces as if she’s swallowed an insect and spits out the word book. "What’s that worth? You shouldn’t trust those things.”
Pathfinder Page 28
