Firespark

by Julie Bertagna

  “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, grumpy 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 end 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.

  Friedrich 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 nervous 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 on 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 ax, she kneels down to pry 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 mom 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-g
randmother. 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 pry 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 pent up grief 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 seal-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 out loud. “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.

  “Okay?” 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 around 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 favorite 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 around a sharp bend. Mara is crushed between Rowan and the mountain as rock and ice hurtle down onto 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 onto a shore.

  ONLY ALIVE

  It feels like an age until the Earth roar ends. Once the last broken echoes die in the abyss, Ibrox begins calling out the names of the Treenesters, Mara and Rowan, and the urchins.

  “Are we all here? Is it only Tuck that’s missing?”

  Mol erupts.

  “Only Tuck?”

  “I didn’t mean—Mol, I just meant that we’re all here.”

  “We’re not all here. He isn’t.” Mol pushes past Ibrox and runs back around the bend.

  Mara follows her, ignoring the others’ warning shouts.

  Around the bend, she stops dead. The ice tunnel and the frozen waterfall are gone. Starlight pours down upon a fallen slice of mountain, a great clutter of rock.

  Mol is on her knees at the place the tunnel mouth should be. Tuck, she sobs, again and again. Echoes of his name spill into the abyss.

  With axes and bare hands, they all try to shift the huge rockfall. They pull away what rubble they can until there’s another rumble and the land begins to slide once more.

  Ibrox calls an urgent halt. “We’re going to bring it all down on our heads.”

  They stand in stricken silence and wait for the Earth to settle. Then Ibrox kneels down beside the rockfall and calls
Tuck’s name one last time.

  There’s no answer, only a trickle of rock.

  “He rescued me from the sea.” Gorbals’s voice shakes. “I should rescue him from the Earth.”

  Mol turns to the mountain and batters her fist on it with a wail.

  Mara feels numb. She knew Tuck was scared but was sure his curiosity, like hers, would overcome his fear. She can’t believe that the very thing he dreaded has come true. She should have spoken to him before she went into the tunnel, but she was keeping her distance. What happened between them last night replays in her head. She begins to tremble as she feels the ghost of Tuck’s cold kiss on her lips.

  The baby kicks and turns inside her, oblivious to the world outside.

  “Look,” says Rowan.

  His eyes glitter with starlight or tears. Mara turns to see. Far away, a thin red fire burns in the black night.

  “What is it?” Mara whispers. She imagines a phantom fleet of fiery pirates, all coming for Tuck.

  “The sun,” says Rowan. He sounds choked. “Tuck just missed the sun.”

  The sun never rises above the mountains but its fire kindles in a twilight sky. The wind is flint-sharp after the vaporous fug of the moon cave. Starlight shocks eyes used to the darkness of the mountain caves. More shocking still is what the stars reveal.

  The path they edge along is a wrinkle on the rim of a vast abyss. Far below, what remains of a glacier glimmers with a cold blue light. Mara can’t begin to imagine the eons of ice that gouged out such a deep, wide gorge.

  When they stop to rest, she wonders how much longer she can go on. The pain in her back is grinding but every time she wants to cry or complain, she remembers poor Tuck. She can hardly bear to think of him crushed under so much rock. She must fix her mind on something else. Is there anything to give her hope? Mara scans the sky for the Star of the North. At first, she can’t find it. Then she sees her sky markers: Queen Cass’s zigzag crown and the Long-Handled Ladle. And there it is. The jewel that is dropping off Queen Cass’s crown into the Ladle. The North Star, the sailor’s steering star, the wanderer’s lodestar.