Exodus

  But she wonders if Rowan is right. Are the people of the sky city so bedazzled by their glittering New World that they can’t see beyond it to the human catastrophe right outside their wall? Do they not know what is happening? But somebody knows, because somebody built that city wall.

  “Look!” Mara cries as she sees something—the tiniest vessel, so tiny she almost missed it—slip through at the very last moment in the churning foam of the ship’s wake.

  Is it possible then? At the risk of being shot to pieces or smashed up by a supply ship, maybe there is a way into the city.

  ILL WIND BLOWS

  Slow hours roll into stunned daylight, every second hot and breathless, drenched in steaming mist.

  Gail groans weakly. “Mom, I’m going to be sick again.”

  It was the fish. Everyone is blaming themselves for not stopping her from eating the small, sun-roasted fish the boy on the neighboring boat caught in the filthy water that’s full of toxic algae. The smell of the fish turned Mara’s stomach, but her insides groaned and ached so much for food that she wanted to do what Gail did: hold her nose and tear into the stinking fish, eating head, bones, eyes, and all.

  All through the night Gail was wracked with stomach pains, and violently sick. On the neighboring boat, everyone who ate the catch of toxic fish was just as ill.

  Around dawn, Gail began to chatter and they were all relieved, thinking she was beginning to recover. But her chatter has grown into an unstoppable, hot-fevered raving. Now, though she still mutters feverishly, her voice has become thin and shrill like a child’s and her body has grown chilled and rigid. More than anything, Mara is scared by the distant look in her friend’s eyes.

  “Should have cut my hair before we left, shouldn’t I?” Gail whimpers, pulling restlessly at a strand of her fringe. Kate strokes her daughter’s hand, helplessly. “And look at my nails, all dirty,” Gail frets. “I’m such a mess.”

  Mara turns away, unnerved by Gail’s delirious state, to look back at the scatter of new arrivals in the boat camp. Since first light, her eyes have been fixed on the horizon or scanning the crush of boats, straining for a glimpse of her family’s boat.

  “I’m going to look for Mom and Dad and Corey,” Mara whispers to Rowan. “And I’ll try to find some safe food.”

  “I’ll come too,” says Rowan heavily. He can’t bear seeing Gail so ill. All through the long night Mara could hear him telling Gail stories from the books he read on Wing. He wouldn’t stop even when Gail fell asleep and, as she listened to his hoarse, parched voice from under her blanket, Mara knew Rowan was trying to believe that his storytelling would keep his twin alive.

  Sometimes food and water are thrown haphazardly at the refugees from the supply ships, but it’s never enough and people are forced to eat whatever fish and seaweed and shellfish they can find in the filthy, toxic seas that surround the boat camp. People get ill all the time because the sea is full of sewage. Those who try to fish farther out risk losing their place in the camp or being gunned down by the sea police, who strive to contain existing refugees within the confines of the camp, as well as barring entry to new arrivals. Some people make spears and arrows out of driftwood and manage to kill the odd seagull. Rain is gathered in anything that can be made to hold water. But there hasn’t been rain for days now. Gail, who was so skinny people always joked she’d blow away in a strong gust, now looks as if the smallest whisper of wind would carry her off. But there’s no more wind than there is rain, just the heavy, damp heat—the kind of heat that breeds disease.

  “What’s that?” Mara asks Rowan as a small, tightly bound bundle of blankets is passed through the boats, from hand to hand.

  “It’s a death,” says Rowan flatly. “They burn them on the sea.”

  Mara stares in horror at the child-sized bundle. She hadn’t realized that’s what the strange fires on the seas around the boat camp were.

  “Find water, Rowan,” Kate pleads. “Gail needs water. Your dad tried to find some earlier but he’s exhausted.”

  So Rowan and Mara begin a long, precarious journey around the boats, leaping from one to another, calling all the time for Mara’s parents. They try to map out the boat camp in their heads but it’s impossible—the human flotsam is too vast. Mara tells herself that her family will be searching just as hard for her. Sooner or later they must find one another.

  Finally thirst and hunger get the better of them. Mara rummages in her backpack for something to trade for a bottle of water. Her cyberwizz is safely sealed in a watertight pocket, but she can’t bear to part with that. Who would want it anyway? What good is it now? All anyone wants is food and water. Mara looks up at the city, watching the strange spirals that glint through the heat haze, whirling lazily in the soft breath of a breeze. Once again she wonders about the cyberfox and his whereabouts in that colossal city. She longs to be up there in the clear air, away up out of this hellish place.

  The cyberwizz might yet be the key. It might be her only possible link to the one who could help her: the fox. So she must hold on to it. But a watch can only tell you how slowly time drags in the land of nightmare. Mara pulls her watch from her wrist and manages, after some pleading, to exchange it for a plastic flask of rainwater. She means to put the flask in her backpack and take it straight back to their boat, she really does. But her thirst is so savage that she tears off the top of the flask and gulps the water—great gulps that spill precious trickles down her chin and neck, and she has to force herself to stop and leave some for Gail and the others.

  Rowan is trading his penknife for two containers of water. Shamed, Mara watches him take one single, controlled gulp from a bottle, then seal it again. The rest of the water he leaves for his sister and parents.

  When they get back to their boat they are both hailed as heroes for bringing fresh water. Alex and some of the others are breaking off bits of wood from the boat to make harpoons, in the hope of catching seagulls, which must be safer, Alex reckons, than the fish. Gail struggles to swallow a few sips of water and again Mara feels ashamed of her desperate gulps, when she didn’t care about anyone or anything other than her own thirst. And suddenly Mara is overwhelmed by the horror of it all. Mixed with that horror is a worse emotion—her own guilt. If she hadn’t made everyone believe in the New World they wouldn’t be here. The weight of guilt is so awful she can’t bear it, so Mara huddles under her blanket and lets sleep, a huge wave of it, fall upon her.

  When at last, hours later, she rouses and unbundles herself from the blanket she finds she is looking at the world with eyes and a head so sharp and clear it’s as if she has crystallized into a shard of glass.

  “Maybe it’s hunger,” says Rowan. “Hunger can sharpen you like nothing else.”

  I must use this sharpness, Mara decides, and she takes the sprig of dried rosemary that’s been tucked in her pocket and inhales its green, mind-clearing scent. With her new, clear senses she focuses on the curious splashings around the thick legs of the great bridge that reaches out east, and suddenly stops, unfinished, in midocean.

  “They’re like water rats,” says Rowan, following Mara’s gaze. “Human water rats. I’ve been watching them since we got here.”

  “Gail, look!” says Mara, gently urging her. Kate shakes her head and stops Mara. Gail doesn’t stir. Mara bites her lip and whispers, “Sorry,” but Kate only glares at her.

  Mara turns away, stricken by Kate’s look. Her eye is caught by a mass of children who are playing around the legs of the sea bridge on metal garbage can lids, bathtubs, tires, old doors—all sorts of odd junk rafts and vessels. At the sudden blare of a police siren the water rat children rush for the bridge legs like iron filings to a magnet, and disappear.

  “Those bridge legs, are they hollow?” Mara puzzles.

  “Must be,” says Rowan. “Unless those kids are magicians.”

  Mara almost smiles. It’s the first real beat of life she’s found in the world since she left her drowning island. What an impossible
idea—a warren of water rat children living in the hollow legs of a sea bridge. Who are they? Where are their parents? Mara wonders, then realizes these wild urchins probably don’t have any parents. They are the orphaned castaways of the drowned world.

  Later, when one of the children skids skillfully across the waves on a tiny garbage can-lid raft, like a mucky cherub in a tin can, she does smile. She watches the child spin and flit across the waves, practicing complicated maneuvers. When he crashes out of a spin and falls in the water laughing, Mara finds she is laughing too.

  “They’re not water rats,” she tells Rowan. “Little sea urchins, that’s what they are.”

  Sun burns on the sky city and Mara’s flicker of hope flames into a sudden bright image of a life up in New Mungo where there is no hunger or filth or disease. I won’t stay in this nightmare any longer, she decides. I must move, must act. I will find my family, then somehow I’ll find the cyberfox and he’ll help us get into the city and we’ll make a life up in the New World.

  “We must get out of this, Rowan,” says Mara. “We’ll all die if we stay put.”

  “Shoes,” Gail cries weakly from inside the woolly cocoon of blanket she has pulled up around her. “I need some decent shoes. I can’t go to the New World with these ratty things on.”

  Kate looks down at her daughter with tears in her eyes. Rowan gives a sudden shuddery sob. Mara reaches over and feels Gail’s forehead. It’s burning hot. Gail’s eyes are shut tight yet she chatters on. Mara looks around her and sees how they have all changed. Gail’s mother looks twenty years older than she did on the island, her face gray and lined with despair; Alex has shriveled to an old man, weary with defeat. Rowan is so begrimed he looks as if he has a deep tan. Mara runs her fingers through her own matted hair and feels the horrible sweaty filth on her skin. Can it really be just a week since they left the island?

  “Come on, Gail. Wake up!” Mara shakes her. Gail is slipping away before her eyes and there’s nothing she can do. But still she must try. “Wake up now! We’re going to get out of here.”

  Gail only huddles deeper under her blanket, chattering feverishly about all the things she’ll do once they get back home.

  “Leave her be. There’s no way out,” mutters Kate. Mara hears the resentment in her voice. Kate hadn’t wanted to leave the island and now they are trapped in a refugee camp with Gail desperately ill, all because of Mara’s belief of sanctuary in the New World. Trembling, Mara tries to hold back tears.

  The city gates open once again to let in a fleet of sea police. Mara scrubs away her tears to watch a mass of sea urchins make a reckless dash from their hideouts in the bridge legs. She holds her breath and keeps score. Umpteen crashes and near misses, at least five or six shot in the water. Only one, maybe two, get in. Lousy odds, yet it’s still a better chance of survival than staying here in the boat camp.

  When she turns back, a terrible stillness has fallen on the boat. Alex and Kate are crouched over Gail who has suddenly stopped chattering. Rowan is staring in horror at the blanket that contains his twin.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Mara grips Rowan’s hand.

  Alex stands up. His red-blond hair and beard seem to catch fire in the sunlight. In silence, as if words are beyond him or not enough, he raises his fists to the sky city.

  The sun slips behind a cloud. Surrounding boats have fallen quiet and everyone seems to be holding their breath, waiting. A small wind blows.

  Mara pushes forward and wraps her arms around Gail.

  “Stay,” she begs the girl who has been her friend for as long as she can remember. She only just catches the words Gail struggles to whisper before the tiny gust of wind carries her friend away.

  “Keep going and never stop.”

  THE BIG BEAT

  A new exodus appears on the western horizon at daybreak. As it draws closer a murmur grows among the refugees in the boat camp. No room, no room, says the murmur, once the size of the fleet becomes clear. The murmur grows until it sounds like a single, surly voice.

  “Aren’t they the ones who followed the supply ships?” someone cries. Now people stare even more hopelessly at the fleet heading toward them. If they have returned here that can only mean one thing: there’s no sanctuary to be found in the place the supply ships come from.

  A battalion of sea police rushes from the city gates, alerted by the scale of the fleet, and sends out volleys of gunfire. The procession is forced on past the city. As the boats pass, guilt settles on the camp like a pall of thick mist.

  Where will they go now? people whisper. No one knows.

  Mara strains to watch the line of boats until they disappear. Shaking with emotion she wants to scream out but they would never hear her. What if her family was on one of those boats? She clasps her hands together in a gesture that belongs to her mother and wills them to return. But they don’t.

  Later, a new hope sweeps around the boats like a fresh breeze. The Pickings have begun again. No one can tell Mara exactly what the Pickings are, but every few weeks the sea police circle the boat camp and select the young, fit, and strong at gunpoint. Then they take them into the city. Me! Me! Take me! people plead, desperate to win entry to the New World. Take my son, my daughter, my baby …

  But there are a few people who can’t say why they feel in their bones that the Pickings might not be what they seem.

  Mara can’t say why either but she feels that same sinister chill in her bones when the Pickers approach and hides under a blanket, pretending to be weak and sick. Once she has found her family, only then does she want entry to a new life in the city. Beside her, Kate’s voice joins the clamor.

  “Take my son!” she pleads. “Look, he’s young and fit and strong!”

  But Rowan pulls his mother down and quiets her.

  “I won’t go,” he insists. And he huddles back under his blanket.

  Once the Pickers are gone, Mara gets to her feet. She is determined to search the whole of the boat camp until she finds her family. She can’t stay here. Kate can hardly bear to look at her, blaming Mara for the terrible thing that happened last night.

  Mara keeps telling herself that it didn’t happen at all.

  It was such a small death. Light as a child, the bundle in the blanket that couldn’t possibly be Gail was passed ever so gently, hand to hand, through the boats until it reached the sea. The bundle was placed upon a plank of driftwood, and set alight upon the waves, like so many others. And it became a beautiful thing, a sea star that blazed in the water. Mara saw it happen yet she cannot believe it was real—that the blazing bundle was Gail.

  Wide awake all through the long night, she found herself repeating Gail’s last words over and over like a mantra. Keep going and never stop. She will keep going and never stop, Mara vows, until she finds her family. There’s nothing else she can think of to do. She seals up the few belongings she owns in her small backpack. Then turns to Rowan who is huddled, distraught, deep inside his blanket.

  “Come with me,” she urges. “Please, Rowan.”

  Rowan barely opens his eyes. “I can’t leave them,” he says, meaning his parents.

  “If you stay here, you’ll die,” she says brutally, to make him see. Then in a whisper, “Rowan, this is all my fault.”

  “No. Don’t think that.”

  “Gail would still be alive if we hadn’t come.”

  “We had to leave. It isn’t your fault.” Rowan reaches out, squeezes her hand, then shuts his eyes.

  “Please come with me,” Mara begs. “I think I might have seen a way through to the city—”

  “Haven’t you done enough damage—you and your silly ideas!” Kate bursts out.

  Mara gets to her feet quickly, unable to meet Kate’s bitter glare.

  “I won’t forget you,” she whispers to Rowan. “I’ll come back for you. I promise I will.”

  Mara leans to stroke his cheek, tucks the remains of her bottle of water inside his blanket, and leaves.

  After a
whole day, she still hasn’t completed a circuit of the boat camp. She measures her progress against the position of the sun in the sky. Mara has shouted for her family until she is hoarse, scanning each boat, aching for the glimpse of a face, a hand, or a clump of hair that is as familiar as her own. Exhaustion eventually grinds her to a halt. She could spend the rest of her life in this useless, circling quest. Surely her family are searching for her too; surely they should have found each other by now. Mara tries to control the awful terror that is growing inside her.

  “Mara!” shouts a voice. A voice she knows. She searches the boats for a familiar face.

  “Here, over here!” It’s Ruth, her island neighbor, almost unrecognizable now. Frantically, Mara clambers over the boats to get to her.

  “My mom and dad—are they here?” cries Mara as Ruth hugs her, with difficulty—she is so heavily pregnant.

  Ruth bites her lip and shakes her head. “But you are,” she cries. “That’s good news.”

  “But they’ll be here somewhere, Ruth, won’t they?”

  Ruth looks away.

  “We have to tell her, Ruth.” Quinn, her father’s old friend, stands up. “There’s no use in her keeping up false hopes.”

  “Tell me what?” gasps Mara, though all her instincts tell her that she doesn’t want to hear the answer.

  Ruth still can’t meet Mara’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mara. It was on the second day of the journey here. We tried to turn back for survivors, really we did. But the waves were like mountains.” Mara stares at her, remembering those terrifying waves. “Your mom and dad’s boat overturned in one of those waves,” Ruth continues in a broken whisper.

  “It sank. Oh, Mara! One moment it was there and then it was—it was gone.”

  Jamie would have panicked. Inexperienced Jamie, the novice skipper. He wouldn’t have had Alex’s skill to steer through such seas.