Exodus (22 page)

Before, fear was a game. Now it's far too real. Mara tries to make herself venture into the ruined back alleys where a fox would stalk and roam, but she can't. To her left, something shifts in a pile of electronic litter that has tumbled off a junk mountain. A long electronic feeler reaches out toward her. Mara stifles a scream and tries to leap, but she's forgotten how—forgotten the cryptic symbols that used to give her such effortless speed and power. The feeler hovers above her head, sparking venomous decay.

Mara rips off the halo and crashes back into realworld. She stuffs the cyberwizz into her backpack and sits, sobbing silently.

Now the Weave is lost to her too. Now she hates it. Everything that she has lived through has left her a nervous wreck. She'll never be able to find the fox again now.

Mara gets up and wanders among the dim forest of book stacks, more lonely and desolate than ever. She really should wake Gorbals—but wait. At the end of a long run of shelves she spies a doorknob sticking out of a gap between the books. A blackened brass doorknob, but no door.

Strange, thinks Mara. Well, there's only one thing to do.

And she tugs with both hands on the doorknob until at last something gives. The bookcase moves—or at least part of it does. Mara cowers, waiting for books to clatter upon her head, but they don't. The books seem to be stuck fast upon this bit of shelf. Is it a false bookcase?

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.

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!