Exodus (39 page)

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.

Very special thanks to Tony Bradman for a phenomenal wait for the Future Story that became this one; Graham Sim for a forest of reading and inspired lanterns in the margins, so far beyond the great wizard hat; Elspeth King's
The Thenew Factor
; Keith Gray and his phone bill; my editor, Sarah Davies, for her act of faith; Caroline Walsh, and to Riccardo and Natalie for their love.

Copyright © 2002 by Julie Bertagna
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Young Picador,
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Limited
Published in the United States of America in April 2008
by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
E-book edition published in April 2011
www.bloomsburyteens.com

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Corrina for permission to reproduce material from External Moment
by Sandy Weores, Anvil Press Poetry, 1987, Ed. Miklos Vajda, Transl. Edwin Morgan, William Jay
Smith
Illustrations © David Newton

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Bertagna, Julie.
Exodus / Julie Bertagna.
p. cm.
Summary: In the year 2100, as the island of Wing is about to be covered by water, fifteen-year-old Mara
discovers the existence of New World sky cities that are safe from the storms and rising waters, and
convinces her people to travel to one of these cities in order to save themselves.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-9745-2 • ISBN-10: 0-8027-9745-8 (hardcover)
[1. Survival—Fiction. 2. Voyages and travels—Fiction. 3. Altruism—Fiction. 4. Global warming—
Fiction. 5. Floods—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B4627Exo 2008        [Fic]—dc22        2007023116

ISBN 978-0-8027-2381-9 (e-book)