Exodus (16 page)

“Gorbals,” says Candleriggs, opening her eyes at last.
Her gnarled voice shakes with emotion. “Spin Mara a good, strong story to hold on to on such a stormy night in this harsh world.”

“Won't we get blown away?” Mara asks, as another great fist of wind grabs the trees and shakes the nests with a fury.

“Of course not,” says Candleriggs gently. “We're as safe as birds' nests. And on nights like this the spirits of the drowned ones rise up from the waters to guard us and keep us safe. Can't you hear them sing loud and strong among the branches?”

Mara hears only the wind and the hoot of an owl. But as she listens the ghoulish sound of the wind seems to change until it does sound like a strong, invisible choir among the trees, and she feels comforted as she imagines the guardian spirits of her family here among the branches, watching over her and singing her to sleep.

“Once upon a time,” Gorbals begins, “there lived a girl.” And he tells the tale of the girl who is whisked out of her world by a great wind and flung into a strange new land where she wanders lost until she spies a rainbow. Not knowing what else to do, she follows the rainbow to its end; she doesn't know why, only that she must.

“And when at last she reached the end, there she found a crock of gold,” Gorbals says.

“
Crock of gold, crock of gold
,” the Treenesters murmur contentedly, and at last Mara falls asleep, cradled by the sound of the words and the wind and the rocking of the nest.

Deep in the night it's not the storm or a nightmare that wakens Mara but a silent presence near the foot of her tree. Instinct tells her it's there. She wakens with a start and, looking down out of the nest, finds herself locked in
the amber gaze of a fox. The fox doesn't blink or move, just sits as still as a statue and stares up at her. Mara stares back, goosebumps prickling her skin as she remembers the cyberfox and the magnetic pull of its eyes.
I'll find you again
—
somehow I will
, Mara vows, as her eyelids drop and she falls back into sleep.

In the morning it's all the sun can do to graze a white patch in the clouds; but the storm has passed and the netherworld lies in a pot of soupy gray mist. Dove calls and birdsong waken Mara and she wonders how they manage such carefree joy after last night's vicious blast. She stretches out her limbs, feeling rested and new. Today, she will scrub herself from top to toe, wash her clothes, and plait her long hair to help keep cool in this heat. Then she will explore the netherworld and try to think what she will do next.

“Candleriggs.”

“Clyde.”

“Molendinar.”

“Springburn.”

“Firhill.”

“Parkhead.”

“Ibrox.”

What on Earth are they doing? Mara peers over the side of the nest. The Treenesters sit in a circle on the ground below. One by one each stands up, shouts out their own name, and points toward a part of the drowned city.

“Gorbals.”

“Cowcaddens.”

“Trongate.”

“Gallowgate.”

“Possil.”

“Pollock.”

“Partick.”

The ceremony continues until it reaches Broomielaw, who holds up her baby.

“And my precious little Clayslaps.”

The others laugh as baby Clayslaps waggles his arms and legs. Then they burst into song. Mara flops back in the greatnest and laughs too. It's ridiculous. The Treenesters are a bunch of walking place names, the living limbs of the lost city.

Gorbals brings Mara's breakfast up to the greatnest. A woven grass mat is her plate, a bird beak her spoon, and a bird claw her fork. Mara decides she'd rather use her fingers. She tastes a morsel of what looks like a mushroom omelette. The mushrooms taste and smell of the netherworld—of earth and trees, darkness and salt.

Now Gorbals offers her a clay cup of some steaming, aromatic drink. “This is rosehip tea but you can have nettle or dandelion or mint. I put some honey in it.”

“No, this is good,” Mara tells him. “What were you all doing just then?”

“At sunup and sundown we remember our lost name places,” Gorbals explains. “Each year we lose more of the old city to the waters and each year our island shrinks until one day soon there will be nothing.”

“Just like my island!” Mara exclaims.

Gorbals nods. “Yes,” he says heavily. “This year the water rose more than ever. If that happens next year we'll have no land left. Just like you.” He looks at her intently. “We believe that's why you are here now. The stone-telling must happen soon or we will drown. But now we know the signs will all come together and we'll be saved. You'll
make it happen.” Mara shakes her head helplessly at him but his large eyes are full of faith. Shyly, he touches her face. “Molendinar will heal this wound with a tree sap cure. Oh, and Candleriggs asks if you had a dream last night.”

“A dream?” Mara fingers the sore rip on her face and tries to remember. “I'm not sure. Why?”

“Dreams are full of signs. Candleriggs says if a dream visited you it might tell you something useful.”

Mara sighs. Then she remembers.

“There was a fox,” she exclaims. “But I don't know whether I dreamed it or not.”

“A fox!” Gorbals relays down to the others, who, Mara now sees, have gathered underneath the greatnest in expectation. “She might have dreamed a fox but she's not sure.”

He waits patiently as Mara tries to remember more.

“Well, it—it just stared at me. That's all. No, now I'm sure it was real, a real fox.”

Once again she remembers the cyberfox and wishes she could reach him. But maybe she still can. Mara looks around the greatnest, finds her backpack, and checks that her cyberwizz is safely sealed inside.

“I once knew a fox,” she tells Gorbals. “Not a real one but he felt like my friend. He had the eyes of a friend.”

Gorbals settles himself on a branch beside her and waits expectantly, as if for a story.

“On your island in the great ocean?” he prompts.

“Not exactly.” Mara tries to think of a way to explain about cyberspace to a plastic-clothed boy who lives in a nest in the trees. She can't.

“I suppose it was like a dream, or a game. Real but not real. The fox was in another world.”

“You have been to another world?” Gorbals stares at her in astonishment.

“Sort of,” says Mara. “But my body was still in this one. Only my mind was in the other one. It's done with a machine called a computer. A cyberwizz.”

“A magic machine!” Gorbals cries.

“No,” says Mara, and she leaves the cyberwizz tucked away in her backpack for now because if she shows it to him and tells him about the Weave and how she got there using her globe and halo and wand then it does sound like magic. And it
was
a kind of magic, she realizes now, as she climbs down from the greatnest. A magic that was so much a part of her ordinary life she took it for granted.

“Maybe the fox is a sign,” Gorbals says, later, once Mara has scrubbed herself clean in a bath full of rainwater in the tumbledown ruin at the top of the hill.

“A sign of what?” Mara asks. Her skin glows and tingles from the cold water. She feels fresh and clear-headed again.

“I don't know,” he says. “Wait and see.”

“I don't want to wait and see. My mother used to say patience was not one of my virtues.” Mara smiles tearfully at the memory. “Is that all you people do around here,” she teases Gorbals, “wait for something to happen?”

“Yes,” Gorbals says simply. “We live our lives and watch for the signs of whatever will happen. It's all we can do.”

“Haven't you ever tried to break out of here? Did nobody ever want to see what's beyond the city walls? Or try to get up into the city? Or take a boat and just sail out into the ocean? Didn't you ever wonder about the outside world?”

Even as she says the words Mara feels shame because
she sees there's no great difference, really, between the Treenesters and the islanders of Wing.

“In the beginning, yes,” Gorbals says darkly. “Then we learned not to. Too many of us died, or disappeared. We saw that the only way was to live quietly and try to keep safe and believe that one day we would be saved. We have put our faith in the stone-telling,” he says simply. “And it's happening. Now you are here, the signs are gathering, and something must happen soon.”

“Oh, Gorbals, there are no signs—please don't believe in me. I never helped my own people, I only made things worse, so much worse, and I can't think of a way to help them now,” Mara despairs.

“I believe in the stone-telling,” Gorbals insists. “I believe in the signs—and the signs
are
coming together. Like the wound on your face.”

Mara touches her cheek. Molendinar's sap ointment has soothed it. With a jolt Mara remembers the ugly crack upon the stone girl's face. The wound the wild girl ripped across her face now mirrors that crack in the Face in the Stone. And Mara turns cold inside as she remembers something else—the crack she made in Granny Mary's mirror, inside the little carved box made by Tain that she keeps tucked away inside her backpack. That crack rips a scar across her face too when she looks in the glass. Like her wound and the crack on the face of the statue, it too is on the left side.

Much as she wants to, Mara cannot explain away such uncanny coincidences. But a few cracks and scars don't mean she's the one who is going to save the Treenesters.

“How did you manage on your island if you didn't know how to read the signs of the world?” Gorbals suddenly asks.

Mara doesn't answer because not reading the signs was the reason she is here, now, having lost everything.

Mara spends the day getting her bearings. She explores the Treenesters's island and sees why they have chosen it as their home. As well as being the largest and most tree-covered, it lies farthest from the central towers of New Mungo and the ever-present threat of the sea police. The occasional wail of a siren and the reels of tide made by the supply ships are a constant reminder of the workings of the New World that overshadows this dank, gloomy one.

Mara rafts over to the cathedral island, and then to the wrecked bus on the Bridge to Nowhere to look for Wing. At last she finds him up on the curving ruin of the building that tops the Treenesters' island. She spies his grubby face peeking out through a large red-and-yellow plastic sign that's lopsidedly propped on the building's crumbling balcony; a bright yellow
M
, like a twin golden archway. Was this once the sign of some special, sacred place?

Wing sits among the flocks of urchins that perch upon the rooftops to throw rocks at the birds. The curve of the ruin forms a kind of amphitheater that resounds with the chirrupping, whistling racket of the birds and the urchins. The urchins are vicious with birds, forever attacking and tormenting them, mimicking their voices, tearing them apart when they stone them down, eating them raw, dead or alive. Mara is sure they punish the birds in envy of their winged freedom. Only Wing's own little sparrow, guarded fiercely by him, escapes such cruelty.

Mara climbs through the rubble of bones and bottles and weeds that lie inside the ruined building. In the middle of a room with no walls or roof sits a smashed television set, its innards overgrown with chickenweed and
dandelions. A kitten cries like a lost child in a wasteland, but as Mara clambers through to get up to Wing she sees it's not really a wasteland at all. The place is teeming with wildlife—birds, bluebottles, beetles, cats, goats, a wild dog, chickens, wasps, worms, slugs, spiders, and ants. Nature has reclaimed the ruins of the human world.

Tentatively, Mara climbs the remains of a staircase, stumbles and plunges into a mass of stinging nettles. She looks around for a dock leaf to rub on her stings and as she reaches out for one she almost thrusts her hand through a huge spider's web. The crumbling building is full of gaps and holes, its doors and windows are wide open to the elements, yet the web survived last night's ferocious storm.

How can so much life survive in such a ruined place? Mara wonders, then she spies Wing.

“I searched and searched for you,” she tells him when at last he scrambles down, “but you've been here all the time.”

He stares at her mouth, hopping about on his spindly legs, trying to drink in the meaning of her words with his eyes while his bird-friend flaps around his shoulders.

“I want you to bring me your friends.” Mara gestures up at all the urchins on the rooftop then points to herself. “I've had an idea. But,” she adds, pointing to the wound on her face and shaking her head sternly, “I don't want any more of this.”

Wing stares at her in concentration. He reaches up and puts a finger to her lips. Mara repeats her request and pantomime of gestures. The child blinks once and runs off.

In a moment he's back, trailing a flock of urchins. So he understood after all. Mara leads the way down to the ground and they gather around, tense and curious. She flinches as a hundred eyes fix upon her. She knows it's a risk meeting
these children alone here; they are truly wild, they might do anything to her.

“Do any of you have names?” she asks nervously. “Do any of you understand me?”

The eyes burn upon her.

“I—I can give you names, if you like,” says Mara. “All the names of the lost islands in the ocean beyond the wall. Would you like names?”

They don't understand a word, of course, but it seems only right to ask.

Mara points to herself. “Mara.”

She points to Wing. “And you're Wing, remember? Wing. Now say it,” she tells him. “It's no use having a name if you can't say it.
Wing
.”

Mara puts her finger to his mouth. The child watches hers intently and attempts to mirror the shape of the word on her lips.

“Wuh,” he grunts at last, trying out the sound. He bashes his head with his hand and tries again. “Wuh-eeng. Wuing!”