Pathfinder (40 page)

9. Knowledge is both revered and reviled in
Pathfinder.
Why is Candleriggs so against the Treenesters reading books or visiting the museum in the drowned city under New Mungo? When Mara explores the university, what does she learn about the world s past? Does she find hope in the books she locates there? How does she remind Candleriggs that knowledge itself is never to blame? What point do you think the author is trying to make about how people interpret facts today?

10. When Broomielaw shows Mara her sunpower mosaic, Mara is struck with the thought that there were few women represented in the ancient museum. She realizes that “
their dreams had become all tangled up with the knit of ordinary life
” and urges Broomielaw to continue her special work. Is Mara ever delayed from her purpose by day-to-day survival? How does Mara's gender affect her journey? Do you think she will continue to fight for the refugees future on the front lines, or will she take a secondary role like Broomielaw does?

11. In many ways
Pathfinder
is a cautionary tale. Mara comes to a disturbing conclusion when discussing the past with Gorbals. She says, “‘
Our ancestors stole our future
'”. What is the author trying to tell us? What do we owe to our planet? What do we owe to future generations? If Mara could go back and speak with people in our time, what do you think she would say? Do you think anyone would listen?

12.
Pathfinder
is the first book in a trilogy. What do you think will happen next in the story? Why?

The desperate search for a haven and new beginning
reaches new heights in Julie Bertagna's compelling
sequel to
PATHFINDER
. . .

Turn the page for a sneak peek . . .

MARA

Dawn reveals a brutal ocean, a roaring gray desert of sea.

“Mara.”

The ocean is so loud it almost drowns out Rowan's voice.

Mara turns from the ship's bow where she has been all night, though there's been nothing to see but the dark. And now, as day breaks, there is nothing but gray. She tries to smile at Rowan, but the blasting wind has made her face feel as rigid as stone.

Rowan throws a dirty blanket around her shoulders and hands her a plastic packet full of powdery yellow stuff.

NOOSOUP, she reads on the garish label.

“Gulp it down fast with some water.” Rowan makes a face and hands her a water bottle. “Horrible. But it's food. There's crates full of it below in the hold.”

Mara wipes her wind-streamed eyes with the blanket, smearing her cheeks with its dirt. She scrapes a dark tangle of hair from her face and grimaces as she puts the packet to her lips, recoiling from the synthetic smell. But she's weak with hunger so she forces it down.

“Now,” says Rowan, as she wipes her mouth, “tell me what happened. You vanished from the boat camp. I thought you must be dead. But here you are with a fleet of ships in a mass break-out from the city.” His haggard face breaks into a grin. “I'm impressed.”

Mara returns a wry smile, but it disappears as she begins her extraordinary tale.

After the loss of her family on the journey to the New World, then more deaths in the boat camp around the city walls, Mara wished she were dead too. She was the one who convinced her people to flee their sinking island and make an exodus to the sky-scraping city of New Mungo. But inside the city walls she found a drowned netherworld at the foot of New Mungo's great towers. There Gorbals, Broomielaw, Candleriggs, Molendinar, and the others survived as Treenesters in the ruins of a lost city. Mara saw the rooftops glimmering with ghostly phosphorescence under the sea. When Gorbals and the urchins were snatched by the sea police, Mara stole into the sky city to find them. And there she met Fox, the grandson of Caledon, the architect of the New World.

“Fox didn't know about the boat camp,” Mara insists. “He knew nothing about the outside world. The City Fathers make sure of that. Up in New Mungo,” she remembers, “it's like living on an island in the sky. You forget about the outside world, just like we did on Wing.”

“If refugees arrived on Wing, we wouldn't have built a great big wall to keep them out,” Rowan retorts.

“What if thousands landed on our shores? What would we have done?”

After a long moment, filled by the roar of the sea, Rowan returns to the here and now.

“How on Earth did you steal a fleet of ships?”

“Fox wiped out the city's communications. It was a big risk but he—he—”

Mara bites her lip, hoping the noise of the wind and the ocean drowned out the tremor in her voice.

“The grandson of the man who created the New World helped you break out of the city?” Rowan looks puzzled.

“Fox wants to change his world. That's why he had to stay.” She feels Rowan's eyes studying her face, trying to read the meaning behind the catch in her voice. Mara rushes on; there's plenty more to tell. Rowan looks increasingly bewildered as Mara tells him about the statue in the netherworld that is her image and the story the Treenesters say is carved into the drowned city's stone. It's a promise left by their ancestors, they believe, that one day they would be rescued from the deathly netherworld. When Mara arrived and they saw her face, the face in the stone, they were convinced that she must be the one to do that.

And strangely enough, she has. Though whether they will all find a home in the world, luck and fate will decide.

Mara has still to tell the tragic story of Candleriggs, the ancient Treenester, but Rowan looks exhausted and so is she. It's far too much to tell all at once.

And there are some things too painful to tell.

“It's crazy,” says Rowan. “Our life on Wing was so hard and there were people dying in the boat camp and living in trees. Yet all the while the people of the New World were . . . are . . .” He breaks off and swallows hard, beyond words.

“Living in castles in the sky,” Mara finishes. “In luxury you wouldn't believe, built by slaves the people know nothing about.”

“So who do they think built their walls and towers? Who builds bridges all across the sea?” Rowan demands. There's a spark of anger in his weary eyes.

“They never think about that.” Mara grabs his arm. “If you'd ever been inside a sky city you'd see why. Rowan, it's
amazing
. . .”

In her mind's eye she sees the vast cybercathedral that seemed to be created out of light and air, the silver sky tunnels sparking with speed-skaters, the wild and savage beauty of the Noos.

Rowan is frowning into the wind. “This Fox . . .”

Mara's heart skips a beat, but she is rescued from questions she is not ready to answer by a sudden cry. She turns to see her friend, Broomielaw, struggling across the heaving deck with her baby in his papoose on her back.

“What if the world is all ocean?” says Broomielaw, crashing into Mara. They grip on to each other as the ship rolls up over a wave. The other girl's large eyes are shadowed and scared. “What if there's no land? What if this is all there is? ocean and ocean and ocean. I don't like it, Mara. I hate this wild world. I wish we were all back inside the wall on the Hill of Doves, safe and sound in our trees.”

Mara keeps a steadying arm across the sleep-slumped baby on Broomielaw's back.

“You
weren't
safe,” she reminds her friend. “The sea was rising. Sooner or later, it'll swallow up the Hill of Doves just like it swallowed my island, and then what would you have done? There's land, Broomielaw, I'm sure there is, at the top of the world. It's in my book.”

“What if it's a drowned land too?”

It chills Mara's heart, that thought.

“And it's only the word of an old b—” Broomielaw grimaces as if she's swallowed an insect and spits out the word
book.
"What's that worth? You shouldn't trust those
things
.”

“You trusted your whole future to a story set in stone,” Mara retorts. “It's your stone-telling legend as much as anything that's brought us here. You'll believe in an old stone statue but not a book.”

“You can trust stone.”

There's an edge of granite in Broomielaw's soft face.

“A vast land of mountains locked in ice.” Mara murmurs the words. She knows them by heart; she's been chanting them like a mantra, over and over, to make herself believe they're true. “If the Arctic ice is melted, the land must be free.”

But those mountains worry her. After all, the reason Mara's people abandoned their island, Wing, was because the rising sea had forced them farther and farther upland toward barren mountain rock. And they couldn't survive on that.

Broomielaw squeezes her hand. “Sorry, Mara. I'm just so tired and the sea is making me sick. Baby Clayslaps couldn't settle all night.” She gives Mara a look. “Like you.”

“Oh, me.” Mara pulls away.

Broomielaw grabs her arm. “Tell me about the sky city. What happened to you up there? Something bad, I can tell.”

Mara shakes her head. How could she describe the wonders and horrors of a New World city to a girl who has lived her whole life in the ruins of the drowned world? Yet Broomielaw knows all about the cruelty of New Mungo toward those beyond its sky-scraping towers.

She also knows the pain of a broken heart.

“Tell me,” Broomielaw urges.

Mara hesitates. Rowan has gone into the control cabin and is deep in conversation with some of the boat-camp refugees.

“I—I had to leave someone behind.”

And she killed someone, but she can't tell anyone that. There wasn't time to dwell on that in the panic to escape New Mungo but there was time enough on the ship in the depths of the night.

She is rescued from Broomielaw's probing by the ship lurching over a wave almost as sheer as a cliff. They hang on to the rail and hope for their lives. Clayslaps howls, hurled out of his sleep.

“Take the baby below deck!” The wind whips away Mara's words.

“Come with me,” Broomielaw yells back, fighting the wind to make for the stairs.

“I'll be down soon,” Mara promises.

She turns back to the ocean. The exhilaration of escaping the city is gone. All last night, blanketed in darkness, she still felt close to Fox, felt the ghost of him beside her, his kiss, the heat of his fingerprints on her skin. Now, in daylight, she is confronted with the ocean that lies between them. The adrenaline is gone and the only thing left is rock-hard grief that feels as if it is crushing her from the inside out.

The wind calms a little. And so does Mara. Head thumping, she scrubs her eyes, turns around, and rubs them again.

A long line of jagged gray teeth bite the horizon. The southern horizon. Not north, where the ship heads.

Mara races to the stairwell.

“Land!” she shouts.

A mass of sleepers rouses in an instant. When they surge on deck Mara curses at the stampede she has caused. There's a dangerous rush to the ship's starboard.

Mara searches the mob and grabs Rowan. “It's behind us. We need to turn back.”

But Rowan is shaking his head. “No, no, that land's no good for us.”

“We've sailed too far!” The shouts go up all over the ship. “Back, turn back!”

“It's no good.” Rowan tries to make himself heard above the din. “It's all New World land.”

His voice is as frail as his body. No one hears—except Mara, who climbs onto the ship's rail to look over the heads of the other refugees.

“You sure, Rowan? How do you know?”

But Rowan is pushing through the crowd, still trying to be heard. Yes, it's high land, he's shouting, but it all belongs to the New World. Look! The sky above those mountains is swarming with airships. They take off and land all day and night. There's no chance of refuge there, he insists, not unless you want to be a New World slave.

Word spreads across the ship, and people slump on deck or troop dejectedly back below to the hold. Mara jumps down from her unsteady perch on the rail.