Pathfinder (41 page)

“I thought I'd got it all wrong again,” she confesses, “but why didn't we see it on the journey
into
New Mungo?”

She doesn't want to think about that journey, when the sea claimed almost everything and everyone she loved.

But she has Rowan. He is the last link with her island people and the life she lost. She has the Treenesters too and the urchins. She must keep reminding herself of what she still has in the world because what is lost is more than she can bear.

“We missed it in the dark,” said Rowan. “We reached New Mungo at sunrise, remember? It was only when I was working on the sea bridge that I saw there were highlands and found out it was a New World colony.”

That spell of slave labor has wrecked him. Mara wishes she could magic back the old Rowan: quick-witted, never-say-die Rowan, who explored worlds through his hoard of books. Not this broken boy, who, like her, has lost
his
world.

He's watching her as she looks at the endless sea, trying to catch the tails of her thoughts. He always could, just as she could always sense the weather of his moods. Now, Rowan's misery engulfs her like an icy wind.

“We'd never find it, Mara.”

He means Wing, their island, where Tain and the other old ones were abandoned to the rising sea.

“We could try.” Her voice cracks. It's an empty hope.

A wave thunders onto the deck, crashing over Rowan's head and knocking Mara off her feet. Another sends her shooting across the deck until she smashes into the wall of the control cabin. Weak as he is, Rowan scutters across the slippery deck and grabs her. Together, they scramble into the shelter of the cabin.

Mara rubs a bashed shoulder, shakes soaking hair out of her eyes.

“You want to play hide-and-seek with an island and a great big ship?” Rowan wipes his streaming face on his arm. “In a sea like this?”

They are sailing across the very ocean their island lies in yet it's impossible to find it and rescue anyone who might have survived. Like so much of the Earth's land, Wing might already have slipped into oblivion under the waves.

Mara looks at the switches and buttons of the control deck, at the flashing numbers and symbols on the radar screen. Fox programmed the navigation disk to take them due north; beyond that, they are on their own.

The reek of the ocean fills the cabin. Rowan thumps a fist on the control deck. Seawater splashes from his hair into bitter blue eyes and drips onto the radar screen like tears.

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.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Young Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Limited
Published in the United States of America in 2008 as
Exodus
by Walker Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
Revised e-book edition published in February 2013
www.bloomsbury.com

Grateful acknowledgement 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

The 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.
[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: 978-0-8027-3404-4 (e-book)