Zenith

by Julie Bertagna

  ‘Oy,’ grunts Hoy, wriggling free. He puts his handful of coloured pebbles on the heap.

  ‘Hoy, it’s dangerous—’ Mara blinks as the sun flashes on the pile of pebbles. Blood-red, sea-green and sunset-amber, the stones are gem-like, polished by ice and sea and time.

  Yet another explosion, far too close, rains a painful hail of stones on their heads.

  ‘Quick! Follow me.’

  She grabs Hoy again and stops. The whole world seems to stop as Mara sees a face in the stones.

  Wing is picking gems from the heap they’ve made, gently placing them upon the almost-buried face.

  Mara grabs hold of Wing. ‘What are you doing?’

  He looks up at her and smiles.

  Mara sinks to her knees and forces herself to claw the gems and pebbles off the ashen face. Then reels back in shock when she sees who it is, sees the garish splash of blood on the stones.

  Merien.

  Mara lets out a wail. She can’t speak. The urchins could not have done this, they couldn’t. These children are wild but surely they couldn’t kill . . .

  But she killed a man, didn’t she?

  Wing crouches down beside her. He points a finger at the face and imitates the sound of a gunshot, then points back at the battle.

  Of course. It wasn’t the urchins. Abandoned here on the open shore, still bound by the wreckers’ ropes, Merien was trapped in the blast of the battle.

  Mara feels shamed. Merien was the urchins’ friend. How could she think they would harm her? But it’s hard to keep trust in anyone or anything any more. The world has become so strange, everything so precarious, shifting and unreal that it’s hard to gauge what anyone will do, including herself.

  When the gun was at her head, her only thought was to save herself and her cyberwizz. In that instant and in the fear rush that followed, she never gave a thought to her friends.

  Wing and Hoy begin to replace the stones that Mara has clawed off Merien’s face, pebble by pebble, gem by gem, chanting under their breath. Mara kneels down beside them and listens, wondering what it is these wordless children are saying. The rest of the urchins join in, all chanting together.

  They’re counting.

  Death, smoke and fire fill the bay. The wind howls around them, full of ice. Still, the urchins keep counting, one, two, three, four, five, over and over, just as Merien taught them to on the ship. Except now they are burying her gently beneath the Earth’s beautiful stones.

  INSIDE EARTH

  The mountain has swallowed them whole.

  Tuck looks back at the cave mouth, at the grey sky and familiar roll of the ocean and his legs twitch, eager to run him back to the world outside. Suddenly, he’d rather take his chances in the battle than face this terrifying darkness that is Earth.

  The cave walls lean too close; they bump against his shoulders and his head so that he has to walk bent and stooped as his old Grumpa. He seems to feel the pressing weight of the mountain overhead. The only thing Tuck ever has over his head is his windwrap, the roof of a boat or the sky.

  ‘Aah.’ Gorbals stands up straight and stretches his long limbs. ‘That’s better.’

  Wary, Tuck raises his head. The low roof of the cave has suddenly opened up. Now they stand in a rock hall so large the Steer Master’s ship could almost fit inside. But it’s a cold, dark miserable place, with only a glimmer of daylight penetrating the gloom. A place to end your days, not begin anew.

  Tuck tries to go back.

  ‘Ooof!’

  A spike of rock sticking out of the cave floor stabs him in the ribs.

  ‘They’re everywhere.’ Gorbals puts a hand on Tuck’s shoulder and points. ‘See, on the roof, all over the floor.’

  Tuck can only just make out the spiky shapes. ‘What are they?’

  Gorbals shrugs. ‘Rock spears. This is a brutal land,’ he mutters. ‘Even the rocks. Mol! Ibrox!’

  Tuck jumps as Gorbals bellows.

  Ox-ox-ox-ox!

  His voice ricochets echoes off the cave walls. An answering shout crashes off the rocks.

  Ere-ere-ere . . .

  ‘They’re here!’ cries Gorbals. ‘Where?’

  ‘Look up-up-up-up!’

  Gorbals looks up and yells again.

  The echoes merge into confusion. Tuck puts his hands over his ears and closes his eyes. The noise and the dark, his spinning head and spiked stomach are too much. He thinks of the Waverley in the thick of the battle out in the fjord, and though he’d rather be there than here, there’s no pirate beat in his blood. None. Tuck no longer knows what he is. But Gorbals has grabbed his arm and is pulling him further into the Earth. They climb, feeling their way in the deepening darkness towards the guiding voice.

  ‘Keep your shoulder to the wall,’ the voice urges.

  On one side is the cave wall, on the other there’s nothing, just the dark. Tuck tries out each step warily, expecting the cave floor to fall away at any moment, but the rock stays solid underfoot.

  ‘Through here!’

  The cave has closed in tight on both sides. They squeeze through the narrow rockway, then burst into light. Tuck blinks in the relief of daylight. He draws fresh, cold wind into his lungs. Then jumps in fright as shadows spring from the cave walls. Tuck draws his cutlass blade but Gorbals cries out.

  ‘Wait! It’s my friends. Molendinar, Ibrox . . . my people.’

  Tuck slides the cutlass back in its scabbard as the friends hug each other. With a stab of shock it strikes Tuck that turning Lander means he’ll never see his own people again.

  ‘This is Tuck.’ Gorbals pulls him forward. ‘He pulled me from the sea.’

  ‘We saw,’ says the young woman, Molendinar, who has hair that falls to her feet. Hair like a mountain waterfall, thinks Tuck, shifting from one foot to another as the girl seems to drink in his face with her huge, dark eyes.

  Ibrox, a sturdy older man, shakes Tuck’s hand. ‘You risked your life for this clumsy clump. The last person who needed to catch fire is Gorbals. Now if it had been me . . .’

  ‘Ibrox is our firekeeper,’ Gorbals explains. ‘He’s good with fire; I’m only good with words.’

  Ibrox leads them away from the windy cave mouth to a crackling fire in the shelter of a large rock.

  ‘Aah, that’s good! My bones are cold as stone. Here, Tuck, grab some heat.’

  Tuck almost groans with relief as Ibrox settles him on a rock beside the fire. The warmth is bliss.

  ‘Move over, Clyde.’ Gorbals nudges a flame-faced boy out of the way.

  His eyes search the cave. ‘Did you find Mara?’

  The others shake their heads. Gorbals looks sick. ‘First we lose Broomielaw and the baby, now Mara.’

  ‘This higher cave is a better lookout than the one below,’ says Molendinar. ‘That’s why we climbed, to keep watch for them.’

  There’s a moment of silence, a lull in the battle outside, when the only sounds in the cave are the crackle of the fire and the rumble of waterfalls.

  ‘Who is here?’ Gorbals peers around the cave. ‘Mol and Ibrox, Caddie and Clyde, Fir and Tron, Partick . . . is that all?’

  Mol points to a heap of bodies curled up asleep on the cave floor.

  ‘Gallow and Spring and Park. And Rowan, Mara’s island friend. Lots of people are missing. All those people on the Arkiel, where are they? And the urchins.’

  ‘The Arkiel?’ says Tuck.

  ‘Pollock and Possil?’ says Gorbals.

  ‘Gone fishing.’

  ‘Fishing?’ The word hisses off the cave walls. ‘Fishing? Haven’t they noticed there’s a war on?’

  ‘Keep your head, Gorbals,’ says Ibrox. ‘These caves seem to worm deep into the mountains. There’s a stream that runs right through here – see?’ He points to the trickle of water that runs along the floor of the cave. ‘Possil and Pollock said they’d follow the water and see if they could track down a pool where there might be fish. We need to eat.’

  ‘Pollock didn’t think he s
hould look for Broomielaw and his child first? No, he had to go fishing.’ Gorbals spits the words as if they taste of acid. He jumps to his feet.‘Well, I’ll look for them if he won’t.’

  Molendinar and Ibrox exchange a glance.

  ‘Broomie and Clay could be anywhere,’ says Ibrox firmly. ‘Maybe they’re safe in a cave just like this, worrying about us, or washed up on one of the little islands or—’

  ‘–blown to bits in the middle of the battle or lying at the bottom of the ocean.’

  ‘Gorbals, don’t.’ Mol’s face crumples and she turns away.

  Gorbals slumps down on a rock and hangs his head between his knees. His burned arm trembles.

  ‘Let’s – let’s do our sundown.’ Ibrox tries to sound matter-of-fact, but his voice wavers. ‘The sun’s falling fast.’

  ‘Let the sun die. I don’t care,’ says Gorbals into his knees.

  Ibrox shakes him by the shoulder. ‘Stop it. We can’t forget who we are or all this will have been for nothing. Come on, Gorbals. Lift up your chin and do something useful. That’s all Pollock’s doing. No one’s giving up on Broomielaw or Clayslaps or Mara. You know that.’

  ‘Pollock.’

  Gorbals grinds the name between his teeth. But he lifts his head and looks out the cave mouth at the sun that is about to settle among the mountain peaks. ‘All right. I’ll do it for Broomie and Clay and Mara.’

  Those who are awake gather around the fire as Gorbals begins the Treenesters’ sundown ritual. He chants a faltering beat of words that build into a grim rhythm as, one by one, the people who were once Treenesters stand and shout their names into the fire.

  Squashed among them, Tuck watches.

  ‘Anyone can join in,’ says Ibrox. ‘Just shout out your name to tell the world you’re here.’

  Tuck feels his shifty legs twitch and gives into the impulse. He jumps to his feet.

  ‘Tuck,’ he bursts out. ‘Tuck Culpy. Landed on Earth!’

  He sits down again, burning with embarrassment. Ibrox claps him on the back and Molendinar gives him a shy smile through her hair, but Gorbals drops his head back on to his knees and says nothing.

  Tuck rises from the sundown fire and goes over to the mouth of the cave. The falling sun means the darkness at the back of the cave is creeping towards him. He doesn’t mind the true dark of the night. He’s used to that. But this darkness inside Earth seems an unnatural, monstrous thing. The cave mouth is high above shore and sea, as high as the mast of a tall ship. Here on the eastern curve of the wide bay, the last beams of the sun fall on Tuck’s face – and on the carnage his people have brought to the fjord.

  He feels nothing as he looks at the blur of boat wrecks in the harbour and the bodies on the shore. Too much has happened; things don’t feel real any more. Tuck takes the little silver box from the pocket of his windwrap. He looks into the tiny window, presses the button and the zoom nose pops out. He scans the fjord, trying to find the masts of the Steer Master’s ship or the fat funnels of the Waverley, but the fading light and the smoke in the bay has made a ghost of the pirate fleet, though firebombs still flare across the bay.

  ‘What is this?’

  Molendinar’s large dark eyes are on the little silver box in his hand.

  ‘It’s a—’

  Tuck struggles to remember the name, the sound of rolling hills of ocean. Mareca? Carema?

  ‘Camera,’ he remembers.

  ‘Ca-mera,’ Mol echoes. ‘Can I look?’

  He puts the little window to Mol’s eye. She looks through it and jumps back. Looks at the world outside. Then puts the camera to her eye again and breaks into a wondering smile.

  ‘Does it put the world inside its box or does it take you over there?’ she demands.

  Tuck shrugs, smiling. ‘It’s a kind of magic eye.’

  Mol gives a shriek and shoves the camera back at him.

  ‘There’s a face . . . a giant face . . . in the fog.’

  Tuck scans the fog and jumps with fright as he finds himself eye to eye with the face. A drift of fog blanks him out. Tuck lowers the camera and looks at Mol’s scared face.

  ‘It’s only The Man,’ he tells her.

  ‘What man?’ Tentatively, Mol takes back the camera.

  Tuck shrugs again. ‘The Man in the Middle. He watches. He sees.’ Tuck chews his lip as he thinks of his silly plan to steal The Man. ‘He makes things happen, I think.’

  A shiver runs from his head to his toes as he realizes that the camera gives him a power to match The Man’s all-seeing, all-knowing eyes.

  ‘Mara has a magic machine too. It takes her to another world,’ says Mol, sweeping the camera eye all across the mountains, ‘but she keeps it to herself.’

  Tuck has trouble following the girl’s quick tongue though they both speak the same words; but hers fall from her lips as fast as rain while his have the rhythm of deep-sea sway.

  ‘The Arkiel,’ says Tuck. ‘I heard you say something about the Arkiel.’

  But Mol is too excited. ‘One moment I’m on a mountainside, there’s a blue door, now I’m down among the rocks on the shore and – oh.’ She jerks the camera to a halt and the colour drains from her voice. ‘So many people dead. All the boats burned.’ Her mouth is tight. ‘Horrible, horrible, why did they – oh.’ She falls silent. Her knuckles tighten on the camera.

  ‘Mara?’ she whispers. ‘Is it . . . ? Mara!’

  Tuck has to grab Mol’s arm to stop her running out into thin air. The camera has tricked her into thinking she is down on the shore, instead of standing at a cave mouth high in the mountainside. Tuck takes back the camera and zooms on to the cluster of people running along the shore. A bunch of children. Seven, he counts, one of them dragging a creature behind her. And an older girl. All he can see is the swirl of her hair in the wind, hair as dark as night or the inside of Earth. She turns to look at the mountain and he sees her face. And knows he’s seen her before.

  It’s the girl who fell on her knees on the Arkiel.

  TIREDNESS KILLS

  Tuck watches from the shadows of the cave as the dark-haired girl is gathered into the firelight among her friends. His heart clenches as tight as his fist because there’s no one, not a soul left in the world, not Pendicle or any of the bridger-people, who would weep over his return like that.

  The girl soon slips aside from the others and sits on a rock near Tuck. The light of the fire illuminates her face. Tuck watches as she takes something from her bag. He shifts closer and his narrow eyes widen when he sees the glowing globe in her lap.

  The globe opens like an oyster shell. Tuck holds his breath as the girl slips a silvery crescent, like a slice of moon, over her eyes and dips a small silvery stick inside the globe. Her face softens as if she’s falling out of the world into a dream.

  ‘That’s her magic machine,’ Mol whispers in Tuck’s ear.

  She hands him a tiny sliver of fire-smoked fish. Possil and Pollock found a chute of violent thunderwater deep inside the mountain, but with no light to see by, their only catch was a single fish that leaped out of the waterfall and landed at Possil’s feet.

  ‘What does it do?’ Tuck stuffs the fish into his mouth and stares hungrily at the magic globe, his looter’s instinct astir.

  ‘It takes her into another world,’ says Molendinar, ‘but her body stays in this one.’

  Tuck swallows the fish in a gulp. ‘What world?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t really understand . . . Broomielaw said . . .’ Mol hesitates.

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘She goes to a place where she can be with someone she lost.’

  The faces of Ma, Pa, Grumpa and little Beth, his own lost ones, flash through Tuck’s mind. He feels hollow, as if the wind that haunts the cave has blown a hole right through his heart. He shakes himself like a sail in the wind and tries not to think of Ma, sunk by mountains of sea, tries to rid himself of the panicky feeling of being sunk inside the Earth, Land-locked with strangers.

  �
�Come by the fire, Tuck, and shake off that chill,’ Ibrox calls over. The grizzled-looking man livens the embers with a stick. ‘Shove along, you lot,’ he tells the urchins then brandishes the hot stick at Scarwell, who has just pinched his fish.

  Tuck stares at the creature sitting beside Scarwell, the one he saw her dragging along the shore. The hairy beast has a human look about it. Its eyes gleam in the firelight but it doesn’t move at all. Tuck decides it might be best to befriend it and offers it the fishbone.

  Around him, people burst out laughing. Mol knocks on the creatures head.

  ‘He’s not real.’

  Feeling a right dubya, Tuck nibbles on the fishbone.

  ‘Broomielaw said that Mara told her something else,’ Mol whispers, squeezing in beside him, her breath almost as hot as the fire on his neck. She fiddles with the long tail of her hair.

  ‘What? What else?’ Tuck wants to know.

  ‘She said the cyberwizz holds the secrets of the past.’

  Tuck looks into Molendinar’s large dark eyes. ‘What secrets?’

  Mol shivers. ‘The secret of what happened there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the past.’

  Tuck takes that in.

  The fire is newly fed with sea grass so it’s nice and hot. He stares into the flames until his brow burns and his eyes sting. His head feels full of hot light.

  The girl’s globe holds the past like a hoard of lost treasure? Yet Grumpa always said the past was lost, sunk at the bottom of the sea.

  ‘The Arkiel,’ he ventures, raising his voice. ‘What do you people know about that?’

  CLANG!

  The noise is so loud the very mountain seems to quake.

  CLANG!

  Tuck covers his ears with his hands, as the CLANG sounds over and over again. When a vast percussion of BANGS erupts, Tuck is sure the mountain is about to fall on his head.

  ‘It’s inside as well as out,’ yells Partick, and it’s true. The bangs and clangs echo all across the mountainsides and inside the caves.

  ‘The caves burrow into the mountains like rabbit warrens,’ Pollock yells back. ‘The people live in them like rabbits.’