Firespark

by Julie Bertagna

  “Crop?”

  Mara stares at Molendinar’s hair, wondering what she means. But Molendinar unfastens a deep pocket in her clothing and shows Mara and Broomielaw the seeds she grabbed before they fled the city.

  Broomielaw gives a sigh. “All I managed to grab was Clayslaps. I left all my inventions behind.”

  “Well, you’d rather have him, wouldn’t you?” says Molendinar, unusually sharp.

  “Mol, you’re a wonder,” says Mara. Her mood lifts. Somehow, the tiny seed crop has given her hope.

  “It’s not just me,” Molendinar protests. “We can’t seem to stop being Treenesters. Ibrox came with his firebox and pockets filled with fire-making stones.”

  The Treenesters have as many waterproof pockets as anyone could ever need in their odd but practical clothing made from a knot-weave of the plastic bags they dredged up out of the litter of the netherworld sea.

  “Ibrox is making fires?” Mara imagines the ship going up in flames.

  “No.” A smile flickers across Molendinar’s bruised mouth. “But he’ll start one as soon as he sets foot on land. And I’ll start planting my seeds. Possil and Pollock will hunt and Gorbals will make a story of our lives. Just as we always did.”

  They’re holding on to being Treenesters, Mara understands, to keep a grip of who they are in the world.

  Not poor Gorbals though. He’s too seasick to be a poet right now.

  Mara follows Broomielaw and Molendinar down below deck. The stench in the hold is terrible, getting worse by the hour. Several hundred sick and dirty people, crammed together with no fresh air and few toilets, have made a mess of the place. They’ve thrown litter everywhere, gorging on whatever they find.

  “Speak to them,” says Molendinar.

  “Why me?” Mara looks around. Tension frets the stale air. Would they listen? So many of the refugees are adults, much older than she is. Shouldn’t one of them take charge?

  “You’re the one who saved them,” urges Broomielaw. “If it wasn’t for you they’d still be trapped in that horrific boat camp. We’d be left to drown in the ruins. All of us were shut out of the world without a chance. You brought us here so you should lead us. Speak up, Mara, don’t be scared.”

  Mara steps forward. She doesn’t know these people; she is scared. Her voice barely makes a dent in the noise. She swallows, tries again. “Listen, everyone. We need to be careful with the food. We need to share it and make it last. We don’t know how long we’ll be on this ship. We should be fishing. There’s no shortage of fish out there.”

  As her voice grows stronger, heads turn and people quiet down.

  “There must be netting or rope—something that we can use to fish.” Mara looks over at Possil and Pollock, the hunters, thinking on her feet. “We need to organize.”

  A tall woman stands up. “You’re this Mara girl, eh?”

  Steely eyes in a pinched face appraise her in a way that makes Mara’s cheeks burn. The woman’s face and voice take her back to the day she entered the horror of the boat camp outside the sky city’s walls. It’s the same hostile woman, she’s sure, who tried to turn away their boat.

  “You’re the one who’s trailing us all across the ocean?” The woman sets her hands on her hips. “But you don’t know where to, or so I’ve heard.”

  The woman makes Mara feel small and childish, but a little knife-edge of anger is sharpening inside.

  “We’re headed for the top of the world.” Mara raises her chin and meets the woman’s eyes with her best don’t-mess-with-me stare. “To Kalaallit Nunaat, the land of the people.”

  “Never heard of it.” The woman looks around her. “Anyone else ever heard of such a place?”

  “Its other name is Greenland,” Mara persists, “though it’s been frozen for thousands of years. If the ice cap has melted, it might really be a green land now—somewhere we can maybe make a home.”

  “Maybe, eh?” The woman raises an eyebrow and addresses the others. “That’s a whole lot of ifs and maybes.”

  Mara rummages in her backpack and finds the book on Greenland. She holds it up in a shaking hand and tries to tell people more, but the tall woman is talking over her, contemptuously blocking out her voice.

  “So we have a slip of a girl in charge of this ship who has no real idea of what she’s doing.”

  Molendinar steps in and challenges. “Do you know any better? It was Mara who rescued you—did you want to stay and die in that boat camp outside the city walls?”

  “Maybe she did.” The woman glances around for support. “The point is we need adults in charge now.”

  There’s a muttering among the refugees. Whether they agree or not, Mara can’t tell.

  And suddenly Mara finds she doesn’t care. She is so tired. She never wanted to be in charge of a ship full of refugees. Let an adult take charge.

  But all around her friends have risen to their feet in outrage. An elderly woman steps forward and touches Mara’s arm. There’s something in her shrewd eyes that Mara instantly warms toward. She turns to Mara’s challenger.

  “Now, Ruby.”

  There’s a grace and authority about this woman that makes Ruby shrug, ungraciously, and sit down.

  “Ruby’s very strong-headed,” says the older woman. “But I see you are too.”

  “That one is wrong-headed,” mutters Ibrox. He leans over and squeezes Mara’s arm.

  The old woman doesn’t argue. Instead, she introduces herself as Merien. “You’re too tired right now to lead your own shadow,” she tells Mara. “You need to sleep.”

  Mara yawns. She should be in the control cabin, checking the ship’s progress. There’s a whole day to live through until she can try to connect with Fox tonight. She lies down, puts her head in her arms, and escapes into uneasy sleep.

  She wakens with a sharp pain in her shoulder. She has slammed hard against a pile of crates.

  The ship gives a great lurch backward. Mara is thrown across the hold, feels bone crunching on bone, head cracking against head. The refugees are tossed about like sticks in a storm.

  The lights flicker into darkness. There’s a vacuum of shock and pain.

  “My baby! Where’s my baby?”

  Mara hears Broomielaw among the aftershock of screams. She feels about in the dark for little Clayslaps. She finds arms, legs, feet, handfuls of hair, but no baby. The ship lurches again. Mara is frantic to find the baby but she must get to the ship’s control cabin, at once. She struggles through flailing arms and legs, feels herself step on something soft, hears a child’s wail, and steps back, reaching down to search the darkness. Her hands are crushed by a stampede of feet.

  The child is gone, rolled out of reach.

  She feels sick. Was that little Clay?

  Shaking, she makes for the stairs. Her legs throb with bruises. Her feet and fingers are crushed. She wipes the taste of blood from her lips, keeps going, feels her way up the stairs, clinging to each rung to stop the lurching ship flinging her back down.

  Mara stumbles out of the dark hold into the shock of daylight. A raw sunrise streaks the eastern sky.

  “What’s happening? What have we hit?”

  There’s no answer. The impact has scattered people all over the deck. The ship is still shuddering so violently that Mara gets down on her hands and knees and crawls to the edge of the deck. She pulls herself to her feet and stares.

  There is no ocean.

  Just a vast chaos of flotsam, all around the ship.

  Her mind scrambles to catch up with her eyes. She can’t make sense of what she sees. From her vantage point she has a broad view and seems to see glinting metal bridges, shimmering channels of sea that run through the flotsam like winding rivers. But it’s not flotsam at all, not junk. It’s an immense clutter of barges and boats.

  The ship must have crashed into a seaport.

  The urgent clang of bells echoes across the boats, amid a rising siren wail—no, the wail is human. It’s the sound of terror. A mass of vo
ices, raised in alarm.

  What land is this?

  Mara can’t think.

  There’s a distant glint of ocean to the north of the port. Mara frowns as she looks east and sees a glinting line of it there, and reflecting far to the west too.

  The sea is all around. And in between the boats.

  Now she understands.

  This city is not made of buildings, but boats.

  This is not land. The ship has smashed into a floating city. And horribly, the ship’s engines are still driving forward, smashing the city’s bridges and boats.

  Now Mara sees the people. They race across the bridges, a great tide of them, running toward the ship to help another, smaller rush of people in nearby barges and boats who are trying to get away. The ship rips through another bridge. Stranded people are screaming, clinging to wreckage. Those with no other option jump into the violent sea.

  Behind the ship, an old barge groans—a deathly sound that almost drowns out the screams of the people on its deck. It keels over, sinking fast.

  Mara grips the ship’s rail as the barge goes down. Eyes tight shut, she wills it to be over. The awful sound of it shudders through her bones. With a great roar, the ocean sucks the barge down to its depths.

  That was what they hit when she was down in the hold.

  A barge full of people.

  The ship rocks back and forth. Mara pushes through people, trips over them, stumbles into the ship’s control cabin.

  This was not supposed to happen. A floating city was not in the navigation plans.

  The ship grinds on, farther into the city. Mara stares at the controls and doesn’t know what to do.

  THE SINKING OF THE GRIMBY GRAY

  Tuck looks up, puzzled. The gulls are going crazy this morning. Beyond the frantic shrieks is a noise that makes his blood run cold though he has no idea what it is.

  Tuck stares at the lagoon. The water is still dark, keeping grip of the night. A moment ago it was calm, rising and falling in a drowsy pulse, but now a great shudder rips across the smooth waves.

  Tuck watches, puzzled. All around the lagoon the stockholders, busy loading goods on to their gondolas, freeze as the strange shudder vibrates across the city. The gondolas begin to crash into each other as the shudder on the lagoon builds into rolling waves.

  There are shouts from the Middle Bridges. A scream rips through Tuck’s bewildered daze, and he races up onto an arm of the bridge.

  A great white ship has entered the city.

  It’s much bigger than any vessel in Pomperoy.

  At first, Tuck thinks it has docked in one of the sea paths. Then he sees that the ship is still moving, faster than his stunned mind. As he stares openmouthed, the ship smashes into one of Doycha’s largest bridges. In that moment, Tuck registers several things. The screams he thought were gulls are not. It’s people, screaming for their lives. And the ship has not entered by any seaway. It is ploughing straight into Pomperoy.

  The bridge seems to explode. Debris juts into the air, in exclamations of shock that scatter across Doycha. Tuck’s stomach lurches. Not all of it is debris. Scattered people, broken bodies, are among the wreckage; early risers on their way to market.

  A bone-chilling sound splices the air. Tuck covers his ears.

  The ship seems to be reversing.

  Tuck peers at the patch of city beyond the maze of Doycha’s boats and bridges to where the barges should be. The murky light makes it hard to see but he spots the dark bulk of Troon and Crossness, neighboring barges. One of them is wounded and listing to one side, but it’s there. Why can’t he see The Grimby Gray? Tuck runs from one side of the bridge to the other to get a better view, but it’s no good. For some reason, he can’t see his own barge.

  His heart slumps into his stomach. A taste of metal in the air makes him feel sick. His limbs are suddenly heavy, as if his clothes are weighted with sea. He can’t move.

  And then he does. He’s racing off the Middle Bridge, down into Doycha, leaping across boat roofs and bridges, the pain in his ankle numbed by shock.

  He runs onto a bridge alongside the white ship then stops. What can he do?

  He grabs the arm of an old man beside him. “What’s happening? What is it?”

  The old man is shock-white, shaking with fear.

  “Arkiel,” he mutters blankly.

  “What?”

  The old man points to the bold nameplate on the ship. “Arkiel. It’s taken my wife.”

  Tuck stares helplessly at the mass of people crowding the Arkiel’s decks. Their screams mingle with those in the boats and barges the ship is ploughing into.

  “Stop!”

  Tuck yells at the ship until his throat hurts. What else can he do? There’s no way anyone can board the ship; its sides are too sheer, too steep, with no grip, no footholds. His cries merge with a multitude of frantic voices, as if the gypseas of Pomperoy are trying to halt the Arkiel with a wall of noise.

  A girl has climbed up onto the roof of the ship’s control cabin. She is caught in a shot of sunlight and throws an arm across her eyes, blinded by the glare. A great shudder shakes the Arkiel as it demolishes a swath of Doycha and the girl is thrown to her knees.

  Another impact hurls the girl right off the cabin roof. The last Tuck sees of her is the scatter of her hair, like a splash of oil, as she tumbles into the crowd on the ship’s deck.

  Tuck stares around him, dizzy and disoriented, as if he’s taken a hard fall himself. Where’s The Grimby Gray? He rubs his eyes, searching frantically for the familiar rusty wreck of his own barge. This is where it should be. Tuck doesn’t understand. And then he does.

  The ship is where his barge should be.

  Tuck feels sick to his stomach, as if he’s swallowed mouthfuls of sea. He makes himself look down, and he sees it.

  Under the water, The Grimby Gray has sunk like a rusted tin can.

  There are bodies, pale ghosts in the darkness of the ocean. Half-drowned people are being pulled onto boats. Tuck panics. Ma? Where’s Ma? A horrible feeling, as if he’s been sliced open and gutted like a fish, makes him wrap his arms around himself. He can’t see her. And the sharp, empty feeling tells him he won’t.

  She couldn’t swim. If she tried, the panic and struggle would bring on an attack of wheezing. She wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s if she woke up at all. More likely, the barge would have sunk before Ma, deep in beer-glazed slumber, even knew what was happening. The only chance she’d have had is if he’d been there.

  But he wasn’t.

  Tuck looks back across the city at The Man.

  He can just about make out the white-bearded face up on the bridge, beaming his relentless smile. Tuck crosses his fingers, but instead of raising them in the good-luck sign, he makes the reverse sign, the malevolent one. He jabs his crossed fingers straight at The Man’s plastic face.

  Why Ma? Why old Arthus and all the others? Why not me? I was the one going to steal you. I was the one that didn’t believe in you. Never even laid a finger on you though, did I? You never gave me a chance.

  Grumpa was wrong about The Man. He’s not just a bit of junk. His eyes can look into the dark corners of your mind. He might grant you the miracle you need or punish you without mercy if he doesn’t like what he sees.

  What else does he see? What else has he planned?

  The Arkiel keeps ploughing through the city in reverse, making a catastrophically clumsy exit.

  Up high on the rig, The Man watches and smiles.

  PENDICLE PRENDER

  Tuck wanders the city, blank and numb. He ends up back at the lagoon and slumps down on the damp wooden walkways, exhausted. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, shivering, when a hand on his shoulder makes him jump.

  “You’re alive then.”

  Pendicle sits down beside him with a sigh of relief.

  “Ma’s gone,” says Tuck. He has to force the words out; he still doesn’t believe it. “She went down with The Grimby Gray.”

>   “Urth,” Pendicle curses softly. He bites his lip and clearly doesn’t know what else to say. They sit together awhile, just staring out at the waves on the lagoon. All of a sudden Pendicle gets to his feet. He punches Tuck softly on the shoulder, in place of soft words.

  “There’s a family meeting,” says Pendicle, with the faint edge of self-importance in his voice that, lately, Tuck has begun to hear. “Something’s happening.”

  Tuck gives a small, hard laugh. “It already happened.”

  Pendicle’s eyes are on his home-boat, one of the Prenders’ fleet of masted megayachts, anchored alongside the family’s market gondolas on the lagoon. A group of people, their windwraps bearing the Prender emblem, are gathered on its deck. Men and women flock to Pendicle’s home-boat from grand yachts and schooners all around the lagoon. Their windwraps are emblazoned with the various emblems of Pomperoy’s oil families. Tuck realizes the reason for Pendicle’s self-important tone. It’s not an everyday family meeting, but an extraordinary summit of the powerful families that rule Pomperoy.

  Pendicle shoves something into a pocket of Tuck’s windwrap. Tuck hears the rattle of pearls.

  “Enough to get you bed and board somewhere, get you sorted,” says Pendicle. “I’d better go.”

  Once upon a time, Pendicle would have taken him back to his boat for a hot meal and a bunk. But he’s changing, Tuck senses, from his old mate Pendicle into a fully fledged Prender, becoming part of the powerful engine of the oil families, no longer the carefree wildhead he used to be. Even if Pendicle would harbor Tuck, his ma won’t. She’s the kind of woman you cross once if you dare; never twice. That’s how the Prenders got to be who they are. She’ll be heart-sorry about what’s happened to his ma, she’ll even put Tuck in her prayers to The Man, but she’ll never have him near her precious boat again.

  Tuck watches Pendicle walk around the lagoon to his yacht, tall and proud, with his beautiful windwrap flapping in the wind. It’s the walk of a Prender man. Tuck looks down at his own faded blue windwrap, a worn cast-off of his da’s. His hair whips across his face, as light and unkempt as Pendicle’s is sleekly plaited and dark.