Firespark

by Julie Bertagna

  The September geese.

  The flight of the snow geese always marked the turn of the season. The geese would fill the skies above Wing, following an invisible corridor in the sky. Each September, time out of mind, the corridor led them from the lands in the Far North to a warm winter home in the South and back again in the spring.

  “If they’re still flying from the North, then—then—”

  “Then there must be land in the North.”

  Rowan’s taut, thin face creases into a sheepish smile.

  “And the South. Because they’re flying south. There’s still land in the world, then. The geese know there is.”

  “Yeah.” Rowan’s blue eyes meet hers. “Sorry.”

  “In the netherworld,” Mara tells him, “I learned to read what was left of the world, anything I could find. The sky, birds, trees, books. I learned to read every echo from New Mungo, every scrap of the old world. That’s how I survived. That’s what we have to do now—read whatever comes our way.” She grins at Rowan. “And you’re the best reader I know.”

  The snow geese have given her necessary hope, but there’s a snag in that hope that she cannot ignore. Once the North Wind coughs the geese out of their summer home and those pearly white flocks fill the skies, that’s when winter begins to finger the days.

  Her book on Greenland said that winter at the very top of the world is one long, dark season of night.

  Time is against them. That’s the message the September geese are writing on the sky.

  FOXTAILS

  The sky crackles.

  A curtain opens in the darkness and a great chasm gapes in the night. The chasm widens, seems to fill with blood. The bloodlight drains and the sky is shot with lilac and indigo. Now golden pillars tumble, a rainbow wall rises, falls. A whole theater of color and swirling shapes erupts, crackling and whistling with static.

  “There’s a land in the sky!” Gorbals points. “I can see towers, the great arch of a bridge, pillars, and the noise—what’s the noise? Guns! We’re under attack.”

  “No, no,” laughs Mara, then bites her lip, seeing the panic on the faces around her.

  “The—the sea—” stutters Ibrox, as the waves reflect the cascade of green and pink now streaking the sky.

  Even the urchins are hushed, hanging over the ship’s rail, entranced by the spectacle in the sky and its weird reflections in the sea.

  It’s the Northern Lights, Mara explains. The memory of the last time she saw them is so vivid it prickles her scalp. She was standing on the doorstep of the farm cottage with Dad and her little brother, Corey. The skies over Wing were crowded with peaceful ghostlights that suddenly whirled into demon green. Dancing dragons! cried Corey, slithery snakes! Dad put Corey on his shoulders, telling him all about the lights. Roaring Boris, Corey called it because he couldn’t say the real name. Mara thinks hard. The aurora borealis, wasn’t that what Dad said? She was too busy staring at the sky, dreaming, to listen properly. There was so much that Granny Mary and Tain and her parents told her about the world, but half the time she wasn’t listening. It didn’t seem important, then.

  Now, she could kick herself. With so much lost under the ocean, knowledge is the most precious thing in the world.

  “It’s—um, it’s just something that happens in the northern sky,” she falters. “It’s a good sign, it means we’re close to the North.”

  And she remembers something else: the old Norse name for the lights.

  Skauf.

  Fox fire.

  The lights were said to look like the brush of fiery foxtails in the sky. Mara gazes up at the fox fire with her heart in her mouth.

  “Look, Clayslaps.” Broomielaw holds her baby up to see. He wriggles with excitement, his fingers opening and closing like sea anemones, trying to catch a tail of light.

  Then he gives a wail. As suddenly as they appeared, the night sky closes its curtain and the lights are gone.

  Mara sits down on deck. She doesn’t know how close to midnight it is and she doesn’t care. The fox fire in the sky has lit a spark inside her. She needs to see her Fox. She pulls out the cyberwizz globe, halo, and wand, powers it up, and falls, fast as the flash of a skauf …

  … into the heart of the Weave. The ether crick-crackles as she whizzes down the boulevards until she finds the broken bridge.

  Fox!

  Her cry rips through the static like a jag of lightning.

  A cyberfox slinks along the bridge toward her. He’s here. The Weave lights glitter in the fox’s eyes. They shimmer in the smooth coat and the brush of its tail.

  Can’t you be yourself? she murmurs. It’s the real, human Fox she needs, though she knows she can’t have that, not here in cyberspace. With Fox, Mara has always been a cybermirror of her real self.

  The tremor in her voice sends a ripple through the ether. The fox blinks. Vanishes. Mara could bite out her tongue for giving him such a cold greeting. She’s been so worried he might never make it here at all. Her heart thuds as she stands alone on the empty arm of the broken bridge.

  Here. Best I can do.

  His voice. Husky, edgy, skin-prickling. She spins around and he’s there—an electronic version of Fox stands within arm’s reach. His tawny hair shimmers in the ether light, just as messy with static as his real tousled head, and the eyes that lock with hers are so unnervingly his own they send a hot lightning bolt down her spine. Mara steps forward to kiss him, reaches out to touch his face—

  NO!

  Sparks fly. Electrons sizzle. Cybercinders fall fizzling at their feet. There’s a scorch mark where she touched his cheek. And a rip in the ether between them.

  We can talk, but not touch, says Fox.

  Oh. Right, I forgot.

  No way around it. He shrugs. Dumb old-world technology, this Weave.

  He kicks the broken bridge and scuffs up a shower of electronic grit.

  You’re safe? she asks. You got down to the netherworld all right?

  He nods.

  Candleriggs is here.

  Mara lets out a long breath. Candleriggs will look after him. That’s something.

  Where are you?

  The top of the university tower, says Fox.

  In her mind’s eye, Mara sees the vast gothic steeple that tops the tower and looks like a great black wizard hat floating on the dank netherworld sea.

  You? he says.

  Oh, me, says Mara. Somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

  Her head droops.

  We were stupid, she blurts out. This is too hard. You should’ve come with me …

  Misery darkens his face and haunts his beautiful eyes. She can’t go on at him like this, she shouldn’t. It’s all too late anyway. She’s already an ocean away.

  I know, he begins. He stops and sighs. Who said we had to save the world?

  That was you, she reminds him, with a bleak grin.

  It breaks the awkward distance between them.

  He lets out a laugh.

  Could have sworn it was you, he retorts.

  Well, we’re not saving the world, says Mara, just the little bit we can.

  That’s all, he agrees, catching her smile. We can do that.

  His face drops again. I feel lost here, Mara. You have people. Here, it’s just me and Candleriggs. I can’t go back home. I feel stuck.

  But what about all your plans? Mara steps closer, is careful not to touch.

  Fox shrugs. Since I crashed the system the rooks have put security blocks everywhere. Haven’t found a way around them yet. Can’t start anything until I do.

  You’re the best Noosrunner in New Mungo, Mara reminds him. You can outwit the rooks. You’ll find a way.

  He just looks at her.

  I should have stayed with you, she thinks.

  She is about to tell him about the fox fire in the sky, to let him know that she still feels close to him in her world, but his face freezes. He looks over his shoulder, frowning.

  What?

  It’s ju
st—

  What?

  Sirens. I hear sirens.

  It’s in his world, Mara realizes; the ether around them is abuzz and a-crackle but calm. No sign of cyberdogs or hazard spiders anywhere near the bridge.

  Sea police, Mara warns him. Put out all light and fire. They come in fleets with the ships to guard them from the people in the boat camp. Sometimes they raid the netherworld. That’s how they got Gorbals. Be careful.

  I need to go.

  One last glance and he’s gone. And she’s alone again on the Bridge to Nowhere.

  She waits awhile, stomach churning with fear. When he doesn’t return, she retracks back through the Weave, desolate, as suddenly she knows that it’s always going to be like this. Every time they part, they’ll never know if the other will stay safe until they next meet on the bridge.

  Each moment together is a gift from time. Just staying alive and meeting here is all they can hope to do.

  PINBALL AND ICE-SOUP SEA

  The wind has grown bitter. It’s been gnawing at her face while she’s been cyberwizzing, ripping tears from her eyes; a wind full of star crusts and the memory of ice.

  Mara hugs herself, chilled to the bone in flimsy New World clothes that are not designed for a world so harsh. Maybe all that’s left of the Arctic ice is in the wind, just as all she has left of Fox is in the ether.

  But she’s wrong about the ice. At first she thinks the change in the ocean is just a trail of fox fire, or the glint of starlight on the waves. It’s only when a terrible groan echoes across the waves that she sees a sinister thickening of the ocean and the hulking phantoms that loom out of the dark.

  There is an instant of hope when she thinks the white phantoms might be the other ships that escaped the city with theirs.

  “What is it?” Ruby shoves past to see.

  Mara runs toward the control cabin. This time she’ll be ready. There will be no more accidents, no more deaths.

  “Rowan, there’s something—a city, I don’t know what.” She’s so panicked she can hardly speak.

  A sharp scent cuts through the salty air. Rowan’s eyes are fixed on the white fleet.

  “Icebergs,” he says.

  They seem to float between sea and sky; strange wrecked castles of an icy realm.

  Their collapsed towers, spires, and arches are an uncanny echo of the drowned city’s ruined cathedral and the university tower. The death moan as a whole iceberg topples into the sea is heart-stopping. An end-of-the-world sound. The salty ocean digests the ancient ice with a dyspeptic fizzle and gulp.

  There’s no turning back. The boreal wind wraps around the ship and hurls them onward into the Far North.

  “Wasn’t this in your book either?” says Ruby, sarcasm icing every word.

  It was, but Mara had been sure the rising ocean meant that all the Arctic ice had melted—though she remembers the island fishermen would often return from long trips with tales of an iceberg blitz. Small enough to look like the crests of waves from a distance, each iceberg, they said, was big enough below the surface to sink a fishing boat. Mara remembers her mother calling her out of bed one night, Quick, come quick and see, when an iceberg passed the island, luminous under the stars. A spectral, unearthly thing, Mara thought a chunk of the moon had fallen into the sea.

  “Turn back,” orders Ruby.

  Rowan’s breath is warm against Mara’s ear.

  “Pinball,” he murmurs. “Remember?”

  Of course she does.

  On the island they had a game called pinball wizard, named after a twentieth-century treasure Rowan’s dad kept in the cellar among the junk. On long days of winter dimness, they’d spend hours playing each other on the pinball-wizard machine. In summer, they re-created the game in the sea. Rowan and Gail and Mara would sneak skiffs out into a small cove along the coast from Long-hope Bay. There, they’d practice lethal maneuvers, pinballing between the rocks and surfing the rolling waves that smashed to the shore. It was a deadly game the adults would have banned outright, if they’d known.

  “Just play it as pinball,” says Rowan.

  “Your call then,” says Mara. “You’re pinball king.”

  Rowan groans, laughs, and heads for the control cabin. There’s a glint of fear in his eyes, but Mara pretends not to see.

  She follows him into the cabin, bolts the door against Ruby, and crosses her freezing fingers. There’s a rescue rope looped on the cabin wall and Mara is suddenly tempted to make a lucky wind-knot, like the fishermen on Wing would do when caught in hard seas. They need all the luck they can get.

  She closes down the navigation program and switches the ship to manual steering.

  “Here we go.” Rowan frowns as he stares at the mass of controls and the radar screen. “I thought you said the ice is all melted.”

  “Most of it must be or the world wouldn’t have flooded, would it? The book on Greenland said icebergs are like small mountains and these are just hills. Maybe this is all that’s left of the ice—baby icebergs and ice-soup sea.”

  “Let’s just hope there isn’t a daddy one lurking,” says Rowan, without a hint of a smile.

  “Remember what you see above the surface is—”

  “—the tip of the iceberg. I’m the son of a fisherman, Mara, I know.”

  He’s snapping at her because he’s too weak to take on this fleet of icebergs, and he knows it. Rowan is used to being strong. Mara has an idea and opens her backpack.

  She pulls out a bottle of bright orange liquid. IRN-BRU, ENERGY DRINK, says the label.

  She unscrews the cap. Candleriggs gave her the bottle. It’s something the old Treenester kept from before the world’s drowning and Mara promised she would drink to her when they reached the North lands; but they’ll never get there if Rowan can’t outwit the icebergs.

  The drink gushes out in an orange froth. Mara puts the bottle to Rowan’s mouth. He looks at it suspiciously but glugs it, splutters, then grins.

  “More.”

  The Irn-Bru gives him a spark of his old self back. His cheeks are less gray, his hands steadier. Mara takes the chance to slip back out on deck. She has to push through a noisy crowd. Ruby has gathered followers around her. Mara doesn’t stop to listen, but pops her head back into the control cabin.

  “Lock the door. Trouble’s brewing out there,” she tells Rowan, before bolting past Ruby’s crowd to the bow of the ship.

  Queen Cass’s crown of stars sparkles high in the night sky. Her fallen jewel, the Star of the North, glistens behind a blur of cloud. At the top of the world, the North Star would be directly overhead; that’s what Granny said. So they are on track, but how much farther is there to go? There is no moon but the sprinkle of starlight picks out a dazzling mosaic of ice that is so fragile it shifts with the movement of the sea. And there is something else. A long silver point is sticking up out of the thin crust of ice.

  Mara screws up her eyes. It looks like a sword.

  The silver sword vanishes then reappears farther in front, breaking a path through the icy waves. Another sword rises out of the ocean, surges toward the first, and crosses it. Mara gasps as the swords clash then vanish.

  Narwhals.

  That’s what they are. She only saw them once on Wing. Great, shell-encrusted whales, far out in Longhope Bay. Island folk legend said a speck of ground narwhal tusk a day would make you live a hundred years or more, just as the narwhals do.

  A narwhal horn always points to the North Star.

  That was another thing the folk legends said. Mara looks, and catches her breath. Amazingly, the narwhals are tracking a route through the icebergs, their spiraling tusks pointing straight to the Star of the North. And the narwhals know what Mara doesn’t: where the hulking mass of icebergs lurk under the waves.

  Between the radar, the narwhals, and Rowan’s pinball skills, maybe, just maybe, they can make it through.

  Mara rushes below deck. The hoard of objects the urchins looted from the netherworld museum is stashed behin
d a pile of crates in a corner of the hold, watched over by urchins and Scarwell’s model apeman.

  “Telescope,” says Mara, but the urchins have no intention of letting anyone get their hands on their loot. She mimes the act of putting a telescope to her eyes, pleading, but it’s no use. The urchins are fierce guards. Snarling, they bare teeth, more feral than childlike.

  “The telescope!” she commands. “Wing? Where’s Wing?”

  A small, wiry, filthy creature jumps down from a crate, gives her a wide smile, and holds out his hand.

  “I don’t have any presents, Wing. Listen, I need the telescope.” She does the telescope mime again. “Please?”

  There is a wordless, stubborn calculation in his eyes.

  “Oh, you!”

  Mara yanks off her backpack and rummages until she finds her own precious loot, a pencil. She scribbles on a crate then rubs out the mark with the eraser. Wing watches, fascinated.

  “Deal?” says Mara.

  Wing grabs the pencil. He pulls out a telescope from the plastic bag that is tied around his waist and replaces it with his new toy.

  At last.

  Mara trips over a crumple of plastic bags in her rush to get back on deck. There’s a howl of pain.

  A head emerges from the plastic bags. It’s Gorbals, huddled in a ball of seasick misery.

  Mara kneels down beside him. “What are you doing down here on your own? It’s not safe. Come up on deck. The sea is a lot calmer now.”

  “Grooo,” he grunts.

  “Come on,” she urges. “I’ll show you something amazing.”

  He follows her unsteadily and trips over a jumbled heap. Mara helps him up, then sees that the jumble is clothing. She picks up one of the garments. It’s an embroidered coat, tough and weatherproof, with a fur hood and lining. She sniffs the garment and knows the material, though she can’t tell what the fur is. The people of her island made winter boots and jackets from this.

  “Sealskin! Where did these come from?”

  “The ratkins stole it all from the museum.” Gorbals glares at the urchins. “They bite if you try to take any of their stuff.” He shows her teeth marks on his arm.