Exodus by Julie Bertagna

doesn’t know if she wants to live or die—but she jumps toward the noise of the beat.

NETHERWORLD
    Â 
    Through me the way to the grieving city…
    Through me the way among the lost people…
    Abandon every hope, you who enter.
    Inferno
, Dante Alighieri

SPIN TO THE CITY

    Mara swims; she can’t help it.
    She tries to stop herself, to still her arms and legs by sheer willpower, but every time she slips beneath the waves some stronger impulse commands her limbs to move and she finds herself swimming across the dark sea.
    It’s not so easy to die, after all. So Mara gives in to the stronger impulse and begins to swim, hard, until she reaches the great legs of the bridge. All at once she is surrounded by a clattering, crashing wave of sea urchins. They spin around her on car tires and garbage can lids, plastic bathtubs, and old doors, splashing in her face, prodding and tormenting on and on and on, until at last exhaustion blunts their bullying. Mara feels her body grow numb, her eyes close and now it’s easy to slip down beneath the waves.
    There is a hard yank on her hair and the pain of it brings her back to her senses. She thrashes out, grabs at something solid, and finds she is face-to-face with a small urchin in a battered metal raft. Mara recognizes it as an upturned car hood.
    The urchin sits in his strange craft like a muddy oyster in an open shell, baby-faced, with dangerous eyes. The skin of his unclothed body is sleek with mud and sea slime. A small sparrow perches on his shoulder. Theurchin paddles his car-hood shell with an upended sign that says STOP in peeling red lettering. Again, he grabs Mara’s hair and now she grabs her own handful of the urchin’s hair and pulls, good and hard.
    He lets out a loud wail and the sparrow flutters off in fright. The other urchins stop bashing and prodding her with their makeshift vessels and paddles. And now Mara has a chance to think.
    This sea is full of disease. It’s an open sewer for the boat camp. I have to get out of it quickly
.
    Urgency gives her an idea. She pulls off her iceberg pendant—the white quartz stone hung on a plaited strip of leather that Tain made for her. Mara dangles it tantalizingly in front of the child’s nose. The urchin gives a yelp and tries to snatch the quartz, almost toppling from the car hood in his eagerness, but Mara has the leather plait wound tight around her fingers.
    â€œOh, no you don’t. Not yet.” She raises the stone toward the city in the sky. The urchin stares, mesmerized by the tiny glowing iceberg.
    â€œDo you want it?” Mara whispers urgently. “Do you?”
    The urchin squeals and stares at Mara with large, bright eyes. Mara takes her chance to clamber aboard his metal raft. She places the pendant around the child’s neck, and he chirps with pleasure.
    â€œIf you get me into the city …” Mara points to New Mungo, “you can keep this pretty stone.”
    The urchin follows the gestures she makes to accompany her words but he looks blank, as if he doesn’t understand. He grunts and pats Mara once or twice as if she is a strange pet he has fished out of the water. Then he grunts again and begins to paddle them across to the bridge leg that is closest to the city gates. He lifts the iceberg quartzto catch the glow of the night sky, gabbling contentedly to himself in high, babyish sounds that don’t seem to be words. Mara watches and listens, aching inside as she remembers Corey as a toddler.
    In sudden tears, she turns away from the chirping child. He falls silent as her sobs grow. Mara is frightened by the violence of her grief. She never imagined it was possible to feel so afraid, so alone.
    And yet, some instinct as strong and powerful as the one that made her swim against her will, says go. Keep going and never stop. It’s the only way.
    Mara grows calmer. When she scrubs the tears from her eyes she sees the urchin is trying to