Exodus by Julie Bertagna Page A

catch a solitary spider that is weaving a web in a small crack of the bridge leg. Weeds and wildflowers sprout there, and the toxic green algae that breed on the water reach up toward it too. And there’s a single blue forget-me-not. It’s a tiny miracle, all that life bursting out of such a barren little space. Mara remembers the junkheap she once stumbled across in a tumbledown towerstack of the Weave. In among the junk she had stopped to listen to the disembodied head of a Weave ghost describing a massive volcanic explosion that had devastated a whole island. Krakatoa, wasn’t that the name? All life became extinct after the eruption—yet nine months later a spider was found quietly weaving its web on the barren island.
    Deep in the night, the bridge leg begins to vibrate. The air fills with the engine noise of an approaching ship. Mara looks across the water and sees the ship’s lights.
    The urchin’s eyes gleam and he fastens Mara’s fingers tight to the rim of the raft and pushes her flat. When she protests he bites her, viciously.
    I am in charge
, the child’s eyes and bite tell her.
    Chaos breaks out as the ship slices a path through the boat camp. The urchin starts to paddle furiously. Giddily, the makeshift raft begins to spin toward the ship, faster and faster, until they are right alongside it. Wave upon wave drenches Mara and she is sure she will drown or die of sheer terror. Gunfire is close and relentless. But all at once the city wall looms up right in front, stretching high into the night sky. Mara closes her eyes tight just as the great gate begins to slide open—but they’ll never make it, they’re too close to the ship. The noise of its engines and the force of its movement are terrifying. If they don’t crash into the ship, they’ll crash into the wall. It’s far too late to turn back now. They are caught in the churning foam of the ship’s wake. Mara can only hold on tight and scream.
    They surge and spin until Mara feels she must have whirled right out of the world. At long last the terrible spinning calms. Mara opens her eyes to see where they have ended up, but her head is reeling so violently she can still only grip the raft tight until the dizziness settles. Once it does, she gasps in shock.
    The gentle dimness of the midsummer night is gone. The huge wall and some new, vast darkness overhead block out the sky and all light.
    Disoriented, Mara looks up and sees a patch of still-blue midsummer sky and a single star twinkling through a gap in the great darkness above. Now she knows where she is—right underneath the thick network of New Mungo’s sky tunnels. They made it through! She is inside the city wall!
    â€œYou’re a genius,” Mara exclaims to the urchin, staring all around her.
    The supply ship is already far beyond them. Mara peers across the great dark sea lake inside the city walls. Theship’s lights allow Mara to follow its progress across the water. Judging by the distance it has traveled, the world inside the walls is much more expansive than she ever imagined from outside. She watches the ship slow down, then disappear into some harbor that’s impossible to see in the darkness. But now, as her eyes adjust, she begins to pick out the vast trunks of New Mungo’s central towers. The supply ships must harbor in them. And somewhere at the foot of those great towers there must also be the entrance to the sky city. Heavily guarded, no doubt. She’s probably safe at this distance, but she feels overwhelmed by such vast, surrounding darkness.
    Amazingly, the urchin’s little bird friend has kept with them during their precarious spin through the city gate and now it hops nervously about the raft. With a shock Mara realizes that the child lies in a heap beside her, unconscious. What happened? She leans over him, struggling to see in the dark. A shadow stains his face. Mara touches it—blood. Now