Pathfinder by Julie Bertagna Page B

she sees the nasty gash on the side of his head. Don’t let it be a bullet wound, she panics. Maybe some bit of junk was churned up in the waves and hit him—or perhaps he lost his balance and dashed his head on the metal raft. She feels for a pulse in the child’s thin wrist. It’s weak and shaky, but thankfully he’s alive.
    As she rips up a T-shirt from her backpack to stem the rush of blood from the child’s head, Mara wonders what on Earth she is going to do now, in this dark and alien place. The one thing she knows she can’t do is abandon a small child who risked his life to get her through the city wall.

WITHIN THE WALL

    Desolate, Mara paddles through the dark waters of the netherworld that lies under New Mungo. She tries to think what to do. She never thought beyond her sudden impulse to get through the wall with the urchin, and now that she is here she is badly in need of a plan of action. Should she head for the great towers and attempt to make it up into New Mungo as soon as the urchin recovers? Mara remembers her filthy clothes and hair, feels the thick layer of grime on her skin. Looking like this, she wouldn’t stand a chance.
    Once again, she feels the urchin’s pulse. He hasn’t moved, but the pulse is stronger, she’s sure. Mara reaches down and tickles his toes. The child’s eyes snap open in surprise, though he still lies in a daze in his metal shell.
    â€œYou’re alive then,” says Mara gently. “Welcome back to the world.”
    The urchin looks at her with limpid eyes. He touches his head and whimpers.
    â€œIt’ll get better.” Mara pulls a strand of his long, matted hair from his face. Warily, wordlessly, he watches her every movement. Then, shakily, he sits up.
    â€œWhat’s your name? Say something,” Mara urges. “You look about Corey’s age. What age are you? Five? Six?”
    He doesn’t answer, just chirrups weakly to his sparrow. Mara peels off the blood-soaked T-shirt to have a look at his head but it’s almost impossible to see in the dark. His injury can’t be too serious or he wouldn’t be sitting up, surely? Now the urchin grunts.
    â€œSpeak to me,” she pleads. “Don’t just grunt. Can’t you speak at all?”
    Has he had no one to teach him to speak? No one to look after him? How has he survived?
    Now he chirrups, urgently, and stares out in front as if he sees something. Mara looks ahead but sees nothing. Yet as they move deeper and deeper into the netherworld her eyes adjust to the dark and she is able to pick out strange, unfathomable shapes.
    â€œWhat’s that?” she gasps. A huge black arm rises high out of the water. As they pass beneath she realizes it’s a broken bridge that ends in midair—a bridge to nowhere. Mara catches her breath. It must be a ruin of the old, drowned world that lies beneath New Mungo. Could there be more? She leans over the side of the raft to peer into the black water and jumps back in terror.
    Ghosts! There are ghosts under the water!
    Mara steadies herself.
Now don’t be silly, there are no such things. Keep calm and look again
.
    Gingerly, she peers once more over the side of the raft. But they are still there—luminescent, ghostly things moving under the water. She takes a deep breath and forces herself to keep looking, her eyes straining to see in the dark, because there’s more, much more. Beneath the silver darting things are all sorts of ghostly shapes and lines of luminescence that glow eerily beneath the waves. Something shifts in Mara’s perception and all of a sudden she knows what she is seeing—rooftops and towers and crumblingwalls. Right below her is an old, drowned city. It glimmers like a ghostly presence in the sea. And the darting ghosts are only fish, lit by that same, strange luminous light.
    â€œ
Who?
” demands a sudden loud voice. Mara screams in fright. “
Who