Firespark
Authors: Julie Bertagna
* “Plucky.” â
Booklist
, starred review
“A well-written and well-paced sequel. . . . Their quest to build a future while trying to survive will keep teens involved from the first chapter. . . . Fans of postapocalyptic fiction will snap this novel up.” â
SLJ
* “Sweeping, futuristic fantasy. . . . Bertagna creates wholly imagined, extraordinarily vivid worlds. . . . This accomplished first novel in a proposed trilogy will, like the works of Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling, attract a wide age-range of readers.”
âBooklist
, starred review
“Inspirational.” â
Kirkus Reviews
“Ecologically conscious teens will embrace this girl who is destined to save humanity.” â
SLJ
The Stairway and the Blue Wisp
In memory of two inspirational women:
Miriam Hodgson and Jan Mark
And for Natalie, my inspiration
for the future
What lasts, what changes, what survives
?
The Play of Gilgamesh
, Edwin Morgan,
adapted from the world's oldest surviving poem
Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees
.
Revelation 7:3
                  Â
north
The sea is as near as we come to another world
.
“North Sea off Carnoustie,” Anne Stevenson
Out on the world's ocean, night is a black warhorse. The white ship bucks upon it like a ghost rider with no reins.
A lone figure at the bow keeps watch, her eyes as dark as the night. She has lost the star. All through the night she tracked it, even when it vanished behind the clouds.
The North Star is an old friend. A steering star for the island fishermen, it was their lodestar to guide them home. For Mara, it was a stray jewel dropped from Queen Cassiopeia's crown, falling toward the Long-Handled Ladle that scoops up the soup of the stars. On clear, calm nights Granny Mary would take her out onto the island hills of Wing and show her the stories of the stars. With a finger, Mara would pretend to join the dots of the Long-Handled Ladle, the studs on the belt of Orion the Hunter, and the zigzag of Queen Cass's crown.
“If you stood at the North Pole, at the very top of the world,” said Granny, “the Star of the North would be right overhead. It never moves. All the other stars wheel around that anchor in the sky. You can't stand at the North Pole anymore, though,” Granny would sigh, “now that the ice has melted into the sea.”
Back then, when she was little, Mara couldn't fathom the crack of sadness in the old woman's voice.
Now the North Star is her only anchor. A flickering point of hope in a drowned world. The ice cap has melted, but if she can track the North Star it just might lead her shipful of refugees, a floating village of desperate people, to land at the top of the world.
The world's wind rises, boiling up a black brew of sea and sky. The refugees huddle closer as the wind wraps the ship in warrior arms and rides it across galloping waves. Mara clings to the ship's rail as her lodestar vanishes in the wild ocean night.
The ocean has eaten the stars.
All that's left are their crumbs. They litter a sea as dark as squid ink or the depths of a whale's eye.
Tuck thanks his lucky stars for the dark and prays for the curfew bell. Meantime, he's running so fast the tail of his faded blue windwrap streams out behind him like a tiny gas flare from the oil rig that anchors the gypsea city of Pomperoy.
The oil lanterns on the boat masts above him glow like a host of shivering souls. If he keeps running till curfew he'll be safe. As soon as the bell clangs, the rig flame and the boat lanterns snuff out and there won't be a wink of light left in the ocean night. The gang of Salters on his heels will need cat's eyes to catch him then.
There's a shout close behind. Tuck rakes air into his lungs and makes a leap onto the nearest bridge. The bridge wire twangs and sways. His long, gangly legs are shaking so hard they almost topple him into the water. He steadies his nerves, and his legs, runs along the bridge onto one of the ferries andâaah!âhe's knee-deep in squishy sea tangle outside the reeking, rickety Weeder
shacks that cram the broad deck. Tuck turns around andâ
whack
!âgets a face full of stringy ocean wrack hanging on a line of rope. He fights his way out of the thick, knotty strands only to skid on a litter of sea cabbageâand ends up on his knees.
A Salter's skittering on the cabbage too, right behind, close enough to grab a fistful of Tuck's windwrap, when a great
clang
sends a shudder through Tuck's bones. He shakes off the Salter as the curfew bell tolls across Pomperoy. Now the rig's great oil flare dwindles and snuffs out, along with every last lamp and lantern in the boats and on the masts.
A whole floating city vanishes into the night.
All that's left is a vast percussion beat. The
clink-chank
and
knockety-knock
of chained boats, cradling a huge human cargo, rocking them to sleep on the world's sea.
Tuck makes it through the ferries and, hoping to lose the Salters in the crowd, heads into the heart of a noisy throng spilling out of the casino ship. From here, he's into the maze of boats and bridgeways of Doycha. He keeps running and leaping till he reaches the slum barges, then clambers onto the flat roof of one of the boat shacks that crowd the deck of the nearest barge.
He lies on his stomach and covers himself with his windwrap. The sack of stolen salt cakes are digging him in the ribs but he dare not move. A
clatter-clang
of feet are chasing along the bridgeways. Soon, the shouts of the Salter gang are hot in his ears and the barge is swarming with men. Tuck crosses all his fingers and begs The Man in the Middle to send him a wink of looter's luck.