Firespark (26 page)

Finding out about the snake sign is the only thing he can think of to do, so Fox searches the tower bookstacks, trying to calm his spiraling fear. The image is niggling at the back of his head. It's only when he turns over a book
on serpents and spots a tiny snake coiled on a stick on the corner of the back cover, that he realizes what it is.

Of course! It's all over New Mungo and the Noos.

It's a dollar sign. The trading symbol of the New World.

Fox grips the book. The sign of a
dollar
is branded on her arm?

“What's branded on whose arm?”

Candleriggs is frowning at him.

Fox could kick himself. He must have spoken the words out loud.

The gnarled hand on his arm is like a claw.

“What's happening?” demands Candleriggs. “You told me they'd found land, that they're safe and settled for the winter in caves by the sea.”

He said exactly that. Fox has been very careful about what he has and has not said. Mara was adamant about that.

“What's happening?” Candleriggs repeats. “Is someone sick? Broomielaw and the baby, are they—”

“They're fine,” he says, too quickly.

“What's
happened
, boy?”

Fox shakes his head. With Candleriggs's owl eyes fixed on him so fiercely, he can't lie anymore.

When he tells all he knows, she doesn't break down. She hunches deeper into her earthen cloak, says nothing at all, just walks away.

Night has fallen when he hears her wail somewhere deep in the book rooms. Her cry mingles with the moans of misery Fox is sure he hears, carried on the wind, from the boat camp on the other side of the city walls.

He couldn't tell Candleriggs what else Mara said.

If my power dies, don't give up on me. If something happens, if we lose contact, don't ever give up
.

What's wrong? he kept asking. What happened that night you disappeared
?

I'm running low on power, she said. I'm—I—I don't know what's wrong. Everything's wrong. Just don't give up on me, promise
?

He promised, of course he did. There was nothing else he could do.

Now he has found the snake sign, but when will he find Mara again? Fox is filled with a terrible foreboding. All he can do is wait on the Bridge to Nowhere and hope that she comes.

There are skeletons in the nooks and crannies of the deep caves, and the scattered belongings of the people they once were. Broken watches, jewelry, unfathomable gadgets from the past, all kinds of useless stuff. Useful things too: clothes and shoes and blankets, pots and plates, empty cans, knives and spoons, plastic bottles and bags.

The urchins have found a collection of small metal and colored plastic boxes, some of which still magic up a flame when a switch is flicked. Ibrox sniffs the unfamiliar oil that fuels them, impressed at these ingenious fireboxes of the old world.

Mara shudders at the thought that the skeletons were once the same people who carved the story of the world's drowning onto the cave wall, though she overcomes her qualms and gratefully pulls on their warm clothes. Did they die here waiting for winter to pass? Their remains can't be buried. The ground is solid rock. So the urchins play with the skulls and bones, turning them into bats and balls, guns and swords, and sticks to batter out a drumbeat bash on the rocks.

The urchins make treasure hoards of the bright litter
they find scrunched on the ground. They dress up in motley assortments of clothes, drape themselves in jewelry and broken watches, and take apart the gadgets to see what's inside.

Scarwell has moved into a cave of her own, a low cavern along one of the tunnels that branches off from the moon cave. She has filled it with precarious bone heaps, gruesome things that scare the other urchins off her treasure hoard, each one topped by a skull with a gleaming pair of firestone eyes. In the middle of them sits her constant companion, the apeman from the drowned museum, who is almost as big as she is. He looks strangely at home in his cavern, hunched over Scarwell's treasure, surrounded by human bones.

It was Scarwell who made the skull lanterns, by turning skulls upside down and burning small chunks of driftwood soaked in fish oil inside. Everyone was horrified, but the darkness of the mountain and the outside world had crept into the moon cave. It seemed to sap the thunder of the waterfalls and the soft moon glow that lives in the cavern rock. Now Scarwell's skull lanterns are a welcome, if grotesque, source of light.

Ibrox, whose fire-making tricks have been dwindling fast, hoards all the fireboxes that still have dregs of fuel. Every so often, he uses one of the fireboxes to spark the embers of the fire. It's the signal for everyone to gather in a semblance of the Treenesters' old sunup and sundown ritual. No one can be bothered to shout out their names anymore but they gather together and Gorbals reads from
A Tale of Two Cities
or a snippet from Tuck's book, or he unwraps a poem or story from his own head and warms it by the fire. The ache of their empty stomachs fades a little as they fly on the wings of the words, escaping their
entombment in the caves. They fall asleep with the story infused in their dreams.

Human sounds, a sneeze or shout, begin to jangle nerves and graze the ear like grit. There's no longer any sense of day or night, hours or minutes. Time hibernates in the long night of winter, nestled in the beat of a heart.

And then …

A wind enters the cavern with a clean, sharp scent that cuts through sleep. Everyone awakens.

“That's not a sea wind,” says Pollock. He jumps up from his sea-grass mattress, alert. “No scent of salt.”

“A tree wind,” whispers Mol, more hopeful than sure.

“Smells green,” Ibrox agrees.

“We'll track it,” says Pollock. Possil has already disappeared into the cave tunnels, quick on its trail.

Tuck sniffs the air. He's never breathed any that isn't salty with sea.

Mara knows the green scent of grass in the wind. This wind is fresh yet it comes from deep inside the tunnels, not from the cave mouth. It can only come from somewhere beyond the mountain.

From the interior
?

If that's where the green wind comes from, Mara is sure there must be a way through. And they need to find it soon or they might end up as a litter of skulls and bones too.

She should go with Pollock and Possil and follow the wind, right now, to wherever it comes from but she's so tired. Her mind keeps slithering into sleep. Later, once she's slept, then she'll track the wind.

But something keeps nudging Mara out of sleep. She tries to ignore it but every time she is about to drop off it
nudges her once more. She lies in the dark, wondering what it is. Not a noise, but a movement in the pit of her stomach. The strangest sensation. Not pain. Mara rolls onto her back, places a hand on the spot, feels it again.
It's like … like a key turning in a lock
. Mara's heart beats like a clock. There's a strong taste in her mouth again. Something to do with the sulfurous tang in the air from the hot spring? It makes fish and seaweed taste of metal and she can hardly eat them, though that's all there is and she's hungry all the time. Her eyelids, the soles of her feet, the insides of her wrists, every part of her tingles, as if her skin has grown too thin and her nerve endings are raw. Sore and tender, she sits up. The ghostly glow of the cavern seems to seep inside her fuzzy head.

“M-Mol?”

She almost called for her mom. Her voice echoes around the caves. Mol doesn't answer. Maybe she's gone tree-wind tracking with Pollock and Possil.

There's a grunt from across the cave.

“Mara?” Mol's voice croaks with sleepiness.

“Something's wrong,” Mara whispers. “I don't feel right. I saw stuff in the cyberwizz—things I shouldn't have looked at …”

The darkness hisses with her whispers. She hears Gorbals mutter in his sleep. Beside her, Rowan is snoring lightly. Suddenly Mol is beside her. She puts a cool hand on Mara's forehead.

“What things did you see?”

“Things from the past. My home. My Granny Mary and Tain.”

“Dreams, Mara. You've just had a bad dream. There's no fever. I don't think you're ill.”

“I feel so strange. Not sick, just
strange
.”

Mol takes a breath, lets it out, long and slow. She puts her mouth to Mara's ear.

“Are you still bleeding every moon?”

Mara lets the words sink in. Her heart hammers.

“We can't see the moon,” she mutters. Then, in a whisper, “No, but so much has happened and we're half starved …”

Mol takes her hand and pulls her over to the low ember fire. “It
is
the strangest feeling,” she whispers. “Like moth wings or tiny fish.”

“Like a key turning,” breathes Mara, “deep inside.”

Mol nods. “And you dream a lot too. Strange dreams.” She squeezes Mara's hand. “You're not sick, you're full of life.”

Mara feels a cold hand grip the key that's still turning, slowly, slowly, deep inside.

No
.

“I
can't
be …”

And yet she knows she is.

“It's only a baby,” whispers Mol. “Don't be scared of that.”

A baby
.

“I can't, Mol. It's too scary. What'll I do?”

“Nothing,” says Mol. “Stop panicking. The baby grows itself. How can you be scared of a baby after all you've been through?”

“What if something goes wrong?” Mara has a sharp memory of the cold waiting and wandering in the field of windmills as a trail of grim faces rushed into the cottage during her little brother Corey's difficult birth. Most of all, she remembers the sound of her mother's agony mixed with the moan of the wind. “No one here knows anything about babies.”

Molendinar's eyes drop. “
I
know.”

“I wish Broomielaw was here.”

“Me too,” admits Mol. “But listen, Mara, I helped with her birth and it was a tough one. We got there, though. Broomie and Clay were …” She falters, bites her lip. “They were
fine
in the end,” she says firmly. “You will be too.”

“I want my mom.”

Mol squeezes her hand tighter still. “I know. But I'm here. Mara, this is not a bad thing, it's good. We need new, strong blood. We need to grow new people.”

Mara hears the ring of relief, as well as friendship, in the other girl's voice and she knows why. It's to do with Tuck. Mol's heart is in her eyes whenever she looks at Tuck. Everyone can see that; everyone but Tuck. And Mara knows who's to blame for that. She is, because Tuck only has eyes for her. But once Tuck finds out she's going to have a baby … Mara sighs. Well, he's bound to feel differently then.

“It's new life,” Mol whispers, “something warm and good, like finding the hot spring in the middle of the killing cold. My mother used to say that wherever a devil is roused, you'll always find an angel on the rise. You'll always have a bit of your Fox now. Think of that.”

Think of Fox, not Tuck, is what she means.

Back in her bed, Mara's thoughts whirl. She's having a baby. Fox's baby. The idea is so enormous and strange, but when the slow, fluttery key-turning comes again, a feeling as clear and sharp as the green wind rushes through her and the dread seeps away.

Like the green wind, the baby is the key to the future. The baby is the way through.

Mol is right. She will always have a bit of Fox now.
Part of him is alive inside her, closer than ever, growing into a baby that they have made.

The women on her island used to call every newborn baby a tiny miracle, and Mara never gave it any thought, never understood. Now she does.

Amid the bones and primeval dark of the Earth, her own tiny miracle has bloomed. A miracle that links her across the waves of time to Granny Mary and Tain on the island. And to Fox in his netherworld tower, an ocean away.