Zenith
Authors: Julie Bertagna
Praise for EXODUS
‘A miracle of a novel . . . a book you will remember for the rest of your life’
Guardian
‘Like all the best fantasies, this one confronts some very real issues, and it’s the most exciting book I’ve read all year’
Mail on Sunday
‘Intellectually rigorous and bursting with humanity, this is a book to read again and again’
Sunday Herald
‘An ambitious, futuristic, environmental wake-up call’
Scotsman
‘Haunted by the past, this is a novel that reminds us what matters: the power of storytelling and that age-old spirit of survival’
Irish Times
Also by Julie Bertagna
EXODUS
THE OPPOSITE OF CHOCOLATE
SOUNDTRACK
THE SPARK GAP
For younger readers
THE ICE-CREAM MACHINE
THE ICE-CREAM MACHINE: TOTALLY FIZZBOMBED
Julie Bertagna
YOUNG PICADOR
First published 2007 by Young Picador
First published in paperback 2008 by Young Picador
This electronic edition published 2008 by Young Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Limited
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-46214-3 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-46213-6 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-46216-7 in Microsoft Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-46215-0 in Mobipocket format
Copyright © Julie Bertagna, 2007
The right of Julie Bertagna to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
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
by Edwin Morgan, adapted from the world’s oldest surviving poem
Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees
Revelation 7:3
north
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
‘North Sea Off Carnoustie’ by Anne Stevenson
Out on the world’s ocean, night is a black war-horse. 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 cloud.
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 towards the Long-Handled Ladle that scoops up the soup of the stars. On clear, calm nights Granny Mary would take her out on to 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 any more though, Granny would sigh, now 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.
