Firespark by Julie Bertagna

Author:Julie Bertagna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2007-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

INSIDE EARTH

The mountain has swallowed them whole.

Tuck looks back at the cave mouth, at the gray sky and familiar roll of the ocean, and his legs twitch, eager to run him back to the world outside. Suddenly, he’d rather take his chances in the battle than face this terrifying darkness that is Earth.

The cave walls lean too close; they bump against his shoulders and his head so that he has to walk bent and stooped as his old Grumpa. He seems to feel the pressing weight of the mountain overhead. The only thing Tuck ever has over his head is his windwrap, the roof of a boat, or the sky.

“Aaah.” Gorbals stands up straight and stretches his long limbs. “That’s better.”

Wary, Tuck raises his head. The low roof of the cave has suddenly opened up. Now they stand in a rock hall so large the Steer Master’s ship could almost fit inside. But it’s a cold, dark, miserable place, with only a glimmer of daylight penetrating the gloom. A place to end your days, not begin anew.

Tuck tries to go back.

“Ooof!”

A spike of rock sticking out of the cave floor stabs him in the ribs.

“They’re everywhere.” Gorbals puts a hand on Tuck’s shoulder and points. “See, on the roof, all over the floor.”

Tuck can only just make out the spiky shapes. “What are they?”

Gorbals shrugs. “Rock spears. This is a brutal land,” he mutters. “Even the rocks. Mol! Ibrox!”

Tuck jumps as Gorbals bellows.

Ox-ox-ox-ox!

His voice ricochets off the cave walls. An answering shout crashes off the rocks.

Ere-ere-ere …

“They’re here!” cries Gorbals. “Where?”

“Look up-up-up-up!”

Gorbals looks up and yells again.

The echoes merge into confusion. Tuck puts his hands over his ears and closes his eyes. The noise and the dark, his spinning head and spiked stomach are too much. He thinks of the Waverley in the thick of the battle out in the fjord, and though he’d rather be there than here, there’s no pirate beat in his blood. None. Tuck no longer knows what he is. But Gorbals has grabbed his arm and is pulling him farther into the Earth. They climb, feeling their way in the deepening darkness toward the guiding voice.

“Keep your shoulder to the wall,” the voice urges.

On one side is the cave wall, on the other there’s nothing, just the dark. Tuck tries out each step warily, expecting the cave floor to fall away at any moment, but the rock stays solid underfoot.

“Through here!”

The cave has closed in tight on both sides. They squeeze through the narrow rockway, then burst into light. Tuck blinks in the relief of daylight. He draws fresh, cold wind into his lungs. Then jumps in fright as shadows spring from the cave walls. Tuck draws his cutlass blade but Gorbals cries out.

“Wait! It’s my friends. Molendinar, Ibrox … my people.”

Tuck slides the cutlass back in its scabbard as the friends hug each other. With a stab of shock it strikes Tuck that turning Lander means he’ll never see his own people again.

“This is Tuck.

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