Pathfinder by Julie Bertagna

Author:Julie Bertagna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

All too soon, Mara wakes with a jolt. A fox has wakened her—a dream fox this time, whose eyes and flashing tail torment her amid the ruins and junkheaps of the Weave. Each time she thinks she’s close the fox slips out of reach and disappears. Then, just as she finds it and reaches out a hand to touch that tawny fur, the fox turns on her, snarling and vicious.

“Bats?” Gorbals murmurs, feeling her jump, his voice full of dust and sleep. “Ratbashers?”

Mara shivers. “No, just me. It’s all right.”

Now she’s wide awake, feeling desolate. Gloom has descended upon the netherworld and she wonders what time of day it is. She looks out through the smashed window but the clouds are too thick to let the sun through so it’s difficult to judge. It can’t be too late, surely. They were up so very early.

“Garlic and sapphires in a puddle,” Gorbals babbles in his sleep.

Mara feels around the pockets of her backpack and takes out her cyberwizz globe. It tingles in response to her touch. Her heart is beating fast as she grips the wand then slips the halo over her eyes for the first time since she left the island. She powers up the cyberwizz and verges into the world of the Weave. When she drops down a shimmering strand right into the heart of it she is suddenly panic-stricken. It all feels strange and alien. The noisy electronic buzz and flicker of the once-familiar tower-stacks and junk mountains fill her with fear. She tries to zip and zoom as she used to but the speed unnerves her. What’s wrong with her? She feels as if she has been gone a hundred years, as if she is a stranger. And then suddenly she knows what’s wrong.

Before, fear was a game. Now it’s far too real. Mara tries to make herself venture into the ruined back alleys where a fox would stalk and roam, but she can’t. To her left, something shifts in a pile of electronic litter that has tumbled off a junk mountain. A long electronic feeler reaches out toward her. Mara stifles a scream and tries to leap, but she’s forgotten how—forgotten the cryptic symbols that used to give her such effortless speed and power. The feeler hovers above her head, sparking venomous decay.

Mara rips off the halo and crashes back into realworld. She stuffs the cyberwizz into her backpack and sits, sobbing silently.

Now the Weave is lost to her too. Now she hates it. Everything that she has lived through has left her a nervous wreck. She’ll never be able to find the fox again now.

Mara gets up and wanders among the dim forest of book stacks, more lonely and desolate than ever. She really should wake Gorbals—but wait. At the end of a long run of shelves she spies a doorknob sticking out of a gap between the books. A blackened brass doorknob, but no door.

Strange, thinks Mara. Well, there’s only one thing to do.

And she tugs with both hands on the doorknob until at last something gives.

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