Read Online Exodus by Julie Bertagna - Free Book Online

altar.
    â€œYou all know that my mother was a woman of unusual courage and vision.” Rosemary sounds breathless, as if she has run up a huge flight of steps, but her quick voice rings clearly through the church. “She worked endlessly for what was best for this island—so that we would all have a future.” Rosemary pauses, steadies herself, thengives Mara a look of deep pride. “My daughter is made of the same stuff as my mother,” she declares. “You should believe in her.”
    Mara turns to her mother in surprise. “You believe in the New World?”
    â€œI believe in
you
,” says her mother.
    Tain grasps Rosemary’s hand.
    â€œI think that swayed it,” he murmurs, keenly scanning the faces in the hushed church. “We’ll take a vote now.”
    It is decided. In two days they will set out for the New World while the summer seas are calm and steady, before another storm or sea surge hits. But there’s no way of forecasting the weather, no way of knowing if a storm will strike on the voyage, and no guarantee that they will find New Mungo or reach it safely.
    People wonder fearfully if the island’s fishermen have the skills to navigate the perils of a great ocean when they have only ever fished the seas close to Wing. The journey might take as long as a week, they reckon, but will there be enough room in the crammed fishing boats for all the water and food and provisions they will need? The talk is all about the sea journey but not about what lies beyond it, because no one can imagine what life in a New World city, high above the ocean, could possibly be like.
    The last day on the island feels like a dream. Tomorrow they will set out on a perilous journey into the future, yet today everyone still tends to the animals and farm holdings as always—they stack the peat and prepare meals just as they always have. They don’t know what else to do, thinks Mara, and neither does she, so she meets up with Gail and Rowan and they climb up to the standing stones to sit upon the ancient rock and look at the endless sea andsky. It’s what they’ve always done on midsummer nights when their northern sky stays light all night long; a strange, forget-me-not sky that is the same intense blue as the scattered wildflowers that once grew in the drowned field of windmills.
    But now, the sight of all that empty ocean is too hard to bear.
    As they walk home, Gail is talking up a huge, ridiculous fairy tale for their future but Mara and Rowan are quiet, looking all around, saying impossible good-byes to every rock, every stone, every weed and wildflower that remains.
    â€œWhat are you taking?” asks Gail. “I’ve lost almost everything—all the beautiful clothes I made over the winter. Mara, can you give me something decent to wear in the New World?”
    Rowan shakes his head, a comical look of disgust on his face. But Mara laughs, glad to have a bit of Gail’s feather-brained chatter to lift the desperate mood. Only Gail could think about clothes at a time like this.
    â€œHmm,” Mara frowns. “Something that travels well and won’t crease too much in the crush of thirty people in a fishing boat.”
    â€œIt’s important!” Gail declares. “What if we land up in some great new city looking like gawky peasants?”
    Suddenly Gail is in tears, choking on loud sobs. Mara hugs her friend tight, knowing Gail is not really a feather-brain at all. The frantic chatter is just her way of blocking out a nightmare.
    â€œLet’s go,” Rowan says heavily and he puts an arm around his twin. “See you tomorrow, Mara.”
    â€œYes,” says Mara, but she can’t imagine tomorrow. Shewatches her two friends head toward their makeshift shelter in the church, then turns for home.
    When she gets home her mother is weeding and watering their small vegetable field, clinging to every last scrap of her life here