Pathfinder by Julie Bertagna Read Free Book Online

discovery, and ended up telling Corey what she had found.
    â€œIt’s not a fairy story, Dad.”
    Coll shakes his head as Mara follows him into the barn.
    â€œI know the myths, Mara, but that’s all they are. Don’t upset your little brother any more than he already is.”
    â€œHe’s upset by the storm, not by me,” counters Mara. “And the New World’s not a myth,” she ventures. “Tain says it’s real. He saw the cities on television when he was young—giant cities. He saw them being built.”
    â€œI’m sure he did, but they’d never have survived this.” Coll struggles to close the barn door against a punching fist of wind and Mara lends her weight. Then he stops to rub the sweat from his brow and stares around him in the gloom of the barn as if he’s just woken from a dream. “But the way things are going, I’m almost ready to believe in anything.”
    â€œDad,” Mara says cautiously, because it’s unlikely her practical, down-to-earth father will listen. “I need to talk to you about—about this New World.” Amazingly, he
is
listening, so Mara takes her chance. “I used to think it was just a fairy story too but I’ve been searching for info on my cyberwizz for weeks and weeks now, and I think—I mean, I’ve found stuff that makes me
sure
that it exists. It’s incredible. Really, Dad. I can show you. They built it so that it would survive all this.”
    Her voice throbs with excitement. Her dark eyes plead with her father. He sighs.
    â€œOh, come on now,” he says, gently dismissive, tucking wayward strands of her dark hair behind her ear. And yet he looks at her as if he wants to believe her.
    â€œDad, please. Just have a look at what I’ve found.”
    Coll looks at his daughter long and hard. Then smiles wryly at the stubborn determination in her face.
    â€œWell, we’ll see. Show me tonight,” he says. “Right now I’ve got the milking to finish, then I’ll have to try and fix up the roof and the barn and that’s just for starters. Don’t go far and make sure you get back in the house as soon as the storm starts up again.”
    Mara nods, amazed. She hasn’t tried to tell her parents anything about the New World till now, until she had real evidence, because she was sure they’d never take her seriously. Dad never would have before. Things must be getting desperate, Mara decides. She studies the storm damage as she crumbles the burned loaf for the chickens. The solar panel is almost completely detached from the cottage roof and there are places in the barn where the gale has ripped the wood from the thick nails that have held it for decades. It’s always been like this. No one ever has time to make plans for the future when there’s bread to bake and a roof to fix and a hundred other things to do.
    And this storm season has been the longest, fiercest she has ever known.
    Mara glances once again at the ominous fleet that sits above the field of windmills. All the island’s boats are perched there, their hulls like the bodies of great birds, ready and waiting to fly.
    Are we near the edge of summer yet, Mara wonders desperately, or just trapped in the dead eye of the storm?

A WORLD LOST

    Mara groans as Rosemary ladles out yet another bowl of murky green soup. She is hungry all the time yet can barely stomach the food her mother serves up.
    â€œI never want to eat another mouthful of cabbage as long as I live.”
    â€œSmelly soup,” Corey agrees, but he tucks in hungrily.
    For the last month they have existed on a meager ration of eggs, cabbage soup, and potato bread. There’s a small but dwindling supply of milk and cheese but the sheep and goats are reacting badly to such a long season spent in a dark barn with rations of mulch and hay instead of fresh pasture. Grain stores are frighteningly low and supplies of