Pathfinder by Julie Bertagna Read Free Book Online Page A

preserved fruit and vegetables are all eaten. If the storm lasts much longer they will have to start slaughtering precious livestock for food—but even that won’t last long as they have so few animals.
    Every night Mara tells her little brother a bedtime story. Corey always wants the
Three Little Pigs
or
Jack the Giant Killer
, and tonight as the story ends he touches the wall beside his bed.
    â€œWe’ve got a house of stone,” he declares. “We’re safe, aren’t we?”
    His bedtime story is the cocoon he builds for himselfeach night before he goes to sleep. He seems to have grown more babyish, younger than his six years, huddled inside himself to hide from the wolfish howl of the storm and its giant strength. While Mara feels she has, all of a sudden, grown up.
    Once Corey is settled, Mara joins her parents. It’s too warm to burn a fire, yet out of habit they sit around the dead grate and now they too cocoon themselves in stories to pass the evening. Sometimes Mara is hit by the strangest feeling that some part of her is already in the future, looking back on this lost scene with an aching heart. Tonight, Rosemary tells the flood legend of Noah and the ark, an ancient tale that is carved into the stone walls of Wing’s church. Since their own great flood, few on the island have kept faith with the old religion and the church stands abandoned, but the richness of its stories has lived on among the people, passed down by the old ones and enjoyed as folklore on the long, stormy evenings.
    Once the story is happily ended Rosemary looks at Mara hesitantly, then speaks her mind.
    â€œI see we’ve got our own arks ready up on the hill,” she says to Coll. “Are we supposed to be going somewhere in them?”
    Now Coll looks at Mara. “There’s to be an island meeting about that in the church, just as soon as there’s a decent break in the weather. Tain’s organized it.”
    â€œTain wasn’t out in the storm?” says Rosemary, concerned.
    â€œHe called around to all the farms and the village during the lull in the weather.”
    â€œWhat’s going to happen?” Mara whispers, though she’s not sure if she wants to hear.
    Coll hesitates and doesn’t answer directly. “I spoke toTain about what you told me, Mara. Maybe you can help. Tell me what you found.”
    â€œHow can Mara help with this?” says her mother. “She’s just a child.”
    â€œI’m not,” Mara retorts, then begins to tell her story about the New World that lies way out in cyberspace, far beyond the Weave.
    When she is finished her mother sighs and smiles.
    â€œIt’s just a dream, Marabell. It’s not real. I’ve heard Tain talk about the New World but it’s just a myth, a story made from wishful thinking.” Rosemary stares at Mara with recognition in her eyes. “Believe it or not, I do remember what it’s like to be fifteen and full of dreams. Real life keeps getting in the way.”
    Mara smiles. “No more burned bread,” she promises. “But this dream is real, Mom. Wait. Wait till you see what I found.”
    She runs upstairs and grabs her cyberwizz, then stands on a chair to lift a dusty, old screen laptop computer down from the top of her wardrobe. She hopes she can remember how to reassemble the homemade connection that she designed to pass the time during last winter’s storm season.
    â€œWhere did you find
that
old thing?” laughs Coll, raising his eyebrows at the laptop, when she bursts back into the living room.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” murmurs Rosemary.
    â€œThe impossible,” grins Mara, as she struggles with wires and magnets.
    Like the rest of the islanders, her parents have no use for the old technology that used to be commonplace in the world. They look at each other and shake their heads in bemusement as Mara connects the laptop to her cyberwizz.