Free Exodus by Julie Bertagna

well of the ocean. Spray stings her face, crusts her eyes with salt, but she keeps looking out and cannot turn away. There’s been no sign of the other boats in days. Mara’s terror is so great she can hardly contain it. She knows that Jamie, the skipper of her family’s boat, is much less experienced than Alex. The lives of her family lie in the hands of a novice skipper.
    She longs to put her head down and sleep and not wake up until they find the New World—but that’s impossible in a heaving boat, amid the crush of so many bodies. It becomes hard to believe that the journey will ever end, that the wails of the children will ever quiet, that theawful seasickness will ever stop, that she will feel solid ground beneath her feet ever again.
    The crush on board means that there wasn’t room enough for sufficient provisions of food and water. They finished the last scraps of food yesterday and there are hardly any water rations left—just enough for the babies and the very youngest children. Everyone is praying that they reach the city today. They must. Months of meager food rations during the storm months on the island have weakened them all more than they realized. No one has much strength left. And no one has ever experienced terrifying seas like these.
    Trembling and muddleheaded Mara begins to drift in a hazy trance. Gail is crammed beside her, their bodies so close and intertwined that the other girl’s spasms of sickness, her listless fear, even her aching, restless limbs, feel like an extension of Mara’s own. Rowan, who began the journey full of tales and stories to pass the time, is crushed up next to his twin, his blue eyes glazed, his mouth too dry and sore to let him talk anymore.
    At dawn next morning Mara is suddenly shaken out of her daze.
    â€œLook up ahead!” Alex shouts. He stares shock-eyed across the ocean.
    All around her people are waking up and crying out in fright. Weakly, Mara struggles upright and looks out, but all she can see is ocean.
    â€œThere!” Gail cries in a parched voice. Trembling, she clutches Mara’s arm and points.
    The most colossal structure rises out of the ocean, swathed in mist.
    Mara swallows. She can’t seem to find her voice. Her throat feels full of stones.
    Vast towers unwrap from the dawn mist. Towers so thick and high it’s hard to believe they are real. As the boat draws closer the thinning mist reveals a stunning geometry of sky tunnels that connect the towers—branches and branches of gleaming connections. A molten sunrise spreads fire across the sky. When it hits the city like a silent explosion the brilliance is heart stopping. The morning sun seems pale beside such radiance.
    â€œThat’s it!” Mara croaks. “That’s New Mungo.”
    People murmur in fear; some cry. But Mara feels blank as she looks at the stupendous vision. She doesn’t know what she feels about that immense city in the sky. All she can think of is stepping out onto solid ground, stretching her cramped limbs—and finding her family.
    As they draw closer and the last of the mist clears, Mara sees with a sinking heart what she always suspected would be there—an immense wall. It rises up out of the sea, encircling the city.
    There is no land or harbor, only a blurred mass that heaves and bobs around the city. A huge, dull-colored live thing. The vile, rotting stench of an open drain hits as the clustering thing sharpens into focus. Mara gasps as she sees it’s a heaving mass of humanity. A chaos of refugee boats crams the sea around the city and clings like a fungus to the huge wall that seems to bar all entry to refugees.
    Frantically, Mara begins to scan the still-distant mass of boats for her family.
Why
was she so stubborn? Why didn’t she go with them?
    â€œWhere are they, Gail?” she panics. “They’ll have made it, won’t they?”
    She sees the look that passes between Gail and