Pathfinder Read Free

farmyard outhouses.
    â€œOh, Tain!” wails Mara. “What can we do?”
    Mara feels the birdlike fluttering in her heart once again. This time it’s not restlessness, but fear.
    Tain sighs and juts out his chin. “We should have done something long before now. It took
me
long enough to face the truth. But maybe there’s still time, if we act now.”
    Mara stares out at the ocean, lost in thought. When she turns back to Tain she catches the strange, wistful look he sometimes fixes upon her. Mara knows it’s not really to do with her. It’s because she looks so like her grandmother did, the girl he grew up with long ago.
    â€œTea?” she prompts, to bring him back to the present.
    â€œTea,” he nods, with a shy smile, and they go inside.
    Mara munches gratefully on the large, warm, buttery oatcake that Tain hands her. The fresh air and a missed breakfast have made her ravenous. She eats it standing in a pool of sunlight by the open door, reluctant to miss a second of this glorious weather, while Tain stokes the stove and boils up the kettle. Mara finds his peaty brew too strong and bitter so he always makes her mint-leaf tea with a spoonful of heather honey, which she loves.
    â€œTell me about you and Granny Mary,” she says, closing her eyes and lifting her face to the sun like a flower, preferring to fill her thoughts with stories of the old days rather than the threat of the future.
    â€œI’ve told you all the stories,” he says briskly.
    Mara debates whether she dare ask the next question—one that she has had plenty of time to wonder about through the long storm months. That wistful look of Tain’s when he remembers Granny Mary has
made
her wonder.
    â€œDid you love her?” she bursts out at last. “You did, didn’t you?”
    Tain doesn’t answer, just pours out the tea. They sit at the table in silence, amid the bright sunbeams that spill through the open window.
    â€œAh, it’s all far away in the past now, Mara,” he says at last.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œAll over and done with. What we need to think of now is the future.”
    Mara’s mind is spinning. It’s just as she suspected. There
was
something between Tain and Granny Mary. That must be why he has always taken such a deep, fond interest in her. She knows she is her grandmother’s image; all the old people tell her so, and she has seen the striking resemblance in photographs of Granny Mary in her youth—the same intense expression and thick, dark sweep of hair; the same long, lean limbs; and even, says her mother, the same restless way of moving.
    But no one has ever suggested that Granny Mary was anything other than happily married to Grandpa and they both died when they were old, so how is it possible that Tain—
    â€œListen to me, Mara.” Tain’s voice breaks into her thoughts. “Your future is not here on Wing. There might be no Wing left soon—or not enough for us all to live on. Your future lies somewhere else in the world.”
    The puzzle of her grandmother’s past is abandoned for the moment as Mara’s mind fills with more urgent questions.
    â€œWhat’s the world beyond here like, Tain? No one ever talks about it.”
    Mara thinks of the places she has seen on her secret travels. Amazing places, so strange and different to the familiar land and seascape that surround her. But her travels are not real, they’re only electric visions.
    â€œThe outside world is a great mystery now,” says Tain. “That’s why we never talk about it.”
    â€œBut what do you
think
?” Mara persists.
    Tain sighs heavily. “I don’t know. When the oceans first rose and swallowed the lands, we were all in shock. The supply ships from the mainland suddenly stopped and all our communication systems went down. We were petrified.” He leans forward and Mara sees a tremor of emotion, the