Extract: Lifted, by Mandy Hager

Elora, Librarian of The Sanctuary, faces an impossible choice: allow herself to be trapped and Lifted, or stay and risk dying alone. In a world devastated by climate collapse and haunted by a mysterious alien presence, seventeen-year-old Elora is the last-trained Librarian safeguarding humanity’s remaining knowledge. W

hen a stranger arrives with a message claiming her long-dead father is alive, Elora is forced to question everything she believes. As hope, grief, and duty collide, she must decide whether to leave the safety of her mountain refuge and risk everything for the truth.

A compelling blend of science fiction and coming-of-age adventure, Lifted explores survival, legacy, and what it means to be human in a fractured world where one young woman may hold the key to humanity’s future. Story inspired by Bill Hammond’s ‘The Fall of Icarus’ which is depicted on the cover.

She was four when she first spied them through her father’s telescope, the evening’s last rays flashing off those metal spheres like a twinkling daisy-chain of twilight stars. She’d demanded he tell her what she’d spotted through its ancient lens, and that’s when he’d told her about the Avians who’d taken up roost in the exosphere back in 2224, seventy-three years ago, as old as her father would be now. Then, she’d been excited, wide-eyed when he opened his journal to draw those elongated, upright bird-forms and they looked so majestic, their batwings flowing from their shoulders like magicians’ cloaks, long legs and arms sporting toes and fingers jointed like her own.

People thought they were angels at first, she later learned, until they jettisoned down from their ship with their flying pods and it was death they brought, people reeled up like fish on a line, Lifted they call it now, skulls punctured by their rapier beaks with one vicious peck, the pineal gland plucked out, livers too, each plundered body then flung back to Earth with the same disregard as the toxic detritus they continue to drop from their orbiting realm.

‘Elora?’ Dimsie’s call startles her. ‘Are you here?’

She raises the long-handled duster she holds and sweeps the cobweb away, careful to leave the spider, who does a good job. If only it was this easy to sweep away the Avians. ‘Down by the seven hundreds. Hang on, I’ll come to you.’

Dimsie’s arthritic knees and ankles struggle to transport her around the stacks these days. Squat and as round as a freshly baked cob, she’s taken to hauling herself along on a chair Bruce fitted with wheels, using the service hoist to move between floors, but even that’s hard for her now. Old age, Dimsie reckons, is an unrelenting bitch and she should know: at seventy-nine, she’s the oldest by far.

Elora was born here when her father, Ethan, became Librarian after Dimsie’s father died. By rights, Dimsie should’ve stepped into her father’s shoes, that’s how it’s always been, but love lured her away, down to the plains, only returning when her man was Lifted, broken by grief. This they share.

Elora was five when her father was Lifted. It happened right in front of her, so shocking it still haunts her twelve years on. It had been such a lovely day, a rare escape from the confines of The Sanctuary, a picnic down on the blustery slopes that loom over an abandoned settlement hunkered among the lake shore’s wind-slapped trees.

He was pointing out plants to her — this one for stings, that one boiled up to stop infection — when she’d spied a tiny sapphire-blue mushroom beyond the track, surely a rare treasure. She broke away and ran over, but as she crouched to study it, so beautiful, her father bellowed, ‘Elora, stop! Don’t move a bloody muscle. I mean it.’

She froze, his tone searing her cheeks, confused as he bolted towards her.

His next words were altogether different: strangled, hoarse. ‘That’s good, honey. Now keep your feet perfectly still.’

She scoured the ground around her, scared he’d spotted a spider, or a wasp maybe, something bad. But all she could see was that delicate fungus, the grass around it flattened, trampled in a wide circle, probably the goats she glimpsed occasionally at dawn or dusk.

He came up behind her and grasped her shoulders, slowly easing her upright, placing his left foottight against hers then nudging it over towards her other foot.

A game? ‘What’s—’

‘—Shhh. Just listen.’ He wrapped his arms around her chest, and she thought it was a hug, shared joy at this wonderful find. ‘Now put that foot on mine, sweet pea, like we used to do.’ She giggled, remembering how he’d walk her with his big boat feet, but choked on it when he snapped, ‘Only that one.’

She obeyed, so confused she was nauseous. He never usually snarled like this.

‘That’s good, love.’ He hiccupped then (these days she thinks it was a sob), and placed his right foot beside hers, shoving it over. ‘Now, shift that one on too.’

With that, he hoisted her up and spun her around until they were nose to nose, her feet dangling. He sank his face into her wind-tangled hair and breathed it in before kissing her left cheek once and then the other twice. ‘You’re doing great, sweetheart. You’re the very best part of me, you know? Never forget that. And now you need to be extraordinarily brave.’

‘But w—’

‘—Listen carefully.’ Tears glistened as he swallowed like it hurt. ‘I’m going to throw you as far away as I can and when you land, you need to run back to The Sanctuary as fast as a rabbit and don’t look back. Go find the others. And never forget I’ll always be with you and love you, no matter what.’

Fear battered at her. His shoulders were shaking. ‘Daddy? What’s wrong?’

He wailed ‘I’m sorry’ and flung her away with such force she screamed, crashing onto the rocky slope, hands, knees and chin scraped raw, pitted with grit.

She clambered up, open-mouthed crying, turning just as he lifted one foot and all around him the ground erupted, sliding metal tendrils bursting from the trampled earth. He flung himself sideways but it was too late, he was caged. It clapped shut around him like a giant Venus flytrap. Gone. Gone, gone, gone.

She screamed again, staggering towards it. ‘Daddy!’ But that evil bloody pod hissed and suddenly shot up so high the clouds closed over it. She howled until her throat gave out. His body was never found.

Lifted by Mandy Hager is available in all good bookstores now.