Call Forth the Waves Read Online Free PDF

current up and out, emerging over the treetops into the clear night. Behind us in the distance, something was burning, turning the sky a violent and mournful red I’d only seen once before—the night we lost the train.
    “It’s gone,” I said.
    The only home I had left was gone, and my past with it. My sister was buried there. Jermay’s father was buried there. The memory of my brother was buried there, with a million other family secrets. It was sacred ground; Files didn’t have to burn it.
    “Give us a storm,” Anise prompted.
    Another familiar feeling overtook me, searing through my heart. It wove a string between me and the stars above, trilling musical notes that no one else could hear. I’d give her a storm. If Files was so fond of fire, I’d ignite the rain around him and torch the sky with burning hail.
    The song in my soul was a funeral march peppered with billowing flares of anger. The stars were lining up, and I knew that this time they wouldn’t ignore me.
    I raised my eyes to the sky and whispered, “Fall.”

    We flew for hours.
    Sunrise looked different above the clouds than it had watching from the train. It was brighter, with bands and rings of light that seemed nearly solid, as though I could reach out and put some in my pocket to carry with us for later. That was the sort of a thing a person called a Celestine should have been able to do. There was darkness approaching; we could all feel it, and having an extra shine in hand could come in useful.
    Anything I could do would have been useful, but I’d made no move to use my abilities since I sent the stars down on top of the men who burned the Hollow. I didn’t have to see it happen; they hit their marks, and I wasn’t sorry. Only humans felt remorse. I was a monster, and accepting that brought me a freedom I’d never expected.
    The morning air was crisp and clean, without the choke of industrial smoke that came from passing through cities and towns. There was no rumble of machines beyond the sound of Xerxes’ and Bijou’s wings slicing air. We were nearly as high as we’d been inside the Center, and it was cold. Skinny-dipping in the Arctic Circle cold.
    With my bare legs stretched across Xerxes’ copper-plated back, it was worse. The cold sunk in past my thin nightshirt and skin until it ran like ice in my blood. I’d never minded the cold before, but since I’d begun showing signs of the gifts my sisters carried, my perceptions had been changing. Now I was as intolerant of low temperature as Evie and her fire spouts.
    Or it might have been the shock.
    “Turn right,” Winnie instructed. “Be careful of the jet stream; it’s pulling us off course, and it’s only going to get worse the closer we come. The place we’re going doesn’t want to be found.”
    She’d been saying things like that for an hour or so, speaking of this great unknown as though it were a sentient beast that could choose to devour us rather than give us shelter.
    Xerxes and Bijou peeled off in turn, taking up their new heading. As we shifted away from the sun and the glare faded, I wound up staring straight at Birch on Bijou’s back. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he was watching me, and he wasn’t practiced at keeping his feelings off his face. Worry for me was written clearly on his features. He’d grown up without a family, and he didn’t know what it was like to lose someone like Evie. He’d been my ally inside the Center, but now I didn’t know what to do with him.
    It was a different kind of cold between us, but still unbearable.
    Even Jermay felt cold behind my back. He’d barely spoken since we left the ruins of the Hollow and the grave where his father had been laid to rest.
    “I don’t like the way Mulch-Head is looking at us,” he said. “There’s something off about him.”
    “Being raised as a lab rat in a cage can have that effect.”
    Jermay didn’t know what Birch’s life had been like with the wardens. He’d only seen the