Call Forth the Waves Read Online Free PDF Page B

boy who thought of Nye as a father and wore the clothes of a Commission underling, not the prisoner who hadn’t been able to escape with his friends and suffered for it. He’d never seen the terror in Birch’s eyes like I had.
    “Please tell me you’re not jealous of the guy who helped me save your life,” I said.
    “I don’t trust him.”
    “But you do trust me, so believe me when I tell you that you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
    “No promises if he keeps staring like that.”
    Xerxes drifted closer to Bijou, and Birch finally glanced away.
    “How much farther?” I asked Winnie.
    “We’re here,” she said.
    An ironic turn, you could call it. When I’d first told Jermay and the others that we’d reached the Hollow, no one had believed me. They couldn’t see it, though it had been right in front of their faces. Now I’d taken the same position, confused by the endless stretch of clouds and sky. Where was Winnie taking us?
    “I don’t see anything down there,” Jermay said.
    “We aren’t going down.”
    Not exactly safe, but no Commission, Winnie had promised. We had agreed to follow her, though we knew it wasn’t possible for such a place to exist on Earth. No one noticed that she’d never mentioned it actually being on Earth.
    “Do you see the cloud bank up ahead?” she asked me.
    “Of course.” It loomed up white and solid as any wall, too wide to go around. But closer scrutiny brought out details that weren’t quite right for natural clouds. There were strange tinges of blue and pink that shifted, threading in and out of sight, and while the rest of the clouds moved with the currents, these didn’t.
    “Can you move it?” Winnie asked.
    For years, I’d thought her mute, not realizing that her lack of words was a choice rather than a necessity. Then her voice had been stolen and locked away by evil men like Warden Arcineaux who couldn’t stomach knowing that she had power over them. They had fused a metal plate over her mouth, and even though Klok had removed it, she had scars and fresh wounds that broke open whenever she had to say something.
    Winnie held her mouth strangely to cut the pain I knew she had to feel with every word. I tried not to ask too many questions of her; I didn’t want to make it worse.
    “Just try and thin the clouds,” she said, waving her hands for a cue, as though we were still circus girls and putting on a show.
    I nodded, but the gesture was surer than I felt. Vesper could have done it, and until my abilities had failed me at the Hollow, I would have believed I could, too. But there was the same chance that I would fail again.
    I tried not to think of where Vesper might be. She looked so much like me that imagining her in pain was like seeing it on my own face. I brushed aside the gloating words of the warden who had claimed her for a prize. All that mattered was finding the currents, weaving them like patterns in a massive loom. Pull one thread and the others all responded, creating a tear in the middle of the cloud bank big enough to see through.
    “What is that?” Anise asked, leaning forward in her perch.
    Hazy colors appeared at first, bright and startling against the void of near-white. It looked as though the sun were rising both ahead of and behind us. As we came closer, the colors formed shapes: round balloons, oblong pontoons, glistening cables mixed with ropes to anchor everything to baskets and floating bridges. It was another city in the sky, but as far removed from the Center as The Show’s train had been. As far as a daydream from a nightmare.
    Here and there several well-made pieces filled the sky, interspersed with air-filled creations of quilted squares, patched where they’d sprung leaks and covered with gardener’s tarp to protect them from the elements. Some had full articles of clothing sewn into the gaps. A pair of men’s trousers formed a sideways V along the seam of a green-and-gold concoction, while a bright-orange skirt