Edge of the Falls (After the Fall) Read Online Free PDF

straps have been replaced. Parts are pitted and marked with the acid from fire-lizards. The thought makes me look up. At least this rain isn’t an acidstorm.
    Kaida is shaking. I can see the tremble in her hand as she takes the bag that Berg extends to her. She’s terrified. Her wide gray eyes find me, and I force a smile that I don’t feel. I wonder if she sees through it.
    Mistress makes a noise deep in her throat, a slight warning. Kaida’s grip on the bag tightens and she loops it over her shoulder before she clenches the rope. For a second, it seems that time stills. Then Berg taps a command on his control tablet and the lift swings her up and out. She shrieks as her feet flail in the open air and I can’t help but remember the sensation—the terror—from only a few days ago. Berg taps at his tablet again, Mistress murmuring to him, and I hold Kaida’s gaze.
    “It’s okay, sweetie,” I murmur into the earpiece I’m wearing. I can hear her frantic breathing, the soft noises of fear she is struggling to contain over the roar of the water.
    “Breathe, Kaida. Count with me,” I begin, keeping my voice slow and steady. She dangles in her harness, and when I reach thirty-seven, she joins me. Slowly, her breathing steadies. “You ready, sweet?” I ask, and her counting falters. Above the Falls, she nods, determinedly, and I murmur, “Good girl.” I give Berg a quick thumbs up.
    Another tap on the tablet, and the lift jerks, and then lowers. I can’t move closer to the edge—can’t follow her with my eyes. The fire-lizards swarmed the cliff top once, when I was seven. Berg was hurt in the melee. Since then, Mistress keeps fires burning to keep them at bay while we harvest from behind the falls. They don’t like the smoke.
    Even after four years of watching from the cliff top, I can see the scene play out in my mind. Kaida’s voice is shrill when she calls my name, and I know her feet are soaked, immersed in the bone bruising water. This is the trickiest part for Berg—throwing her through the Falls to reach the tunnel behind them, without hurling her into the cliff itself.
    “Hold your breath, Kaida. Count,” I say.
    All of the children are taught the counting skills—close your eyes, and hold your breath. Count to twenty. Again. Thirty. Again. Forty. Again. Again.
Again
.
    I push away the anger that surges in me, and focus on the noise in my headset. Above the water, her breathing is even. I hold up three fingers, and feel Gwen and Berg tense on either side of me. “Deep breath,” I whisper, and lower a finger.
    Dangling in the air over the gorge, I hear a sharp inhale, and my fist closes.
    The noise is deafening, pulling me back to all the times it had been me, tugged by the water, buffeted and slammed against the rocks, the icy terror of it rushing all around me. I can
feel
it, and I drop to my knees. It’s the first hurdle—will she reach the rocks, will the water destroy her, will it rip her from the harness and throw her against the jagged shards below? It has happened before. I hold my breath with her, and hope.
    Berg is intent on his tablet, and then looks up, a smile turning his lips. The noise in my earpiece changes. A weight slides off my heart, and my breath rushes from me in a choked sob. I would know that noise anywhere—the roaring echo of the Falls in a hollow space.
    Mistress is watching me, and I force myself to focus, to do my job. “Kaida, the tunnel is on the right side. Do you see it?”
    I look at Berg for confirmation. He is frowning at his screen, tapping gently at the arrows that move the Lift. “Wait, Kaida. Just wait,” I murmur.
    There is a long moment of waiting, and then a sharp gasp from her. “I see it.”
    I nod at Berg, and he taps the panel until I hear her grasp the rocks. They skitter, unnatural in the unceasing sound of water.
    “I have it,” she whispers, and I can almost taste her fear, it’s so palpable.
    “Remember, Kaida. Feet first,” I