Evan Burl and the Falling, Vol. 1-2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

hall.  
    Henri gasped. "I couldn't help eating."
    "Shhh. I know."
    "I'm so hungry." She twisted the black anklet on her right leg, like she always did when she was scared. All the Roslings had one, each with the broken base of an hourglass hanging from it. Impossible to remove, and somehow, as the Roslings got older it grew larger.
    "I'm hungry too. We're all hungry."
    "But it hurts. It hurts so bad."
    Sometimes we ate grass or tree bark just to make the pain go away for a little while, even though we knew it only made it worse later. The jungle plants that had overtaken the abandoned city weren't edible. Nothing that came near the castle was. Even the fish, bony as they were, had stopped swimming in our lake long ago. One day, when I was swimming in the lake, I rose to the surface to find I was surrounded by floating carcasses. That was three years ago.  
    "Just keep telling yourself the hunger's only in your head," I said, "remember?"
    Mazol said only eleven Roslings were supposed to fall the day Pike died. But in the end, twelve came. One of them was extra, or Mazol was wrong about the number. They were special. We discovered it shortly after they arrived. Burns, cuts, broken bones, nothing harmed them. They could feel pain, just like me, but cuts or bruises, no matter how bad, usually healed in an hour. Except for feeling sick with hunger, they didn't even need to eat. That's how Henri could go days, sometimes weeks, without food. Somehow, she never grew gaunt from hunger like you'd expect.
    And the other thing about Henri, the thing that was either extraordinarily wonderful or unnervingly creepy—she wasn't growing any older. The first time I saw her I figured she was about seventeen. About the age a girl is when she's as tall as an adult, but still thin in the hips and shoulders—that's how I imagine teenage girls from the pictures I've seen. And now, five years later, Henri looks exactly the same as the first day I saw her. Sometimes, and I try not to think about it if I can help it, I imagine she's actually much older than she appears. If she's not growing any older, how can any of us know how old she really is? And then, other times, she behaves like she's as young as the other Roslings—like her mind is confused about how old she's supposed to be. We used to think that she and the other Roslings were immortal.  
    Then Little Saye died.  
    "I don't know if I can do this." She wiped her face with the sleeve of her faded yellow dress. All the Roslings wore dresses like Henri's, made from floral bedsheets with pockets on each thigh right above the hem.
    In the hall, someone flung open a door and it crashed into the wall. Dust fell from the ceiling, stinging my eyes.
    "They're almost here," Henri whispered, her voice breaking. "They're going to find us."
    I imagined the punishment that was coming for both of us. No food for a day? A double shift of work? A belting?
    "Please, Evan. I know you can do it. Make us disappear."
    Why did she keep saying that? Could she know about sapience?
    Real sapience.  
    For a moment my heart beat faster—sapience would have given me the power to keep Little Saye from dying. I could have saved Pike the night we fell from the tower.  
    No. I shook my head. I can't let the book be right about me. I can't be sapient.
    "Take us where it's safe," she whispered.
    I hit the floor with my fist. "Nowhere is safe."
    "Far away," she insisted. "There must be some place, far away from here."
    "We'd have to cross the jungles."
    "Not if you made us disappear."
    "That's just a dream." I turned away.
    "Sapience." She said it so quietly her voice was almost drowned out by the thudding inside my head.  
    "What did you say?"
    "Sapience," she repeated. It came out as barely more than a hiss.
    The monster inside me smiled. Short for breath, I imagined invisible hands wrapping around my neck. "You're confusing our dreams for what's real. We can't really escape. That's only games we play."
    "Will you