From a High Tower Read Online Free PDF Page A

here because she had invited them. There were other things that could, and would, come uninvited. Mother had been freer to use her power in the city, because most of those things avoided cities and their high concentrations of people and poison, iron and steel.
    â€œSo you would never go back—”
    â€œUgh! Never,” she said emphatically. “Mother
loves
me.” Of that, she was absolutely sure. “That . . . man that was my father, he couldn’t possibly have loved me if he just
gave
me away like that!”
    Luna was silent for a long while as Giselle savored her cheese-and-toast. And then, she said,
“Hunger makes desperate choices. You have never gone hungry.”
    Where did that come from?
Giselle wondered. She didn’t even know if sylphs
could
hunger.
    â€œThat may be so,” she said, feeling stubborn. “And it is true I have never known want. But I do not think that a man who loved his child would give it away for the sake of a wagonload of vegetables, and I don’t really understand why Mother feels obligated to him.”
    Luna only smiled.
“When will she return?”
    Giselle consulted the calendar. “At any hour from today on,” she said, feeling a happy thrill of excitement—for there would certainly be new books, and perhaps some beautiful new fabric to make into new clothing, and the treats that Mother always brought back from the city. Mother’s Earth Mastery could allow her to grow amazing things, but she could not grow exotic spices, and she could not grow chocolate. Giselle’s mouth watered at the thought of chocolate.
    They could have done without the fabric, Giselle supposed. Mother was very patient, but she said herself that she was not patient enough to spin her own thread and weave her own cloth. She had taught Giselle how to do both, but . . . Giselle was not very patient at all. To be honest, it was very hard for her to just sit and do handwork; she found it terribly tedious.
    But—books! She hoped there would be a new Karl May book! The ones set in the Orient were very, very good, but the ones set in America, in the Wild West, were
superb!
Old Surehand, Old Firehand, and especially Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. She could not get enough of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. Especially Winnetou and the other Indians. She wondered what it would be like, to be an Elemental Master on the plains. What the Elementals would look like. They were different in other places, she knew from her studies. And what would it be like to stand in a place where the horizon was flat, where the land was flat for as far as you could see, and not hemmed in by mountains?
    Luna brightened.
“Will there be new ribbons?”
she asked. Giselle smiled. The sylphs loved to play with ribbons, and would wear them to shredded tatters, twirling them about and using them in games of tag. Mother always made a point of bringing bolts of ribbon back from her trips to the city.
    â€œOf course there will be new ribbons,” Giselle promised. “Mother would never forget you.” Luna clapped her hands in glee.
    Giselle finished her meal and went back upstairs. She didn’t much care for the kitchen either, it was so dark, and so close. But she had to cook her food somewhere, and when Mother was gone, she was locked into the tower.
    She took the stone stairs that spiraled up the tower wall two at a time; there was nothing like a handrail, but she had been scampering up and down these stairs since she was old enough to toddle, and it never occurred to her to feel fear.
    This tower had four levels. The bottom was the kitchen, and had been her bedroom as well until she was old enough to safely navigate the stairs. The next level was the library and workroom, where she took her lessons and learned her magic. The third level was the storeroom, where everything was kept that wasn’t a book, and the final, top story was her bedroom. Besides