Call Forth the Waves (5 page)

She choked on her words as she, too, got a look at us. She backed up, trying to pull the boy with her, like she wanted to bolt and run.

“Please don’t,” Anise said, hoping to stop her before she raised an alarm and dashed our hopes of finding help. “We’re not here to hurt anyone—please. Winnie said—”

“Winnie?”

The girl repeated Winnie’s name as though it were the sort of word respectable people avoided speaking in company.

“Hello, Nola,” Winnie said over the top of Dev’s head. She made the name as much an improper slur as the girl had made hers, and smiled so wide that one of the sores on her face broke open. “Penn, say exactly what I tell you.”

“What?”

“Just do it—and don’t change the script.”

I nodded as Nola said, “Don’t you dare.”

Winnie ignored her. “We’re travelers,” she said.

“We’re travelers,” I repeated.

Nola scowled; she gave up trying to pull Dev away. He’d grabbed on to the counter so she couldn’t move him.

“In need of assistance.”

“In need of assistance. Winnie, I don’t see—”

She cut me off with a Show gesture meant to remind me I shouldn’t deviate from her words.

“We need shelter and something to eat until we’re able to move on.”

It felt ridiculous, but again, I parroted her words. The longer she spoke and the more I repeated, the deeper Nola’s scowl became and the brighter Dev’s smile. As I filled the air with Winnie’s words, I glanced at the others, wondering if they’d noticed some detail I had missed.
Maybe this would make sense if I could find the right angle.

They each shrugged. The only thing to do was keep going until Winnie was finished.

“Please pardon us for intruding upon your hospitality; we’ve no choice but to ask,” we both said.

When we finally stopped, Nola was furious—nearly shaking with it—and hiding what I thought was a bit of fear. She didn’t hide it well, and it certainly didn’t seem like she’d be answering our request for help in the affirmative, regardless of who did the asking.

“If you don’t want to help us, we understand. We can—” Anise started. She never got to finish.

“That’s not exactly an option, now is it?” Nola spat. She’d dug her fingers so deep into her arms, the skin was dented.

“I don’t understand,” Anise said. “If you don’t want us here . . .”

“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Winnie said triumphantly. “She knows what she’s supposed to do, and we have a witness. Right, Dev?”

Dev was beaming. He grabbed Winnie with one hand and Klok with the other, and tugged them toward the door.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”

Watching a boy Dev’s size try to pull Klok anywhere was worth the confusion of the situation, but Klok seemed happy to oblige his game. The rest of us followed them, with Nola stomping along at the rear.

Jermay fell into line from the doorway, where he’d been watching the platforms outside.

“That woman’s still watching us.” He nodded toward Nafiza across the street.

“Just pretend you can’t see her,” Winnie warned us. “We’re better off that way.”

Our caravan of feet traveled through streets made of rope and panel boards. These weren’t empty like the ones where we’d landed. Clusters of people whispered and pointed as we passed, some ushering children ahead of them into buildings woven into walls that made up sections of the city. Nola marched into the lead, arms crossed, bottled-up anger in every stomping step.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Winnie. “Who are these people?”

“My family. We’re going to see my grandfather.”

CHAPTER 5

On the ground and in the past, the Golden Mile had drawn its name from the fact that it was exactly a mile square, crammed full of enough shops and stands to fill an area ten times bigger. They piped pleasant smells into the air to combat the effects of heat and overcrowding. Music was so common that as soon as you stepped out of range of one song, you’d be close enough to hear another.

In the clouds, all of that extra stuffing had unfurled into expanding jutties of clutter. The bracketing walls and brownstones were gone, so there was nothing to stop the sprawl. The artificial perfume had been replaced by the sugared-apple bite of high altitude, and the lyrical scale of twirling air currents added a harp-like soundtrack to our journey, making it easy to think of this city above the clouds as Heaven.

Birdie pulled away, closer to the nearest edge, so she could look over. It was the first time since we’d left the Center that she hadn’t insisted on holding someone’s hand. Every day since our escape, she’d drifted to each of us in shifts from the time she woke up until she fell asleep, still attached, like we were a jungle gym and she couldn’t let go of one bar until she had a grip on the next. This was also the first time she’d stayed completely visible for more than an hour, a habit that had taken its toll on her. The poor kid had lost at least ten pounds from her metabolism having to fuel her touch. “Birdie” was no longer just her name—her appearance had turned more birdlike the thinner she became.

“I wish Nagendra could see this,” she said.

“So do I,” I said.

Nagendra had loved the Mile, often describing it in stained-glass tints of happier days. People were at ease there, he told us. That was why the Commission chose it as the location for the gathering that became the Brick Street riots. They’d hoped the setting would keep everyone calm. Instead, it inspired the poem based on the wardens’ symbolic tricolored cloverleaf pins:

Red for the blood spilling into the streets. White for the bodies and grief no one speaks. Power is golden, but heavy as lead. Remember the brick street; remember the dead.

No one spoke of the dead, but they did remember them. And Nagendra mourned the Mile like a lost loved one.

“He saw it,” Winnie said bitterly. “Why do you think he had nightmares?” She passed us as I waited for Birdie to lose interest in whatever had caught her attention on the other side of the Mile’s rim. “Keep up. It’s easy to get lost here. It’s even easier to fall off.”

“Why is she so angry at us?” Birdie asked me.

“I think she’s in pain.” Both from her mouth and whatever memory seeing her relatives had dredged up.

“Not Winnie,
her
.” Birdie pointed to the front of our convoy, where Nola was walking so quickly, she had to be hoping we couldn’t keep pace. She hadn’t uncrossed her arms since we’d left her shop.

I directed a puff of air toward my sister and Birch, who were struggling with where to step, and the walkway cleared.

Nola sped up.

“What did we do wrong?” Birdie asked.

“I don’t know, Little Bird,” I said. “Winnie said the folks up here don’t like strangers. They’ve been hiding for a long time.”

“Is she scared of us?”

“Maybe.”

“Should we be scared of them?”

“I hope not.”

Home turned out to be in a neighborhood made from several metal-sided dwellings all grouped together along walkways used for streets. More shipping containers, like the shops, only these were predominantly silver. Fading graffiti capped the entrance to the neighborhood with a gateway dedicated to the Medusae. Smaller works on individual units detailed touched families. Brown hair and brown skin decorated one wall, green-eyed pale blondes another. A flash of red and more brown at the end of the row.

Most of the characters showed elemental powers, but an odd few were spectacular anomalies, crackling with electricity or directing symphonies of birds, controlling the weather and creating disks of light for unknown purposes. Here on the Mile there was nothing hidden about being touched; there was no shame in it and no danger of being exposed by those around us. Why didn’t my father bring us here, where we could have been safe? We could have grown up with family and friends. The Commission would have been nothing more than a ghost story told to scare us when we misbehaved. I could have learned to harness my touch where no one would have been afraid to see me use it.

The only danger here was possibly the woman in black. She was still there, still shadowing us, and she wasn’t alone. Others were gathering. Runners were knocking on doors as we passed, whispering and pointing, gawking at our parade. We must have been quite the spectacle in our pajamas: me and Anise in our father’s long shirts, without pants or shoes. Jermay and Birch with the pants and no shirts. Winnie and Birdie wearing things nearly two decades out of style. Klok and his flashes of glistening body armor at the neck of his shirt and past his coat sleeves, looking like an army of one.

Nola stopped at a fused stack of containers with a blue door.

“Don’t do this,” she said, pausing before she opened it.

“Do what?” Anise asked.

“Ask the ghost. She knows what will happen if I open this door.” Nola glared at Winnie, still refusing to speak her name.

“Talking to people who don’t exist is a bad habit,” Winnie said. “It might give people the wrong idea. They might even decide
you’re
too dangerous to keep around.”

Maybe it was due to the infrequent nature of her speech, or maybe it was her natural voice, but Winnie had this way of infusing malice into her words that had nothing to do with her touch. Every inflection was a knife, sharp and ready to cut, splitting her words on the syllables with the precision of a chef slicing muscle from bone.

“I will say one thing, and then you are dead to me.” Nola mimicked Winnie’s tone as best she could, but she was an amateur in the presence of a master.

“I’ve died before; that’s no threat.”

“Have you thought about what this will do to him? His health is worse than you remember. You
don’t
know what life’s been like up here since you left.”

“Would you like to compare scars and see who fared worse?”

Winnie shoved the sleeves of her nightshirt up past her elbows, putting her skin on display. Its usual brown color was mottled through with the evidence of Warden Arcineaux’s experiments. One patch at her wrist looked nearly like cedar bark because there were so many layers of damage, and I knew that these were only the smaller reminders she carried from the Ground Center. There were wider, thicker scars that cut from her collarbone, over her shoulder, and onto her back, and more that I’d barely glimpsed.

Nola wasn’t prepared for any of them. She choked on whatever she’d planned to say. Her face turned sallow, and Winnie fastened her sleeves back in place.

“What happened?” Dev asked, concerned and saddened the way children often are when they’ve seen something horrible. Winnie chose not to answer him.

“Either open the door or I’ll knock, and you can explain to Baba why you didn’t let us in,” she said. She’d lived too long among the wardens to back down when an opponent showed weakness. That was the time to go in for the kill.

Nola pressed the latch release on the door, standing in the opening so we couldn’t pass until she let us.

“Whatever happens is on your head,” she told Winnie.

“Isn’t it always?” Winnie brushed her aside and let herself into the house.

Nola went inside with Dev. Anise followed, taking Birdie with her.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked Birch.

“This is her grandfather’s house,” he said, but Winnie had told us that much.

“You knew about this place?”

“No, just about the blue door. Her parents died right after she was born. Baba raised her and her cousins. Greyor, too, I suppose.”

“Dev and Nola are her cousins?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why does Nola treat her like that? She acts like she hates her.”

“Because Winnie isn’t supposed to be here. She was exiled, and I shouldn’t have told you that. Don’t ask me to share secrets that aren’t mine.”

He slipped through the door before I could press him for more answers.

How could a kid be exiled from anywhere, much less her own home and family? What could she possibly have done?

“I still don’t like him, but he’s got the right idea,” Jermay grumbled. “We should go inside. She’s still there.”

Across the street, the woman in black was still watching us. She stood completely still, allowing her shawl to twirl around her. None of the people who had ventured out of their homes and businesses stood close to her.

“Creepy,” Jermay said.

I agreed but didn’t say it out loud. I was too busy fighting thoughts of torch-bearing mobs chasing us all off the rim, lemming-style. A feeling that only got stronger when Klok beeped a question for me on his screen.

“I could inquire as to their intent. Should I?”

“I think it’s best if we leave them alone for now,” I said.

The last thing we needed was our own Frankenstein’s monster spooking the locals into pulling out their pitchforks.

The inside of Baba’s house looked nothing like its shipping container origins. It was homey, warm, and full of light and life, a welcome change from the cold outside. It reminded me of the living compartments on our train.

The entryway opened into a living room where one wall was nothing but pictures. Some of them didn’t even have frames; they were just taped up in layers like wallpaper, reminding me of the comic-book pages I’d used to paper my room on the train. More photos filled shelves and tables, giving a better idea of just how many people Baba had been responsible for raising.

There was a kitchen to the right, with a window cut into the wall so we could see inside. Two closed doors were set to the back, where extra shipping containers had been soldered together, and a staircase led upward into the stacked containers that formed the upper portions of the house. All around the top of the room ran tiny creeper lights that would fit in the palm of my hand. They scurried up and down the walls, startled into action by the presence of visitors.

Baba had already been summoned from wherever he’d been in the house before we arrived. He was shorter than Dev, even without the stoop that made him lean on a metal crutch, and very frail. He wore a tightly wrapped navy-blue turban and had a beard so thick I couldn’t see his mouth. His eyes likewise disappeared below his brows, but the way he moved, feeling his way forward with his crutch, told me he was blind.

“We have visitors, Baba,” Nola said.

“From the ground?” The old man perked up, hobbling forward until Dev took his arm and led him into the middle of the room. “Did Magnus send someone new? Is there any news?”

“No. They’re not—”

“Magnus was our father’s name,” Anise cut in.

“Was?”

Baba reached for her face; she bent down so that he didn’t have to stretch. He patted her cheeks and nose, ran his hands over her eyelids, felt out the boundaries of her hair.

How strange it must have been to lose a sense so central to his perception. I was being constantly bombarded with new ways to quantify the world around me. Heat signatures. Electromagnetic fields. Vibrations triggered by subatomic particles. All realigning my understanding of space and matter into more than three dimensions. I couldn’t imagine going the other way and losing color or visual texture, the immediate knowledge of size and shape.

“We’re not sure where he is, but it’s possible that he’s dead,” Anise told the old man.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, my dear. Which one are you?”

“Anise.”

“Miss Middle Ground.” He chuckled, like that was meant to be a joke. What it meant to me was that my father had been here and spoken of us.

“We don’t want to upset you or your house,” Anise said. “A friend told us we might find help here.”

My sister glanced at Winnie, who had positioned herself outside the circle surrounding her grandfather. She’d pulled her hair up, instead of letting it hang like usual, and wrapped a scarf over the top to keep it in place, making her look even more like her cousin.