Call Forth the Waves (6 page)

Baba tottered my way and searched out my features the same way he had with my sister. His hands smelled like a lifetime of boiled tea and mint muscle cream.

“We don’t know for sure that he’s dead,” I said. My lack of pants was suddenly all I could think about. I tried to pull the bottom hem of my nightshirt down farther. “We actually hoped . . . er . . .
I
hoped that you’d heard from him, or that you might know where we could look.”

“You favor your father,” Baba told me. “In feature and in mindset. He never gave up on a lost cause, either. Is the rest of your family well, at least?”

“Two of our sisters are in custody,” Anise said. “The other we lost, recently.”

“I’m sorry. What of your
extended
family? Were there . . . were there any survivors?” He was fishing for a name, but Winnie tucked herself deeper into the shadows at the room’s edge, near the photographs on the wall.

“This is Jermay and Birch and Klok, and the little one is Birdie,” I said.

Baba moved from person to person. He was cordial with Jermay and Birch, and shocked by Klok’s size and the feel of his armor beneath his coat. Birdie pulled back from his hands and hid behind me.

“Did I shock you, child?” Baba asked. “I’m afraid that our buildings are full of static.”

“She doesn’t like to be touched by strangers,” Anise offered, and he smiled.

“Then she shall remain the mysterious lady in our midst. Much more interesting, I think.” Ironic that the only one Birdie couldn’t really hide from was a man who couldn’t see anyone else.

“Baba!” Dev cut in. “Tell them they can stay. They can, can’t they?”

“Of course. Of course. There are no closed doors for Magnus’s girls here.”

“Winnie, too?” Dev asked eagerly.

“Wi—” Baba startled. He stretched his free hand out, looking for her. Winnie backed up, but Dev wasn’t having it. He pulled her closer.

“Dev, no,” she whispered, but he ignored her. He placed Baba’s hand against her cheek.

Slowly, the old man outlined her face from top to bottom and side to side, rolling her hair between his fingers where her scarf hadn’t contained it. He lingered at the scars on her mouth, trembling when she flinched in pain and cried out.

“You favor your father, too,” he said in a weak voice. He embraced her awkwardly, falling forward off his toes to wrap his arms around her neck. Winnie was so surprised that she didn’t reciprocate at first. He was so fragile looking, she could have shattered him. “I didn’t think I’d live to see this day. Welcome home, child.”

“Baba, you can’t!” Nola had been quiet during her grandfather’s introductions, but his emotional outburst broke her. She snatched his arms away from Winnie’s neck and made sure he couldn’t touch her face again, effectively removing Winnie from sight. “They didn’t use Magnus’s coat to get here; they flew in plain sight, knowing they were being hunted! What if they were followed?”

“We weren’t,” Anise said.

“And we’re supposed to risk the safety of everyone in this outpost on the word of an outsider?”

“Magnus was
not
an outsider, and neither are his daughters. Winifred certainly isn’t.”

“The warning hasn’t changed, Baba.”

“Worrying about portents and signs has cost us enough already. I’ll not throw a gift in the garbage for fear of what’s inside.”

Still shaking, he looped one arm through Winnie’s.

“Do you remember where the kitchen is, child?” he asked. I guess he’d been blind long enough to forget about the window between the kitchen and the living room.

“Y-yes, Baba.”

“Good. I was just about to start breakfast, and I’d appreciate the extra hands.”

“The others saw them,” Nola argued. “They won’t stand for—”

“Bah!” The old man cut her off, stabbing his crutch into the air dismissively. “This much discord before eating isn’t healthy. Too many words and there won’t be room enough for food!”

“This is not going to end well,” Nola warned us. She resumed her crossed-arm stance and stomped into the kitchen.

“Am I the only one who thinks we should watch to make sure she doesn’t slip any mysterious powders into our food?” Birch asked. “Because I’m thinking that’s where we’re headed, based on the face she just made.”

Birdie slipped one hand into mine and hung onto Jermay with the other, implying that she agreed.

“We don’t have anything to worry about.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “Nola’s part of Winnie’s family, and family helps each other, right?”

“Right,” Birdie said.

We were both good enough at performing under pressure to act like we believed that.

CHAPTER 6

The first neighbor knocked before we reached the kitchen.

It was a small room with narrow sides, and the ceiling was low enough that Klok could touch it without straightening his arm. The walls had been painted an orangish color that was too weak to cover the corrugated alloy underneath. Factor in the four-seat table, the stove, and the counters, and we barely all fit with enough space to breathe. How did Baba expect us to sit down?

Dev squeezed through to open the back door for a pinch-faced woman who seemed permanently perched on her toes. Her blue-black hair curled at the bottom of a loose braid that twitched over her shoulder.

“Good morning,” she said absently. She’d stepped forward automatically when the door opened, but couldn’t find a place to stand, so she stayed outside.

“Good morning, Esther,” Baba said. How he’d known it was her, or made it to the door without jostling the rest of us, I couldn’t say, but he was standing beside Dev and I never saw him move. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“No, no, no. Don’t trouble yourself on my account. There seemed to be some unusual commotion on your side of the street, and I wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Never better.” When Baba smiled, his moustache tilted. He moved his head to match.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a look to make sure nothing’s out of place,” Esther offered. A little too fast. A little too sweet.

Voice modulation was a skill I’d learned early on while working at The Show. To pull off a convincingly detached conversation, your body language had to match your words. Esther relied too heavily on Baba’s blindness. She leaned through the opening with a balanced, ball-bearing sway that allowed her to examine the room in all directions without crossing the threshold, and assumed that he was oblivious.

“What is she doing? She’s going to fall flat on her face,” Jermay whispered.

“She’s counting,” I told him. I’d dropped to my “inside” voice, too. The setting seemed to call for it.

Esther’s lips kept moving, even when she wasn’t speaking. She rounded the room several times by sight, only to look away when her eyes met mine on the last pass.

“Just tell her there’s seven of us, so she’ll stop. This is embarrassing.”

“I’m not sure she can see all seven. I think that’s why she keeps checking her count.”

No one was hiding—we wouldn’t have had room if we’d tried—but while Birdie still had me by the hand, her newly developed nervous tic was in full force, leaving her at times translucent or invisible. Esther might have seen her, or she might have seen a ghost. She might have seen nothing more than my hand clutching thin air. There was no way to know. And there was no way to tell if Birdie had hidden any of the rest of us from sight without constantly checking. Little Bird could obscure anything or anyone she touched. Several someones, if we were all in contact, so it was entirely possible that Esther was watching us blink on and off like Christmas lights.

Not the best first impression.

“Then tell her there’s twenty of us, and let her believe it,” Jermay said.

“Not helpful.”

Birdie had been so skittish since we escaped Nye’s Center. I should have asked Klok to carry her on his back. She would have felt safer with him between her and potential danger.

“It’s been a hectic morning, but that’s the price one pays for a full house,” Baba said. “My guests came a long way to get here, so I thought it prudent to let them refuel before formal introductions. But if you have questions, I’m sure they don’t mind your asking.”

Esther stepped back onto the small metal porch beyond the door, seemingly shocked that he knew we were strangers. She gave the room another sweep, lingering on Klok and Winnie. Especially Winnie, the way someone does when they think they’ve recognized someone but aren’t sure. Esther was old enough that she would have been a grown woman when Winnie was exiled, but her features had to have changed since she was a child.

“You’re certain that everything’s all right?” This time Esther’s voice was more sincere than curious. She was also scared. “Nola?”

“We’re . . .” Nola began, but that was the moment Xerxes decided he’d been left in the satchel in the living room for long enough. He shoved past me with no regard for the fact that human legs had bones in them or that those bones couldn’t bend to accommodate him. The little menace had been decidedly belligerent since our return to the Hollow, and shrinking him had made it worse. All his attitude and anger concentrated into something more potent, and he was looking for a chance to spread his wings.

Which he did.

So close to Esther that if she hadn’t already stepped out, he would have probably drawn blood. The razor edge and tip of one wing sliced clean through the doorframe, then he plopped his deceptively massive self down and started growling.

What can I say? Xerxes has no filter. When he doesn’t like someone, it shows. I think his new power source had left him a bit drunk.

“We’re fine.” Nola tried to scoot Xerxes out of the doorway with her foot, but found him impossible to move.

Mean drunk.

“Have you spoken to Nafiza?” To her credit, Esther didn’t let Xerxes intimidate her. Of course, she had no idea that he could have turned her into human sushi if he’d felt like it. I doubted she even knew what he was. She seemed more the “pretend it’s not there and it can’t hurt you” sort of person.

“Not since yesterday,” Baba said.

“And they arrived . . .”

“A few minutes before you did, as I’m
sure
you’re aware. I’d offer you a place at the table, but I don’t think there’s one to spare. So if you don’t mind, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“If you need me, give a shout. Someone’s always close by.”

Esther gave Winnie one last fearful look, set her expression back to its original fake pleasantry, and left.

“Well, that couldn’t have gone any worse.” Nola shut the door and leaned against it, rocking back on her heels with her toes in the air. “I told you that the community wouldn’t tolerate this.”

“Bah!” Baba said. “One woman is hardly the whole community, and she didn’t force her way in brandishing her latest petition of merit, or whatever she’s calling them this week. Esther only thinks she speaks for everyone because she never gives anyone else a chance to say anything. She’s harmless.”

“But what if
they
aren’t?” Nola launched herself off the door without accounting for the lack of space. She was only able to go a few undramatic inches.

“Maybe you’re right about being invisible,” Anise whispered behind me. “She’s talking about us like we aren’t right here.”

“We don’t
know
them, Baba. We don’t
know
that they’re friends. We don’t
know
that they aren’t dangerous.”

“We are,” I said. “I turned a Commission Center to rubble, and I survived. Birch and I took down the armada docked at another Center that was as far off the ground as this place—and
we
survived. Winnie destroyed the warden who was torturing us, and Klok survived an attempted dissection. Anise leveled our house to stop the man who stole our sister. We’re survivors, we’re
very
dangerous, and we’re fugitives, but we are in no way a threat to you or anyone else here.”

“
One of you
is.”

Another loaded glance at Winnie.

That was when the second neighbor knocked. A man this time, tall and broad, with a crooked nose and dark-blond hair that somehow didn’t match the rest of him. Several people who had been across the street were now strolling past the windows on a circuit. By the third and fourth pass, they completely abandoned the idea of subtlety. Two of them stopped and propped their chins on the windowsill so they could see inside.

And I was still barefoot, wearing one of my father’s old shirts without pants. I’d managed to put that fact out of my head until I realized that all the tiny creeper lights from the living room had migrated to the kitchen and turned themselves into my personal spotlight. I angled myself behind Jermay to block the light from shining through the material of my shirt. The lights moved with me, which is exactly the sort of thing nosy snoopers notice.

I’d done a quick-change at The Show for years, never much minding who was backstage with me, but that was a far different scenario than standing half-naked and gawked at in a stranger’s kitchen.

“It’s Ollie,” Nola told her grandfather. “Ollie, please talk some sense into him. He won’t listen to me.”

“Esther’s worried,” Ollie said curtly. He didn’t hide his surprise at how many of us were stuffed inside the room.

“She usually is.” The things Baba couldn’t flick away with a sharp “bah,” he deflected with pleasantry and good humor. “And, as usual, she has no reason to be. If you’d like to come inside and talk, I’m more than happy to have you over
after breakfast
.”

“What happened to your door?” Ollie demanded, scowling at the gash that Xerxes had left in the metal.

“I think the better question is ‘What’s happened to your manners?’” Baba hobbled to the windows and pulled the shades. “This is a kitchen, not an interrogation room, and my guests are not criminals. All of you are behaving dreadfully.”

“With reason. How did they get up here? Who escorted them? Did anyone speak for them? Considering yesterday’s declaration, the timing of their arrival is more than coincidental.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence, and the declaration is beside the point. They requested asylum; that’s all that matters.”

“We need to take precautions.”

“Good idea. You take the rabble-rousers and find some precautions you’re comfortable with. I will take my coffee with two sugars and cream, and my eggs with spinach. Everyone wins.” Baba tried to shoo him far enough back that he could shut the door.

“Refugees weren’t Esther’s only concern.” Ollie took a better look at us, stopping at Winnie. “Is
she
who I think she is?”

“Probably, and it’s no business of yours. If you and the rest of them cannot conduct yourselves civilly, then you are welcome to darken someone else’s door. My blood sugar is too low to deal with this sort of interruption before breakfast!”

Baba turned his head toward Xerxes, who was still on the floor. He’d found something stuck under one of the chairs and was making a lot of noise trying to knock it loose. Baba whistled to get his attention, using a sound cue I’d thought unique to our circus. He never asked anyone for an explanation; he seemed to know what Xerxes was already.

“A little help, if you don’t mind?” he asked. Xerxes trilled, happy to have permission for his bad behavior, and jumped back to his feet. He snapped his wings out to their full span and walked briskly toward Ollie, herding him out the door. Once Ollie was outside, Xerxes spun and kicked the door shut with his back foot. He flicked his feet like he’d just buried something unpleasant.

“Good boy.” Baba petted him on the head.

Xerxes puffed up proudly and stationed himself as a doorstop so that no one from outside could let themselves in again.

“Now, who’s hungry?” Baba asked. “I can’t be the only one.”

“He’ll just go around,” Nola said. A second later someone was at the front of the house, knocking on that door. “See? He’ll do that for two minutes, and then he’ll use the key you hid for emergencies. The one you
told
him how to find. What then? Should we nail the doors shut and glue the windows?”

I thought of reminding her that Bijou was still in the living room and that fire-breathing dragons made great guard dogs, but having him show off and set the house on fire wouldn’t improve anyone’s opinion of us.

“Bah! Let him knock.” The grin on Baba’s face was eerily close to the one that crept across Jermay’s when he was up to no good. It created a disturbing mix of an old man with trickster’s eyes bobbing toward a light switch beside the entrance from the living room. “He can’t very well open the door if the room behind it no longer exists.”

“Winnie, is your grandfather actually insane?” Jermay asked. “Because if he’s about to blow up part of this house, I’d rather take my chances with Esther, Ollie, and the torch-bearing mob.”

“Me, too,” Birch said.

Klok rat-tatted something short that had to be “me, three.”

In my head, I was saying “me, four” while considering the odds of us making it to the Mile’s rim without being caught. So far, Winnie’s assessment of her childhood home was only half-accurate. We didn’t have to worry about Warden Files or the Commission, but at this point, Baba was far more likely to be the bogeyman than Nafiza was.

“Relax,” Winnie told us. She took our silence and blank stares as reason to continue. “He’s just starting a mealtime protocol to make room for the extra bodies at the table. These rooms are modular, like the dining and kitchen compartments on the train. If you need a bigger kitchen, you get it by shrinking the next room over. And since the front door only opens into the living room, all Ollie will see on the other side is a metal wall.”

“Astute as always, Winifred dear.”

“Baba, you can’t!” Nola said. If she’d been a little younger, she would have been jumping up and down.

She seemed as tired of making the complaint as we were of hearing it, and while Baba’s face grew younger as he carried out his plot to thwart the local busybodies, Nola’s aged. She cracked like parched earth broken by the sun and ready to be blown away, exhausted by the constant drain of having to be more mature than her elder.

She took a deep breath and tried to respond more calmly.

“We’ve already had six shorts this month. Two of the rooms upstairs were taken completely off the grid because they kept frying breakers. Do you realize how much power this is going to draw? Because I guarantee you it’s more than the system can handle.”

She looked to us pleadingly, as though we might be able to sway the old man. Maybe she was hoping that Winnie would step in and do exactly that, without her having to ask, but Winnie was high on her grandfather’s acceptance. She nearly tripped over Birch in her rush to be included in his scheming.