Call Forth the Waves by L. J. Hatton Page A

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.
    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.