Revolution in the Underground Read Online Free Page B

to stir.  A head appeared.
                  “Hi-ya,” he answered, knowing full well that she wanted him to come out of the water.
                  “Meet me on the tree branch?” she asked through inflection.  He was quiet.  Maggie found the sight funny: Ember’s ostensibly bodiless head in the distance, innocently popped up against the backdrop of the placid water, gentle waterfall, and ridge walls.  She chuckled discreetly.  He blinked a few times and then dipped his head under the water again.
                  “Come on!” she said between laughs.  She knelt down and splashed the water playfully with her hand.  She imagined Ember smiling underneath the water, though she knew he probably wasn’t.  “I know you’re there!”  His head popped up again, but this time more slowly.  “Meet me on the tree branch, ok?”
                  “Why?” he asked with more than a touch of indifference.
                  She frowned, tipped her head to the side, and then turned away and headed to a nearby tree.  Ember lifted his arm and skidded the tips of his fingers against the smooth surface of the water.  He slowly breast-stroked to the edge of the basin, as if he had all the time in the world.  He put on his shirt and joined his sister on a sturdy branch of a tall, nearby tree. 
    Climbing trees and balancing on branches were activities that nearly all Erosans mastered at young ages.  Though they were known to be dangerous and though injuries occurred from time to time, it was such a part of daily life that hardly anyone feared it.  Erosans, as a whole, were quite adept at these activities.  In fact, the last time someone fell from a tree and got seriously injured, Ember was 2 years old and Maggie wasn’t even born.  Usually, if one slipped and fell, there were enough nearby branches or ropes to break the fall.  This particular branch, however, was dangerous because it hung over the forest floor beyond any major town structure.  To make matters worse, the branch was a “loner”—Erosan speak for a branch around which there were no other major branches.  “Loners” were dangerous because if one fell from them, one would not stop until one hit the ground.  The branch upon which Maggie was perched was a particularly tenuous “loner,” and she liked it for precisely that reason.
                  As Ember crawled onto the branch, Maggie scooted down to its distal portions.  The branched bowed downward slightly as Ember joined her at the end.  Each of them put an arm around each other, as was traditional in Erosa, to provide extra stabilization.  Though a fall from this height would mean certain death, neither of them was afraid.  Just overhead there was a small hole in the canopy—just large enough to catch the face of the rising sun.
                  “So…” she began.
                  “So…” he parroted.
                  “Shall we talk about it?” she said with a smile.
                  “What’s there to talk about?”  Maggie frowned again.  Ember always had a way of getting under her skin.  She knew that his understated, apathetic responses were just his way of spoiling her bubbly excitement, yet she couldn’t help but get annoyed each and every time.
                  “Come on, don’t do that!”
                  “Do what?”
                  “Act like it’s not a big deal.  Come on, today’s your Evaluation!”  Ember smiled lightly.  Maggie instantly grinned from ear-to-ear in response.  Though these were the sorts of games they played very often, it always made Maggie feel better when he broke.  It reminded her that all was not miserable in Ember’s life—that although he might not be the happiest guy in Erosa, he at least had some inkling of contentedness.  “They’re going to suggest you for