The Breath of Suspension Read Online Free Page A

was easy. I slid down the trunk to the ground. My dimly lit window hung high above me.
    I felt exhilarated. I breathed not air but light. The ground rocked under my feet as if I walked on the surface of Lake Michigan. I ran off through the darkness.
    The chapel corner was deserted, the moon peeking over the ramshackle plastic building that housed the MHD generators. Two huge concrete cherubim with snarling faces and winged wheels supported the chapel. I pulled myself into the shadows by their heads.
    The cold wall behind me sucked my heat. I shifted weight from foot to foot but didn’t dare move much more to stay warm. Footsteps crunched on the gravel walk. I almost turned and ran then. Heart pounding, I stepped forward into the moonlight.
    Laurena turned. “Ah, Brother Vikram.” She stood before me in a long dress, not a school uniform at all, but a real gown flaring out over her hips and tumbling down to the ground. Her hands were clasped like a suppliant’s, her hair loose around her shoulders. For a moment I thought she was there to make mock of me, but she was clearly as nervous as I was.
    “I’m glad you came,” I said.
    “I almost didn’t,” she said. “Aya didn’t want me to. She didn’t say that, but it wasn’t so hard to figure out what she thought.”
    I didn’t ask her if that was why she came. Instead, I took her arm. She pulled her arm back against my hand in acknowledgment of its presence. I felt joy.
    “So what do you think rescuing me on that stupid pier entitles you to?”
    I ignored her tone and paid attention to the pressure of her upper arm. “Just a few words. The ones you wouldn’t give me before.”
    She snorted but said nothing else. We walked along the low wall that tried vainly to stop the encroachments of dune sand and finally stood on the slope overlooking the villages that clung to the edge of Crystal Lake, the dune-trapped body of water behind St. Theda’s. Her family lived down there somewhere, save for her tedious brother Michael, who had moved up to the monastery, where he worked providing his town with electric power. Though surely her ankle had already healed, she still limped.
    “I was in Chicago once,” I said, naming the most romantic place I could think of. It helped that I actually had seen it.
    She took my arm in her turn but did not look at me. Was she seeking, somewhere among the twinkling lights around the lake, the single light of her family’s house? Escape. Laurena Tarchik wanted escape. I was going to give it to her. “The Drowned City. I wish I came from a drowned city. I wish Lake Michigan would pour across the dunes and fill Crystal Lake to overflowing.” She was imagining water pouring in through the windows of her house, drowning her mother as she fixed dinner. I didn’t need to read her mind to know that.
    “The water the towers rise from is usually still. It’s shallow and you can still see the fire hydrants and street signs under it. There’s enough glass left in the buildings that the reflected light of sunset makes the place look inhabited.” We hadn’t actually landed there. Uncle Cosmas had just swung the boat in close on our way to Milwaukee. But I didn’t feel the need to burden Laurena with that kind of detail.
    “I have places to go,” I said. “Boston. Paris. Constantinople. Who knows? Moscow herself.” I whispered the names of those torn and rebuilt cities, capitals of the Orthodox Empire, for their aphrodisiac qualities.
    She sighed. “Anywhere, Vikram. Anywhere but here.”
    I put my arms around her waist and kissed her. She kissed me back, deeply but matter-of-factly, not melting in my arms. I ran one hand down to where her buttocks swelled out and felt her breasts against my chest.
    She ground her hips against me, then pushed me away with suddenly strong arms. “I have to get home.” She said the word with disdain. “They’ll miss me.”
    “When will I see you again?”
    “Use Aya to send me another note.” She