Free When the Wind Blows by James Patterson Page A

And you know… you actually
     don’t know a thing about me,” he said from behind my back. “You really don’t know who I am.”
    I went back into the cat, treated the uterine ligament, then began stitching. Kitty was purring now, which meant she was coming
     to. But she would be scared and hissing up a storm.
    I was a little scared myself, and I didn’t like being that way. Unbidden, a chill came over me. I had left my door open. There
     was a man sitting behind me, and as he had said, I didn’t know a thing about him.
    I turned to face him, but the stool behind me was empty.
    He’d left as silently as he’d come.

Chapter 24
    M AX HAD SLEPT REALLY WELL inside the house, whoever’s house it was, the messy, careless family’s amazing, wonderful, stocked-with-goodies
     house. She was out on the porch at daybreak and the sky was a whole bunch of different shades of pink and red bleeding into
     a swatch of blue.
    “Good morning, forest! Good morning, beautiful sky! Good morning, sunshine! I feel like flying high into the Rockies. Who
     wouldn’t? Maybe I’ll find Matthew today.”
    She stood perfectly balanced on the wooden railing of the deck of the house where she was hiding. She was still wearing the
     sleeveless white cotton tube she had escaped in, and the same ballet slippers. She was edgy with excitement. It was such a
     perfect day for flying.
    Matthew? Matthew? Where the heck are you? Come fly with me? Come on down, Matthew. Please don’t be dead.
    The wind was blowing noisily against the steep hill behind the house and she could feel the cool updraft frisking her legs.
     She raised her wings, just a little.
Testing, one, two, three, four.
    She wanted to check to see how much pain there was, whether or not she could tolerate it; but she already knew she was feeling
     pretty good. She wasn’t hurt too bad. She’d live, at least for the moment.
    Air buffeted against her feathers, making a soft drumming sound, the gentlest timpani. Her heartbeat accelerated in anticipation.
    Max took a deep, sweet breath of the mountain air, of wildflowers, of pine needles, and before she could chicken out, she
     pushed off!
    She was more prepared for the vertigo this time and for the sensation of her stomach actually rising up in her chest. Instinct
     took over. She beat her wings hard against the air.
Flapping counters gravity,
she told herself. She had learned all about flying from Mrs. Beattie at the School. She just wasn’t allowed to fly. Flying
     was forbidden.
    As her upper arms swung out, her shoulder bones rotated easily and naturally in their sockets. The elbow joints automatically
     opened, her wrists extended, and her feathers spread.
    She found herself rising without having to do another thing! It was unbelievably quiet up here. She was riding on the air,
     and it was a hundred times easier than swimming. It was easier than walking.
    Max rose in a thermal vortex. The air seemed alive,
pushing
her upward from below. She knew a little about thermal vortexes. She’d read everything she could at the School, and she retained
     most of what she read. In School terms, she was supposed to be a genius. So was Matthew, of course. So where the heck was
     he?
    She could hear birds chirping, but didn’t see many of them yet. She circled effortlessly as she continued to climb. Flying
     was the best thing. Definitely. No wonder it had been forbidden for her and Matthew.
    Other people would have to be on drugs to experience anything even close to this. Each one of her feathers was wired directly
     into her nervous system, so that her brain knew the exact alignment.
    When she was so high that she could blot out the house with a fingertip, she encountered another small miracle.
    The hill behind the house was connected to other hills, making a ridge that stretched to the ends of her sight line. The wind
     blowing into the ridge had nowhere to go but up, so it formed a standing wave of air along the entire hilly crest.
    Max