Dust girl

by Sarah Zettel

  “Get in!” hollered Shimmy.

  I dove into the backseat with Jack piling in behind and partly on top of me. We didn’t even have the door shut before Shimmy threw the car into reverse and stomped the accelerator so we tore backward with squealing tires. With another clash of gears, we shot forward. Vigilantes and civilians flashed in and out of the car’s headlights as Shimmy clutched the wheel with both hands and drove hell-for-leather down Constantinople’s main street.

  “What was you thinking going to that rail yard?” she shouted. Jack had managed to get the door shut, which was good because we both spilled against it when the car tipped up onto two wheels as Shimmy cornered tight around the hardware store. We untangled ourselves in time to see the highway swinging into place under the headlights. With another hard bounce, we hit the pavement and raced forward into the dark.

  Jack and I sat up, trying to catch our breath. It was not comfortable knowing that Shimmy had saved our lives. Worse, it was setting in that we were stuck with her in a speeding car.

  “Where’re we going?” Jack asked.

  “Away,” Shimmy snapped.

  I tried to rally some nerve, but found precious little left to work with. “Look, thank you for getting us out of there, but…”

  “You think you want me to stop?” Something small and dark flew toward me. I caught it automatically. It was a compact, the kind that usually held rouge or face powder. “You have a look in there, and then you tell me how much you want to get out of this car, missy.”

  My fingers fumbled with the compact’s catch and finally got it open. There was a mirror under the lid, and I looked into my own hollow eyes, but only for a second. While I watched, the mirror turned solid silver, just like a movie screen. And just like a screen, it showed a moving picture. Except this picture was in color, and clearer than anything I’d ever seen in any theater.

  There was Bull Morgan, sprawled on his face in the shadowy rail yard. A thin, dark trickle of blood ran down his temple. My stomach clenched, and Jack, who had leaned close to look, cussed softly.

  Some vigilantes came around the corner of a boxcar and saw Morgan lying there. They rushed forward and rolled him over. They listened to his chest; they slapped his face and shouted. One of them ran away, probably to get help.

  Morgan didn’t move.

  Slowly, though, the light around the vigilantes and the railroad bull began to brighten. The men didn’t react. They just kept shouting and slapping Morgan. The light was almost as bright as day now, and it coalesced into a ring of candle flames, each as tall as a human being and as white as snow. The candle flames changed, flickering and becoming… people.

  They were beautiful beyond words, beautiful beyond understanding. So beautiful, I wanted to tear out my heart and hand it over, because after seeing them, I surely wouldn’t have any more use for it.

  They spread wings of pure light over Morgan’s body. He groaned, long and low.

  Please. I heard the word, but I don’t know if Morgan actually spoke. I don’t want to die. Please, I ain’t ready.

  “Then live, Samuel Morgan,” said one of the shining, beautiful people. “Live, thou good and faithful servant.”

  “Thy labors are not yet finished,” said another.

  “Rise up, Samuel Morgan,” commanded another.

  “Rise up. Rise up,” they said together, their voices blending in a sonorous chord, like the deepest note on a church organ. I knew that voice-part of it, anyhow. I’d heard it on the wind and in the dark. I’d heard it somewhere else too, but I had too much going on in my head to remember where.

  The men couldn’t see the light or hear the voices. But Bull Morgan could, and his eyes opened wide.

  “My God,” he whispered. “My God.”

  “Rise and walk!” the Shining Ones commanded.

  And Morgan did rise. Not like a normal man trying to stand, but as if someone had shoved a board under him and was now levering him upward. The vigilantes fell back, cursing and swearing. Morgan ignored them. He took two steps forward and went down on both knees before the Shining Ones. In that white light, I could see his upturned face was ashen and his lips were ringed with blue. His eyes were the worst, though. His eyes were turned up, and they didn’t blink. It didn’t matter if his body was moving. His eyes were dead.

  “The girl, Bull Morgan,” said the Shining Ones. “The mixed-blood girl. You know her kind are an abomination.”

  “Yes, I do know it,” whispered Morgan reverently.

  “You will bring her to us. Nothing shall deter you. We grant you clear sight and unfailing strength. No rest, no food will you need for your righteous quest. You will find the abomination, and you will bring her to us so that we may clear away the stain of her from this earth.”

  A terrible peace stole over Morgan’s face, as if everything he held most dear had just been proven true. “It will be as you say.”

  “Go then with all our blessing.”

  Their brilliance faded, blending back into the stark white of the yard floodlights. Morgan climbed to his feet and turned slowly around to face the vigilantes clustered behind him.

  “What’re you mooks standing around here for?” His voice was soft and rough, like he couldn’t get enough breath to raise it to a shout. Maybe he couldn’t. “We got work to do.”

  The mirror went dark.

  “It’s not true,” said Jack. “Nothing they show is true.”

  “It is true.” The compact slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor. I just let it go. I couldn’t explain how I knew it was the truth we’d seen, but I did. It was a feeling deeper than any in the bone. “That was them, wasn’t it?” I asked Shimmy. “The ones like Trixie. Those were the Seelie.”

  “Got to be,” said Shimmy, keeping her eyes on the road.

  “What do they want with me?”

  “They think if you’re dead and your mama’s out of the way, your papa’ll come round and marry their girl, and then they’ll get to take over our share of the territory.”

  While I tried to find some kind of sense past this new roadblock in my head, Jack, as usual, got right down to the practical.

  “Where’re you taking her?” I noticed that he said “her,” not “us.”

  “The city gates,” said Shimmy. “I just hope we can get there fast enough.”

  “Where are these gates?” asked Jack.

  “At the moment, Kansas City.”

  Kansas City. That was east of Slow Run. A long way east. Shimmy was taking me and Jack in the exact opposite of the direction we needed to go to rescue my parents.

  Panic squeezed my stomach, and all at once I couldn’t catch my breath. We were going the wrong way. I couldn’t let her do this. I was already too far away from Mama, and I’d been gone too long. But what was I going to do? I had no way to make Shimmy stop the car, and even if she did and Jack and I could get away from her, what would we do then? It was the middle of the night and the middle of nowhere. We’d show up on the dunes as plain as paint, and Bull Morgan would find us and take us to his new bosses, dead or alive.

  Tears swam in front of my eyes, and I fought to swallow them down. Jack saw, and he covered my hand with his. But because of what had happened in the theater and what we’d seen in the little magic mirror, the two of us sat in the big backseat of that Packard and let Shimmy drive us the wrong way into the dark.

  17

  Rattled Down That Road

  Something nudged my leg. I swatted it away, but it came right back. Nudge, nudge.

  With the fight and the fear all done, and Shimmy not showing signs of taking us off anywhere more terrible than the dust fields east of Constantinople, I’d fallen into a doze and was looking for a way deeper into sleep. But that little nudge kept on, and reluctantly, I opened my eyes.

  The sun was up, and we were still driving. The fields passing by had been ridged and plowed in an effort to stop the blow dirt, in case maybe this year a crop could be saved. Jack leaned against th
e other door and stared out the window on his side, but his hand was nudging his battered black notebook at me. It was open, and the page read:

  She watching us?

  I glanced at Shimmy. She had both hands on the wheel and hummed random bits of tune as she took us down that highway straight toward the orange sunrise. It wasn’t just a song; she was working some kind of wish with it. I couldn’t tell what kind, but I could feel how that constant wishing took up most of her attention.

  My stomach squirmed, trying to get comfortable around this new way of knowing. But the feeling was too lumpy to allow that, and my stomach finally gave it up as a bad job.

  Jack’s pencil stub lay in the fold of his notebook. I picked it up and, moving as carefully as I could, wrote

  Don’t think so

  on the page and pushed the book back to him. He flicked his eyes briefly down to read.

  We went back and forth like that for the next few miles, both pretending to stare out the side windows, letting Shimmy drive us farther away from where we wanted to be, and all the while writing our notes.

  What do we do now?

  What can we? Morgan’s never going to stop looking for us.

  Was it true? In the mirror?

  You saw Morgan in the theater. What’s it matter if the mirror showed true?

  It matters.

  My face wanted to screw up tight when I read that.

  Because they can bring back dead folks?

  Because the mirror can show us stuff. You can work it.

  BAD IDEA. Every time I do magic, they find me.

  Jack read this, made a face, and stared out the window for a while.

  A mule cart took shape in the dusty distance, coming toward us. Shimmy’s hum changed pitch, and the wordless tune slowed down. As we passed the cart, I saw a black man in dungarees slouched in the driver’s seat, with about a ton of baled cotton piled high behind him. We drove by slow and easy, but he didn’t look up. I would have bet all the money I didn’t have that he didn’t even see us.

  Shimmy’s hum picked up tempo and turned all happy again. I pulled Jack’s notebook back toward me.

  You think they’ve got your sister, don’t you?

  Jack read it, and his face went funny and tight.

  Do you?

  I don’t know.

  For a second, I thought he was going to tear the book in two, he looked so angry.

  We have to find out. If they’ve got Hannah somehow like they got your folks, we have to get her away.

  I thought about this. Hannah was dead; how could anybody be holding her prisoner? But then, Bull Morgan was dead and they had him up and walking around. But then, the Seelie were liars. But then, Letitia Hopper was one of them and she’d told me some true things.

  It was just too many thoughts, spinning too fast. I tried to sort out the one that was really important. Jack wanted me to find out whether the Seelie had Hannah like they said they did.

  HOW?

  Jack thought about this.

  Get her talking.

  He drew an arrow to point between Shimmy’s shoulders.

  She already likes you. Find out what you can.

  Then what?

  He glanced at Shimmy to make extra sure she was still watching the road, then wrote four words slowly and carefully.

  We steal this car.

  I nodded once. Jack erased the last line, closed the book, and stashed it in his coat. The movement caught Shimmy’s eye and she glanced back at us. Jack yawned and wiggled like he was trying to scratch an itch between his shoulder blades.

  “Miss Shimmy, are we gonna stop soon? I gotta”-he glanced at me like he didn’t want to offend my delicate sensibilities-“stretch my legs.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “And I’m hungry.”

  Shimmy sighed, short and sharp. “All right, all right. Next roadside stand, we stop. But no funny business. I ain’t got enough juice to be chasin’ the pair of you all over hell and creation, you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” we chorused.

  Shimmy snorted at our docile agreement and kept driving.

  We’d reached a county where the spikes of sunburned cotton stems still stuck up above the dunes. The broken bolls trailed sad streamers of white fluff that combed the blow dirt out of the wind. The road sign said BURDEN. The cluster of gray houses and one lonely gray church were behind us almost before we saw them coming. But on the far side of Burden, Kansas, there was a low white building all on its own. Gas pumps and picnic tables stood watch in front of it, and a peeling sign read FLORA’S.

  Shimmy eased the car to a stop on the patch of dusty dried grass beside the fry shack.

  “Here, young man, you go and make yourself useful.” Shimmy pulled a beaded purse out of her handbag and laid two fifty-cent pieces on Jack’s palm. “You go in and buy us some food, and be sure you bring me all the change.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jack pushed his cap back on his head and put his wide-eyed young boy look on. He walked into the shack, jingling the coins in his pocket the whole way. I could see him through the window as he stepped up to the counter. Somebody had worked hard to keep that glass clean. The fry cook, a skinny man in a white shirt, glowered at Jack, his face as hard and ugly as grease at the bottom of a jar. Jack pushed those coins across the counter, and the fry cook nodded. But then he looked through that sparkling-clean window at me and Shimmy, and his face tightened up into ugly again.

  Shimmy didn’t seem to notice. She just took a white hankie out of her handbag, dusted down a spot on the picnic table, and sat. The fry cook nodded, turned back to his flat top, and began cracking eggs from a big carton onto the grill.

  “Well, I suppose there’s some use having that boy around after all.” Shimmy got out her compact and looked herself up and down in the mirror. But I wasn’t really watching. Shame curdled through me from the cold suspicion on the fry cook’s face. I’d been out in the sun for days now, without a hat or gloves. I looked down at my hands, and to my shock, I barely recognized them, they were so brown. Mama would’ve had a fit. I touched my tangled hair, which had come loose from its braids days ago. If I went in there, would that man let me sit beside Jack on one of his stools? Or would he throw me right out again?

  I didn’t want to think about that. I had enough problems. Starting with how to get Shimmy talking. Jack wanted me to find out about Hannah, but I had a whole heap of my own questions I wanted to tuck into.

  “Shimmy?”

  “Mmm-hmm?” She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with one fingertip.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about the prophecy?”

  “Prophecy?” She snapped the compact shut and stowed it in her handbag. “What prophecy?”

  “See her now, daughter of three worlds,” I recited, trying not to see Letitia Hopper’s bug eyes while I did. “See her now, three roads to choose. Where she goes, where she stays, where she stands, there shall the gates be closed.”

  “Oh, that!” Shimmy laughed, but for the first time her laugh sounded thin, like she was stretching it too far. “That’s been around for donkey’s years. Some fool’ll trot it out every time a half-fairy girl gets herself born, and pretty soon everybody’s in a tizzy.” She held her hand up to her mouth like she was whispering sideways to some other body leaning in close. “ ‘Is it her? Is she the one? Oh, my stars, I think it’s got to be her.’ ” Shimmy laughed again and waved all those invisible folks away. “They even said it about me when I was still an itty-skinny thing. It’s why Their Majesties didn’t want anybody marrying outside the fold. Gets folk all worked up.” She frowned at the shack. Jack was sitting on a stool at the counter now, swinging his legs. “What is takin’ that boy so long?”

  But I wasn’t ready to let it go so easily. I couldn’t forget the turning-key feeling, the way I’d opened the time window to show the railroad work camp, and how I’d felt it again when I opened the doors between the theater and the normal world. “Can all of… us open gates?”

>   “Oh, sure, sure,” Shimmy said breezily. “Ain’t nothin’ to it.”

  Then why couldn’t you get into the Bijoux? But I knew. She couldn’t open that door. That was a door between the regular world and whatever kind of world the Seelie lived in, and Shimmy didn’t have the right kind of magic to get through.

  I was going to ask more questions, but Jack was shouldering open the shack’s screen door. He carried white paper bags filled with fried egg sandwiches and fat slices of apple pie. Jack and I shared a bottle of milk between us, and he’d gotten Shimmy a coffee, which she thanked him all pretty for and drank down like she’d never tasted anything so good.

  Jack watched Shimmy closely as he took another swallow of milk, wiped the bottle rim with his sleeve, and passed it to me. “You know, Miss Shimmy, you must be tired by now. Why don’t you ride shotgun a ways? I can drive.”

  “Nice try, Mr. Jack. But I’d rather keep things as they are. Now”-she picked up her purse-“I’m going to make use of the outhouse. Don’t you let Mr. Jack here get any ideas, Callie. I’ve made sure no one can move that car but me.”

  She left me and Jack sitting there with a mess of paper wrappers and the remains of our breakfast.

  “You think that’s true?” Jack picked at the pie crumbs and kept an eye on the direction Shimmy’d gone.

  “Can’t say.” I frowned at the car. From where we sat, it was just a car. “But it could be.”

  “Might make the rest of this trickier.” Jack measured up the Packard with his eyes. I got the idea he was seeing through the hood to the motor and the wires, figuring how long it would take him to start the engine without the key.

  “Might.” Then I screwed up my nerve to ask something that had been bothering me since Constantinople. “Jack, are you really a Jew?”