“I heard you scream,” Jack answers me. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” His eyes are wild as he glances back and forth among me, the path ahead of us, and the wolf behind us.
I almost laugh out loud. As if that creature could hurt me! Damage me, yes. But hurt me? No matter what he does to me, I can be fixed, put back together. Jack cannot.
The wolf is getting closer. He is on our heels and I am sure he will step on the hem of my dress, and Jack and I will both fall forward, and he will jump on our backs. But instead he brushes past us. He runs ahead before stopping and turning back, blocking our path.
“Did you really think you could outrun me?” he taunts. “I was made for running, you fools.” He paces back and forth in front of us. Jack squeezes my hand tighter for a second then lets it go, gripping his ax with both hands.
“Yes, that was rather unpleasant,” the wolf says, eyeing it. “But even with that, you are no match for me, whelp.”
Without warning, Jack rushes forward, screaming, holding the axe above his head.
“No! Stop!” I yell to him, but he either does not hear me or does not listen.
He swings his ax in an almost graceful arc toward the wolf’s head. The wolf leaps toward him, meeting him in the air, his paws slamming into Jack’s chest. They both tumble to the ground, and the ax goes flying. Jack lands on his back, and I cannot see whether or not he is hurt.
I start to run to him but the wolf is up already, padding toward me. His head is low and his ears are pinned back. His teeth are bared. They are yellow, and sharp.
“I’ve had quite enough chase now,” he growls. I glance at Jack and see blood seeping from the back of his head, forming a puddle beneath him. I turn back to the wolf. My chest tightens. I clench my fists. There is a pounding in my head and I narrow my eyes at the creature in front of me.
“Come and get me, big bad wolf.”
As he jumps toward me, I crouch down and block my face and chest with my arms. His wet, razor-sharp teeth sink into the skin on my forearm. I wonder if he notices that I do not scream. That I do not bleed. Then his teeth hit metal.
It is a loud, awful sound when they crack and break. He falls to the forest floor whimpering into his paws.
“What have you done to me?” He growls and glares at me with hate-filled eyes. I step backward, not foolish enough to turn my back on him even for a moment. He stays crouched low to the ground but slinks forward.
I keep stepping back, my eyes locked on his, until I feel my heel kick into the thing I need. Jack’s ax. When I start to reach for it, the wolf’s eyes widen. He must see it, too.
He runs forward, swiping his paw against my leg. His claws cut through my dress and my skin and I lose my balance. I fall down onto the ax, the wooden handle digging into my back. His heavy paws land on my shoulders, pinning me down. Blood drips from his gums, down his broken teeth, and falls onto my face. His breath smells like death. He shoves his wet nose into my hair and breathes deeply.
“Ahh,” he says with a long sigh. “Human hair. That’s how you fooled me. Well, metal-girl, I may not be able to eat you, but I will rip you up so that no one will ever recognize you again. Then, I will go eat your friend.”
He lifts one paw, ready to slice through my face, but it seems he has already forgotten that I am no human girl. I ball up my fist, my heavy metal fist, and slam it into the side of his big, furry head. He topples onto his side, and I roll up onto mine. I reach behind me and grab Jack’s ax. I jump to my feet, looking down at the wolf. Without a moment’s hesitation I swiftly swing the ax over my head, then down through the wolf’s neck as smoothly as Jack sliced into the fallen log. His tongue hangs out of his mouth as his head slides away from his body. His blood soaks into the dark brown earth.
The ax drops from my hand as I run to Jack. I kneel beside him and run my cool palm over his face. His blue eyes flutter open and I let out a sigh of relief. He looks me over and his eyebrows draw together.
“Look at you,” he says. He looks confused, like he has forgotten where we are and what has happened. “You’re all torn up.”
I look at my arms. My protective skin is ripped open and the metal underneath shines through. I wipe the wolf’s blood onto my skirt.
Jack starts to sit up and I see blood in his dark blond hair.
“So are you,” I tell him, helping him to stand up. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He rubs the back of his head and looks down at the blood on his hand. “I must have hit a rock. I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks. Don’t worry,” he says, looking at me with real concern in his bright eyes. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but I’ll be fine.” He wipes the blood on the back of his pants, then reaches up and touches my arm. I resist the urge to pull it away. He knows what I am; there is no point in covering it up now.
He touches my torn skin. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” I say softly.
“Well, I’m sorry anyway.” He looks down at his feet. “I guess I wasn’t much of a white knight. You ended up having to rescue me.”
I smile at him. He smiles back, creating a dimple in one of his cheeks. Just one. The imbalance of it makes him look that much sweeter. Then he bends down and kisses me. I startle, separating us for a moment. His cheeks start to turn pink, but I lean in and kiss him back before he pulls away.
His lips are warm and soft and I cannot possibly deny the feelings that go shooting through my body.
I lean into him and he wraps his arms around me. I breathe him in. Pine is my new favorite scent. We stay that way for a while…I don’t know how long. I revel in everything I am feeling, everything I thought I was unable to feel. The excitement. The joy of being in this moment with Jack.
Most importantly, I revel in the love I feel.
Love.
I realize I love the woodcutter’s son. I think, perhaps, I have for quite some time. I remember every time he has smiled at me, and how it made me feel better, made me feel warm, no matter what else was happening.
It feels wonderful to quit denying that I am feeling emotions. To stop denying that I have them, no matter how impossible it seemed before.
I am wrapped in warmth when small, cold drops of water hit my face. The rain Rebecca had been worried about has finally arrived.
My mother. My grandmother. I had forgotten about them.
I pull away from Jack, instantly wishing I did not have to. “Grandmother! We need to find her.”
Jack lifts my hood over my head. His face is flushed when he takes my hand. We race through the rain back to Grandmother’s cottage. I put my fingers to my lips, silencing Jack, and listen. I can hear rustling coming from her room. I run.
We find her locked in her bedroom closet. Her cotton nightgown is wrinkled and her eyes have dark circles under them. She is scared, but unharmed. She cries when she sees me. I hold her frail body close to me and stroke her soft gray hair.
Eventually we convince her that we are okay, but that we need to get home. The sun is moving back toward the horizon, and my mother will surely be starting to worry. She makes us take some of the food from the basket Mother sent me with, and sends us off with a kiss on both of our foreheads.
Jack walks me home, never letting go of my hand. When we reach my house, he kisses me again and promises to come visit me tomorrow. Then he runs down the path back to his own home.
The scent of cinnamon still lingers from this morning. My mother is staring out the window, a look of surprise on her face. I grin at her, and then I run to meet her.
She comes out the front door and sees my arms.
“Rose,” she cries. “What happened to you?”
I do not stop to explain. I practically knock her over when I run into her, wrapping my arms around her waist. She smells like home. Our home. I want to tell her everything that has happened and how happy I am to be back with her.
I bury my head into her shoulder and I start to cry. Big wet tears fall out of my eyes and soak into her cotton dres
s. “Rose?” She sounds scared. She has never seen me cry. How could she? I never have.
“Are you hurt?”
A small laugh escapes my lips at her question.
“No, Mother. I am not hurt.” I hold her tighter, thankful for her concern. Thankful for her love.
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“Nothing, Mother,” I tell her. “Nothing is wrong. I…I am just so happy to be home.” I look up at her and say, “I love you.”
Her eyes widen, for just a second, then her face melts and she pulls me to her and holds me tight.
She starts to cry too. She strokes my curls and holds me tight. “I love you, too, Rose. I love you, too.
It’s Only Rust
Jason Keith
“It’s only rust!”
“Huh?”
“I said, it’s only rust!”
Elise shakes her head as if the action will place all her scattered thoughts in a convenient order. It had been a while since anything in her life made sense. She pulls down her breathing mask and looks at Marco, standing a few feet to her right. He had lowered his needle gun and pulled his own mask down to yell at her over the cacophony of the dry dock. The tight curls of his black hair, covered in red rust chips and dust, combined with the clean, light-brown skin where the mask had covered his mouth, looks almost clownish.
“What are you talking about?” She imagines she looks even more ridiculous with her pale skin exposed. Marco tries wiping off his goggles to see better but quickly gives up, propping them on top of his head instead. She laughs.
“I was saying,” he explains in a more normal voice now that he has her attention, though he still needs to speak up to be heard over all the other work going on around them. “It’s only rust. You were standing there staring at it like it was the worst thing in the world. Besides, all that daydreaming is going to get you cracked in the back of the legs by Tartar.”
There had been a lot of changes to the law in South Africa since the World Labor Riots nearly a hundred years ago. But managers could still dock your pay and motivate you with a club if they were so inclined. Tartar liked to do both.
“Like he could get his big butt down here,” she says with a shrug. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about other stuff. And it’s not only rust. Rust can sink a ship.”
“True enough.” Marco smiles, his teeth unusually bright and white.
Damn he has good teeth. A nice, square jaw. Probably got it from his father.
“But rust comes off. When it does, these old bones will be like new again.” He puts his hand on the bulkhead almost reverently. “She’ll reborn. Resurrected.”
Elise lifts her own goggles and stares at the wall. The spot she has been working on is as clean and smooth as the day it was welded into place. She and Marco have been partners for nearly a month. He does most of the talking during their limited chances for conversation, but she doesn’t mind. She enjoys listening and it saves her from having to talk about herself. And she likes him. He never slows down or lets up. She doesn’t have to wait for him or pretend to work slower. Despite the torture he receives at the hands of the foremen—and even other workers—for his mixed blood, he always has a good attitude. Nothing gets to him.
They’re a good team, too. He uses his needle gun, hissing with released steam pressure and machine gun-like, tooth-jarring needles, to break down the buildup of rust on the old warship. She sands and smoothes the areas after him. She’s about to speak when a shout from behind interrupts her.
“You down there! Get to work, you lazy dregs!” Tartar is looking down the ladder into the cargo hold. Too lazy to climb down the ladder—and probably too fat even if he wanted to—he looks ridiculous with his combed-over hair hanging a good foot from the top of his head. He does no work himself other than beating workers into greater productivity. Although the munitions hold is sweltering, it’s a good place to work undisturbed and unmolested. Elise and Marco laugh, which makes Tartar even more red-faced than he already is. Marco yells over his sputtering. “Right! Right! We’re on it!”
“You better be! I’ll dock you a half-day’s wages if I see anymore milling about wasting steam!”
Marco casts a rolling-eyes glance at Elise before he pulls down his goggles and sets his mask into place. He waits for Elise to do the same before lifting his needle gun, and once again, vibrations echo throughout the warship’s hold.
“So what were you yammering about earlier?” Elise’s mouth is half-full with the cheese sandwich she brought for the quick lunch break they are allowed. When the labor riots in England sparked a near-worldwide revolt, the result was bloody and expensive. Most governments quickly made capitulations to workers to prevent union formations and slower production. Children under twelve could no longer work in factories or at other dangerous jobs. Days were limited to ten hours, with a lunch break and Sundays off. But women still earned a third less wages than men. Elise wasn’t much more welcomed than Marco. Her willingness to take on arduous duty in the shipyard for less money was taking away the job of another man.
“Can you be more specific? I’m a professional yammerer.”
“About all the great work we’re doing resurrecting old tubs.” They’re sitting on the deck of the ship, their legs hanging over the side. She kicks at his foot.
Marco pops a piece of honeydew into his mouth and stands while scanning the harbor. He points at a large steamship exiting past the sea wall. Its stacks belch thick, black smoke from the burning coal that creates the steam pushing it out to sea.
“The Cape Town. She was in Dry Dock five. Government bought her from Russia. Came in after a reef ripped a hole in her. Boilers hadn’t worked right for years because they hadn’t seen maintenance since she was built fifteen years ago. Her hull was nearly eaten through with rust. Now look at her.”
Elise keeps her eyes on Marco as he speaks.
“Just like new. Like nothing was ever wrong with her. She just needed some tenderness. To have her rust knocked off.”
“Too bad it’s not so easy for people.” Elise licks her fingers and holds up her hand; he pulls her up. She rubs at the back of her neck. Sweat and paint chips make the skin under her collar itch.
“The only thing that stops people from changing is that they can’t let go of the past. They want to hold onto all the stuff they can’t change. Especially the garbage. May as well forget it and move on.”
“How Zen of you.”
He laughs, and she thinks about how beautiful that smile is. Too bad things can’t be different. His life is hard enough without her complicating it. She shakes her head and laughs to herself. He’s right. She can’t let go.
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s get back to work before—”
“Hey, you two!” Tartar is standing outside the temporary management office, a shed erected on the main deck. “Your break has been over for two minutes! Get your asses back to work before I dock your pay!”
“We do fifty times more work than any of the other dregs,” Marco responds. “You can afford to spare us two extra minutes.”
“Your mouth just cost you a half-day’s pay, half-breed. Open it again if you want to lose the rest.”
Marco presses his lips together.
“That’s what I thought. You’re lucky your father was the white one or you’d be out digging in the diamond pits, begging on the good will of the owners, and eating the scraps of buzzards!”
Marco’s fists clench.
Elise pushes him ahead of her as Tartar slams the office door. “Come on. You can’t lose this job, and beating him won’t change him.”
“Would make me feel better, though.”
“Who are you? And what have you done with my Zen master?”
Marco casts her a wry, sideways glance and lets her guide him back to the hold. When they get to the ladder, she stops. “Hey, you mind going down and prepping the equipment? I’m going to get some water for my canteen. Want me to fill yours?”
> “Sure. No problem. And no, I’m fine.”
Elise pats him on the shoulder as he climbs down. Once out of sight, she turns and walks with purpose toward the foreman’s office. She opens the door and quickly slips inside. Before the door closes she has already scanned the room, noted the other two desks are empty and that she and Tartar are alone.
He sits behind his desk, his chair tilted back, the flesh from his sides hanging over the armrests. The piece of furniture looks like it may collapse at any moment. His coveralls are stained on the front with juice from the giant half-eaten roast beef sandwich in front of him. He looks up in surprise with his thumb in his mouth, sucking off the juice from the meat.
“What’s this? Get your scrawny ass back to—” His eyes bulge with horror when Elise’s knife presses against his throat. One moment, the girl is walking toward him; in less than a blink, she is squatting on the edge of the desk with her knees in his gut. Too afraid the movement of swallowing would cut his throat on the girl’s blade, a piece of meat he had been chewing hangs from his lips.
“Listen well, you disgusting, fat pile of pig crap,” Elise hisses into his ear. The smell of meat and body odor makes her want to vomit. “Marco will not lose half a day’s wages. In fact, you’ll accidentally pay him double. And if you ever speak to him or me again, I will cut out your tongue and tie you to the rocks at low tide with your own intestines. Do we have an understanding?”
She pulls back and looks him in the eyes. She moves the blade just a quiver and he winces. Lifting it, she shows him the thin line of blood along the blade.
“Do. You. Under. Stand?”
He nods vigorously. The piece of meat flaps up and down like a thirsty dog’s tongue.
“Say the words.”
“I understand.” A muffled squeak explodes from around his roasted gag.
“Good.” She slides back and spins around, the knife disappearing into the folds of her coveralls. She pauses at the door for a moment and looks back at his staring, bulging eyes and gaping, meat-filled mouth. “It would be in your best interests to keep this conversation private. The shipyard is a dangerous place. I would hate to see any unfortunate accidents happen.” The man lets out a small groan of terror, his hands shaking on the edge of the desk. Her lip curls with disgust as she exits the shed and closes the door quietly.
Real Girls Don't Rust Page 13
