Dust City

by Robert Paul Weston

  “Thank you,” says the priest. The giant nods carefully and retreats into the trees.

  At some point during the eulogy, I made up my mind. Here among the cleanness of the trees, the rareness of the air, the sadness of the day, I’ve realized there’s nothing left for me back at St. Remus. Without Jack or Doc, I’m on my own. And without those letters, I’ll go crazy thinking about them. Plus, I’ve got this slim reed of gold in my pocket, something I can pawn off once I run out of loose change. All I need now is the right exit strategy.

  Pebbles and stones are scattered in the grass, maybe shards of crumbling gravestones or leftovers from what David dug up. They’ve given me an idea. It’s probably a stupid one, misguided and half-formed, but it’s all I’ve got.

  As I stand with the others, I let my paw hang down and brush the grass, scooping up the largest rock I can find. When we’re all up and marching back toward the parking lot, I hang back as far as I can, right in line with the rear guard. He’s bumbling along, looking nervously into the trees. That gravedigger must’ve spooked him. It’s rare to see a giant working down here in the City. Most of them live up in Eden.

  Roy’s big white head looms over the rest, but it looks oddly small after the proportion-skewing sight of the giant. I feign a yawn and a stretch, and when I drop my arm I do it quickly, releasing the rock, letting it lob through the air in a lazy arc. Nobody notices. Nobody but me. I’m watching it sail away, end over end, straight for Roy’s head. Now, what exactly am I going to do if—

  “OW!” Roy spins around and slaps one bewildered paw to the base of his skull. The other one jabs backward instinctively, back at the guy behind him—who just happens to be his chief rival, Jim Vulpino. Sly and quick, the fox dodges left.

  But Roy’s even faster. He catches Jimmy on the chin and a pair of his friends rush in to defend him. In a second, the fight snowballs into an all-out campaign of fists and growls.

  The priest flaps up, hovering like a spirit. “Please,” he squawks, “this is hallowed ground!”

  The guard beside me snaps out of his stupor and lumbers into the fight. For a second I’m all alone. I drop to all fours between the chairs, and I stalk for the bushes. Behind me I can hear the snaps of teeth, the dull thuds of knuckles against hairy hides, the shouts of the guards. I can even hear the rising percussion of hearts—in time with the desperate thundering of my own. And miraculously, I make it. I’m into the brush, into the trees. Now it’s merely a matter of time. Waiting to see if they miss me. Could it really be this easy?

  I watch them reload the buses, drenched with sweat and blood, and it isn’t long before everyone’s aboard. The engines start up and the wheels start rolling. Shaking his head, the priest glides off, presumably to the next burial.

  I lope deeper into the thicket, careful to keep low. My ears slick back. My chin skims along a bed of fallen leaves. It’s good to feel how naturally my fingers grip the soil. It’s a throwback to the primordial times, back when forepaws and hind legs were practically indistinguishable. That’s what this is, this stalking through the bush—it’s a blood memory of the species.

  I push in, burying myself deeper and deeper in the leaves and shadows. The whole forest trembles and closes in around my body, welcoming me back.

  9

  APPEASE THE GIANT

  BUT I DON’T GET FAR.

  I’m suddenly pressed to the earth. Something heavy, like a pair of warm cushions, pounds into my back. They come together and pinch my spine. I’m lifted off the ground, suspended in the air like a cub in his mother’s mouth—only this is one hell of a mother.

  “YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.”

  I’m above the trees, face-to-face with the oversized gravedigger. The veins on his tuberous nose are thick and ropy, like the roots of a tree in one of Doc’s paintings. His beard reeks so strongly of tobacco I can feel the nicotine creeping down my throat. When I start choking it only makes him angry. He shakes me, and I flap like a hooked fish.

  “YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ON ONE OF THOSE BUSES.”

  Then I see it—the reason he’s a gravedigger down here in the City instead of living like a prince up in Eden. There’s something wrong with him. There’s a wild, empty look in his eye. He’s not all here. He’s loopy.

  This could be a problem.

  “I HATE WOLVES. WOLVES BITE,” he informs me. He opens his mouth (not a good thing). His teeth are boulders of coal, the cavernous valleys between them filled with the worst imaginable mash. The stench is—well, it’s indescribable. He pulls me closer. “BUT I CAN BITE TOO.”

  “David, no!” Somebody yells up from below. “Put him down, please.” I half-expect the priest, but no—it’s a girl’s voice. A voice like gravel and honey.

  Slowly, both David and I peer down through the hanging branches of a larch tree. There she is, beautiful and improbable. Fiona, Roy Sarlat’s sister. She’s got her camera aimed up at us. “Say cheese!” she says.

  “CHEESE!”

  I feel David’s grip loosen ever so slightly.

  Fiona’s camera clicks and she squints up at me. “David’s not fond of strangers.”

  The giant nods his mountainous head in agreement. “I DON’T LIKE WOLVES.” He turns to me with a passionate frown. “EXCEPT FIONA FRIEND. SHE BRINGS ME TREATS.”

  “I do, don’t I?” she says, speaking as if to a child. “I’m a friend, just like Father Corviday is a friend.” She points up at me. “And that’s our friend, too.”

  “HE IS?”

  “My friend is your friend, right, David?”

  With some effort, David winks one eye shut. He brings me in close to ogle me with the other. “WHAT’S HIS NAME?”

  “Um . . .”

  Great. She doesn’t even remember me. “Henry!” I shout down in a stage whisper.

  “That’s our friend, Henry. Now put him down.”

  David pouts out his lip until it’s bigger than my bunk back at school. He nods thoughtfully. “HENRY FRIEND,” he says. A moment later, I’m safely down with Fiona.

  “Thanks,” I tell her.

  But she ignores me. “David? I brought you something. Look.” She opens a large shoulder bag and retrieves a plastic container filled with a sharp, sweet-smelling chocolate cake. A couple slices are missing. She creaks open the plastic lid. “Ta-da!”

  David’s eyes glaze over and his jaw drops. “THANK YOU!” He stoops down to collect his prize, tossing the whole thing in his mouth like it’s a bonbon. His rotten teeth grind it up, and muddied saliva streams into his beard. I can’t help thinking that, were it not for Fiona’s fortuitous arrival on the scene, that’d be me in there.

  “MMMMM,” says the giant. He turns and galumphs into the trees, vanishing all over again.

  “Thanks.”

  Fiona ignores me. She’s fiddling with the closure of her shoulder bag. “Damn! This is a brand-new purse. It’s what I get for lugging a cake around all day.”

  “I thought you never bothered with the whole ‘say cheese’ thing.”

  She looks at me, puzzled. “What would you have said?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Fiona gives up on the clasp of her purse, letting it flop loose. “Look at this. I totally stretched the leather.”

  “So . . . do you work here? You’re a babysitter for giants? In a graveyard?”

  She laughs. “No, I don’t work here. Why does anybody go to a cemetery?” She points at a modest grave two plots over. It’s a two-foot slab lying flush with the earth. It says:

  Charles Ferdinand Sarlat

  RIP

  A plastic pot of flowers sprouts up in the corner.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” says Fiona. “He was a jerk. Prob’ly where my brother gets it from. When Mom remarried, she made me promise I’d still visit him once a week. A promise is a promise.” She motions with her head into the woods. “Which is why I’m such good ‘friends’ with David. I learned early on that if you happen to be a wolf and you wanna
lope around this place by yourself, you need to appease the giant.” She shrugs. “It’s not a problem. David has simple tastes. Candy or cigarettes. I don’t approve of the latter—and I don’t need to. I’m always able to steal the leftover cake from my work. It’s a bakery.” She looks into the trees and laughs. “Nobody understands why I never get fat.”

  The whole time, she’s hardly looked at me. Me, on the other hand—I’m staring. She ties the closure of her purse into a makeshift clasp and finally pays me some attention. She studies my face, leaning her head sideways, all the way to her shoulder. “We’ve met, right? You look kind of familiar.”

  “Actually . . .” Only I trail off. I’m not terribly keen to remind her that I’m the guy her brother beat up about ten seconds after we (almost) shook hands.

  Before I can make up a story, though, she leans in and reads the insignias sewed into my uniform. “Wait a sec,” she says. “You’re from St. Remus?” She looks around. “Didn’t they just leave? I saw my brother, getting himself into trouble like always.” She squints at me. “I don’t get it. Why’re you still here?”

  “I didn’t want to go back.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware that was their policy.”

  “It’s easier than you think,” I say, feigning the confidence of a master escape artist. “Everybody’s doing it.”

  Surprisingly, she nods in agreement. “I’ve lost count of how many time’s Roy showed up at my window in the middle of the night.” She shakes her head, inhaling fretfully through her snout. “Enjoy it while you can. They always catch you in the end. The police, I mean.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “My plan . . .”

  “The reason you escaped?” She smiles. Her teeth are nothing like Roy’s, which have probably been knocked out and rearranged more times than he can remember. Fiona’s teeth, however, are smooth and pristine and gleaming white. “You got a girl on the outside, right?”

  Sure, I think. You’re pretty much it. But instead I say, “I need to find a friend of mine.”

  I can’t help but wonder if she’s scared of me, if she sees me as an escaped thug. While I’m wondering, she turns and starts off toward the gates. “Which way are you headed?”

  I lope after her. “Toward Elvenburg, I think.”

  “Convenient. I’m going the same way myself. We’ll take the streetcar together.”

  She leads me off and I can’t help but prick up my ears. The noises seep through the trees. I can hear them. The sound of the city, faint but relentless: the bellow of factories; the trundle of streetcars; the clatter of shoes, boots, and hooves against endless sidewalks; the chirm of countless voices of every pitch and intonation.

  Sounds I haven’t heard in a long time.

  PART TWO

  THE CITY

  10

  AN AUDIENCE OF ONE

  BEING CLOISTERED IN ST. REMUS FOR SO LONG, I’D FORGOTTEN WHAT A madhouse the City can be. All around us, streets teem with folks of every stripe: plodding hedgehogs, witless mules, dripping water nixies, pudgy pigs, pensive elves, sloe-eyed cats, crafty humans, limp-legged frogs, watchful ravens, and on and on and on. On the streetcar, we’re crammed in like herring, packed and pickled in a rolling jar. The city’s a fun house, an unruly parade, a circus—with Eden hovering high above like a silent ringmaster.

  “So tell me again about this friend of yours?”

  “His name’s Jack.”

  Fiona looks at me sideways. “The little hominid?” I wonder if maybe she’s as prejudiced as her brother, but then she chuckles. “Roy hates that kid.”

  “Roy hates everybody. He can be a jerk sometimes. A lot of the time.”

  “I know,” she says and then falls silent. I’ve probably gone and offended her. “Sometimes,” she says, “like with me and Mom, he can be so sweet.” She looks out the window, and since I can’t think of what to say next, we ride in silence.

  Outside, the city rolls past. Tubes of neon wink at us, even though it’s not yet dusk. The buildings are garnished heavily with signs and slogans. One massive billboard for Nimbus beams down. It’s a collage of scientific apparatuses—test tubes, beakers, microscopes—all overshadowed by a ropy helix of fairydust, rising up like a mist. In the upper corners, the faces of the Nimbus brothers smile reassuringly down from their experiments. The caption reads, Coming Soon: A New Way to Enchantment! It’s followed by a list of upcoming products. Theurgicol. Charmex. Enchanterin. Faericetomol . . .

  “Almost there,” says Fiona. We come to a ringing halt and the doors slap open. Outside, the Willow Street Bridge takes me by surprise. It rises up right beside us, blotting out the sky. More than half the streetcar empties and Fiona, granted a little more room, backs away from me. “One or two more stops,” she says.

  “Uh huh . . .” We’re moving under the bridge, right where the accident happened.

  “This is you.” She points to the bright green arch that marks the border of Elvenburg. As the streetcar slows, she says, “It was nice to see you again.”

  “Listen,” I say. “I haven’t been out in the open for a while, so um—well, obviously I don’t know too many folks, so . . .” I trail off, hoping she’ll pick up the thread.

  “You do realize you’re about to miss your stop.”

  I hadn’t even noticed the driver putting on the brakes. “Maybe we could hang out sometime. Like before the police catch up with me.”

  Fiona sighs. “They always do, you know.” She opens her bag and finds a pen and a crumpled napkin. Propping one foot on the wall, she uses her knee for a writing surface. She passes me the napkin just as the doors fold open. “That’s where you can reach me.”

  I step backward and stumble onto the pavement. The doors clap shut and the streetcar whines away, the wires above crackling with electricity. I watch until it rounds the corner, then turn to face the enormous green arches of Elvenburg.

  Every inch of the sidewalk is so well trodden that the whole neighborhood feels worn down like the carpets of an old hotel. There are folks everywhere—elves for the most part, but every other species of citizen is well represented. All of them jostle to out step their neighbors, elbowing for bargains in the market, or merely shoving folks out of the way just for kicks. The address on Jack’s note says: 1020 PINE STREET, APT. 7B.

  I try asking for directions from a pig and her son, but she tugs the little guy away so fiercely she nearly tears his arm off. The two of them duck into a shop just to avoid me. Old habits die hard, I guess. Next, I try a wearied old mule, clopping up from the opposite direction. With a shaky forehoof, he points me across the street.

  “Pine Street” is barely more than an alcove, a narrow recess that widens (somewhat) into a wretched alleyway. I poke my head out of the shadows again to check the sign. Pine Street it is. I’m in the right place, only there certainly aren’t any pine trees.

  Moving farther in, I’m forced to duck my head to avoid the fire escapes, clawing down with rusty fingers. High above, strings of laundry hang like a million wistful grins.

  “Psst!”

  I look to the left, but there’s only an overflowing Dumpster. I’d be surprised if it’d ever been emptied. No garbage truck could squeeze into a clotted alleyway like this one.

  “Hey, c’mere.”

  A thin gray fox steps out of the shadows. He’s wearing a ratty anorak with a woolly hat pulled down over his brow, but it doesn’t hide his distinctive face. Two streaks of black run up either side, from his snout to the tips of his ears. His eyes are sodium-yellow in the lamplight, sparkling with flecks of violet. In the dimness of the alley, they flash like jewels.

  “You wanna buy some dust?”

  “What?” I shake my head, trying to stifle my surprise.

  “Dust,” he says. “Good stuff.” His breath hits me, smelling of bile, as if he hasn’t eaten in days. “Old Jerry’s got the finest of the fine.”

  I look down the alleyway. Not much
farther to the end. Number 1020 must be down there somewhere, so I wave him off. “No, thanks,” I say, turning to go.

  The fox pushes off the wall and shuffles after me. “I’m talking about the real deal. My stuff comes direct from Dockside, direct from them nixies.”

  “I’m meeting somebody.” I keep going but it’s pointless—Pine Street is a dead end, and Old Jerry is with me now, matching my lope. “This is old-time dust. Just like them fairies could getcha. I’m talkin’ about the real deal—real magic. None of that watered down Nimbus junk. This is the stuff that can fulfill destinies . . . if you know what I mean.”

  I keep my eyes glued straight ahead.

  “Who you meeting down here anyway? Ain’t nobody nice lives down here. Maybe a big, young guy like you—maybe you think you’re fine, but take it from Old Jerry, nobody nice lives down thataway. You’s gonna need something to—y’know, lift the spirits. A set of horns, maybe. Jerry can do that. How’d you like to breathe some fire? That’d be nice, huh? Come in handy. Jerry can do that too.”

  I keep on loping, scanning the sooty walls for signs, numbers, anything.

  “C’mon!” His voice raises a pitch, sharpened by a whine. “Give Old Jerry a break.”

  “I said no. Thank you.”

  “Don’t be like that.” He shakes his head woefully. “Old Jerry ain’t got no place to go. Holes in m’clothes and in m’shoes.” He kicks up a foot to show me. Indeed, the sole’s coming loose, flapping like a tongue on a hot summer’s day. “All I got is a little dust here, that’s all. Nothing wrong with tryin’ to make a living. Times’er rough, y’know? Maybe a strong, young guy like you—maybe you can’t tell they’re rough, but take it from Old Jerry, they are. They most definitely are.”

  We’re getting to the end of the alleyway now. Still no signs, nothing to tell me where I am. “Sorry,” I say, “never touch the stuff.”

  A vulpine grin slides up the side of his face, showing off a row of surprisingly white teeth. “Don’t lie to Old Jerry. We all need a little dust now and then. Just natural. And this is nixiedust we’re talking about. Old-time dust. Fulfills your destiny.” He taps his chest. “Whatever you want in here.”