Dust Girl: The American Fairy Trilogy Book 1
Page 21
White clouds billowed all around us. Not steam clouds. Clouds. Overhead stretched the sparkling white river of the Milky Way. Down below, the earth spread out like a carpet, all green and brown in the sunrise.
I let the shade drop into place and fell back against the plush seat.
“What did you see?” asked Jack, but I just shook my head. He did not want to know.
“Can you wish us outta here, Callie?”
I swallowed, and I stretched out my senses, but there was no feeling. No, that wasn’t right. There was plenty of feeling, but it was beyond me. It was like trying to wrap my hand around the wind. These people were past my touching, past anybody’s touching. Or maybe it was because I couldn’t feel my own self anymore. Maybe if I could have still gotten to my pain or my fear, I would have found my magic, but that was all gone.
I shook my head again. No wish was going to get us off this train. I reached for Jack’s hand. It was cold. But then, so was mine.
I don’t know how long that ride took. Maybe it took no time at all. But it didn’t feel like the timelessness of Fairyland. There was nothing frenetic about this, nothing hidden under any veil. The train held a calm like earth and stone.
At last, Daddy Joe the porter came up the aisle. “Union Station!” he called. “Union Station, last stop! All out at Union Station! All connecting trains at Union Station!”
The rocking and rattling slowed. The brakes shrieked and the steam whooshed out. Light streamed in around the shades. People got to their feet. No one reached for any luggage. They just moved into the aisles and climbed down the stairs.
I looked at Jack. Jack looked at me. “I guess we gotta,” he whispered. I nodded.
We joined the queue of passengers waiting to exit the car. I tried to be afraid for Jack’s sake, and for my own, because if I was afraid, maybe I wasn’t like … like the others.
We stepped out of the car into the biggest, grandest station I’d ever seen, even in the movies. It was built with a hundred different shades of marble, white and black and green and pink, all laid out in fine and fancy patterns. Everything was edged with gold, and the arched dome ceiling was aquamarine and filled with stars. Except for the tunnel the train had come through, there were only two exits, one marked NORTHBOUND TRAINS and the other SOUTHBOUND TRAINS.
The platform was crowded with people. Like the train passengers, they were all ages and all colors. They waved and shouted to the disembarking passengers. Couples embraced and kissed. Parents hugged their children and hoisted little ones up on their shoulders. Friends clasped hands and cried joyful tears. But there were cops too, in clean blue uniforms, who, all silent and solemn, linked arms with some of the passengers and walked them toward the stairs marked SOUTHBOUND.
Jack and I stared around. I had no idea what to do or where to go. Then I turned to see Daddy Joe coming down the stairs, with Morgan tucked under one arm. Morgan kicked and waved his fists, but this didn’t seem to bother the porter at all.
“I … uh … Mr. Joe, what do we do?” I asked.
“Sorry. Not for me to say. I got to see this one delivered.” Daddy Joe shook Morgan until his teeth rattled. “Besides, this young man’s got somebody waiting on him.”
“Jacob!”
She came pushing through the crowd. I recognized her right off. She had Jack’s blue eyes and the same brown hair, although hers was long and all in curls.
“Hannah!” Jack cried. “Hannah!”
The little girl leapt into Jack’s arms, and he caught her and whirled her around so easily I knew they’d done it a thousand times before.
I grinned up at Daddy Joe. He touched his hat brim.
“Please,” whispered Morgan from under the porter’s arm. “Please, help me.”
“You remember you said that,” rumbled Daddy Joe. “Maybe next time it’ll go better. ’Scuse me, Calliope.”
Daddy Joe slung Morgan over his shoulder and marched away down the southbound stairs.
Jack hadn’t noticed any of this, of course. He was on his knees in front of his little sister. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m so sorry. It was all my fault. Can you forgive me?”
But she leaned forward and rubbed her nose against his. “Silly!” she cried. “It wasn’t your fault. Not ever. And I’m okay now.”
“Are you really?”
She nodded. “Truly. And I do forgive you for not playing dolls with me.”
Jack barked out a laugh, and the two of them hugged for a long time.
“I’ve been awful worried about you, though,” said Hannah solemnly when she was finally able to pull away from her brother. “You wouldn’t let go of me, and they were using it to hurt you.” She laid her hand over his heart. “You won’t let them do that anymore, will you, Jacob? Please.”
“I won’t, Hannah. I promise. But …”
“But what?”
“I’m … I’m dead, aren’t I?”
She laughed. “Not yet, Jacob. Not you.”
They both turned to look at me. That huge, bustling station suddenly felt very small and very still. I reached my hand to the loose spot on my scalp and let it fall down again.
“Callie?” Jack whispered.
“That’s up to her,” said Hannah.
“What do you mean?” The words crawled awkwardly out of me.
Jack’s little sister didn’t have eyes in her face, but she didn’t have empty holes either. Her eyes were like Baya’s, filled with night and stars, and she was studying me, not hard, but kindly, like she just wanted to know me better. “Sometimes people who make it this far have to make a decision.”
I looked from the northbound stairs to the southbound, and Hannah Hollander laughed hard.
“Not that kind of decision! That’s made way before any of us get here. No. You’ve got to decide whether to go back or not.”
The train was still behind me. I could hear the clink of cooling metal. The crowd had cleared out. The Hollands—Hollanders—and I stood alone on the platform.
“What about my grandparents, my mother’s parents?”
“They weren’t sure you’d want to see them, but they’re waiting for you that way.” Hannah waved toward the northbound stairs.
“My folks aren’t here, are they?”
“Nope. They’re still in the lands of the living.”
“And Jack?”
Hannah’s smile drooped slowly, and Jack took her hand. “Whatever you do, Callie, Jacob’s got a long way to go yet.”
But I didn’t have to go so far. Not if I didn’t want to.
I looked at Hannah and saw how she shone all happy. I felt a kind of peace settling around me. I thought about the way the faces of the people lit up as they climbed the stairs with their friends and family. I thought about seeing Grandma and Grandpa again, about being able to forgive and just be family, real family, without any schemes or tricks or traps.
But my parents weren’t here. Mama and, yes, Papa were out in the wide, living worlds somewhere. Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t help them. The king and queen of the Midnight Throne wouldn’t help them. If I went up those stairs, the throne would go to Uncle Lorcan, and it would be like Mama and Papa didn’t exist.
I had a choice to make, and I made it.
“I’m going back.”
Hannah nodded solemnly. “It’s going to be hard,” she said. “That prophecy? It’s still there. Both sides are going to want you for their own, and they are not going to give up easy.”
“Neither am I,” I said.
Hannah Hollander nodded, her brown curls bobbing. “You’d better take Jacob with you, then. You’re gonna need him.”
“Maybe …,” I began, but Jack shook his head.
“Oh, no. I’m seeing this through. How else am I gonna know how the story ends?”
There was a lot under those words. I’d go digging for it later.
Jack turned to his sister, his face creasing to hold back tears and get ready for good-bye. Little Hannah just went up on her tiptoes
, wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him tight.
“It’s okay, Jacob. I can come meet the train anytime.”
“Thanks, Hannah.”
“You take care of yourself, all right?” She looked him in the eyes with her midnight and stars.
“I will, I promise.” He kissed her forehead, and she rubbed his nose. Then she spun around and ran up the northbound stairs. At the first landing, she turned and waved, and we both waved back.
Hannah whisked out of sight, and Jack lowered his hand. If the weight of the world had slipped from me when we boarded the train, I could see it rolled off Jack now. He’d been forgiven by his little sister, and I could see he’d forgiven himself too. Here, on the edge of all the worlds there were, something tight and hard had vanished from behind Jack Holland’s eyes, and I was pretty sure it was gone for good.
He turned to me and took both my hands. “I got a wish, Callie. I wish you were better. I wish we were back in Kansas City.”
We linked elbows and strolled away. I made the world key turn with a wave of my hand. It had never been this easy before, and I was sure it never would be again. But that was later.
Right now, a door opened in front of us, and we went through, walking easy and free all the way back to Kansas City.
Author’s Note
No story springs to life in a vacuum. This one, however, has a longer history and more sources than much of what I’ve written before.
The story really started back when I was a kid listening to Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads while reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. It came to life under the influence of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class by Larry Tye, and Jazz by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux. Frequently, the most powerful influences for an author are novels, and two were very much in my mind as I worked on this book: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Horace McCoy’s chilling story of dance marathons during the Depression, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I also was able to draw on the eyewitness accounts collected by the Dust Bowl Oral History Project of the Ford County Historical Society (skyways.org/orgs/fordco/dustbowl/) and the writings and images compiled by Kansas State University (weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/dustbowlpics.html), as well as Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas by Lawrence Svobida, and of course the photographs taken by Dorothea Lange.
Oh, and just for the record—I did not make up the Fairyland amusement park in Kansas City. I found it in the book Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop—A History by Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix. So thanks, gentlemen: you made me rewrite the entire second half of the story.
Suggested Playlist
Nothing tells the story of a time and place like music. So when the story for Dust Girl began to take shape, I went to the music of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl, and the Depression for insight and inspiration. Below is a partial list of songs and ballads I drew on to help Callie and Jack on their way.
“Dance a Little Longer,” words by Woody Guthrie, music by Joel Rafael
“Do Re Mi,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill,” attributed to Thomas Casey (lyrics) and Charles Connolly (music)
“Dust Bowl Refugee,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“Dust Pneumonia Blues,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” words and music by Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays
“Hard Travelin’,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“I Ain’t Got No Home,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“Little Black Train,” words and music adaptation by Woody Guthrie
“The Midnight Special” (traditional), sung by Huddie Ledbetter to John and Alan Lomax, 1934
“My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away),” words and music by Sis Cunningham
“Rock Island Line” (traditional), collected by John and Alan Lomax
“St. James Infirmary Blues” (traditional), recorded by multiple artists
“So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“Take This Hammer” (traditional), collected by John and Alan Lomax
“This Land Is Your Land,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“This Train Is Bound for Glory,” new words and music adaptation by Woody Guthrie
“Tom Joad,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
“Vigilante Man,” words and music by Woody Guthrie
About the Author
Sarah Zettel is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author. She has written twenty novels and many short stories over the past seventeen years, in addition to practicing tai chi, learning to fiddle, marrying a rocket scientist, and raising a rapidly growing son. Dust Girl is her first novel for teens. Visit her online at sarahzettel.com.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1. In a Month Called April, a County Called Gray
2. I Got the Dust Pneumonia in My Lungs
3. She Blowed Away
4. It Dusted Us Over, and It Covered Us Under
5. Got the Do-Re-Mi
6. Layin’ in That Hard Rock Jail
7. All the Hungry Little Children
8. No Home in This World Anymore
9. Dust Bowl Refugees
10. Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad
11. I Seen My People
12. They May Beg You to Go with Them
13. What Is a Vigilante Man?
14. Get Away
15. Looking for a Woman That’s Hard to Find
16. Come and Drag Me Away
17. Rattled Down That Road
18. Gone and Left Me
19. Whirlwinds in the Desert
20. Shot
21. Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This a-Way
22. Bound for Glory
23. Gotta Dance a Little Longer
24. Gonna Bring This Proud House Down
25. The Little Black Train’s a-Comin’
26. Kind Friends, This May Be the End
Author’s Note
Suggested Playlist
About the Author