Dust (Of Dust and Darkness)

by Devon Ashley

  We walk for at least ten minutes, but I don’t mind. After being trapped in a hole for several days, it just feels good to be out stretching my legs, even with my muscles twitching and cramping in protest. It seems our pit is on the outskirts of a forest because we immediately step onto a path and venture inward. The trail we’re following is well worn and I know it’s because these pixies have trampled it for an endless amount of days. Do they stomp on purpose? Maybe hoping some pixie or decent-hearted faerie will follow it out of curiosity and discover this unlawful prison? I stomp a little harder than necessary myself, ignoring the aching in my knees. Our steps fall in sync and the repetitive steps are both rhythmic and hypnotic. It’s almost soothing – at least for me – and it’s possible nature agrees. The forest is eerily silent. I’m not sure if all the living things are quietly watching as we pass by or if they’ve bailed on this area completely.

  As we march, I keep my head forward but push my eyes as far outward as possible, sweeping the forest. There’s literally no brush or weeds or flowers or anything around the trunks. The forest appears desolate, almost like a fire rolled through once and nature never recovered. There are a lot of trees still standing, but without wings to fly, there was nowhere to hide from the spriggans that would give chase. And right now is my best time to run, before I get any weaker from starvation and begin to look like my fellow prisoners. I feel a little more defeated inside. I realize with each passing second how difficult it’ll be to escape this nightmare. But still, the temptation to run is great.

  The line stalls and I lightly bump into the pixie in front of me. She doesn’t turn or react in any way. I brave a peek above her shoulder and see the opening to a cave. At first I wonder if it’s the one I was kept in, but I don’t see any water dripping over the entrance or collecting on the ground, so it couldn’t be. Two spriggans stand guard as pixies begin to disappear into the cave, collecting a glass lantern as they enter. Two of the pixies collect a basket made of dried out vines and head off into the forest. A third spriggan follows closely behind. My head follows them, then to the surrounding forest. Still nothing to hide behind if I run. No wonder the faeries chose this place for a slave camp.

  I hear a quiet, “Uh-uh,” from the pixie behind me but don’t dare turn to face her. She continues with a hushed, yet harsh, “Don’t. It’s been tried before. Don’t”. The way her words came off all mumbled, no way she opened her mouth to say any of that. I turn my head forward again and catch the black, beady eye of one of the guards. It startles me, and I drop my head and stare at the ground, refusing to look upward again. As I near the entrance, I too collect a lantern and step through, fighting the incredible urge to take a closer look at the guards. Of course it doesn’t keep me from smelling them though, and the sourness makes the water in my stomach churn.

  The line moves slowly as I step into the cave. Probably because each pixie is waiting for her eyes to adjust like I am. Once we’re advancing again I take a peek at the stations I pass. The first has a couple of square holes recessed in the cave wall. Two pixies are piling wood from the log stacks into the lower holes. My best guess as I continue on is the heat is used for drying the mushrooms, an absolute must when powderizing mushrooms we use for dust.

  The rest of the work line is one wood table after another, with each section descending in height ever so slightly. Since each section has its own hand-cranked conveyor belt, the slight decrease allows room for the mushrooms to be dumped at the next station without affecting the rest of the line. Some pixies are already in position, but since the line hasn’t officially begun, I’m not quite sure what all the steps are. I make my way to the back of the line, which happens to be the end of the cave itself. Holly is already there, waiting patiently. She reaches for my lantern, and surprisingly, sets it down on the front end of the table. Without it, our spot in the back of the cave is incredibly dim.

  I look forward at the entire line. The cave is long and skinny and I can barely see the fire glowing from the pits up front. Two other pixies, both sage in color, share our station and begin sifting through the dust on the table without even acknowledging our presence. Holly just stands there watching the line intently, leaving me utterly confused, not knowing what to do.

  “Alright,” she says. For some reason, she doesn’t begin working on the pile of dust before us, but steps back and sits against the back wall. She pats the ground beside her and I willingly join her. “Rosalie, I’m guessing you have a lot of questions. Scratch that. I know you do. But today you and I have the back end of the line, which means we get to rest. Every day we advance the line in pairs, or threes, depending on our numbers. Which basically means you’ll complete the line in about ten days. As I’m sure you’ve probably figured out on your own, we don’t get days off. We work sunrise to sundown every day. That’s why we’ve given structure to the line. If we didn’t we’d all be dead on the floor by now. The back end is our day off,” she says, adding air quotations around the last two words.

  “Once an hour the spriggans will walk through the cave to check on us. When they do, those working the fires up front will pretend to cough over the smoke. That’s our warning to get up on our feet and begin sifting through the dust on the table. Any other time during the day, we’re meant to rest our bodies.”

  I look apprehensively to the pixies nearest us. They all seem so exhausted. Yeah, I’m tired, but my problem is more starvation than exhaustion. “I feel so bad, Holly. So many of these pixies look like they’re ready to drop dead on their feet.”

  “That’s because they are.” Those words disturb me. I cringe and drop my head. Holly lays her hand softly below my neck. “Don’t feel guilty, Rosalie. You just spent four days in the hole without food or water. You’ve earned this spot. Anyways, every new pixie starts here on day one. No one in that line will have ill thoughts over you being here today. So just sit back and try to relax. Sleep if you can. Ivy and Lily will wake us if we’re asleep when the spriggans come through.”

  I nod my head and her hand disappears from my back. I lean into the wall, squirming until I find a comfortable spot. I have so many questions but can’t deny I’m sleepy too. I roll my head sideways, thinking I’ll get in a quick question or two, but Holly has already closed her eyes. In fact, by the sound of her breathing, I think she’s already asleep. Dang. Only utter exhaustion could get me to fall asleep upon impact.

  I close my eyes too, wishing that when I awake, I’ll be blinded by the sunlight seeping in through the thatch of my tree house.

  “Get up!” a voice yells in a hushed tone, hands grasping my arms and shaking me violently. Scared out of my wits, I jump to my feet, completely freaking out. My breaths are fast and panicky, and it takes a second to remember where I am. Holly pushes me toward the table and immediately sifts through the dust.

  “Rosalie,” she says quietly, “be meticulous as you go through the dust. Literally make it look like we examine each particle before we bag it.”

  I nod, examining the brown powder on the table. I’m not quite sure what it is I’m supposed to be separating, but I don’t dare ask since our corner of the cave is quickly becoming illuminated with additional light. I keep my head down and sift the dust with my fingertips, dividing the dust based on shades of brown. Luckily, Ivy or Lily moved our lanterns to our side of the table during my panic attack so I can actually see what I’m examining. My heart pounds so hard and loud, just like those hide-covered drums the male pixies beat on during celebrations back home in the Hollow. I’m sure the noise will give me away and the spriggan will beat my guilty conscience-self silly for not working this last hour. But the light begins to fade, and my heart slows down the dimmer it gets.

  Holly releases a long sigh and stands erect, rubbing her eyebrows. I follow her lead and the other two pixies relax a bit as well, relocating the lanterns to their end of the table again. We fall to the floor and transfer the burden of our weight to the cave wall.

  I suddenly realize how hot it is in here.
I can only imagine the heat coming off the fires and the poor pixies working beside it. Tiny beads of sweat are seeping out my skin and reflecting what little light we have. “Holly, is there any water?”

  Her head rolls toward me with closed eyes. She nods and murmurs, “Mmm-hmm. Someone should have left us a bucket in the corner.” I search our tiny back area and find the bucket. I gulp several times and splash a bit on my face and neck. It barely lowers my body temperature but I do feel a little cooler. Unfortunately, adding more water to my system backfires on me. My bladder suddenly becomes aware how full it is. All the water I drank this morning has finally gone through my system.

  “Holly?”

  Her eyes bolt open and she jumps to her feet. I reach to pull her back, apologizing for scaring her. She returns to the floor and releases a long yawn, stretching her arms. “Where do we go to pee?”

  “There’s a fissure in the wall about half way down.” I stare in disbelief at her for a moment. She’s kidding, right? “What?” she asks.

  “You don’t go outside? You go right here in the cave? Doesn’t it smell in there?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s really not that bad. It rarely gets used.” Another yawn.

  “Why’s that? Does everyone hold it in all day?”

  “No. Truth is, once you’ve been here a while, you really don’t go all that often.” I scrunch my eyebrows, trying to figure out how that could possibly be true. “Look. We’re all skin and bones here. What food goes in, our bodies tend to keep. And what water we drink typically sweats out through the day. Yes, we all go sometime, but honestly, it’s few and far between.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “You can go outside if you want, but a spriggan is going to go with you. Personally, I don’t want one of them watching me go.”

  I moan. I don’t want an audience for this either. I snatch my lantern and follow the cave until I reach the fissure. It’s a skinny opening, and I have to enter sideways and leave the lantern behind, but it widens once I get in. Like Holly said, the smell isn’t bad. I tiptoe along the edge and crouch in a spot in the back. I relieve my bladder, trying not to think about how many times this fissure has been used without cleaning it. I wish I had some leaves to wipe with, but no way was I going to actually search the floor blindly. I tiptoe again to get out, determined to touch the floor as little as possible.

  When I get back to my station, Holly is already asleep. I’m quick to drift off again, and when the pixies awake me a second time, I manage to react without panicking. We do this over and over again through the day. Like Holly said, pretty much every hour. Towards the end, I think my internal timer kicks in because I begin to wake up on my own, expecting the spriggans to be making their rounds again.

  As the end of the day nears, I haven’t really had any questions answered, but I do feel a little more refreshed. My muscles aren’t complaining as much, though my stomach sure is.

  A whistle pierces the air. “Come on,” Holly says, pushing herself to her feet. “Day’s over.”

  Thank Mother Nature! Now I can eat something. I follow her lead, grabbing my lantern and disposing of it just outside the cave. I’m the last to fall in line so I have a spriggan practically up my backside. There’s no wind as we progress and my skin feels slick and grimy. I feel the spriggan’s hot, sticky breath heat the backside of my neck and it sickens me. How does someone who does nothing but sit outside all day smell so badly by day’s end?

  When the line stops I figure we’re back at the pit. The spriggan behind me stands guard as the others carry my fellow pixies to the bottom. Once the line disappears, a set of rough hands snags my arms. As we rise into the air, I realize I’m not being taken to the pit. I see nothing but a burned out wasteland with nothing but a stark skeleton buried halfway under the sand. I see no plants, no water, and no pixies. Where did all the pixies go before me? Juniper, Holly? Lily and Ivy? The violet-headed pixie, whoever she is?

  I prepare my feet for an impact that never comes. We descend beyond the wasteland, into air that ripples like waves in water and tickles my skin, and I suddenly see the pit and all the pixies scattered about. I look to the sky and I still see sky. They’ve glamoured our prison! No wonder these pixies have never been rescued. No one could see them even if they flew overhead. And who would stop on a bare wasteland with nothing more to offer than a bare-boned skeleton? No one.

  The spriggan drops me several inches before my feet can touch the ground, and I fall forward on my hands and knees upon impact. Jerk.

  Some of the pixies are lining up to take a shower. What’s odd is they line up like they’re set to march, standing lifelessly and not turning to speak to one another. Others are working on our dinner, breaking nutshells and using a mortar and pestle to grind them up. They too work in silence. Tonight’s meal looks like a banana and some peanuts, which is slightly comical to watch them peel, since bananas are as tall as us pixies. I moan internally, wishing we had just a smidgen of pixie dust to make the food a little bigger. The molecular structure of living organisms can only be stretched a little, but in this case, a little goes a long way. How I would love to use the dust on myself and make myself larger than the spriggans themselves, but I know it could never happen. Even if I still had my satchel, the more complicated the molecular structure, the more difficult it is to will the dust to do your bidding. As weak as I am, I’d never get it to work properly. And I’d only be able to grow an inch or two anyway, which would still put me at a disadvantage next to a spriggan.

  The pixies begin to segregate to their spots in the pit. Why didn’t they ever speak to one another? It’s bad enough I’m stuck here for the moment, a prisoner in some desolate wasteland. Must I go through this alone even with two dozen pixies by my side?

  As if she can read my thoughts, Juniper brings me my dinner. She presses her hand to my forehead to check my temperature and asks, “How are you holding up, dear?”

  “I don’t know, Juniper. It’s not right. Us being here. We shouldn’t be prisoners. We’ve done nothing wrong to deserve this. I want to…I want to…I don’t know. I want to go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning in my tree house and breathe a sigh of relief because it was all just a dream. And rest easy because I know this kind of thing doesn’t happen in the real world. I mean, how did this happen, Juniper? How can all of these pixies go missing and no one comes looking?”

  “I don’t know.” Great. As if it were even possible, I think I just made her feel worse. But she lifts her head and curves her lips enough to smile, albeit forced. “Maybe you’ll be the pixie someone comes looking for.”

  “It only takes one. Right?”

  She pats me softly on the shoulder. “Right.”

  I wish I could believe she meant that. Juniper lifts my chin with her finger and says, “Goodnight, Rosalie. I sincerely do hope you wake up in your tree house tomorrow morning and find this was all just a very bad dream.”

  “Goodnight, Juniper.”

  On my own again, I devour my food in five heaping spoonfuls and fill my stomach with three cups of water. Since I didn’t work the line today, I decide to wait for all the pixies to take their shower first, including Holly, who goes right before me. She offers a small wave and forces a smile as she passes, sweeping the lingering drops off her skin. Now finally my turn, I take my sweet time dumping waves of water onto my head, washing away the sweat and dirt that clings to me.

  I choose a spot by the edge overlooking the drop off to make my own and gaze up at the night sky. How can the stars do this to me? Just a few nights ago they performed their show for me from the safety of my Hollow. Now, they twinkle and soar, carrying on above me in rhythmic fashion, like nothing’s different. But I’m not in my Hollow. And I’m certainly not safe.

  The next morning I eat my mash, fill my stomach with water and hold my tongue as the spriggan’s sweaty hands remove me from the pit. I fall in line once again and observe my surroundings from the corners of my eyes. Still nothing. No bi
rds, no insects, no signs of life. Feeling defeated, I take one last breath of fresh air before entering the cave and beginning my first (and hopefully last) day of slave labor.

  I meet Holly at the back and place my lantern on the table. Two other lanterns are there and I take a peek at the pixie lying against the wall. The darkness makes it difficult, but I believe she’s got a bluish tint to her skin. I jump when a fourth lantern clunks on the table beside me, and I turn to meet the pixie with the gorgeous violet hair. Unfortunately, her grey eyes are ice cold and diminish the beauty of her other facial features.

  “I’m a heavy sleeper. Don’t fail me, newbie,” she snaps, shocking me with her rudeness.