Dust (Of Dust and Darkness)

by Devon Ashley

Willow. Of course the pixie with the alluring features is the one pixie who suggested I be left to die so I wouldn’t diminish her share of mash. Of all the pixies to be responsible for… She’s quick to turn her back and settle on the floor. I look to Holly with disbelief, wondering what it is I’ve done to offend this pixie, but she just shrugs it off.

  Holly whispers, “Forget it. She’s…dramatic.”

  You think?

  “Alright. All we do at this station is sort the dirt from the dried mushroom powder.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “No idea. Quite frankly, we don’t give a crap about the purity of their pixie dust.” My eyebrows lift and my forehead creases in amusement. Way to go pixies. “We just make it look like we’re meticulous.” The only table without a conveyer belt, Holly takes the pile of powder at the beginning and sweeps her forearm over it, spreading it into a thin layer before us. “If you see anything obvious, great. Otherwise, I don’t care which particles make it to your good and bad piles.”

  I laugh internally, thinking the faeries deserve as much. “The sprigs don’t ask or check?”

  “They wouldn’t know the difference either way. And the faeries obviously haven’t noticed the pixie dust isn’t as strong as it should be. Even if they did, these mushrooms are just one component they’d have to look in to.”

  “That’s what they get for slave labor,” I add bitterly.

  “Exactly. Anyways, the good will go into the sacks beneath the table. The bad will go into a bucket that we’ll dump on our way out of here.”

  Holly begins sifting through the powder and I soon follow her lead. Taking a quick peek at the two against the back wall, I note that Willow and the other pixie, whose name I don’t know, are already asleep. The sleeping version of Willow is far more likeable, with features that aren’t taut with stress and anger.

  “Holly?” I ask, waiting for her to murmur in acknowledgement. “Do you still believe you’ll be rescued?”

  “No.” An invisible weight suddenly suffocates my chest. “I hope I’ll be rescued one day but I no longer believe anyone’s looking for me. I’m sure my family has come to terms with my death by now.”

  “What’s a family?” I ask curiously.

  She pauses to give me the weirdest look. “Seriously? Mother and father? Sometimes siblings, either a brother or a sister?” Now it’s my turn to give the weird look. I’ve never heard these terms before. “Wow. Okay. Your mother and father would be the female and male that came together to make your egg. That makes you their pixling. If they had any other pixlings, the females would be called your sisters and the males your brothers. Together they make up your family and they’re the ones that are there for you, no matter what. You take care of each other, have each other’s backs.”

  “Oh. Interesting.” Weird, actually. I play with the pile of dirt before me, pinching bits here and there and letting them float carelessly to the ground.

  “So you didn’t have a mother and a father raising you?”

  “No. We’re raised by our village. When the eggs are laid, they’re taken to the nursery to be housed. When they’re born, the entire village raises the pixlings.”

  Holly’s looking at me with this really confused look upon her face. “So do you know which male and female are responsible for laying each egg?”

  I casually shake my head. “No. Several are born within a season and we’re all given the same birthday.” I sweep a random part of the powder into a good pile and a smaller portion into the bad. “I suppose your right. I never really thought about the fact that two of those pixies were responsible for my being alive. We’re just not raised to think that way. The entire village is responsible for our upbringing.”

  “Come to think of it, I think Elm Hollow does that whole village raising thing. Is that where you’re from?”

  I shrug. “We just call our home the Hollow.”

  “We all do. What type of tree do you live in?”

  “The Lauralyn.”

  “Then you’re from Lauralyn Hollow. I’m from Ash.”

  “Is there anyone else here from my Hollow?” I ask excitedly, peeking down the line, examining the pixies with a reddish hue.

  “Um, I don’t know. No one since I’ve been here, but maybe one of the older ones. You’d have to ask Juniper.”

  Oh, my Mother Nature! Someone here might be from home! I’m pretty sure I passed Juniper somewhere in the middle when I came in earlier. I pivot and take two steps in her direction when Holly snaps, “No!” I jump and freeze in place. Willow stirs on the ground but doesn’t wake. “You can’t ask her now. Tonight.” My spirit dampens and I return to my post with my head hung low. “Don’t forget where you are, Rosalie. We don’t have freedom anymore.”

  Annoyed, I reply, “You mean, right now.”

  “What?”

  “You mean, we don’t have that freedom right now. Anymore means you have no faith you’ll ever get it back.”

  “Whatever,” she gripes, clearly frustrated. She closes her eyes and sighs extra loud. “Just sort, Rosalie.”

  I let out an exaggerated huff. What is it with these pixies? Don’t they want to be free? Don’t they want to go home again? Will it kill them to keep a little faith and believe that someday someone’s going to come looking for one of them and set this nightmare straight? Why is that so hard to flippin’ believe? There’s no way this prison is impenetrable. It’s run by a bunch of stupid sprigs for crying out loud!

  I decide not to engage Holly anymore. Clearly, we’re both a little moody and I don’t want to tick off one of the few pixies still willing to talk. I focus on the task before me, but basically I just move the powder around in circles. At one point I even spit in it. Holly pauses long enough to cock her eyebrow, then returns to her pile, not caring if I contaminate the powder any further.

  I begin to think on Holly’s whole family idea. I mean, I’m used to what I grew up with, and I’m not knocking it. But when I really think about it, there weren’t too many individuals that truly cared about me the way Holly described. I guess I can consider Maple, the pixie that headed up the pixling home, as my mother. She was responsible for me, in a way. Truthfully, Poppy’s the only the pixie I would consider a sister, and that’s because we’ve been roommates all our lives. She’s always been there for me, even though we seem to like different things. Our friendship was easy because we accepted each other’s quirks. Me being total nature girl, always covered with dirt and constantly sneaking out to sleep under the stars directly, and she being very primped and proper, a hair never out of place. I wonder what it would have been like for us to grow up as real sisters, with a mother and father watching over us directly, loving us and caring for us, actually taking responsibility for us.

  Someone up front coughs a few times. Those poor pixies up front with the fires. I’m not looking forward to that station in the least, even if Holly and I are on speaking terms those days. Holly rushes over to the pixie against the wall beside her and begins shaking her.

  Oh! Coughing!

  I rush to Willow and shake her shoulders like crazy, remembering what she said about being a heavy sleeper, yet she doesn’t stir. I look down the path and see a light growing brighter as it progresses our way. I shake harder and yell, “Willow!” in a hushed voice. Still nothing, and I can almost make out the form of the thick spriggan as it nears. Desperation takes over and I throw the bucket of water at her face. Willow gasps and spits, slinging the water off her face. Her eyes pinch with anger but I cut her off before she can add the threatening commentary. “Move!”

  She jumps to her feet without hesitation. Holly and the fourth pixie move the extra lanterns to light up the entire table and the four of us bend over and sort through the particles in our respective areas.

  My heart panics, pounding so hard I’m sure it’ll burst from my chest any second. When the spriggan arrives, he lingers on Willow longer than usual, even moving the lantern closer to her head for examination. I feel
awful for putting her under this scrutiny. What if they punish her for wasting water or something? What if she’s beaten and it’s all my fault? Can I take the punishment myself? Will I even step up and take the blame in that instant?

  If Willow’s panicking, she hides it well. She keeps her head down and her hands sorting, as if her appearance wasn’t unusual at all. The spriggan’s lantern jerks back and he slowly returns from where he came. A collective sigh releases at our table.

  “Sorry,” I say as soon as possible. Willow is T-I-C-K-E-D. She glares at me and chews on her lower lip, and I’m wondering how long I have left to live. The spare pixie doesn’t care either way and goes back to sleep. Willow drops her head back and sighs really loudly. Pleading my case, I add, “I was out of time and it was all I could do to wake you.”

  “Next time,” she says in a calm but firm voice, lowering her eyes to glare at mine, “just bring the light to my face and I’ll wake up.”

  “Okay,” I whisper, a slight tremble of fear coursing through my veins.

  Willow rolls her eyes but returns to the floor, slicking her hair back out of her face. Is that it? She’s not going to kill me, or she’s not going to kill me right now? I turn to Holly for confirmation but all I get is a smile she’s trying hard to fight. I can’t help but release a small one myself before we return to our pointless task.

  I manage to finish the day without Willow using me as her personal punching bag, and by the looks of her glares, it’s exactly what she’d like to do. I leave Holly alone, deciding any questions I think of aren’t worth ticking her off any further. Juniper comes to visit with me before bedtime again and lifts my mood from bleak to moderate. I like Juniper. She’s what I imagine this motherly figure I’ve just learned about should be. Loving, caring, giving, protective. All these motherly traits I wish were offered to me growing up. Sure, the village took care of me and protected me, but I always felt like something was missing. And now I know what that thing was. A real mother. And perhaps this father Holly spoke of. One or two individuals that really step up and have an interest in your well-being. Someone who makes me feel safer, makes sure I eat and bathe, tucks me in at night and tells me everything will be alright. Someone like Juniper.

  Four days of slave labor have passed and the lack of food is really starting to get to me. Every morning and every night I’m given some sort of mash that contains one type of fruit and one type of nut or seed. I used to love these foods. Now they’re beginning to make me want to hurl. I’m fed just enough to keep my stomach mad at me all the time, like it thinks I’m teasing it on purpose and I deserve to be yelled at all day. Maybe it’s the consistency that does it to me. Normally I eat my seeds individually, not all mashed up with fruit. But I understand why they grind it all together. It’s so much easier than trying to divide the individual pieces evenly between the pixies.

  But hunger is just one issue I’m facing. My muscles are really straining. I’m not used to this kind of labor; and even though we clearly don’t care about the purity of the mushroom powder, it’s hard being on your feet all day, every day, bending over a table. My back hurts, my feet hurt. My calves refuse to stretch and loosen.

  Holly has explained the stations to me at this point, even though we haven’t gone that far in the line. At the front of the cave are the fires. There are three chiseled out rectangles with heavy iron doors to keep the heat in. At the top of each fire are holes that allow the heat to flow upward into another rectangle above it. That’s where the mushrooms are placed for half an hour to dry them out. Every day a couple of pixies go into the forest (with an unwanted guard) and collects the hallucinogenic mushrooms from random patches growing around the area. Once collected, they’re washed and tossed above the fires until they’re dehydrated. The next table will chop them into fine pieces and pass them off to the next table, where they’ll be ground into a powder using a mortar and pestle. That’s where Holly and I are today. I’m actually impressed by how much powder the pixies are capable of making in a single day. And though they intentionally move slower when the guards aren’t around, my wrist and arm really aches from all the twisting I’ve done with the pestle. Sadly, my left arm is terrible at it so my right is forced to do most of the work.

  I groan and knead my fingers into my right arm muscles. How I was going to find the strength to reach up and pull the water lever tonight for a shower was beyond me, because my left can’t do it alone.

  As agonizing as the work is, the worst part of the day is the silence. The only pixies that really seem to have it all together are Juniper and Willow, the latter I want nothing to do with, and unfortunately she works beside me. Holly and two other pixies, Ginger and Spruce, are willing to talk about half the time, but completely clam up the other half. The other prisoners are pretty much out of it completely. It still baffles me that they’re completely aware of what’s going on around them and can react when necessary, like waking the sleeping pixies in the back, but completely tune out the world the rest of the time. They don’t want to chat at the work tables to make the day go by faster, or curl up with the other pixies at night to keep warm. They just go about living a life without expression or feeling, completely numb to the world. They’re living life on flippin’ auto-flight or something.

  I sometimes wonder about their sanity…and if I’m soon to follow.

  I awake earlier than normal. The sky is still a medium shade of blue and the stars a faded shade of cream. I catch movement out the corner of my eye and turn to see a pixie standing beside me at the edge, gazing across the canyon to the other side. Can’t say I blame her really; I do it every morning and night, trying to focus on anywhere but here.

  She’s one of the blue pixies but I don’t know her name. “Hi,” I say softly, friendly. A few seconds later she looks down to me but I’m not even sure she really sees me. Her face is void of expression and her eyes seem so empty. Without responding, she slowly turns back to the canyon. I rarely get to see the canyon since we’re not here during the daytime. But the early evenings and mornings light up the sky enough to see that a wonderful forest filled with luscious trees and animals lies just on the other side of the canyon, and a fast-flowing river rushes just below.

  The blue pixie steps forward and my heart suddenly pounds in my chest. I know what she’s doing and I try to lunge myself towards her – but it’s too late. In an instant she’s gone. I’m left sitting on my knees, my arms outstretched and mouth wide open. I gasp – then scream into my cupped hands. It arouses the attention of the pixies closest to me. My body language speaks louder than words and the few that are still lucid these days jump to their feet and rush over. Those that remain in place look as dazed and lost as the pixie that leapt to her death.

  I’m choking on my screams and crying uncontrollably by the time Juniper wraps her arms around my heaving body, gently shushing and saying it’ll be alright. Only it won’t. Not for me. Not for her. Certainly not for the poor pixie that’s no longer with us. At some point she had friends, possibly family, and now they’ll never know what became of her. They’re left to worry and wonder about her forever now.

  And I didn’t even know her name.

  Juniper holds my head as I wrap my arms around her waist, letting the tears flow freely. The convulsions have calmed but a tremble still remains in my limbs. A bluish blur nears and whispers to Juniper, “It was Orchid.” I’m pretty sure the voice belongs to Willow.

  Juniper must be nodding her head in acknowledgement because my body bounces softly. “See to it they get breakfast going, will you?”

  “Yes, mum.” The bluish blur fades into a little dot before disappearing completely from my tear-soaked eyes.

  Fingers lightly massage my scalp, and my eyes begin to daze. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Rosalie. We lose pixies every once in a while to suicide, but it mostly happens late at night when we’re asleep.”

  She leaves me soon after to comfort the less stable pixies. I wrap my arms around my knees and rock back
and forth, watching the birds fly around the trees on the opposite side of the canyon. It makes me think of life back home. Is Poppy flitting around the trees like the birds before me? She has cross-pollination this month. Poppy loves pollinating; plucking the pollen from one flower and flying around the forest searching for its match to keep the flowers thriving. Okay, that’s really why I love pollination. Poppy loves it because it means she can fly anywhere she wants in the forest during work hours, which means she’ll be finding the necessary flowers wherever Tin or Mustard is stationed. Did she even worry when she realized I was gone? I think of her each night before I pass out from exhaustion, my lost sister.

  At some point a bowl of mash is handed to me and I nibble mindlessly. I can still taste the flavors, today being raspberries and sunflower seeds, but I hardly care anymore. My body is too tired and too stressed. My stomach is grateful for the attention but my taste buds lack the same enthusiasm.

  After I’m rudely lifted above the pit and placed in line, the spriggans notice we’re down a pixie. Who knew the stinky baboons could count? One walks the line, pausing at each pixie. When he comes to me he grabs my wrist and checks the number with his list. I wonder what number Orchid is. Was. How long had she been here, suffering away in this hellhole, repeating the same repetitive nightmare over and over and over again? How much time passed before she gave up hope and thought her best option was to plummet over a cliff? Or was she even lucid enough to think about what she was doing?

  The question that bothers me the most: will I do the same thing one day?

  I hope not.

  My stomach churns and queasiness takes the top spot in my current list of ailments: all-over achiness, headaches, back pains, crankiness, malaise, calf cramps, exhaustion. And it burns when I pee, which is becoming rarer by the day. My skin is itchy and drying out; I know I’m not drinking enough water due to the painful bloating going on in my belly. Lack of water is probably making concentrated waste, which is why it burns coming out. I make a mental note to force several cups down my throat today whether I like it or not.