According to Mrs. L, because of certain aspects of the raven’s wing structure, the birds were the first of the animalia to evolve the brains and thumbs and everything else. Wolves, foxes, mules—we were late to the table. Which is probably why we’ve kept up such a bad reputation. Even now.
In an interspecies race, each group brings its own particular forte to the table. The foxes are sly, of course. Tricky. Wolves are all about brute strength. Especially Roy. The ravens have the power of flight on their side (provided they don’t fly too high, in which case you can count on the globs up in the tower shooting them down with tranquilizer guns loaded with sedative blends of fairydust).
Jack always urges me to join in. He has a theory: Although Roy’s the bigger wolf—the biggest, in fact—his muscles get in the way. Jack tells me I’m sleeker, more aerodynamic. That’s my edge. But I’ve never raced. I never will. I just watch.
Out the window I can see a drove of them, coming across the field toward the courtyard. The globs are up in the tower, eyeing them impassively, rifles at the ready. You’d think the ravens would take the win, air travel being what it is. But it’s not as fast as you think. A fox or a wolf down on all fours, like in the ancient times, can give them a run for their money. And they do. Jim and Roy are neck and neck for the lead, with Eddie flapping behind, followed by the rest of the motley herd.
When they hit the courtyard, gravel kicks up in clouds around them, enveloping the pack, but Roy, Jim, and Eddie punch free, leaving the others to skirmish in the haze. Jim tries a fake, but Roy doesn’t flinch. He’s too determined. He wins these free-for-alls nine times out of ten. I have no idea why Jack thinks I could beat him.
Indeed, it’s Roy who’s first to reach the wall of the rec center. He slaps it so hard I can feel a tremor come through the floor. He rises up and pumps a victorious forefist in the air. Eddie alights and hunches over, panting and leaning heavily on his knees. Jim, meanwhile, claps Roy on his back, but we can all see it’s a begrudging gesture. The others—the losers—fall in behind, sputtering like old engines.
“You could’ve won that,” Jack comments to me from across the room. He’s over by the TV that’s bolted high in the corner. He has the remote in his hand and he’s carefully pressing the buttons, but nothing’s happening on the screen. The TV’s stuck on the news.
I shake my head. “Not my thing,” I tell him.
We’re sitting around the rec center, a large L-shaped room perpetually shedding its skin. The walls cast off paint in snowy flakes and the edges of the floor are feathered with hair balls and grit. Board games in sun-faded boxes populate the shelves near a pair of Ping-Pong tables. The pool table is piled with swollen paperbacks and garbage. It’s been like that ever since some fight broke out in here, years before my time. Apparently, the cue ball was used as a blunt instrument.
Most of the time, we loll away our Open Hours on the moldy couches, watching TV in a vain attempt to keep up with the world outside. That’s what we’re doing now: me, Jack, a few of the other outsiders—meaning beasts with not enough of their species getting into trouble to throw together a gang.
Jack shakes the wrecked remote. Something rattles inside it. “Do you know how to get this working?”
I shake my head. “The batteries are running out.”
“Can you reach up there and switch the channel? I’m not tall enough.”
I ignore Jack’s request. I’m watching a trio of mules play cards at the folding table. From an evolutionary point of view, mules were the last to get wise, so to speak. Their forehoofs aren’t anything like those of hominids or wolves. Mules evolved differently, with hooves that became jointed, crablike claws—ebony pincers, offset by a stubby opposable thumb. They have never been reviled like wolves, or mistrusted like foxes and ravens. As always, they are largely ignored. I’m guilty of it myself. I don’t even know these guys’ names.
I watch their forehoofs struggling to clutch the smooth, delicate surface of the playing cards. Their game is a silent one, a sort of three-way solitaire with each of them placing a card down in turn.
The TV’s on a commercial now. It’s a scene from up in Eden, bursting with lush greenery. I’ve seen this commercial before. I can mouth the words to the soothing voice-over. “For more than a generation Nimbus Thaumaturgical has been on the cutting edge of research and development into fairydust products for both hominids and animalia.” The camera pans over Nimbus Headquarters, a sprawling industrial estate built at the very heart of Eden. Then the camera magically penetrates one of the walls to reveal a bright laboratory. “As the originators of fairydust processing, the Nimbus brothers were the first to harvest fairydust runoff from the city’s surrounding land.” The perspective shifts to show the arid desert beyond the City walls. In the background, there’s a picturesque ridge topped with a copse of deadwoods. Karl and Ludwig Nimbus, the company founders, stand proudly in the foreground on the edge of a quarry. “With or without fairies, you can count on Nimbus to provide you with the closest available product to old-time magic.” The camera cuts to a pharmacy, the shelves brimming with colorful vials. Finally, there’s a shift to the haloed Nimbus logo and its ubiquitous slogan: Nimbus Thaumaturgical ~ Better Living Through Enchantment.
Jack hammers the remote on his palm. “Damn! Seriously, Henry, you know how to work this thing?”
Before I can offer Jack any help, my ears instinctively prick up. I hear the doors at the end of the corridor slam open. A whole menagerie of sound is barreling toward the rec center. A moment later, Roy and the others roll in.
Roy’s grinning a mouthful of fangs. “Nice try at the end there, Jim, but you oughta know you’ll never outfox me. I’m too fast.”
Jim shrugs. “We’ll see.”
Roy goes straight for Jack. “Gimme that!” He snatches the remote out of his hand and shoves the boy backward. It’s enough to throw Jack into a somersault, but it’s hard to truly shove him off balance. He wads himself into a ball and rolls with it, coming up beside the defunct pool table, hopping up on the edge and swinging his legs. He even whistles a tune, like it was all part of the show.
Roy mashes every button on the remote before he figures out it’s broken. He growls angrily and throws it backward. It soars straight for Jack’s head but he dodges left and brings his hand up to catch it. It slaps loudly into his palm. “Ow!” The mules look up from their game, blinking in silence.
Jack’s faster than he looks.
Roy reaches up to the TV, raising the volume manually. It’s a news story about a raid on a gang of water nixies from along the reservoir. There’s a montage of seized refinery equipment and a gaggle of nixies being hauled off in saltwater tubs.
Roy settles into a nearby armchair. “We missed you in the race,” he says. “Too chicken, I guess.”
“It’s not my thing.”
“It oughta be. You’re a wolf. Didn’t anybody tell you?” He stabs a paw in Jack’s direction. “Quit hanging with the baldies. Run with us. I’d have a lot of fun making you eat my dust.”
“I try to avoid dust whenever I can.”
“Whatever.” Roy turns back to the TV. “Once I get out of here, I’m gonna get me some work with those guys, see? Nixies. There’re the only ones who’ll give a wolf a decent break.” He points idly out the window. “And that is also why we race. It’s practice, Hank-man. Like an investment in the future. Face it already: You gotta live up to your species one of these days.” He looks at me sideways. “Don’t you wanna make your father proud?”
“No,” I tell him. “I don’t.”
Roy opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted when Eddie flaps in. “Cheat!” he squawks.
Roy chuckles. We can all see Eddie’s feathers are badly ruffled. “You cut the corner by the rectory.”
Roy picks something from his teeth, right from back in the molars. It comes out tied to a string of spit, and Roy flicks it down at Eddie’s feet. “I’m trying to watch,” he says. The screen’s full
of police tape and flashing lights.
Eddie takes a step forward. “Admit you cheated. We all saw it. Right, Jim?”
Jim says nothing. He’s staring at the screen, too.
“Admit it, Roy! Tell everybody how you—”
Roy’s paw lashes out. He catches Eddie by the neck and the poor bird comes right off his feet. Only this time it’s not on his own power. I can easily imagine Roy crushing Eddie’s larynx with a pop of his fist.
“Excuse me?” Roy rises from the chair and pulls the bird in close. Eddie’s hard black eyes bug out like a frog’s. “I think you’re the one who’s got something to confess.”
Eddie’s focus starts retreating to someplace inside his avian skull. His beak hangs loose and a wormy tongue lolls out. Roy puts his snout to the bird’s cheek, almost like he’s giving him a kiss. “You need to admit that you are lying,” he whispers. “I won fair and square. Didn’t I?”
But Eddie can’t admit anything. He can’t even speak. He twitches and his feathery arms hang limp.
“Put him down, Roy.” It’s Gunther, finally deigning to intervene.
“Whatever.” Roy loosens his grip and Eddie—belying his species—drops like a stone. Roy giggles through his snout. “Not much of a flyer, I guess. Maybe that’s why you lost.” Roy settles back into the armchair. It creaks like a sinking ship under his weight.
The other ravens move to help Eddie up, but Roy glares at them. “Let him lie.” They know better than to argue with Roy, so Eddie stays there for a while, splattered on the floor like spilled soup.
Gunther says nothing. He fades back into the corridor, leaving the rest of us to watch Eddie floundering on the tiles. There’s a certain tenseness in the room now, and since nobody knows how to alleviate it, we simply turn our attention to the television. We watch it in silence for a long time before Eddie finally scrapes himself up off the tiles. He stumbles away, wingtips dragging behind him.
5
BUBBLE OF MUD
JACK AND I ARE BACK IN THE YARD, SITTING IN OUR USUAL SPOT. IT RAINED all night and the field’s nothing but mud. Through the damp haze, I’m keeping an eye on Gunther. He’s propped against the wall of the dormitory, laughing with the other guards.
Jack’s twisting his toe, digging a little trench in the mud. “Got a letter from Siobhan yesterday.”
I nod, gazing through an open section of the exterior wall. It’s been patched with triple panes of chain link. “How’s she doing?”
“Says she’ll come visit again. Real soon, probably.” Jack untucks his shirt. Underneath, instead of the smooth pink skin of his belly, there’s a manila folder. “Got something for you,” he says. He slips the folder out of his pants and places it on the dull rock between us. The color blends in, almost to the point of invisibility. “Remember how you told me once you always wonder what Doc’s writing about you?”
I suddenly realize what Jack’s done. “You stole it?”
Jack smiles but it’s only halfhearted. “It’s what I’m good at.”
“You probably read it, too. So now what—you know everything about me, right? About my mother and my nightmares and—”
“Naw!” He digs his foot deeper into the muck. “Which is not to say I didn’t read it. Because I did. Well, sort of. I started to, but here’s the thing: It’s the wrong file.”
“Then why’d you say it’s for me?”
“I saw the one that said Whelp, so I took it. Except it’s not yours.”
“Whose is it?”
“Your dad’s.”
Acting on instinct, I grab for the file, flipping it open.
Dear Henry,
You must think—
“Hey!” Jack yanks my arm. I’m so gutted with shock I lose my grip. Jack lays the file back on the stone. “Someone’s gonna see.”
“That’s my dad’s handwriting.”
Jack’s eyeing the rectory. “You can read it later.”
“He sent me a letter?” I can see the thickness of the file. There’s more than one. “How come I never got them?”
Jack taps the folder. “I think your dad wants to see you.”
“So you did read them?”
“A little. I think maybe Doc thought reading them would screw you up or something.”
My eyes burn into the bland manila. If the guards find out I have this, they’ll not only take it back but they’ll figure I stole it. I need to find out what Dad wrote, but I’m staring so hard, it feels like someone will notice. So I tear my eyes away.
“Why would Doc keep them?” I wonder. Through the patch of chain-link I can see the ridge that runs along the edge of the City, out where the quarries start. There’s a dirt road out there, bypassing the school as it cuts onto the overpass. There’s a vehicle speeding down the ridge. It’s probably a delivery truck, probably from Nimbus. They’re always driving too fast. They never stop for anything. I turn back to Jack. “I need to read it,” I tell him.
Jack nods. “Let me hold onto it for now.” With one swift motion, he slips the file back under his shirt. “You’re coming, right? They’re gonna think you stole this.”
“What? Coming where?”
He dips one hand into the folds of his uniform. It comes out with the battered leather pouch Siobhan gave him on Visitors’ Day. He tips it and a big seed, about the size of a pea, dribbles into his palm. He holds the seed in his fist and pokes his foot into the ground, which leaks back at him, spongy with stale rain.
“What’re you doing?” My head’s swimming. “Let me see the file.”
Jack doesn’t answer. The truck coming down the ridge races through a puddle of sunlight and flashes suddenly, blinding me. Jack’s looking up, contemplating the wall. He opens his palm, plucks up the seed, and with his thumbnail he peels away nothing more than a sliver. “Trust me,” he says. “Your dad wants to see you.”
The truck is down from the ridge now, coming toward the school along the lone highway—only now I see it’s not a truck. It’s a little convertible. A fast one. Jack drops the larger chunk of the seed back into his pouch, slipping it into the mysterious folds of his shirt.
I rub my forehead. I’m sweating. “Can I see the file?”
Jack ignores the question. “There’s still some of the old magic left in this city, but it’s rare. So you have to know when to use it.” He works his tongue inside his mouth, stirring up spit and drooling a drop into his palm. With a fingertip he pushes the flake around to moisten it. Then he tosses the mixture into the pit he’s been digging with his shoe. “As soon as you see a nice sturdy vine,” he tells me, “grab hold. But don’t wait too long. I only used a sliver, see? So it’s not gonna last long.” He refills the trench and tamps it down.
“Jack?”
He gets up and retreats a few paces back toward the school. “I’d get outta the way if I were you.”
Good advice. In the spot where Jack tossed his sliver and his spit, the moist earth is swelling up in a bubble of mud. A fiddlehead of a sprout pops through the center, green and leafy and unfurling like a fist into an open hand.
Then, with the miraculous speed of magic, it whips against the wall and begins to climb. More green tendrils split from the stalk and twine around one another, until the main trunk is as thick as I am. It’s some kind of plant—half grapevine, half oak tree.
I can hear them shouting from the admin buildings.
“Here!” Jack pulls a piece of paper out of a pocket and slaps it into my paw. “In case we get separated, this is where I’ll be!” He steps up and latches a fist into one of the rising vines. The stalk grows higher and pulls him into the air, spiriting him all the way up the wall.
Meanwhile, here comes the little convertible. It’s turned off the road now, skidding over the arid emptiness toward us. There’s a girl behind the wheel. She’s got a handkerchief tied across her nose and mouth, and a baseball cap yanked over her eyes. Her features are obscured, but anyone who’s ever seen the pictures taped over Jack’s bed would recog
nize those unmistakable eyes.
Jack’s at the top of the stalk now, rising over the wall. He swings his weight and tips the whole thing sideways, bowing it over the cement. The plant seems to understand him, knowing just what he wants it to do. It grows higher and then, with all the gentleness of a new mother, slips Jack perfectly into the convertible.
“Hurry up,” he shouts at me through the fence. “Grab on!”
What else can I do? I step up, grasping a vine of my own. But the moment I’ve got it in my paw, it snaps off with a quick tear. As soon as it parts from the main trunk, the vine withers and crumbles to nothing. I hear Gunther pounding across the yard, the muddy ground splashing and quaking beneath him. I reach for another vine, but before I can, his truncheon comes down on my shoulders. I sink to my knees as more blows pin me into the mud.
“I’m sorry!” Jack yells through the fence. He slaps his belly, where the letters—my letters—are concealed. “I should’ve left them for you!” He points at me and I realize he’s indicating the pocket where I put his address.
The tower guards start shooting and Siobhan slams the accelerator. Jack lurches over the seat as the car careens toward the road. Wet clumps of earth fountain up from the wheels and the car leaps back to the asphalt, rushing into the city.
Gunther’s knee comes off my back and, dim-witted as ever, he tries climbing after Jack. With his feet wedged in the thickest tendrils, he strains to tug himself off the ground. But suddenly the plant’s deep green drains away—summer turning instantly to autumn. Gunther yelps as the stalk withers and the huge glob sploshes down in a filthy puddle. Suddenly, I understand what Jack meant: with only a sliver, the magic doesn’t last long.
I can’t help but laugh out loud, first mockingly at Gunther’s failure, then jealously at Jack’s freedom, and finally bitterly at what I’ve just learned about Dad’s letters. My laughter is rewarded with another deluge of blows from Gunther, culminating in one clean shot to the back of my skull. The whole sky sparkles with stars and all I can hear is the sound of a distant engine, roaring and free.
Dust City Page 3