by Sarah Zettel
Callie, I do know you’ve been through a lot. Papa’s voice was back in my head, this time on purpose, I could tell. I could also feel him forcing himself to be patient. But in this city, we are behind enemy lines. We’ve got your mother and Jack to think about, and the only way we can keep them safe is to get out of here as fast as possible.
He was right, but I didn’t want him to be, especially not while he was brushing Jack off and ordering me around like a little kid. Papa slid his arm around Mama’s waist, letting her know he was close. If I could feel her fear, he definitely could, and I was sorry for my anger. Guilt was another feeling I didn’t need. But I still wasn’t going to let them, him, keep us in the dark.
Right then my parents weren’t paying attention to either me or Jack. They were watching the cars honking and swerving and pushing between each other. They were waiting for their chance to get us across that river of moving metal. But on the other side, the iron and steel in the cars might smother up my magic senses enough to keep me from learning anything on my own about what had Papa so scared. Jack craned his neck, like he was trying to see a break in the traffic, but he nudged my arm with his elbow. I was sure he’d been thinking the same thing. I nodded once. Then I sneaked my fairy senses open and turned them back on that empty Hooverville.
For a couple of seconds, I didn’t feel anything. The worn-down men and the Chinese shopkeepers going about their business were ignoring us. The workers sauntering through the gate around that big, dusty construction site had their minds on their work, or the contents of their lunch boxes, or their wives and families. Normal things. Human things.
But there was something else too, something that dragged itself over my senses like a storm cloud over the sun. It was hunger. It rose up like it was coming straight from the earth. It cramped up my stomach and dried up all other thoughts. Behind us, someone who was invisible even to my fairy eyes was starving to death.
A break in the traffic opened, a heartbeat pause in the noise for two of the four lanes. Papa was leading Mama across, and Jack was following, and I had to go too. But I caught Jack’s sleeve. We reached the island in the middle of the intersection. We were halfway, with traffic in front and traffic behind, and waiting ahead the solid, square lines of the train station, our goal, the place we absolutely had to get to.
Jack looked into my eyes, and he saw immediately there was a whole lot wrong. He knew, and I knew, that we should keep going, like my parents wanted us to. Like we had every reason to do. Whatever was behind us, it was Seelie.
But the Seelies didn’t build that Hooverville. That was a home for humans, and something had happened to those humans.
Jack swallowed and reached up to his hat brim, like he meant to scratch his head. Instead, he nudged his new straw boater, just a touch. Just enough so that hot California wind and the smoggy traffic breeze caught the brim and whipped it backward off his head.
Jack cussed and turned and ran, chasing after his new straw hat, like anyone would do. The cars screeched and honked and skidded to a halt, sometimes just inches from his flailing fingers. On the far side of the street, Jack, who never, ever missed a step in his life, stumbled hard on the curb. He fell on his knees, right in front of the Hooverville.
“Jack!” I yanked myself out of my father’s grip and dodged into the snarled-up traffic, running after my best friend, like anyone would do.
3
Ol’ Willow Tree, Weep for Me
Both my parents were shouting behind us, but I ignored them. The cars were honking and revving their engines and fighting to get going again.
I knelt beside Jack like I was about to help him get to his feet.
“What do you see?” he whispered, putting out a hand like he was signaling me to back off.
I eased my magic senses open again and lifted my eyes to the Hooverville. I saw the shacks and the crow and the empty doorways. I felt the hunger. It was hot and desperate and it filled the air, but I still couldn’t see where it came from. Now that I was closer, though, I could feel something else underneath that hunger. This new something stole across my senses like a lullaby. It was a wish. There was a wish being granted, right in the middle of the hunger that sloshed through the deserted Hooverville. It was a wish for peace, a wish for rest. It was sweet and happy, and so completely wrong it made my skin crawl. It crept close to the ground, like fog, like dust. But like the hunger, it seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Callie!” Mama was shouting from the intersection island. The blaring, roaring traffic noise made her sound faint and far away. “Callie, get back here! Now!”
But I wasn’t getting back there until I knew what was going on right here. It was dangerous for me to go slinging my own magic around even this little bit, but there was one other trick I could try. Before I left Kansas, I’d gotten three wishes of my own granted. The first of them let me see clearly through dust. That might not sound like much, but when you have to walk through some of the biggest storms of blow dirt in the history of the country, or across a chunk of California desert, being able to see through all that dust gets to be surprisingly useful. I might be able to make use of it now.
There were pockmarks in the cement sidewalk, and they were filled with dust from the construction site. I scrabbled with my fingertips in the nearest little hole and came up with a pinch of dust. As Jack and I both climbed slowly, deliberately to our feet, Jack waved back to my parents to let them know everything was fine, and we’d be along directly. I held up that pinch of dust so the wind caught it and blew it straight into my eyes.
The dust stung. I sneezed and blinked hard. I looked again at the empty, hungry Hooverville with its soft, creeping lullaby from nowhere. This time I saw clearly.
A tree stood in the middle of the Hooverville. I couldn’t see it with my regular daytime eyes, but my magic eyes, my dust eyes, saw its stout trunk and smooth silver bark. The empty shacks drooped down from the tree’s spreading branches like overripe apples until they touched the ground.
I was right. The Seelies hadn’t built this Hooverville. They’d grown it. And those shacks growing from that tree’s branches weren’t really empty. A human figure huddled in most every one. Some had their mouths open, with sloppy, dreaming grins on their faces. The lullaby, the wish for peace and rest, came from that tree. It was lulling those people into sleep and keeping them there, forever and for good. Through some of the doorways I could see bones.
Jack put his hand on my shoulder. “Show me.”
I swallowed, and I did it, putting enough of my magic into Jack’s veins so he could see what I saw. Each one of those fake shacks was a mouth, and the tree was starving for its human flies. A wave of greed, hot and crazy-making, rose up from the ground, joining the hunger, overwhelming the lullaby.
Another sizzle sounded. There was a fire on the wires overhead, sparking blue and white at the junction box near the poles. It stank of burning rubber and hot electricity. The tree swayed and dragged its shanty cages closer to its smooth, shiny trunk. The ragged men inside just grinned wider.
Jack shuddered hard. “We gotta get them out of there.”
But hands grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around. Mama shook me, her face tight with fear and flushed from the heat and her anger. “Callie! You get away from there! You heard your father! You mind him!” Papa, though, wasn’t looking down at me. He was looking at the Hooverville. He knew what was wrong. He could see the people dying in there, and he wasn’t going to do one thing about it.
Anger hit me hard and knocked all the sense out of me. I knew Mama was scared, and I knew Papa had a world of very good reasons to want us to clear out. I knew what they’d both been through. But in that moment, I just plain didn’t care. Nobody treated me like a baby, not even them. I was not going to leave a magic trap behind to take people who’d done nothing worse than try to find a place to sleep.
I looked right at both my parents and deliberately stepped across the line from sidewalk pavement to vacant-lot d
irt, my magic wide open and spoiling for a fight.
As soon as the sole of my shoe touched the ground, greed poured down over me. The tree drank down the lives of all its hostages, but it was starved for more. Much more. A whole world’s worth of more. If it got enough, it would be allowed to live. If it got enough, it might finally be free.
While I was still trying to get a handle on all that, a voice shouted out of the clear blue sky: “Get out of here, dumdum!”
My head jerked up, and I saw fire on the power line. But not normal fire. It was silver, white, and blue, and clutched a sparking wire in its hand.
Hand?
“I said get out of here!” The silver fire critter had no real face, just a pair of pale, almost-human eyes in the middle of its blue-white glow. He—she—it flickered and buzzed as it slithered down the pole, brandishing the power line at the tree, or maybe at us.
I staggered back and bumped into Jack. We lurched together. Something caught my ankle and yanked. All at once, I was flat on my face in the dust between the shacks. I coughed, and for a second I saw the tree’s twisted, greedy face peering out from under its waving branches. Its roots bunched up under my arms and my shoulders, and where I touched the warm, soft bark, I stuck.
For a moment, it was like I was plunged into dark water. Lungs and heart turned to stone. I didn’t know which way was up. I could barely remember how to move.
I’m sorry, gasped the prison tree inside my head, and it meant it.
Jack reached down for me immediately.
“No!” I shouted, but I couldn’t twist away. His fingers closed around my arm, and I cried out, not because it hurt, but because I felt the paralysis run through me, straight into Jack. I felt it yank him down into the cold of the tree’s enchantment, right beside me.
Jack didn’t go quiet like I had. He cussed and pulled, but only succeeded in throwing himself off balance. He wobbled and dropped to one knee, and stuck there. Mama screamed and dove forward, but Papa caught her around the waist and hauled her back.
Two more, two more. A voice shivered out of the bark beneath my belly, slow and low and gleeful. I recognized the greed and good cheer. This was the tree too.
I’m sorry, it said again, and it still meant it. I’m so sorry.
“What are you?” I couldn’t move my body, but I still had hold of my magic. I pulled my fairy senses open wider, searching for edges to the prison tree’s power. There had to be some spot I could grab hold of and bend with a wish or a willing. But there was nothing except the greed and desperation as sharp as the Santa Ana winds. “What do you want?”
Don’t want, sobbed the tree. The Seelie king needs you all. Drink you up, drink you deep, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but the king must have you all.
The Seelie king. It was a trap. It was all a trap. It wasn’t meant for us, but I’d dragged us in all the same. I tried to yank my magic closed, but it was way too late. The river between me and the tree was flowing freely, like blood from an open wound. Magic ran out of me, and in its place, the tree’s sweet lullaby flooded in.
I felt heavy. Jack’s hand on my arm was deadweight, pressing me down. I knew he was trying to wish. I felt that too. Jack was frantically wishing me strength, but that wish couldn’t make it upstream against the tree’s magic. I scrabbled around weakly, trying to form a wish of my own, for freedom, for help, for anything. But it was all gone.
Jack was down on both knees now, his mouth open and his eyelids drooping. His strength, his will to fight was draining right out of him. It drained into the sap that ran through the tree’s veins. Because my magic was being held open, I knew what was happening. The tree would store up the strength it stole until the servants of the Seelie king came by. They’d drain off that sap filled with human strength, human life, and haul it away to feed those the king deemed worthy.
The tree was laughing, unless that sound in my head was it crying.
The silver fire critter cussed with words I wouldn’t have thought a magic being had any business knowing. “Stop, Stripling!”
“It’s no good, no good, Edison,” the prison tree cried. “Get away!”
A small square of roots was spreading out around Jack and me. I blinked. The roots sprouted twigs. Those twigs broadened into milled lumber and cardboard. The tree, Stripling, was growing another shack around us to swallow us whole.
The fire critter, Edison, cussed again and jammed that live power line into the dirt.
A massive, numbing blow ran through the ground, the tree, me, and Jack, freezing us solid, standing our hair on end. The tree screamed. Jack flew backward and plowed into Papa, so they both fell together in a heap. The fake shacks rocked and shuddered, and I smelled ozone and burning. My heart was banging out of control and fire crawled across my skin, but I was still stuck fast.
“Let her go!” Mama charged into the Hooverville, brandishing a saw in both hands.
She must have run to the construction site. She must have charged right past all those working men and snatched up a saw and run back. Because for better or worse, that was the kind of thing my mama did.
“And it’s another one!” Edison fell back in astonishment, dragging the power line with it. “Who are you people?”
Mama brought that saw down against the nearest branch, digging the teeth hard into the slick silver bark. The tree screamed again.
“Stop!” cried Edison.
Mama, though, wasn’t paying any attention at all. “Let. Her. Go!” The saw scraped and wobbled as she hauled it back and forth, trying to dig the teeth into the living bark. Edison charged at Mama, waving the power line. Papa cussed and whistled. The wind blew hard, and the line’s sparks guttered, and then died. He whistled again, and the critter’s fire sputtered, and it crumbled to the dirt.
The tree screamed and screamed again. Something hot and wet dripped against my skin, like blood. “No! Stop! Stop!” Edison staggered to its feet, its fire, its whole body flickering.
The tree let out another shriek as the pain of Papa’s magic and Mama’s saw blade dug in together. This time Stripling’s hold loosened. I felt the glamour that hid it from human view shiver and then break. I yanked myself backward and toppled against the too-warm wall of the nearest shack. The hoboes who had been hunkered down in the alley shook themselves out of their coats and climbed to their feet, gaping at the chaos that hadn’t been there a second ago.
“HEY!” Jack bellowed at the top of his lungs. “SOME HELP HERE!”
I could hear swearing and pleading from inside the shack behind me. An arm thrust out of the doorway, waving frantically, looking for something to grab. Jack caught hold of that ragged arm and pulled. A man—hairy, filthy, and skeleton-thin—tumbled out.
This was a sight the hoboes understood. They barreled across the alley. Papa scooped me up off the ground and carried me back to the sidewalk. The men ran straight past us and dove inside the prison shacks. They yelled and cussed and kicked, but they made it back out, carrying prisoners to lay on the sidewalk.
Papa shot the tree a look of pure, hot poison. Then he turned toward the cracked-open Chinatown and shouted a string of high-pitched, lilting words that I didn’t understand at all.
A few Chinese men hurried into the street. Papa shouted some more and pointed toward the tree. Next thing I knew, those Chinese men were all hollering and pointing at the prison tree. I had no idea what they were saying to each other, but they were saying it fast and loud, and it got results. Maybe a dozen men and boys came running out of the shops, and they brought cleavers and hatchets with them. Jack grabbed Mama and pushed her out of the way. The hoboes cussed and called the new crowd a bunch of names, but they got themselves out of the way too.
The armed Chinese men surrounded the tree, screaming in their own language so loud it drowned out any cries coming from the tree as they laid into it with their cleavers and their knives.
“No, Papa, stop it!” My voice was hoarse. “It didn’t mean it. It was trapped. It …”
“How dare you disobey your father like that?” Mama grabbed hold of my shoulders and shook me again. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed! We all could have been killed!”
“What was I supposed to do?” Shame and anger flushed my cheeks, and I struck her hands away. “They were dying!”
By now the men from the construction site across the way had noticed something was up, and they were running through the fence, shouting and waving their arms. The Chinese ignored them and kept hacking at the tree. It had stopped screaming. The greed was gone. So was the desperation. Inky blackness ran down the silver trunk, like dirty water or dirty blood. It sank into the dusty ground of that vacant lot and disappeared.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Papa grabbed up Jack and dragged him out of the crowd of hoboes, Chinese men, and builders.
“You didn’t have to do that!” I wanted to scream as I stumbled to keep up with him and Mama, but it hurt too much. “It wasn’t the tree’s …”
In answer my father reached out and turned my hands over to show me my own palms, the skin all torn up and bloody and covered in what could only be tooth marks. More red stains blossomed around the sides of my new dress. Jack looked down at his hands and saw they were just as torn, just as bloody. More blood spread out on the knees of his white flannels. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why it didn’t hurt.
“It will,” said Papa as if I’d spoken out loud. I was leaking thoughts again. I tried to pull the edges of my mind properly closed, but I was drained of magic and blood, and it was real slow going.
Papa dragged me and Mama across the street, dodging traffic and rubberneckers all the way over to the train station. Jack followed close behind. Blue-uniformed cops pushed past us out of the station doors, billy clubs out and whistles shrilling.