Dust City (2 page)

“There,” says Gunther happily. “That’s better. Nice and calm.” He holds Roy aloft with one hand, teasing the wound on his face with his other one. “Wolves,” he says with a sour expression. “Filthy animals. Oughta lock up the lot of you.” He brings his hand away from his face and examines his blood. It’s thick and gluey and slung between his fingernails like cobwebs. “Even still,” he says, pausing in thought. “It was a nice shot.” He grins like a connoisseur, licking his fingers clean.

He turns his attention back to Roy—the panting wolf draped over his arm like a flimsy coat. “How’bout we clean up this mess you made.” He presses Roy’s head against the wall and starts wiping. The blood spatter morphs into the shape of a melting insect, a deformed fairy, a butterfly on fire.

Gunther grins at the mess he made. “Good,” he says. “All clean.” He looks over his meaty shoulder at the other guards. “Okay, he’s ready now. Get in here and search him.”

Two of the guards come forward and rifle through Roy’s pockets. All they find is an envelope—sky-blue paper
containing some sort of letter. They pass it to Gunther. Roy barely notices. He’s lolling in and out of consciousness now, a silver thread of drool spilling over his lip.

Gunther is more amused than anything else. “Well, well, whadda we have here?” He drops Roy in the dirt, where two of the guards pin him down.

“Don’t,” Roy mutters.

Gunther opens the envelope and takes out a letter, handwritten on matching baby-blue paper. His lips move as he reads and he smirks, the gloating smile of a bad winner. Roy looks up from the ground, shaking his great white head.

On my shoulders, Jack clenches my hair and pulls. “I can’t see what it says!” He’s waiting for Gunther to read it aloud. But that’s not what happens. “How sweet,” says Gunther. He slides the letter back into the envelope. “Let him up. He can go in now.”

Jack spits on the ground, narrowly misses my shoe.

“Hey!”

He shakes his head and comments simply, “That sucked.” Then, ever the acrobat, he rolls off my shoulders and flips to the ground. “We didn’t even get to find out what’s in the letter.”

“Maybe it’s private.”

Jack shrugs. “Whatever. Let’s get inside. You can meet Siobhan.”

2

GRAVEL AND HONEY

JACK WEAVES THROUGH THE MESS HALL, NEVER ONCE LOOKING BACK TO
see if I’m keeping up. At the table in the corner, there’s an elven girl. I recognize her from the gallery of clippings Jack keeps pinned over his bunk. She looks just like her pictures. Moon-pale skin and peaked ears, puffy lips and a pair of almond eyes that are a little too far apart. She’s beautiful, in her own way.

Jack pecks her on the cheek and takes a seat, beside her instead of opposite, which isn’t officially allowed. One of the guards glances over, but he lets it go (in a mess hall filled with delinquent wolves, the scrawny hominid with his elven girlfriend are the least of your worries). Besides, with haunches like mine on this side, there’s not much room left, not even for Jack’s skinny butt.

“Henry,” he says, “meet Siobhan. Siobhan, this is my roomie, the guy I wrote you about.”

“Hi.” I flash her a grin that I’m hoping isn’t too wolfish.

She’s barely five feet tall, so tiny and perfect you can’t
help but feel like a great, hairy beast next to her. She has the scent of an elf, too, all nutmeg and incense.

She stares at me, gazing into my snout like it’s about to snap her head off.

Jack shrugs. “Big guy’s harmless. Nicest wolf you’ll ever meet.” He pauses for a moment. Then he adds, “Almost to a fault.”

Siobhan casts her eyes around the room. It’s not official policy, but we all know St. Remus is pretty much exclusively for animalian youth. The room is bristling with the usual suspects—wolves, foxes, and ravens, with a few wayward mules and hedgehogs thrown in for good measure. Jack’s the only hominid here.

“If you’re so nice,” Siobhan says to me, “what are you doing in this place?”

“Well,” Jack whispers, taking the opportunity to slide closer to her. “Henry had a lapse of judgment, let’s say. He was up on—”

“I broke a window,” I tell her. I don’t like to talk about it. Being a wolf is already enough to warrant a nasty first impression. Why make it worse?

Siobhan looks puzzled. “A window? And they sent you here? They really
do
come down hard on you guys, don’t they?”

“Well,” says Jack, “there
were
extenuating circumstances.” He hugs Siobhan close, like they’re planning a robbery. “See, Henry’s father is a
killer
. Judge probably thought,
y’know—like father, like son. It runs in the blood.” Jack enjoys basking in the fact that his roommate is the son of an infamous murderer. He rarely misses a chance to bring it up. Probably because, in spite of outward appearances, he knows I’m harmless.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I tell Siobhan, “I don’t have a father. He doesn’t exist.”

Siobhan shakes her head. “Even still, just for breaking a window? That’s harsh.” She reaches over, almost as though she wants to pat my paw. But she stops halfway and pulls back. “Anyway,” she says, “you don’t look like a killer to me. And I’m an elf. I’m pretty good at reading folks.”

Jack agrees. “That’s why she hooked up with me.”

Siobhan rolls her eyes at him, but he doesn’t react. “Why don’t we get down to business,” he says, lowering his voice. “Did’ja find them?”

A look of worry passes over the elven girl’s face. Reluctantly, she nods. “I did.”

“Good.” Jack puts his hand out below the table. “Have you got them with you?”

I’m beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. “Would you two prefer to be alone?” I start to rise, but Jack waves me down.

“Sit! You’ll draw attention to us.”

Siobhan stares at Jack’s open hand. “If I give you these,” she says slowly, “you’re not gonna do anything stupid. Right?”

“Define stupid.”

“Let me put it another way . . .” She lowers her voice further. “You only have to be in here another six months. It’s not that long. You’re not planning anything, right?”

“Trust me,” he says. I can even smell the sincerity on his breath. “I’m not planning anything. I just feel—I dunno, sorta naked without them. And they
are
good to have around. Just in case.” I can see his fingers, opening and closing below the table.

Siobhan looks to the guard standing by the door. Lucky for us he’s ignoring our little confab. He’s paying more attention to Roy, who’s only just now stumbling in, coughing and wheezing. His woozy eyes search the unfamiliar faces. Ripples of apprehension churn the air. Roy Sarlat has that kind of effect on a room.

“Fine,” says Siobhan. “Here ya go.” Her hand comes out of her purse with a small leather pouch. It’s stained with oil and tied shut with a rotten shoelace. I wonder what’s inside of it. Judging from way Jack’s eyes are sparkling, it must be something pretty precious.

“Great,” he says. The moment the pouch is in his hand, it vanishes, spirited away into some secret pocket sewn into his uniform. It’s an apt demonstration of his skill as a thief. It’s the whole reason they sent him to St. Remus in the first place. “Thanks, babe,” he says. “I think I could kiss you.”

Siobhan smiles. “So go ahead already.”

He pulls her forward and wholly in spite of myself, my
ears prick up. It’s some old instinct, kicking in when I least want it to. I hear oceans of saliva, crashing together like tidal flows. Finally, their lips part. It’s about all I can take. I wave a forepaw and rise up from the chair. “That’s it. You guys do whatever you like, but I’m leaving.”

Both of them look at me, apparently bewildered to find I’m not into Visitors’ Day voyeurism.

Jack stretches across the table. “Sorry, big guy. We’ll cut it out. You can stay.”

But my mind is made up. “Nice meeting you, Siobhan.”

She looks me up and down. “Jack’s right,” she says. “You seem like a nice guy.”

“Thanks.”

Jack stands up halfway off the bench. “C’mon,
stay.
You need to get outta the room sometimes—and I mean besides goin’ to class or seeing Doc.”

“No point to Visitors’ Day when you don’t have any visitors.” I turn my back and lope off.

I’m only a few tables away, when my pace slows. There’s one table left without an inmate. Over on the visitor’s side sits a green-eyed she-wolf. She’s chocolate brown all over except for her ears, which are tipped milky white. There’s a hefty camera slung around her neck and she looks my age, sixteen, maybe a little older. She smells like cherry blossoms—subtle and sweet. I love that scent. She looks up at me and every hair on my back stands up all at once (I hope she doesn’t notice).

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.” She lifts the camera in front of her face and there’s a flash. The whole world turns white and for a second I figure she’s only a hallucination. When the spots fade, however, she’s still here. “I hate the whole
say cheese
thing,” she says. “Makes you look
completely
unnatural.” Her voice is like gravel and honey. She leans forward, her eyebrows raised, and whispers to me. “But, uh, I think you might have the wrong table.”

My thick canid brain sends a message to my feet—
Idiots! Keep walking, she just told you to scram
—but the wires get crossed and it’s my forepaw that springs to life, reaching across the table. “My name’s Henry.”

“Fiona.”

Our fingers are about to meet when somebody raps me on the shoulder. I turn around and there’s Roy—with his sulfurous yellow eyes, his jigsaw puzzle grin, his dead white hair, slicked back from his brow and still smeared with goblin blood.

“That’s my sister,” he says.

Oh. “I was just—”

“You were trying to talk to my sister?”

“I was—uh . . . just . . . um . . .” In my peripheral vision, I see Jack and Siobhan on their feet.

Roy snarls. “Don’t lie, Hank-man. I can smell it all over you.” He balls up a fist, full of every bit of anger and
humiliation he suffered outside at the hands of Gunther, and punches it deep into my unsuspecting gut.

I double over, coughing and gasping for air. Only Roy’s not done with me. As my head falls forward, he comes up with a knee, smashing me full in the face.

There’s another flash of light—decidedly more agonizing than the one from Fiona’s camera. I see an explosion of stars that erupts like a fountain of fairydust.

After that, there’s nothing to see at all.

3

NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF

FAST CLOUDS AND A GHOSTLY MOON HAUNT THE SKY. TREES LOOM OVER ME
like bridges. I drop to all fours, padding into them, letting them swallow me up. They’re electrified with wind, so soon all I can hear is the rush of leaves . . .

Shadows and moonlight cling to the inside of my eyelids. Everything’s heavy, smothered beneath too many blankets. My head’s been replaced with something weightier. An anvil, maybe, a team of blacksmiths hammering away at it. So yeah, I don’t feel so good.

A hot stream of fluorescence trickles through. I sniff with my snout, but the only thing I can smell is the nothingness of a room wiped clean, so I pry open my eyes. A ceiling sags above me, a water stain creeping out from the corner. The left side of my face is puffy and tender.

“Good,” says a familiar voice. “You’re awake. I was about to call an ambulance.”

I turn my head and a swallow of breakfast bubbles up,
headed in the wrong direction, but I manage to keep it down. The kind face of Mrs. Lupovitz floats into view, a gray and motherly cloud.

“Lie still,” she says. “Mr. Sarlat gave you a nasty concussion.” She winces over me. “Look at that face!” She turns to a glass cabinet full of small brown bottles and plastic vials. “I’ve got just the thing.”

She opens the door and takes out a plastic canister of fairydust, glistening and silent in its tube. The powder lurking within is a soothing, ocean-blue variety. Just looking at it dampens some of the throbbing in my skull. But I won’t let her give me any. “Leave me alone,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”

“You ought to take something.”

Mrs. L finds an edge on the tiny cot, which is way too small for my beastly heap. Her soft, old-lady haunches press against the small of my back and for some stupid reason a photo of Fiona’s face flashes into my head. Roy Sarlat’s sister. Just my luck.

Mrs. L hooks her claws into my shoulder and turns me. Another batch of renegade bile surges up from my stomach. “I don’t want anything,” I tell her. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but when your mother was killed in an accident involving a truck full of fairydust, it leaves you with a generally poor view of the stuff.

Mrs. L waves the vial in front of my face. The label’s printed with a bright, oblong halo, circling around two
stylized letters: an
N
and a
T
. Below the image are the words N
IMBUS
T
HAUMATURGICAL
, I
NC
. It was a Nimbus truck that crushed my mother.

“This is just about the mildest blend available,” Mrs. L tells me. “A basic analgesic. That means a painkiller that works by—”

“I know what analgesic means.” I turn back to the wall. “Just let me sleep it off.”

Mrs. L shakes her head. “Sleeping is absolutely
the worst
thing you can do. Either you take this now or I’ll be forced to call the hospital, and believe me, they’ll make sure you take something ten times more potent than anything I’ve got here at the Home.”

I ignore her. I shut my eyes and watch the darkness swim around inside my head like heat off a summer highway. Sometimes I can be pretty mulish.

“Do you have any idea what you look like right now?”

“Why? What do I look like?” The vanity card.
Well played, Mrs. L
.

“See for yourself.”

I pop my eyes open to find I’m staring into a mirror. I’m not pretty: a big, bad wolf, one half of his face busted open like rotten fruit.

“I guess . . . I guess I can have a little.”

“There’s a good boy.” She uncorks the vial and I get a whiff of a stale, chemical tang. Like scorched plastic, long
cooled from the fire. She sprinkles a thimbleful into the chub of her old-lady palm. “Ready?”