Dust City (6 page)

Cindy sits down in front. She’s swaying minutely, but I can only see the barest profile of her face. She might be
crying, but I can’t tell. Mrs. Lupovitz, on the other hand, down at the end of my row, is shuddering like a train off its tracks, tears streaming down her face.

The priest recounts how thoughtful, kind, well-educated, generous, insightful Doc was. I can’t help searching for a scrap of dubiousness in his avian eye; not too many folks would deem insightfulness and generosity wolfish traits. But there’s no irony in the priest’s voice. He’s a bit monotonous, maybe, but he’s nothing if not sincere. Once he’s done, he turns to the forest that overshadows the grave.

“David?” he says.

Suddenly, the trees ripple like a mirage. They shake as if blown in a wind, but the air is perfectly still. Something shines through the branches. It’s an ember, gleaming and orange. It floats high off the ground, lighthouse-height and half lost in the thickest leaves. Then come the hands. They reach out toward us, enormous and stiff and deeply tanned, parting the poplars like a garden hedgerow.

A giant.

He steps into the open as gently as he can, but the ground still trembles. He’s dressed in soiled overalls and a canvas cap. He must be the gravedigger. The ember is the enormous stub of a cigarette, clinging to his pillow-sized lip.

The priest frowns. “
David,
” he says sternly.

The giant plucks the cinder from his mouth and lets it drop. It falls, big as a meteor, and when he stamps it out the ground shakes.

The priest spreads a wing toward the grave. “Go ahead, David.”

Stooping forward, the giant gathers up the seat belt–like straps lying under the coffin, lifting it with hardly any effort at all. The polished box floats up and then down into the darkness of the earth. With the flat of his foot, David sweeps the nearby pile of soil into the hole, burying Doc forever. Finally, just as he did with the cigarette, the giant’s enormous boot tamps everything down.

“Thank you,” says the priest. The giant nods carefully and retreats into the trees.

At some point during the eulogy, I made up my mind. Here among the cleanness of the trees, the rareness of the air, the sadness of the day, I’ve realized there’s nothing left for me back at St. Remus. Without Jack or Doc, I’m on my own. And without those letters, I’ll go crazy thinking about them. Plus, I’ve got this slim reed of gold in my pocket, something I can pawn off once I run out of loose change. All I need now is the right exit strategy.

Pebbles and stones are scattered in the grass, maybe shards of crumbling gravestones or leftovers from what David dug up. They’ve given me an idea. It’s probably a stupid one, misguided and half-formed, but it’s all I’ve got.

As I stand with the others, I let my paw hang down and brush the grass, scooping up the largest rock I can find. When we’re all up and marching back toward the parking lot, I hang back as far as I can, right in line with the rear
guard. He’s bumbling along, looking nervously into the trees. That gravedigger must’ve spooked him. It’s rare to see a giant working down here in the City. Most of them live up in Eden.

Roy’s big white head looms over the rest, but it looks oddly small after the proportion-skewing sight of the giant. I feign a yawn and a stretch, and when I drop my arm I do it quickly, releasing the rock, letting it lob through the air in a lazy arc. Nobody notices. Nobody but me. I’m watching it sail away, end over end, straight for Roy’s head. Now, what exactly am I going to do if—

“OW!”
Roy spins around and slaps one bewildered paw to the base of his skull. The other one jabs backward instinctively, back at the guy behind him—who just happens to be his chief rival, Jim Vulpino. Sly and quick, the fox dodges left.

But Roy’s even faster. He catches Jimmy on the chin and a pair of his friends rush in to defend him. In a second, the fight snowballs into an all-out campaign of fists and growls.

The priest flaps up, hovering like a spirit. “Please,” he squawks, “this is hallowed ground!”

The guard beside me snaps out of his stupor and lumbers into the fight. For a second I’m all alone. I drop to all fours between the chairs, and I stalk for the bushes. Behind me I can hear the snaps of teeth, the dull thuds of knuckles against hairy hides, the shouts of the guards. I can even hear the rising percussion of hearts—in time with the desperate thundering of my own. And miraculously, I make it. I’m into
the brush, into the trees. Now it’s merely a matter of time. Waiting to see if they miss me. Could it really be this easy?

I watch them reload the buses, drenched with sweat and blood, and it isn’t long before everyone’s aboard. The engines start up and the wheels start rolling. Shaking his head, the priest glides off, presumably to the next burial.

I lope deeper into the thicket, careful to keep low. My ears slick back. My chin skims along a bed of fallen leaves. It’s good to feel how naturally my fingers grip the soil. It’s a throwback to the primordial times, back when forepaws and hind legs were practically indistinguishable. That’s what this is, this stalking through the bush—it’s a blood memory of the species.

I push in, burying myself deeper and deeper in the leaves and shadows. The whole forest trembles and closes in around my body, welcoming me back.

9

APPEASE THE GIANT

BUT I DON’T GET FAR
.

I’m suddenly pressed to the earth. Something heavy, like a pair of warm cushions, pounds into my back. They come together and pinch my spine. I’m lifted off the ground, suspended in the air like a cub in his mother’s mouth—only this is one
hell
of a mother.

“YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.”

I’m above the trees, face-to-face with the oversized gravedigger. The veins on his tuberous nose are thick and ropy, like the roots of a tree in one of Doc’s paintings. His beard reeks so strongly of tobacco I can feel the nicotine creeping down my throat. When I start choking it only makes him angry. He shakes me, and I flap like a hooked fish.

“YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ON ONE OF THOSE BUSES.”

Then I see it—the reason he’s a gravedigger down here in the City instead of living like a prince up in Eden. There’s
something wrong with him. There’s a wild, empty look in his eye. He’s not all here. He’s loopy.

This could be a problem.

“I HATE WOLVES. WOLVES BITE,” he informs me. He opens his mouth (not a good thing). His teeth are boulders of coal, the cavernous valleys between them filled with the worst imaginable mash. The stench is—well, it’s indescribable. He pulls me closer. “BUT I CAN BITE TOO.”

“David, no!” Somebody yells up from below. “Put him down, please.” I half-expect the priest, but no—it’s a girl’s voice. A voice like gravel and honey.

Slowly, both David and I peer down through the hanging branches of a larch tree. There she is, beautiful and improbable. Fiona, Roy Sarlat’s sister. She’s got her camera aimed up at us. “Say cheese!” she says.

“CHEESE!”

I feel David’s grip loosen ever so slightly.

Fiona’s camera clicks and she squints up at me. “David’s not fond of strangers.”

The giant nods his mountainous head in agreement. “I DON’T LIKE WOLVES.” He turns to me with a passionate frown. “EXCEPT FIONA FRIEND. SHE BRINGS ME TREATS.”

“I do,
don’t I?” she says, speaking as if to a child. “I’m a friend, just like Father Corviday is a friend.” She points up at me. “And that’s our friend, too.”

“HE IS?”

“My friend is your friend, right, David?”

With some effort, David winks one eye shut. He brings me in close to ogle me with the other. “WHAT’S HIS NAME?”

“Um . . .”

Great. She doesn’t even remember me. “Henry!” I shout down in a stage whisper.

“That’s our friend,
Henry
. Now put him down.”

David pouts out his lip until it’s bigger than my bunk back at school. He nods thoughtfully. “HENRY FRIEND,” he says. A moment later, I’m safely down with Fiona.

“Thanks,” I tell her.

But she ignores me. “David? I brought you something. Look.” She opens a large shoulder bag and retrieves a plastic container filled with a sharp, sweet-smelling chocolate cake. A couple slices are missing. She creaks open the plastic lid. “Ta-da!”

David’s eyes glaze over and his jaw drops. “THANK YOU!” He stoops down to collect his prize, tossing the whole thing in his mouth like it’s a bonbon. His rotten teeth grind it up, and muddied saliva streams into his beard. I can’t help thinking that, were it not for Fiona’s fortuitous arrival on the scene, that’d be
me
in there.

“MMMMM,” says the giant. He turns and galumphs into the trees, vanishing all over again.

“Thanks.”

Fiona ignores me. She’s fiddling with the closure of her
shoulder bag. “Damn! This is a brand-new purse. It’s what I get for lugging a cake around all day.”

“I thought you never bothered with the whole ‘say cheese’ thing.”

She looks at me, puzzled. “What would you have said?”

“Uh . . .”

Fiona gives up on the clasp of her purse, letting it flop loose. “Look at this. I totally stretched the leather.”

“So . . . do you work here? You’re a babysitter for giants? In a graveyard?”

She laughs. “No, I don’t
work
here. Why does anybody go to a cemetery?” She points at a modest grave two plots over. It’s a two-foot slab lying flush with the earth. It says:

Charles Ferdinand Sarlat

RIP

A plastic pot of flowers sprouts up in the corner.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Fiona. “He was a jerk. Prob’ly where my brother gets it from. When Mom remarried, she made me promise I’d still visit him once a week. A promise is a promise.” She motions with her head into the woods. “Which is why I’m such good ‘friends’ with David. I learned early on that if you happen to be a wolf and you wanna lope around this place by yourself, you need to appease the giant.” She shrugs. “It’s not a problem. David has simple tastes. Candy
or cigarettes. I don’t approve of the latter—and I don’t need to. I’m always able to steal the leftover cake from my work. It’s a bakery.” She looks into the trees and laughs. “Nobody understands why I never get fat.”

The whole time, she’s hardly looked at me. Me, on the other hand—
I’m staring
. She ties the closure of her purse into a makeshift clasp and finally pays me some attention. She studies my face, leaning her head sideways, all the way to her shoulder. “We’ve met, right? You look kind of familiar.”

“Actually . . .” Only I trail off. I’m not terribly keen to remind her that I’m the guy her brother beat up about ten seconds after we (almost) shook hands.

Before I can make up a story, though, she leans in and reads the insignias sewed into my uniform. “Wait a sec,” she says. “You’re from
St. Remus
?” She looks around. “Didn’t they just leave? I saw my brother, getting himself into trouble like always.” She squints at me. “I don’t get it. Why’re you still here?”

“I didn’t want to go back.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware that was their policy.”

“It’s easier than you think,” I say, feigning the confidence of a master escape artist. “Everybody’s doing it.”

Surprisingly, she nods in agreement. “I’ve lost count of how many time’s Roy showed up at my window in the middle of the night.” She shakes her head, inhaling fretfully through
her snout. “Enjoy it while you can. They always catch you in the end. The police, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“So what’s your plan?”

“My plan . . .”

“The reason you escaped?” She smiles. Her teeth are nothing like Roy’s, which have probably been knocked out and rearranged more times than he can remember. Fiona’s teeth, however, are smooth and pristine and gleaming white. “You got a girl on the outside, right?”

Sure,
I think.
You’re pretty much it
. But instead I say, “I need to find a friend of mine.”

I can’t help but wonder if she’s scared of me, if she sees me as an escaped thug. While I’m wondering, she turns and starts off toward the gates. “Which way are you headed?”

I lope after her. “Toward Elvenburg, I think.”

“Convenient. I’m going the same way myself. We’ll take the streetcar together.”

She leads me off and I can’t help but prick up my ears. The noises seep through the trees. I can hear them. The sound of the city, faint but relentless: the bellow of factories; the trundle of streetcars; the clatter of shoes, boots, and hooves against endless sidewalks; the chirm of countless voices of every pitch and intonation.

Sounds I haven’t heard in a long time.

PART TWO

THE CITY

10

AN AUDIENCE OF ONE

BEING CLOISTERED IN ST. REMUS FOR SO LONG, I’D FORGOTTEN WHAT A
madhouse the City can be. All around us, streets teem with folks of every stripe: plodding hedgehogs, witless mules, dripping water nixies, pudgy pigs, pensive elves, sloe-eyed cats, crafty humans, limp-legged frogs, watchful ravens, and on and on and on. On the streetcar, we’re crammed in like herring, packed and pickled in a rolling jar. The city’s a fun house, an unruly parade, a circus—with Eden hovering high above like a silent ringmaster.

“So tell me again about this friend of yours?”

“His name’s Jack.”

Fiona looks at me sideways. “The little hominid?” I wonder if maybe she’s as prejudiced as her brother, but then she chuckles. “Roy hates that kid.”

“Roy hates
everybody
. He can be a jerk sometimes. A lot of the time.”

“I know,” she says and then falls silent. I’ve probably gone and offended her. “Sometimes,” she says, “like with me and
Mom, he can be so sweet.” She looks out the window, and since I can’t think of what to say next, we ride in silence.

Outside, the city rolls past. Tubes of neon wink at us, even though it’s not yet dusk. The buildings are garnished heavily with signs and slogans. One massive billboard for Nimbus beams down. It’s a collage of scientific apparatuses—test tubes, beakers, microscopes—all overshadowed by a ropy helix of fairydust, rising up like a mist. In the upper corners, the faces of the Nimbus brothers smile reassuringly down from their experiments. The caption reads,
Coming Soon: A New Way to Enchantment!
It’s followed by a list of upcoming products.
Theurgicol. Charmex. Enchanterin. Faericetomol
. . .