Dust Girl: The American Fairy Trilogy Book 1 (20 page)

Jack kept driving.

“Pull over here,” Morgan ordered.

We’d been on the road about an hour. Morgan had
made Jack turn off the main highway a while back, sending us bumping slowly over dirt roads between dunes and what was left of old farm shacks. Where he ordered Jack to stop was the edge of what had been a cornfield. Rows of broken brown stalks still rattled in the wind, their bases all tangled up with the remains of grass stems and tumbleweeds. No one had cut down last year’s plants, let alone tried to plow the ground to hold the blow dirt, or attempted to sow a crop for this year. To the north I could just see a hogback ridge curving above those chattering, whispering cornstalks. An old gray house stood sentinel on the ridgetop, the light glittering on its broken windows. Just another abandoned farm in the middle of the Dust Bowl, and we were in the middle of it with a dead railroad bull.

Morgan marched us straight into that tall, dead corn until I lost sight of the ridge and the house and the road. The only thing that told me we were still headed south was the sun over our shoulders. I thought maybe now I could cut and run. I told myself that Morgan wouldn’t really shoot Jack or Shimmy. I was the one he wanted. He’d follow me, and I was smaller and faster than him. The other two could run away on their own.

Except he might just shoot them before he came looking for me. Or he might shoot me in the back while I was running. I saw the black hole of the barrel pointing at my face again, and a wave of weakness ran down my spine.

We broke through into a little clearing in the corn, and Morgan ordered us to stop. There was no sound except the
rattle of the dead and broken stalks. I tried to remember how to pray. Jack flexed his hands, like he was gauging whether he could knock Morgan down before the bull got a shot off.

Shimmy, though, Shimmy had her nose up in the air, like she was trying to catch a whiff of something on the wind.

“What’s out there?” she murmured. “What is that?”

Morgan just grinned and held the gun steady in his saggy gray hand.

I twisted my head around, trying to figure out what Shimmy was talking about. To the north, where that ridge had curved up, I saw smoke rising. No, not smoke. I squinted. It was dust. But not like a dust storm. It was a long, puffy gray cloud lifting up from the ground, like something was moving closer. Something big.

With the dust cloud, a jangling, clanging noise came drifting down over the corn’s endless chatter, the sound of dozens of pieces of metal being slammed together.

The corn in front of us rustled and bent. A rabbit raced by so fast it was nothing but a streak of brown and white. It was quickly followed by another, and a third. All of them tore through the corn in the mad dash that means the critter is afraid for its life.

The banging got louder. The corn shifted and swayed, and more rabbits—six, eight, a dozen—sped past us. One bounded right over my shoe tops, like it didn’t even notice a human was standing there. It was just trying to get away from whatever was coming up, making all that noise.

Then I knew. “It’s a rabbit drive.”

Shimmy’s eyes went wide. “Have mercy.”

“What?” croaked Jack. “What’s a rabbit drive?”

Morgan grinned his rotting grin and gestured with the revolver barrel, telling me to go ahead.

“Since the dust came, there’s no grass for the rabbits to eat, so they eat the crops, when there are crops,” I told Jack. My voice had gone hoarse, and I couldn’t even find the breath to clear my throat. “So in some places folks round up all the rabbits and kill ’em. They get in a long line and they walk in the same direction, making a big noise with pots and pans, and that scares the rabbits and they run … but there’s a big pen set up in front of them and the drovers herd ’em in and the people waiting … they shoot ’em or club ’em to death.…” My voice faltered. The banging was getting louder. That’d be the drovers, banging on their pans as they marched through the old, dead corn. The rabbits would run from the noise and the line of people. The people would keep moving forward, herding the rabbits toward the pen. Others would be waiting behind that pen with shotguns and clubs. The first rabbits would run into the pen and be trapped. But the other rabbits would keep running in until they all piled up, clawing each other to try to get over the edge of that big pen, and they’d just be clubbed back down.…

“They shoot some on the way in, if they’s too slow.” Morgan straightened his arm to level the revolver at us.

Shimmy grabbed my wrist, backing away and pulling me with her.

“No,” whispered Jack. “The people won’t hurt us. Not if they’re just after the rabbits.…”

“There’s magic happening here,” snapped Shimmy. “You think we’re gonna look like people to whoever’s coming?”

“If I was you, I’d run.” Morgan cocked the revolver’s hammer back another notch.

We ran.

We slammed through the cornstalks and stumbled over tangles of dead weeds. A living river of jackrabbits ran in high flood around us. Brown, black, and white, they squealed in fear. We couldn’t see the drovers, but we felt them at our backs. They raised the dust and their banging filled the air, louder even than the chuckling of the corn.

They were getting closer.

I tried to cut sideways, but I tripped over the solid mass of fleeing rabbits and fell sprawling into the dirt. Rabbits squealed and leapt over me. Their claws scraped along my back and got tangled in my hair. I screamed and screamed, trying to beat them off and keep my head covered at the same time. Jack hauled me to my feet. Shimmy grabbed my hand and dragged me forward.

A gunshot exploded above the banging. And another. I heard Morgan laughing, back there in the corn. He’d
joined the drovers. I knew it. He was marching with them, his revolver held high.

“They wishin’ dead.” Shimmy panted. “Can’t get hold of anything.… All they wishin’ is dead.…”

I knew what she meant. I could only catch glimpses of the people moving through the corn in a big curving line, but their anger rolled over me like the noise. With every beat, every footstep, the drovers wanted the rabbits dead. They wanted us dead. That single wish was in the banging pots and the rustle of the corn.
Die, die, die
. Every inch, they drove us closer to the open pen and their kith and kin, waiting with clubs and guns.

That couldn’t be all there was, I thought desperately. There had to be something else. But I didn’t dare open my magic sense to try to find it. I’d tried in the rail yard and was paralyzed by the anger and fear that I found. If I froze up now, I would die. Those people back there wouldn’t see me. All they’d see was another varmint destroying what little they had left.

A rabbit flashed in front of me, too close. I tripped and plowed face-first into dirt and dead weeds. Dust drove into my eyes and under my nails. I pushed myself up, hacking and coughing like the dust pneumonia had come back.

“Get up!” screamed Shimmy, hauling on my wrist. “Get up!”

I staggered to my feet, trying to blink the dust away as I ran forward.
Die, die, die
. The wish pummeled me. I
coughed, and knuckled the blow dirt out of my eyes, and kept running. Sweat streamed down my face and turned the dust on my cheeks to mud, and all at once my mind clamped tight around a new thought.

There was another wish, a wish that every person in Kansas wanted to come true, even these people driving us to die. They wanted it more than the death of the varmints they’d set out to slaughter, more than revenge against a world gone so wrong for so many years.

They wanted rain. They wished for rain each time they stepped out into their dead fields. They wished for it now, under the banging of the pots and the pans.

“Shimmy!” I shouted. I put on a fresh burst of speed and held out my hand to her. “Help me!”

She grabbed hold of my hand, and I felt her magic rise up. I squeezed my eyes shut and let her drag me along, blind. It didn’t matter if our enemies could find me from the wishing magic. They were already here. Bull Morgan had brought their magic with him to blind the folks behind us. I squeezed Shimmy’s hand, and with all my might, I wished for rain.

I remembered the cool smell of rain filling the wind as I ran to the top of the hogback ridge near the Imperial, and how the black and gray clouds built up into mountains overhead. I remembered the hard smack of the first drop against my skin, and the way the goose bumps spread out from the touch of cold water on a burning-hot day. Then there’d be another drop, and another. Soon there’d be too
many to count, pattering on the ground, making a sound like paws.

I’d wished for rain every day since the dust came, just like all the folks behind us did. It was my wish and their wish, all together, as strong and as real as the wish for food among the hobos in the rail yard.

The wind blew hard and suddenly cold. Behind us, the clamor faltered. The light turned dirty-canvas yellow and then smoky gray. I risked a glance up. Clouds churned in the hard blue sky. But these weren’t brown dust clouds. These were thunderheads, great piles of them, filling the sky.

Something cold hit the top of my head. Then my arm, and my cheek, and my brow.

Rain.

Fat, ice-cold raindrops hit the ground and raised puffs of dust. They smacked against the dead cornstalks, making the stems buckle and sway. I could see the people between the drooping cornstalks now. The whole line of folks in dusty clothes, with hats on their heads and dented pots in their calloused hands, stood with their faces turned toward the sky.

“My God!” someone cried. “My God!”

They stared openmouthed at the sky. The individual drops now turned into a solid sheet of water, rippling in the wind, pouring down over the dead earth and the desperate people. The rain fell faster and thicker with every heartbeat. It poured out of the clouds, out of my wishing, and out of me too, until I swayed as much as any of the cornstalks.

“No!” bellowed Morgan. “Get after ’em, you fools!”

But no one was listening to him. The rabbits vanished into the corn, splashing through the new puddles as they made their escape, and no one cared. The people laughed and held their arms out to the sky, mouths open wide to let the rain pour right in. They hooted and hollered and banged on the pots, the ones they weren’t holding up to catch the water. They danced among the cornstalks, swinging each other around and shouting hallelujahs.

With the rain, I felt something else dissolve. The spell on their eyes. My rain washed that magic clean away.

I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Bull Morgan roared. He swelled like he was a bag filling up with the rain, and he teetered toward us, the revolver stretched out in front.

“You’re dead, you darkie brat!” he howled. “Abomination! Gonna kill you dead!”

“Run!” hollered Jack.

I tried, but my legs had turned to rubber and I just sagged. Jack caught my arm and kept me upright. Shimmy grabbed my other arm, and between the two of them they dragged me deeper into the cornfield. Shimmy pushed me forward into Jack’s arms so he could pull me with him while she shoved us both from behind.

There was a shot, and another. How many bullets had that been? How many did Morgan have left? My head spun. My stomach heaved. I was jouncing and jolting, deadweight in Jack’s arms. The clouds I’d called up hid the sun. I had no sense of direction. Jack swung around to the right, like
he knew where he was going. Maybe he did. He always had before. Behind us, Morgan shouted and plunged through the corn and the pouring rain.

A hollow opened up in front of us. Jack threw himself flat on his face in the mud and pulled me down beside him. Shimmy dropped to her knees and then to her belly beside us. There was something wrong with her dress. It had a dark stain across the shoulder, something shining and wet that mixed with the rain and the mud. Shimmy put her hand on my back and held me down like she thought I might get up and start dancing. I couldn’t move. Each raindrop that hit me felt like it weighed five pounds. I was being pummeled flat into the ground by my own rain.

“Give it over now, Callie,” Shimmy said. Then she coughed. “Give it to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The—the wish.” She coughed again.

Panic was blooming inside Jack. I could feel it like the rain battering my skin. Something was wrong, very wrong. I knotted together the last of my strength and made myself look at Shimmy, and at that dark, spreading stain. It wasn’t just a stain; it was a tear, straight through her shoulder.

She was shot.

“I got it now.” Shimmy’s voice trembled. “You let go.”

“But you’re … you’re bleeding.…”

She coughed. “It’s not so bad.”

I made my eyes roll up to look at Jack. He shook his head. Shimmy was lying.

“I can’t let you …”

“Yes, you can!” Shimmy snapped. “You wish you felt better, don’t you, sugar? You wish you could run. Give it to me now.”

Shimmy huddled on the slope of the hollow. I didn’t know what to do. Bull Morgan was thrashing around up there with his gun, looking for us. It was a matter of seconds before he tripped over us in that little hollow, and I didn’t know how many bullets he had left, but I figured it was enough. The rain was punishing me down to my bones. I had no strength for another wish.

“You got to get away,” croaked Shimmy. “Take the car, get to Kansas City. You got to promise me you will.”

“Okay.” I swallowed hard. “I promise.”

Shimmy smiled, and I saw the glimmer of golden light in her brown eyes. “Don’t look like that. You just be sure you tell our king and queen that Shimmy never let you down.” She wrapped her hand around mine. It was as cold as the rain, as cold as death. I felt her reach inside me, felt the spark of mischief and determination, and her wish. I felt Shimmy wish I could give her the rainstorm, and I passed it over to her. Simple as breathing.

It was like a whole sack of stones rolled off my back. I could stand. I could back away.

Shimmy rose up from the mud. She was tall and solid, more real than the storm overhead or the mud underfoot.