Dust City

DUST

CITY

FOR MY FAMILY.

PUFFIN CANADA

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Published in Canada by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2010.

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Copyright © Robert Paul Weston, 2010

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Weston, Robert Paul

Dust City / Robert Paul Weston.

ISBN 978-0-670-06396-3

I. Title.

PS8645.E87D87 2010 jC813’6 C2010-903084-2

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DUST

CITY

ROBERT PAUL WESTON

Animals, whom we have made our slaves,

we do not like to consider our equal.

—Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man

It is easier to get into the enemy’s toils than out again.

—Aesop, “The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts”

“Dear father,” she replied. “Do what you will with me.

I am your child.” Thereupon she held out her hands

and let him chop them off.

—The Brothers Grimm, “The Girl Without Hands”

ONCE UPON A TIME

ONCE UPON A TIME, FAIRYDUST CAME FROM WHERE YOU’D EXPECT. FROM
fairies. I was only a cub, so I don’t remember much of what the City was like back then. But I have a strong sense that things were different. Dreams could come true. You read about it in the paper. I’ve seen the clippings. Mrs. L has some of them pinned up in her office: P
AUPER
G
IRL
G
ETS A
F
AIRY
V
ISIT
, E
LEVATED TO
L
IFE OF
L
UXURY
!

P
UMPKIN INTO
P
ARLOR
C
AR
O
VERNIGHT
!

Then one day, the miracles dried up. The fairies stopped drifting down to bless us with their charms. All at once, they were gone. It happened like magic.

It was months before anyone ventured up to Eden. Back then, there was no road that could take you there. City planners had yet to build it, which they did with private funding from the thaumaturgists. The Empyrean Skyway, they called it, a coiling ribbon of suspended asphalt.

When they finally arrived, there was nothing there. Eden was a ghost town. The streets were deserted, the houses
locked and empty. The fairies, as far as anyone could tell, had abandoned us.

It wasn’t long before the wealthier hominids moved up there. There had always been an unofficial division between us and them, but the boundary was never as clear as it became after the fairies vanished.

The big thaumaturgical companies took over. “Enchantment for all,” they promised. They began mining dust runoff from quarries outside the City, magic that had seeped into the land from the fairy days. Thaumaturgical-grade dust was made from actual leftover miracles. They said it was as close to the old-time magic as you could get.

Maybe so, but fairydust from Nimbus or Luster Labs is nothing like the real thing. Or so I’ve been told. To be honest, I’m too young to remember. Apparently, fairydust didn’t always come in vials. It wasn’t used merely for getting rid of a headache. Once upon a time, it was all about dreams and destiny.

With the wave of a wand, old-time magic could look inside you, take stock of your deepest potential, and then make it happen. It was like pressing a fast-forward button on your life. The dull were made vibrant; the poor became rich; the dim-witted were transposed to genius. With
real
fairydust, whatever the magic saw in your heart was precisely what you became. It was life-changing stuff and better yet, it stuck. Even the big spells—provided the dust came direct from a fairy—could be permanent.

The only permanent effects you can count on from today’s recycled brands are at about the level of basic first aid. You can sew up a gash or shrink a bruise, but not much more. That’s all there is these days. Low-grade remedies, and there’s a
ton
of them. Toothache fairydust, headache fairydust, strength-enhancing fairydust, fairydust tranquilizers, fairydust for numbing nerves, fairydust for knitting bones, fairydust to raise self-esteem, fairydust to lower cholesterol, and on and on. Red, blue, green, yellow, golden silvery fairydust. The stuff was
everywhere
, but it pales in comparison to the old-time magic. Or so I’m told.

Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m holding out for the real deal. I like to think one day the fairies will return to Eden. They’ll hoof the thaumaturgists out of their fairy palaces and dreams will start coming true again. The way they did when I was a cub, once upon a time.

PART ONE

ST. REMUS

1

BUTTERFLY ON FIRE

ONCE, THIS WHOLE PLACE WAS NOTHING BUT TREES. BEFORE THAT, IT WAS
a shadowy smudge at the bottom of the sea. Before that, it was packed in ice for a million years. But once, and pretty recently in the grand scheme of things, it was nothing but trees. At least that’s what Mrs. Lupovitz teaches us in science class. But sometimes, it’s hard to believe.

These days, the City’s a clutch of steel, cut through with glass cliffs and canyon upon canyon of cement. The only trees are the deadwoods, sprouting from the endless plain that surrounds the City on all sides. If you look out through St. Remus’s west wall, you can see them: thousands of branches, rising up like grasping hands.

The St. Remus Home for Wayward Youth is an arid compound built around an old cathedral (which is now the mess hall). The buildings here are either strangled with ivy or streaked with the remnants of polluted rain, and all of them—the courtyard, the dormitories, the old rectory—they’re all hemmed in by a thirty-foot wall topped with razor wire.

Today is Visitors’ Day.

Somehow, Jack convinced me to come down to the mess hall with him. He wants to introduce me to his girl. Apparently, she’s anxious to meet me. Apart from the ones she passes on the street now and then, she’s never met a wolf before.

“You’re gonna like her, trust me,” Jack says, stalking over the cobbles. He says it in that loose, offhand, Jack sort of way that sounds more like hucksterism than a method of eliciting trust. Nevertheless, I do: I trust him, the little thief.

“I
hate
Visitors’ Day,” I tell him, which makes perfect sense. No one’s coming to visit me. Not unless Dad escaped from prison (and who’s to say that if he did, I’d want to see him?).

“Come on.” Jack tugs my sleeve and hastens us around the corner of the rectory. Then he stops dead.

There’s a crowd of uniformed guards huddled around one corner of the mess hall. It looks like the building’s grown an oily gray scab. Jack rushes forward. “Look,” he says. “There’s something going on.”

We move closer and I can see Roy Sarlat standing in the middle of the crowd. Roy’s the biggest wolf at St. Remus. He’s been in and out of juvenile detention centers like this one all his life. He’s down on all fours, padding back and forth. Every step scours the ground. He’s angry. Never a good sign with Roy.

Jack wedges his face in between the hips of two guards, but one of them slaps him back. “I can’t
see,”
he complains.
“Lemme up on your shoulders.” Before I can say no, Jack’s scaling my back like a gecko.

Roy paces and growls inside the tightening corral of guards. For the moment, Jack’s forgotten all about the girl waiting for him inside the rectory. He’s perched on my shoulders like a sports fan in the cheap seats, winding his fingers into the hair on the back of my neck, pulling himself higher. Both of us know we’re in for a show.

Roy opens his mouth, teeth glistening, and growls from deep in his gullet. “Anybody comes near me,” he says, “and I swear I’ll use these.” His jaws open wide and he clamps them shut, snapping crooked fangs together and launching out fireworks of spit. It’s a clear show of ferocity.
Teeth
are taboo, and not just here at St. Remus. Break out the choppers while robbing a market stall and it goes from petty larceny to felony in a snap (no pun intended). If Roy starts biting, it’ll be an automatic week in lockup.

“I got family in there,” he growls. “And I mean it, anybody comes near!” He claps his jaws again.

There’s a phlegmy voice from within the thickening crowd of guards. “Did I hear you say
anybody
? Because I don’t think that’s what you meant.” The guards shuffle and murmur. The crowd parts and Gunther lumbers into the open. “Sorry, Roy,” he says. “You know the rules. Can’t let you in until y’bin searched.”

Roy growls again. More saliva squeezes out through his teeth. The muscles in his legs knit together and swell.

Gunther grins and starts rolling up his sleeves. His truncheon hangs heavily from his belt, but he doesn’t need it. His arms are already thick as the trees we never see. All the guards at St. Remus are goblins (or “globs,” as we inmates call them), and without a doubt, they’re the nastiest breed of hominid. But Gunther? Gunther is in a class by himself. While every glob in the world is a huge, ugly, snaggletoothed, knuckle-dragging, short-tempered vulgarian with all the delicate charm of a city bus (just before it runs you over), in Gunther’s case, all of that would be a compliment.

“Fair enough,” he says. “Let’s do this the hard way.”

Roy, of course, is the kind of canid who’s always prepared for the hard way. His long white body leaps up so fast it’s a streak of light. Gunther, meanwhile—
stupid
Gunther—should’ve seen it coming, what with Roy down with his ribs to the dirt, ears slicked back. Three of Roy’s claws catch Gunther’s cheek and three matching spurts of pea-soup goblin blood spatter on the stuccoed wall. The splotches hang there for a second, then start a syrupy descent.

Up above me, Jack whistles. “Aw, man,” he says. “Roy is
so
dead.”

For a second Gunther stares. You can see that the sudden pain in his face startles him. He stands there dumbly, gaping at the blotches on the wall, stains of his own blood.

Meanwhile, Roy rears up for another pass. He lunges again, but Gunther’s not as slow-witted the second time
around. He claps his apelike arms together, catching the big wolf by the throat. Roy spits and gnashes. His eyes dart everywhere at once. He’s a huge guy—over six feet when he stands up straight—but with his throat crushed in Gunther’s huge mitt, Roy’s a stuffed toy, limp and lifeless. He bats his arms weakly against Gunther’s barrel chest, then against his drumlike paunch, and then not at all. Both his arms go limp as wet rags.