Dust City (13 page)

Whump!
Something heavy rams my skull, and I’m thrown back into the nightmare.

The bones pop through my hide. I can’t tell which is worse, my dream or my reality. No, that’s not true. Nothing’s worse than my nightmares. I choose reality. I want to wake up. Happily (or not), that’s exactly what I get.

Cold air sieves through the cloth of the pillowcase, chilling my snout. My arms are wrenched up behind me and bound up in the sheet. I’m doubled over something. Feels like a squat hunk of cement. I’m outside. Clanks and rattles rise up from below.

Somebody yanks the pillowcase off. For a dizzying moment I’m blinded by a million pinpricks of light, too many stars to count. Only they’re not stars. It’s the city, sprawling out below me.

They’ve got me on the roof. It’s not a tall building (buildings made of soot rarely are), but it’s more than high enough to give me a sudden shot of vertigo. A fall from up here would kill you.

“You’re a cheat,” one of them informs me. Looks like five of them altogether. It’s the pack of dice players from when I arrived. Three of them have me braced over the ledge, while two more—a big one and a little one—pace behind my back.

“Yeah,” says the little one. “A cheat!”

“Shut up, Squitch,” says the big one. He comes over to me and leans against the concrete barrier. “There’s been some
kind of mistake,” he says. He almost looks genuinely puzzled. “You see, uh . . .?”

“Henry.”

“Wrong.
Your name’s Newbie, got it?” He glances over his shoulder at the constellation of lighted dust refineries below us. “Nice view, huh, Newbie?”

“Listen,” I say. “I just got here, so if I did something to make you guys angry, then . . .”

One of the wolves pinning me down jabs me in the ribs, robbing me of air. I’m sputtering for breath, but the other guy keeps talking.

“In fact, you
did
do something to upset us, see? My cousin was supposed to win today. Name’s Zeb. Black hair. Skinny as anything, but fast.
He
was supposed to win tonight. Not you.”

“Yeah!” says the little one, leaping up behind his friend. “Tom’s
cousin
was s’posed to win!”

“I said shut up, Squitch.”

Squitch is obviously an annoyance for everyone involved. Each time they tell him to shut up, my arm gets cranked a little higher. If he doesn’t stop yammering soon, they’ll rip my shoulder out of its socket.

“Ow!”

“You can shut up, too,” says the one called Tom, pointing at me.

“Yeah, you can shut up too!”

“Squitch!”

“Sorry, Tom.”

“Maybe I owe you an explanation,” Tom tells me, leaning casually on his elbow. “My whole family works for Skinner, see? He takes good care of us. This is a good job for wolves like us.
Not
for wolves like you.”

Finally, I catch my breath. “Aren’t we all in the same boat here?”

“Naw,” says Tom, waving me off. “I saw it as soon as you walked in. You’re not like us. You’re one of them wolves who thinks they’re above their species, see? You think you’re a hominid, right? But you’re not. You’re
an animal
. Only you can’t see it. That’s your problem. Not comfortable in your own hide.”

“I know who I am.” I say it calmly. Almost as though I believe it.

“Maybe so,” says Tom. “If you do, then you’ll know that you don’t belong here.”

“I won that race.”

Tom bares his teeth. “You
cheated!”

“Yeah! He cheated!”

“Squitch!”

My arm gets shoved even higher.

Tom looks up at the sky. Eden floats silently above us. Its underbelly is an upturned mountain, one great finger pointing at the city. Up on top it’s nothing but glimmering towers of light. Tom squints at it, contemplating. “Them fairies knew it. Never waved the magic wands for
us
, now did they? They knew where to draw the line. Just a fact of life. But you’re too young to remember any of that.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true,” I tell him. Besides, he doesn’t look much older than me. “I knew a fairy once. Her name was Faelynn. She said things were gonna change.”

Tom gives me a pitying look. “You guys hear?
That’s
the sort of company he keeps. Not that anybody here believes you.” He laughs and spits over the ledge. “Phew! That is a
long way down
.” His features are still, hard as stone. “This won’t be pretty.”

He nods to his friends and they struggle to lift me over the ledge. But
struggle
is the operative word.

“Damn!” says one of them. “Guy weighs a ton!”

“Help us out, Tom.”

“Weaklings.”

He gathers up my ankles and heaves. I’m clear off the ground, wriggling as best I can with my arms in a tangle. The city opens up below with its million glittering teeth. Thoughts of my mother and my father flash through my head. Thoughts of Jack, too, of Siobhan and Gram and Faelynn. Of Fiona. Even of Roy.

“Nice knowin’ ya, Newbie.”

“Hold it, fellahs,” says a new voice. “Think you better put him down.”

Tom drops my legs. The sheet loosens and I’m able to turn enough to see that it’s Matt, the wolf I met when I first came in. He’s still draped in his housecoat, bottle in hand. “I doubt Skinner’d be pleased to hear about how you’re treating the newest member of the family.”

“No part of
my
family.” Tom’s face remains set in stone.

But Squitch isn’t so coolheaded. His bottom lip is drawn back from his teeth in worry. “Don’t tell Skinner! Please-please-please, don’t tell Skinner.”

“Squitch,” says Tom. “What’ve I been telling you all night long?”

Squitch shuts up for once.

Matt slips the bottle into the pocket of his housecoat. “’Kay, boys, get back in your beds in five minutes and I’ll consider keeping this little episode between us.” He points at me. “And you, the newbie. You come with me. Evidently, I gotta find you a new room.” He eyes Tom. “Someplace with a door.”

Squitch folds his forearms and pouts. “How come
he
gets a door?”

“Cuz you fidos just tried to toss him off a roof, that’s why.”

“Good point,” says Squitch.

The dark-hairs disperse like nothing happened, as if attempting to throw the newbie off the roof is no more momentous than a dice game. Matt leads me down a musty stairwell and back to the solid door where I first met him. He takes out a massive ring of keys and unlocks it.

I feel a distinct wave of privilege. “You’re gonna let me stay with you?”

Matt laughs. “Not a chance.”

I peer into the room and see it’s a well-furnished disaster. There’s not one, but
three
desks, a herd of swivel
chairs, couches, armchairs, chests of drawers, and a bunch of bookshelves filled more with empty bottles than books. Everything is askew. It looks like the furnishings were arranged by a bomb blast. The walls, meanwhile, are covered with maps, each one of them dense with fine black lines and arcane notations. Matt opens one of the countless drawers and pulls out a folded blanket, along with a thin pillow.

“Nobody sleeps in here but me,” he says, stepping back into the hall. “You can have the room next door.”

The room next door, it turns out, is a broom closet. Only there aren’t any brooms. It’s just vacant shelving and a single dustpan. Matt shakes out the blanket and spreads it on the floor, topping it off with a thin pillow.

“You’ll be safe in here,” he says.

I stoop in through the doorway. The closet is so squat I fill the whole thing wall-to-wall. I lower myself to the floor in a gambit for more headroom and find it’s not quite as uncomfortable as it looks.

“Matt?” I say, looking up at him.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. They always give newbies a hard time.” He shakes his head. “Stupid thing is, all those guys are newbies themselves. Joined the crew in the last couple of months. But don’t worry, it’s my job to look after you guys. And speaking of which, you better get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.” He starts pulling the door shut.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Hurry up,” he says. “You’re not the only one who needs some shut-eye.”

“Is Matt short for something? Like say, Mattius?”

He gives me a puzzled look. “How’d you know that? Nobody calls me that. Not anymore.”

“My dad did.”

Matt stares at me a long time. My face must look half-baked and cadaverous under the closet’s bare bulb. Maybe that’s why he recognizes me.

“Oh my God. You’re George Whelp’s son.”

21

THE DEADEST OF ENDS

“HENRY?” SAYS MATT. “LITTLE HENRY WHELP?”

I shrug. “Not so little anymore.”

“Why didn’t I see it? You look just like him.”

“Guess you haven’t seen him lately.”

Matt looks down sheepishly. “Skinner wouldn’t like it.”

“He told me you guys were friends.”

“We were. But after what he did—
wait!
You can’t stay! We gotta get you out of here.” He looks anxiously down the corridor. “He made me promise that if you ever showed up here, I would send you packing, but not before giving you a good swift kick in the pants for being so stupid for falling into this stuff!”

“But—”

“A promise is a promise, kid. I stick by that.” He checks his watch. “Won’t be hard to smuggle you out. We can use the tunnels.” He steps into the closet, grabs my shirt, and gives me a sharp tug to my feet. “If George wasn’t in the clink
right now, he’d kill me for letting those guys nearly toss you off the roof!”

“But
he’s
the one who sent me. He wants me to work for Skinner.”

“What?” Matt’s so deeply baffled he almost stops his drunken swaying. “
Why?
”

I look at him, square in his whiskey-red eyes. “Where does nixiedust come from?”

Again, Matt looks confused. “What do you mean? It comes out of the ground, from all the quarries. That’s pretty obvious.”

“You’ve never heard about it coming from somewhere else? Someplace secret? Like a special brand of dust that they get from—I don’t know, somewhere else?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy, kid. As far as I know, they dig it up—just like everybody.” He sighs wearily. “Leftover miracles.”

“Oh.”

“What’s this all about?”

“It’s why my dad sent me here.”

I tell Matt as much as I know: about a secret brand of nixiedust; dark, impelled destinies that could only come from old-time magic; my father and countless other animals like him, all serving time for sudden, uncharacteristic bouts of violence.

When I’m finished, Matt takes a long swallow of whiskey.
“It’s a good story, kid, but who’d believe it?” He sighs. “Your pop was a good wolf—as good as you get on this side of the law. But when he did what he did, he went way over the line. Cooking up a cockeyed fairydust conspiracy is a poor excuse.”

“But if it’s true, then maybe it would mean he was innocent, because Skinner and the nixies
forced
him to do it—they found a way to make folks live out their worst possible destinies.”

“Then there’s your proof right there. It can’t be true. The fairies would never spin that kind of magic.”

“But what if someone made them do it? Don’t you think that’s possible?”

Matt shakes his head. “In this line of work, I do my best not to think about anything. That’s what this is for.” He brandishes his bottle. “Now, if George really sent you, then I won’t force the issue. The choice is yours. Either we smuggle you out right now, or you stay and go chasing after fairy tales.”

“I’ll stay.”

“You sure?”

“Like you said, a promise is a promise. I made one to my dad.”

“Then we both did. I promised to look out for you, and I intend to. But right now, let’s hit the hay.” Matt pulls the door shut, locking it behind him.

I yank the string dangling from the bulb to switch it off. Surprisingly, with the adrenaline draining out of me and in the relative safety of a locked broom closet, I drift off. It isn’t
long before I’m back in the forest of my dreams, stalking through whispering trees, belly to the earth, under a moon so bright it’s casting shadows.

Things are different this time. The hillside that draws me down into the woods keeps going and going. It’s so deep that the moon, radiant only moments ago, has nearly vanished. It’s a pinprick now, one point of brightness jabbed through a limitless field of dark. The path through the trees is longer, too. It meanders in every direction, urging me in vast circles. At last, the cottage appears, but when I nudge myself inside, there are too many rooms, hundreds of them, every one devoid of life. There are stairways leading up to nowhere, or down to dead ends. There are tiny, unreachable windows and doors that open up into the bottoms of wells. There are rooms full of cages. Rooms made of gold. There’s one I find that crawls with a jumble of chairs and tables, their million legs entwined like the limbs of an endless insect. I stand in the doorway, gazing into the vast space and they begin to move, clicking and cracking their legs, their antennae, their grasping mandibles and—

I’m jolted awake when the closet door opens. Standing in the opening are a pair of globs. They’re identical. They look like twins. In unison, they step aside to reveal the cat, still impeccably wrapped in his tux.

“Get up, Whelp.”

“Where’s Matt?”

The cat scoffs. “Sleeping it off, no doubt. No idea why he put you in here. Took me forever to find you.”

I sit up, and my body groans, voicing a clear aversion to spending the night on the floor of a closet.

“Henry,” says the cat. “It is ‘Henry,’ correct? I’d like you to meet Skinner’s private bodyguards.” Without indicating who’s who, he says, “This is Adler and this is Baldwin. They’re here to get you moving.”

Adler (Or is it Baldwin?) hauls me up as easily as if I’m made of crepe paper. The other one snatches my opposite arm and the cat leads the three of us out past Matt’s room. The door’s shut, without any sign of life. We head down to the end of the corridor. It’s a dead end, as if last night’s dream were a premonition of things to come. There are no latches. No keyholes. There’s not even a door. It’s just a bare wall. The cat knocks against it with a finely combed knuckle.