Dust City Read online

  DUST

  CITY

  FOR MY FAMILY.

  PUFFIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

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

  Simultaneously published in the United States by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Copyright © Robert Paul Weston, 2010

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  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

  American Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data available

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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: PAUPER GIRL GETS A FAIRY VISIT, ELEVATED TO LIFE OF LUXURY!

  PUMPKIN INTO PARLOR CAR OVERNIGHT!

  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.

  “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.”