Robert Paul Weston - 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 jC8136 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 enemys 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 YOUD EXPECT. FROM fairies. I was only a cub, so I dont 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. Ive 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 wasnt 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 Ive been told. To be honest, Im too young to remember. Apparently, fairydust didnt always come in vials. It wasnt 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 spellsprovided the dust came direct from a fairycould be permanent.

The only permanent effects you can count on from todays 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. Thats all there is these days. Low-grade remedies, and theres 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 Im told.

Either way, it doesnt matter to me. Im holding out for the real deal. I like to think one day the fairies will return to Eden. Theyll 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

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 thats what Mrs. Lupovitz teaches us in science class. But sometimes, its hard to believe.

These days, the Citys 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. Remuss 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 themthe courtyard, the dormitories, the old rectorytheyre 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, shes anxious to meet me. Apart from the ones she passes on the street now and then, shes never met a wolf before.

Youre 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.