Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

Jack stumbled again.

“Jack…”

“Gotta… gotta keep moving…,” he gasped.

“No. Let’s go sit down, okay? I’ll get you something to drink.”

“Can’t. Can’t. Gotta keep moving. They say I gotta keep moving.”

“Who, Jack? Who says?”

He stared at me. His eyes were clouded over, milky. “Don’t know,” he wheezed. “Just… gotta keep dancing.”

I whipped my head around, turning us, trying to catch my grandparents’ attention. But they just waved from high on their thrones.

The current of the music pulled hard at me. My grip on my worry started to loosen, and I wanted to let it go. This was where I belonged, inside this life and vitality. I needed to drink it all into myself. I’d be even stronger than I was now. I’d be able to dance forever, and that was all I wanted, wasn’t it? Sure, I wanted to talk about who I was and what had happened to my papa. But there was time enough for that later. Grandmother had promised we’d talk when tomorrow got here.

Which was a funny way to say “later.” Like when Shimmy said Jack would take no harm walking into her house, when we weren’t in her house.

We weren’t in her house now either. We were in a magic country where even Death could be pushed around. Could they push around Time too? Thought and memory shoved hard against the music, trying to get up to where they could be seen.

I’d torn time right open back on the prairie, back when it was Jack who believed I was half fairy and I tried to tell him that was all baloney. What if my fairy grandparents could stop time in its tracks?

The music slowed down, becoming sultry. A woman in a sparkling red gown had stepped in front of Mr. Basie’s piano. I blinked, and looked, and blinked again.

“SHIMMY!”

Shimmy waved and smiled at me like nothing had ever been wrong. Then she took hold of the microphone and raised her voice to sing.

“Woke up this morning…”

Shimmy had a fine voice, full of feeling. She sang-she wept, really-about a man who’d done her wrong, and about how she should never let him go, never, ever let him go.

Jack slumped into my arms, but that didn’t seem important. What was important was that Shimmy was alive and well, and right where she wanted to be, home among the fairies, singing for their delight. Grandfather had promised she’d be rewarded, and she was.

I felt I should listen to that song about holding on to your man. I should hold on to mine forever and never let him go.

“Gotta keep moving,” Jack said. He was right, of course. I couldn’t leave the music or the dance. I didn’t belong out there. I never had. I belonged right here, just like Shimmy did. I waved at her, and she winked at me.

But Jack’s head lolled against my shoulder, and a bolt of fear shot through to my heart. It touched the spot where I could still muster a sense of right, and that feeling spread up my spine to my drowning head. It occurred to me that this much magic might not actually be good for a normal person. As much as I belonged here with my family, it wasn’t Jack’s world. I thought maybe I should get him out into the fresh air, away from some of the swirling power.

“Okay, Jack. We’ll keep moving.” I stretched my neck to see past the dancers until I got a bead on the double doors we’d come through. Jack was supposed to be leading because he was the boy, but he could barely support his own weight now, so I had to take over. I struggled with the rhythm but slowly steered us toward the edge of the dance floor. If I could just get him back outside to the midway, it would be all right. I was sure of it.

“Callie, my dear, where are you going?”

I turned us both around, and there was my grandmother.

She didn’t look so happy anymore.

My hands went cold, and I groped quick after a lie. “I… uh… I was gonna go ride the Ferris wheel. I’ve never had the chance before, and neither has Jack.”

“Oh, poor thing, he’s tired, isn’t he?” Grandmother cupped Jack’s cheek with her hand. “Well, we’re just about to have dinner. You’ll both feel so much better after a good meal.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” I forced a smile.

“I know it’s all very confusing, Calliope,” said my grandmother. “But you just finish your dance. When tomorrow gets here, you’ll understand. For now… well, we’re celebrating, aren’t we?”

Of course we were. That was exactly what we were doing. How could I forget?

Except those thoughts weren’t coming up from inside me. I could feel it now. Those thoughts were from outside, like the music. They pushed their way past my own thoughts and memories. Grandmother was trying to put ideas in my head, and I had the very scary feeling she hadn’t even tried her hardest yet.

“Yes, we’re celebrating. Of course.” I said it because I knew it was what she wanted. It was the direction the current of music and magic moved, and it would be so much easier to just go along with it. If I tried to cut across it, I’d stumble and fall, just like I had during the rabbit drive, when Shimmy died.

But that wasn’t important, said those outside ideas to me. That was all long ago and far away. What was important was that Jack and I would finish the dance, and then there’d be a banquet, bigger and grander than anything either of us had seen yet.

Jack would eat too, because he was so hungry. I could feel that as well. This time, he wouldn’t be able to hold out. Even though he was the one who told me that if a regular person ate or drank in Fairyland, they’d be trapped.

“Come on, Jack.” I shook the hand I held. “We haven’t finished our dance.”

“Gotta keep moving,” murmured Jack.

Grandmother smiled as hard and bright as the diamonds in her crown, and stepped back so I could steer Jack deeper among the dancers.

The band was swinging again, fast and hot. All around us on the dance floor, people hopped and swung, fast and frantic and happy. Desperately, crazily happy, their eyes as wild as their movements. I dragged Jack over to the bandstand, and as we swayed back and forth, I looked hard at the musicians. They were desperate too. But they weren’t happy. They were scared, almost scared to death.

How much time had passed for the regular people? Jack was turning gray. He was going to be sick. I saw waiters laying out platters of food on long tables. Jack’s head turned that way, and he groaned like he was starving. And he might have been.

Shimmy wasn’t up at the microphone anymore. I turned us around, searching for her. I finally spotted her standing in one of the alcoves with Uncle Lorcan. He cupped a hand around her cheek. She was laughing with him, all loving. All forgiven.

I felt I was being watched. Sure enough, Grandmother was by the door and Grandfather was on his throne, both with their glittering eyes trained right on us. I moved away from the bandstand again. This time, I tried to keep to the edges of the dance. I had to do something and I had to do it soon, or neither one of us was getting out of here. Not that I wanted to. I mean, I had just come home. But Jack couldn’t stay.

I bit my lip and tried to think. These are regular people dancing around us. There must be wishes here . I reached with my extra sense gently, like I was trying to move through the dark without being heard. But there was not one single wish in that whole hall to catch hold of. All the wishes here were fulfilled. Taken. Grandmother and Grandfather, this place, it had made all their wishes come true, or at least it made them think they had. For them those wishes were so true they noticed nothing else. Not even that they were dancing themselves to death.