Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

Slowly, the dancers staggered to a halt. They blinked. I felt the moment every one of them smelled the smoke, and the moment they saw the flames chewing on the curtains.

They screamed. They screamed and broke and ran, following the musicians racing for the big open doors.

“Stop!” shouted a bass voice. It was Grandfather, on his feet in front of his throne. “Stop!”

But fire is stronger than magic, and it was spreading. It was licking across the curtains. One of the trumpet players tripped over his chair, and a bunch of chairs and papers and drinks spilled across the bandstand. The liquid hit the burning curtains, and blue alcohol flames leapt up from the floor. The pavilion was burning, and the crowd was shoving its way out the doors, past the point where any glamour, any wishing magic could call them back.

“Time to go, Jack.” I grabbed his hand. He blinked too, and looked at me, really looked at me. He was still sick and gray and weak, but he was back. He stumbled to his feet behind me.

The doorway was clogged with struggling people. There was no getting out that way. But there were windows. I jerked open the curtains and saw the bright lights of the midway. Jack and I knew what to do with windows.

Jack yanked off his tuxedo jacket and I pressed my hand right up against his, lacing our fingers. He got the idea and wrapped the jacket around both our arms, tying us together.

“On three!” I reached for my magic. Jack reached for the last of his strength. “One, two, three!”

“STOP!” The force of wish and will tumbled over us, but it was too late. Together, we punched out that sparkling glass. The world key turned, and turned again. I grabbed Jack’s shoulders, pulled us forward, and we fell.

And we kept on falling.

We fell through a blaze of color. We tumbled and pinged and slammed back and forth. Jack screamed. I screamed. I wanted to pull out my powers and stop the storm. But if I did, we’d stop flying. We’d be stuck in whatever world this was. Their world.

I let us fall.

We hit the boardwalk hard. I screamed some more, and Jack cussed and groaned. I couldn’t see straight. The crazy colors we fell through had blinded me. But then I smelled the smoke and cotton candy. I heard the other screams, and something in my brain beyond all the magic jerked itself upright and took me with it. The world cleared, and we were in the amusement park again.

The white pavilion was burning down. People streamed out of the building, adding their screams to the roar of the fire. There were sirens and bells clanging, and everybody who wasn’t running away from the fire was running toward it to watch the show and cheer it on. A fire engine thundered up the boardwalk, and men in heavy coats and red helmets swarmed out and started shouting orders.

“We made it,” gasped Jack. He was doubled over, his hand pressed against his belly. “We made it.”

But I looked up and saw the green-skinned carnival barker who’d given me my ring. The goblin from the test-of-strength tower sat on the counter at his right hand, and they both had their beady fairy eyes trained on me.

“Not yet, we haven’t,” I said, more to myself than to Jack. We were back in the tunnel, the passage between. I grabbed Jack’s arm. “Come on, we got to get to the outside gate.”

But Jack staggered forward two steps and sank to his knees.

“I can’t…,” he gasped. “I can’t…”

He had to. I looked around us and spied an abandoned cart advertising soda pop, five cents a bottle. I reached into its cooler, grabbed a bottle of root beer, and used the opener. I felt no magic or glamour around it, and I ran back to Jack.

He turned the bottle up and drank that root beer like he meant to down it in a single gulp. The screams had lessened, but the smoke was filling the air around us and firelight flickered on the boards. White sparks flew overhead, and the artificial lights all winked. There was just the fire now.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I murmured, hoping Jack wouldn’t hear me over all the other noise.

But that was a mistake. Because that was me making a wish.

Thhhheeeerrrre shhhheeee issss… It was the voice again, the soft, beautiful, deep voice that had followed me from that first awful day when I’d wished so hard to get out of Slow Run.

No. Oh, no, no, no, not here ! “Get up, Jack! They’re coming!”

Jack surged to his feet. He followed me as I ran through the heat and the flickering firelight. The stupid Mary Janes pinched my toes, and the slick leather soles skidded against the boards, making me stumble.

“Calliope!” a woman’s voice called. “Calliope, where are you going, child? Come home!”

Hearing the sound of my name was like slamming up against a brick wall. I couldn’t go forward. It hurt. My feet turned, skidding and sloppy under me.

“Come home!” called Grandmother. “Calliope deMinuit! Come home!”

“Callie, no!” Jack grabbed for my hand.

But Jack wasn’t strong enough. I was slogging forward, as helpless against the pull of my own name as he had been against the pull of the dance music.

The touch of Jack’s hand slipped away. He was gone, run off. Again. He’d left me alone to stumble through the stinking smoke and hot ash toward the fire. The little imps in evening dress circled around my knees, cheering. I looked up and saw my grandparents silhouetted against the flames, their arms out in welcome. A deep hole filled with the swirling colors of madness opened behind them.

WHAM!

I was sprawled on my belly. Jack rolled off me before I knew what had hit me, and he stuffed something in my hands. I stared.

It was a frying pan. A big black cast-iron frying pan. Over his shoulder I saw the lunch counter with its stove top, and the human fry cook hollering and leaping over the counter.

“Calliope deMinuit!” called Grandmother again.

But this time, the drag was gone. Jack looked down at me and grinned.

“Let’s go!” he said.

I was on my feet and we ran, fast and crazy, away from the fry cook and my grandparents and everything. We were going toward the gate. I didn’t need my magic to tell me. Jack always knew the right way to go.

The shot exploded past my ear without warning.

I screamed, Jack screamed, and we both faltered and skidded sideways around the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Bull Morgan walked out of the smoke. And he wasn’t alone. A slim male silhouette walked beside him.

Where issss shhhheeee? The voice rode the wind and swirled together with the smoke.

“There!” said Bull Morgan, who despite everything was a human being and couldn’t be fooled by iron or steel. He pointed at us with his revolver.

“Thou good and faithful servant!” laughed the man at his side. No. Not a man. I knew the voice now. I’d heard it calling to Bull Morgan, raising him up and driving him back down into the dust. But I’d also heard it singing “St. James Infirmary Blues” in a deserted honky-tonk, and trying to talk me into believing lies about who my father was.

It hadn’t been the Seelie who had sent Morgan after us. It had been my uncle, my father’s younger brother, the one who would have been the heir to the Midnight Throne if it wasn’t for me being born. The one who told me straight-out that I was the heir, as long as I drew breath.

“You’re slow, Callie deMinuit.” Uncle Lorcan smiled his big white smile down at me. “But then, so was your papa.” He turned calmly to Bull Morgan. “Shoot them. We’ll toss them into the fire afterward.”

“You planned this. You wanted me to start the fire so you could kill me and make it look like an accident.”