Sarah Zettel - Dust girl

“Callie?” Jack whispered.

“That’s up to her,” said Hannah.

“What do you mean?” The words crawled awkwardly out of me.

Jack’s little sister didn’t have eyes in her face, but she didn’t have empty holes either. Her eyes were like Baya’s, filled with night and stars, and she was studying me, not hard, but kindly, like she just wanted to know me better. “Sometimes people who make it this far have to make a decision.”

I looked from the northbound stairs to the southbound, and Hannah Hollander laughed hard.

“Not that kind of decision! That’s made way before any of us get here. No. You’ve got to decide whether to go back or not.”

The train was still behind me. I could hear the clink of cooling metal. The crowd had cleared out. The Hollands-Hollanders-and I stood alone on the platform.

“What about my grandparents, my mother’s parents?”

“They weren’t sure you’d want to see them, but they’re waiting for you that way.” Hannah waved toward the northbound stairs.

“My folks aren’t here, are they?”

“Nope. They’re still in the lands of the living.”

“And Jack?”

Hannah’s smile drooped slowly, and Jack took her hand. “Whatever you do, Callie, Jacob’s got a long way to go yet.”

But I didn’t have to go so far. Not if I didn’t want to.

I looked at Hannah and saw how she shone all happy. I felt a kind of peace settling around me. I thought about the way the faces of the people lit up as they climbed the stairs with their friends and family. I thought about seeing Grandma and Grandpa again, about being able to forgive and just be family, real family, without any schemes or tricks or traps.

But my parents weren’t here. Mama and, yes, Papa were out in the wide, living worlds somewhere. Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t help them. The king and queen of the Midnight Throne wouldn’t help them. If I went up those stairs, the throne would go to Uncle Lorcan, and it would be like Mama and Papa didn’t exist.

I had a choice to make, and I made it.

“I’m going back.”

Hannah nodded solemnly. “It’s going to be hard,” she said. “That prophecy? It’s still there. Both sides are going to want you for their own, and they are not going to give up easy.”

“Neither am I,” I said.

Hannah Hollander nodded, her brown curls bobbing. “You’d better take Jacob with you, then. You’re gonna need him.”

“Maybe…,” I began, but Jack shook his head.

“Oh, no. I’m seeing this through. How else am I gonna know how the story ends?”

There was a lot under those words. I’d go digging for it later.

Jack turned to his sister, his face creasing to hold back tears and get ready for good-bye. Little Hannah just went up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him tight.

“It’s okay, Jacob. I can come meet the train anytime.”

“Thanks, Hannah.”

“You take care of yourself, all right?” She looked him in the eyes with her midnight and stars.

“I will, I promise.” He kissed her forehead, and she rubbed his nose. Then she spun around and ran up the northbound stairs. At the first landing, she turned and waved, and we both waved back.

Hannah whisked out of sight, and Jack lowered his hand. If the weight of the world had slipped from me when we boarded the train, I could see it rolled off Jack now. He’d been forgiven by his little sister, and I could see he’d forgiven himself too. Here, on the edge of all the worlds there were, something tight and hard had vanished from behind Jack Holland’s eyes, and I was pretty sure it was gone for good.

He turned to me and took both my hands. “I got a wish, Callie. I wish you were better. I wish we were back in Kansas City.”

We linked elbows and strolled away. I made the world key turn with a wave of my hand. It had never been this easy before, and I was sure it never would be again. But that was later.

Right now, a door opened in front of us, and we went through, walking easy and free all the way back to Kansas City.

No story springs to life in a vacuum. This one, however, has a longer history and more sources than much of what I’ve written before.

The story really started back when I was a kid listening to Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl ballads while reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. It came to life under the influence of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class by Larry Tye, and Jazz by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux. Frequently, the most powerful influences for an author are novels, and two were very much in my mind as I worked on this book: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? , Horace McCoy’s chilling story of dance marathons during the Depression, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I also was able to draw on the eyewitness accounts collected by the Dust Bowl Oral History Project of the Ford County Historical Society (skyways.org/orgs/fordco/dustbowl/) and the writings and images compiled by Kansas State University (weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/dustbowlpics.html), as well as Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas by Lawrence Svobida, and of course the photographs taken by Dorothea Lange.

Oh, and just for the record-I did not make up the Fairyland amusement park in Kansas City. I found it in the book Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop-A History by Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix. So thanks, gentlemen: you made me rewrite the entire second half of the story.

Nothing tells the story of a time and place like music. So when the story for Dust Girl began to take shape, I went to the music of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl, and the Depression for insight and inspiration. Below is a partial list of songs and ballads I drew on to help Callie and Jack on their way.

“Dance a Little Longer,” words by Woody Guthrie, music by Joel Rafael

“Do Re Mi,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill,” attributed to Thomas Casey (lyrics) and Charles Connolly (music)

“Dust Bowl Refugee,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“Dust Pneumonia Blues,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” words and music by Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays

“Hard Travelin’,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“I Ain’t Got No Home,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“Little Black Train,” words and music adaptation by Woody Guthrie

“The Midnight Special” (traditional), sung by Huddie Ledbetter to John and Alan Lomax, 1934

“My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away),” words and music by Sis Cunningham

“Rock Island Line” (traditional), collected by John and Alan Lomax

“St. James Infirmary Blues” (traditional), recorded by multiple artists

“So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“Take This Hammer” (traditional), collected by John and Alan Lomax

“This Land Is Your Land,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“This Train Is Bound for Glory,” new words and music adaptation by Woody Guthrie

“Tom Joad,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

“Vigilante Man,” words and music by Woody Guthrie

Sarah Zettel is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author. She has written twenty novels and many short stories over the past seventeen years, in addition to practicing tai chi, learning to fiddle, marrying a rocket scientist, and raising a rapidly growing son. Dust Girl is her first novel for teens. Visit her online at sarahzettel.com.