Hugh Howey: Dust

“Breathe easy,” she said. She looked up as others arrived. They pulled up short at the sight of this stranger.

The woman wiped her mouth and nodded. Her chest heaved with a deep breath. Another. She brushed the hair off her face. “Thank you,” she gasped. She peered up at the sky and the clouds in something other than wonder. In relief. Her eyes focused on and tracked an object, and Juliette turned and gazed up to see another of the birds wheeling lazily in the sky. The crowd around her kept their distance. Someone asked who this was.

“You aren’t from our silo, are you?” Juliette asked. Her first thought was that this was a cleaner from a nearby silo who had witnessed their march, had followed them. Her second thought was impossible. It was also correct.

“No,” the woman said, “I’m not from your silo. I’m from… somewhere quite different. My name is Charlotte.”

A glove was offered, a glove and a weary smile. The warmth of that smile disarmed Juliette. To her surprise, she realized that she held no anger or resentment toward this woman, who had told her the truth of this place. Here, perhaps, was a kindred spirit. And more importantly, a fresh start. She regained her composure, smiled back, and shook the woman’s hand. “Juliette,” she said. “Let me help you out of that.”

“You’re her,” Charlotte said, smiling. She turned her attention to the crowd, to the tower and the piles of supplies. “What is this place?”

“A second chance,” Juliette said. “But we aren’t staying here. We’re heading to the water. You’ll come with us, I hope. But I have to warn you, it’s a long way.”

Charlotte rested her hand on Juliette’s shoulder. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve already come a long way.”

In July of 2011, I wrote and published a short story that brought me into contact with thousands of readers, took me around the world on book tours, and changed my life. I couldn’t have dreamed that any of this was about to happen the day I published Wool . Two years have passed, and now the publication of this book completes an amazing journey. I thank you for making that journey possible and for accompanying me along the way.

This is not the end, of course. Every story we read, every film we watch, continues on in our imaginations if we allow it. Characters live another day. They grow old and die. New ones are born. Challenges crop up and are dealt with. There is sadness, joy, triumph, and failure. Where a story ends is nothing more than a snapshot in time, a brief flash of emotion, a pause. How and if it continues is up to us.

My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come.

What do you see?

Raph seemed unsure. He held a branch in his hand, weighed it purposefully, his pale face a dance of orange and gold from the flickering fire.

“Just throw the damn thing in,” Bobby yelled.

There was laughter, but Raph frowned in consternation. “It’s wood ,” he said, weighing the branch.

“Look around you,” Bobby roared. He waved at the dark limbs hanging overhead, the wide trunks. “It’s more than we’ll ever need.”

“Do it, lad.” Erik kicked one of the logs, and a burst of sparks buzzed in the air as if startled from their slumber. Finally, Raph threw the branch in with the rest, and the wood began to crackle and spark.

Juliette watched from her bedroll. Somewhere in the woods, an animal made a sound, a sound unlike any she’d ever heard. It was like a crying child, but sonorous and mournful.

“What was that?” someone asked.

In the darkness, they exchanged guesses. They conjured animals from children’s books. They listened to Solo recount the many breeds from olden times that he had read about in the Legacy. They gathered around Elise with flashlights and pored through the stitched pages of her book. Everything was a mystery and a wonder.

Juliette lay back and listened to the crackle from the fire, the occasional loud pop from a log, enjoying the heat on her skin, the smell of meat cooking, the peculiar odor of grass and so much soil. And through the canopy overhead, stars twinkled. The bright clouds from before — the ones that had hidden the sun as it set behind the hills — were parted by the breeze. They revealed above her a hundred glittering pricks of light. A thousand. More of them everywhere the longer she looked. They glittered in her tear-filled eyes as she thought of Lukas and the love he had aroused in her. And something hardened in her chest, something that made her jaw clench tight to keep from crying, a renewed purpose in her life, a desire to reach the water on Elise’s map, to plant these seeds, to build a home above the ground and live there.

“Jewel? You asleep?”

Elise stood above her, blocking the stars. Puppy’s cold nose pressed into Juliette’s cheek.

“C’mere,” Juliette said. She scooted over and patted her bedroll, and Elise sat down and nestled against her.

“What’re you doing?” Elise asked.

Juliette pointed up through the canopy. “I’m looking at the stars,” she said. “Each of those is like our sun, but they’re a long way away.”

“I know the stars,” Elise said. “Some of them have names.”

“They do?”

“Yeah.” Elise rested her head back against Juliette’s shoulder and gazed up with her a moment. The unknown thing in the woods howled. “See those?” Elise asked. “Don’t those look like a puppy to you?”

Juliette squinted and searched the sky. “Could be,” she said. “Yeah, maybe they do.”

“We can call those ones Puppy.”

“That’s a good name,” Juliette agreed. She laughed and wiped at her eyes.

“And that one’s like a man.” Elise pointed at a wide spread of stars, tracing the features. “There’s his arms and legs. There’s his head.”

“I see him,” Juliette said.

“You can name him,” Elise told her, giving her permission. Deep in the woods, the hidden animal let out another howl, and Elise’s puppy made a similar sound. Juliette felt tears roll down her cheeks.

“Not that one,” she said quietly. “He already has a name.”

The fires settled down as the night wore on. Clouds swallowed stars and tents gobbled children. Juliette watched shadows move in one of the tents, other adults too jittery to sleep. Somewhere, someone was still cooking strips of meat from the animal Solo had shot with his rifle — the long-limbed deer. Juliette had marveled at Solo’s transformation these last three days. A man who grew up alone was now a leader of men, more prepared for surviving in this world than any of them. Juliette would ask for another vote soon. Her friend Solo would make an excellent mayor.

In the distance, a silhouette stood over a fire and prodded it with a stick, coaxing more heat from dying embers. Clouds and fire — these two things her people had only ever feared. Fire was death in the silo, and clouds consumed those who dared to leave. And yet, as the clouds closed in overhead and flames were agitated higher, there was comfort in both. The clouds were a roof of sorts, the fire warmth. There was less here to fear. And when a bright star revealed itself through a sudden gap, Juliette’s thoughts returned as ever to Lukas.

He had told her once, with his star chart spread across that bed in which they made love, that each of those stars could possibly hold worlds of their own, and Juliette remembered being unable to grasp the thought. It was audacious. Impossible. Even having seen another silo, even having seen dozens of depressions in the earth that stretched to the horizon, she could not imagine entire other worlds existing. And yet, she had returned from her cleaning and had expected others to believe her claims, equally bold—