Dust girl

8

With Letitia Hopper marching behind me, I carried that tureen full of ipecac-laced chowder into the dim and dusty Moonlight Room.

The Hoppers ringed a table in the exact center of the room. They’d stuffed Jack between Mr. Hopper and the oldest boy, Hunter. Hunter’s jaws moved like he was chewing a wad of gum, and he had one arm draped around Jack’s shoulders. Jack had turned a nasty shade of green, but he clenched his jaw and tried to swallow his panic as I set the tureen down. I shook my head just a little as I lifted the tureen lid, releasing the salt-and-tomato smell of my improvised chowder.

“Excellent!” Mr. Hopper inhaled deeply. Hunter smacked his lips. William burped, and little Clarinda giggled.

That was when I realized the dust cloths that had covered the tables and chairs were gone. All of them. Even the dust sheet we’d dropped beside Papa’s piano had vanished.

Mrs. Hopper glared at her children as she shook out her napkin and smoothed it daintily over her lap. None of the others seemed to have saved theirs. “Is it going to be enough, Desmond?”

“This is just for starters,” I made myself say. “There’s more food in the back.” I looked at Jack over the Hoppers’ heads. Don’t eat it, I tried to think toward him. Even if they offer, don’t eat it. But there was no way to tell if his attempt at a grim smile meant he understood.

“Well, if there’s more, let’s have it,” said Mr. Hopper. “Letitia, help her.”

This did not sit well with Miss Letitia. “Pa! I’m hungry too!”

“Do as you’re told, Letitia.” Mrs. Hopper leaned over the tureen, a thin river of spit running down her chin.

Letitia grimaced, and her mouth parts clacked under her false face. I walked away. Behind me, the buzzing and humming noise of the Hoppers settling down to their feast rose up, and I didn’t dare look back. But as I heard Letitia’s angry clacking, a new plan formed in my head.

“It’s not fair they won’t let you sit down with them,” I said to Letitia once we were both in the kitchen. “You gotta be starved.”

“We’re always starved.” Her voice sounded different when she said that, light and thin but more… real. “There’s never enough for all of us.”

“Then what could you want out this way? There’s not much left to eat since the dusters started.” I took up a side towel and pulled the bread pudding from the oven. It had come out perfect, all golden brown and shimmery with the milk custard. The rich, sweet smell mixed with the scents of the ham, beans, and gravy still bubbling away on the stove top. It set my mouth watering, but Letitia… she looked at that bread pudding like it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“Now that we’ve found you, we’ll be fed.” She took two steps toward the pudding. “The Seelie King will reward us all.”

I couldn’t have heard that right. “King? Who the heck is Seelie King?”

“The Seelie King.” Letitia snickered and took a step closer to the pudding, like it pulled her on a string. “And he’s offered a reward to the first of us to bring you to him. You’re famous, Miss Callie. There’s a whole prophecy about you.”

The words dropped like stones into the middle of my confusion, but I just adjusted the pudding on the counter a little. “Prophecy?”

Letitia’s bug eyes misted over. I could see my pudding’s reflection in her spectacles. “See her now, daughter of three worlds. See her now, three roads to choose. Where she goes, where she stays, where she stands, there shall the gates be closed.”

Those words went straight down into my blood and bones. They twisted around in there, looking for the way to my heart. She was telling me the truth, and I knew it. The problem was, I had no idea what the heck that truth meant.

It didn’t matter. I could work it out later. Right now, I had to take care of Miss Letitia and the rest of the proud Hopper clan.

“You know,” I said slowly. “It’s not fair that they’re all out there stuffing their faces and you’re in here doing the work. Why don’t you have this?” I slid the pan toward her.

Letitia opened her mouth wide, but she didn’t move right away. She shifted her bug eyes sideways to me, and back to the pudding.

I made myself smile. “It’d serve ’em right.”

“Serve ’em right.” Letitia dug in with both hooks and stuffed a big, boiling-hot heap of pudding into her mouth. She bent down over the pan, chewing and buzzing, and not looking at me at all.

So I whacked her a good one with Mama’s best silver tray.

Letitia fell splat into the pudding, and I hit her again, hard enough to dent the tray. She slid to the floor, but she didn’t stay down.

“You little brat!” Letitia bounced to her feet. Her spectacles hung crooked and custard-spattered from one ear, and her faceted bug eyes glittered hard and dry. I had one short second to get good and scared before Letitia leapt into the air. Her green sash unwound from her waist, turning into a pair of iridescent green-veined wings.

Half-bug, half-human Letitia swooped down. I dove across the tiles like I was sliding into second base, and banged hard against the stove. Letitia laughed and circled tight, lining up for another run. I scrambled to my feet and-still thinking baseball-grabbed the cast-iron frying pan off the stove with both hands. Letitia dove, and I swung. Momentum carried me in a full circle. I felt the thud and heard the scream before I could see straight.

“What is all this commotion?”

Mrs. Hopper came through the door in time to get hit by a gob of flying ham and to see her girl knocked smack against the wall.

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Hopper’s antennae waved toward her daughter, who was sprawled on the tiles and did not get up, but her eyes stayed fixed on me. “Callie, I am very much afraid we’re going to have to dock your pay for this.”

“Come on, you big bug!” I hefted the frying pan, dripping sticky Coca-Cola glaze. “You wanna take a bite outta me? Come on and try it!”

Which was a stupid thing to say, because Mrs. Hopper did come on. For a minute, I saw the locust plainly. Taller and heavier than I was, it scuttled on four of its legs, its hooked feet held out in front. Its mandibles snapped, looking for something all covered in sticky cola to chew.

Fear blanked my mind. I backed up, clutching the frying pan in front of me.

The bug shivered and became Mrs. Hopper again. She pressed a hand against her stomach.

“What…” Mrs. Hopper covered her mouth, and her eyes rolled. With a groan, she reeled sideways. Vomit splattered all over the floor.

It was disgusting.

Seeing no point in waiting around for her to finish, I ran headlong for the swinging doors and slammed into Jack.

We both staggered backward, clutching our noses and gawking at each other.

“The Hoppers are all being sick!” He pointed behind him. Then he saw Mrs. Hopper retching, and Letitia still out cold against the wall. “God Almighty.”

“Come on!” I bolted down the corridor toward the front doors, still holding tight to the frying pan. My plan was forgotten. All I could think about was getting away. I jumped off the porch and plowed straight into the dust drifts.

“Wait!” Jack grabbed my wrist. “The car!” He waded toward the Duesenberg, which sat gleaming in the light that trickled from the Imperial’s glass-fronted doors.

“We don’t have the key!”

“Just get in!”

I dove through the driver’s-side door, my pan banging the door frame behind me. All at once, the Duesy was gone. I sat in a rattletrap Model A truck with a cracked windshield and an open back.

Jack and I stared at each other, but only for a heartbeat. Jack folded the Model A’s hood back and plunged both arms into the engine. A second later, the engine coughed and the smell of gasoline filled the passenger compartment. The whole truck shuddered, and the motor caught. That unsteady rumble was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

I threw myself and my frying pan sideways as Jack leapt feetfirst into the driver’s seat. He worked the choke, yanked the throttle open, slammed the gears, and stomped hard on the accelerator, and we lurched off into the dark.

“Which way?” shouted Jack.

The world beyond the little space cleared by the headlights was a wall of solid black. I squinted, and found out my ability to see through the dust didn’t mean I could see in the dark.

“Just drive!”

Jack’s cheek bulged as he clenched his jaw. A line of barbed wire and fence posts appeared in front of us. Jack swore and tried to swing right, but he was too late. Wire twanged and snapped around us as the truck lumbered straight ahead.

I stared and stared. Slowly, I made out the line of the hogback ridge, and then the vague shape of a windmill. With the fence, that meant we were headed east, away from town, out toward the railroad tracks. I opened my mouth to tell Jack to bear left, but the wind gusted hard, blowing dust in through the truck’s open windows. Dust, and voices.

Look shhhhaaaarrrrp! Look shhhhaaaarrrrp!

“No! Oh, no, no, no, no!”

“What?” Jack demanded.

“Can’t you hear it?”

“No!”

THUMP! The truck rocked under the impact of something heavy falling square on the roof.

“Heard that,” Jack muttered.

A second thump shook our flimsy getaway truck.

“That too,” said Jack.

A huge Hopper head, mandibles scissoring, ducked into the window. I screamed and shoved the frying pan straight into its mouth. There was a hiss and a stench like burning hay, and the bug tumbled off into the dust.

“Got it!” I shouted.

Jack hooted and pounded the steering wheel.

A black hook curled around the window frame.

“Take that!” I banged the frying pan down on the hook. The Hopper howled and the hook vanished.

Jack gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles went white. “Hang on!”

He hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel around. The engine groaned, and the rickety Ford spun in a tight circle, rocking like a ship in a storm. The Hopper flew sideways, tumbling away into the dark.

Miraculously the truck didn’t stall out. I was ready to marry both Jack and Mr. Henry Ford as we went rolling over the dunes.

Then the engine coughed and the truck lurched.

“Come on, come on,” Jack pleaded, working the throttle and the choke. “Not yet!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Engine’s taking in dust,” he said grimly. “It’s gonna smother.”

Caaaalliiiieeee…

I stuck my head out the window. There was just enough light to see the big black bug leaping from dust ridge to dust ridge, right behind us.

“One of ’em’s back there?”

“Yes!”

The truck coughed and staggered again.

“Okay.” Jack clashed the gears and cussed a blue streak, throwing the truck into reverse. The wheels spun and I was afraid he’d dig us into the dunes. But he just swung that truck around until the Hopper glittered in the headlights.

“What’re you doing?” I shrieked.

“Playing chicken!” Jack grinned like he was a Hopper himself and put all his weight onto the accelerator, almost standing up from the seat. The truck flew forward. So did the bug. I swear I heard it laughing.

“They can fly, you idiot!”

Jack said nothing. The bug jumped up and landed right on the hood with a hollow thump. It scrabbled at the glass, its mandibles and hooks digging into the spiderweb of cracks, ready to winkle us out of our tin shell.

It didn’t see the windmill looming up in the headlights behind it.

“Jump!” Jack shouted.

I kicked open the door and jumped, thudding into hot dust and rolling tail over teacup down the new dune. There was a crash and a scream and a big, juicy, buzzing squelch.

Coughing hard and spitting dust, I picked myself up.

The Model A had plowed into the windmill, and the Hopper, whichever one it was, was squashed between the twisted struts and the steaming guts of the wrecked truck. Yellow oozed out of its broken body and dripped onto the dust.

I looked at Jack. Jack looked at me. Above us, the windmill’s bent frame creaked and swayed in the wind.

I grabbed Jack’s free hand and dragged him behind me.

We ran until we couldn’t run anymore. After that, we walked. The wind was kicking up all the new dust. It stuck to my glaze-smeared skin and itched like a whole family of fleas. Jack coughed with every step, and I was ready to be sick wondering what I’d do if he started to suffocate. So when we saw the deserted tenant farmer’s shack sticking out of the sand, we didn’t even think twice, just stumbled inside and collapsed in the middle of the floor. Jack threw his coat over us both and we huddled close under the worn-out cloth.

After a while, we fell asleep.