Dust girl

23

The people in front of me were royalty. I took hold of my skirt and bent my knees, doing my best to imitate the curtsies I had seen in the movies. Behind me the dancers applauded politely, and I flushed. Welcome home. The words echoed in my head and my heart. Welcome home.

“Now, granddaughter.” The queen, my grandmother, turned toward Jack. “Make this young man known to us.”

“This is Jack Holland, ma’am.” I grabbed Jack’s hand and pulled him forward. He looked next to panicking, but I had no idea why. My anger was all gone. Nothing that had happened outside the gates seemed to matter now that I had been welcomed home. “He’s the reason I was able to make it this far. He saved my life a bunch of times.”

“Did he?” boomed Grandfather from his throne. “Then we are deeply in your debt, Jack Holland.” He inclined his head regally.

“Yes, indeed.” Grandmother grasped Jack’s hand and smiled down straight into his eyes. Immediately, a change came over Jack. The panic bled away, and he stood up straighter. He bowed low over my grandmother’s hand, and even clicked his heels like a foreign count in a dime novel. It should have looked dopey, but it didn’t. It looked… debonair. The swaying dancers applauded again. Grandmother’s smile went a little tight, and her eyes slid sideways to Grandfather. He nodded.

“We had help from Shimmy too,” I told them, and for a moment my rising happiness faltered. “She never let us down.”

“Shimmy?” repeated my grandmother.

“She means Shiraz,” said the thin man beside the throne. He trotted down the steps, coming close enough that I could see him clearly. Shock knocked my jaw loose.

“Shake!”

Shake bowed. Now I knew why my grandmother’s silver and gold eyes looked so familiar. I’d seen eyes like hers when Shake first looked at me, a thousand miles and a thousand years ago.

“Hello, Calliope. Welcome home.” Shake smiled his big white smile. “Perhaps I should introduce myself properly. I am Lorcan deMinuit, and I am your father’s brother.”

“You… you’re my uncle?”

Shake-Lorcan deMinuit-bowed again.

Anger tried to elbow its way past shock. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I apologize for that. But it is dangerous for our kind to go wearing our names openly in the world beyond. They can be turned against us, which is something you have yet to learn.” He said those last words as pleasant and polite as Sunday morning, but there was something in them that didn’t sit quite right.

“She… Shimmy told me you went on ahead…”

“I did, to make sure all was prepared for your arrival. Where is Shiraz… Shimmy?” Lorcan craned his neck to see between the dancers, as if Shimmy might have gotten lost on the way from the door.

Now I had proper hold of my anger, and it was fresh and piping hot. Why hadn’t he stayed with her, with us? We could have used his help. Maybe Shimmy would still be alive if we’d had some full-bore fairy magic when Bull Morgan set us in front of that rabbit drive.

“She’s dead,” I told him.

The music faltered, and the whole crowd gasped. Grandmother’s smile faded. Up on the throne, Grandfather said, “Tell us what happened.”

So I told them about how Shimmy had come to save us from the Trixies and Bull Morgan in the Bijoux, and about the long car ride and the motel, and about the rabbit drive. While I talked, I felt the anger rising in the room. It made the kind of heaviness in the air you feel when the weather’s changing. I glossed over Jack’s running out on us as best I could. This might have been my home and family, but there was danger here. I could feel it all across my skin, and despite everything, I didn’t want it aimed at Jack.

When I finished my story, Grandfather bowed his head. “Shiraz was truly one of the Midnight People. She shall be rewarded for the service she has rendered in bringing you home.”

I almost opened my mouth to ask how she could be rewarded for anything when she was dead. Then I remembered I was in a magic country now. Dead didn’t mean the same thing to these people… to my family. Hope rose up in my heart. Maybe Shimmy wasn’t gone after all.

“Now, I know you have a thousand questions.” Grandmother squeezed my arm. “And they will all be answered, I promise. But tomorrow. Tonight we dance. When tomorrow comes, we will talk about your future.”

“Play on!” Grandfather raised his hand to the musicians. “We will dance! For Princess Calliope is returned to us!”

A cheer rang around the room, and a single high note rose above the band. It sounded almost like a siren, but the music swept that warning note away and the dancers swarmed to the center of the floor, swirling around, swinging to the hot new tune.

“Come on with me, Jack,” said my uncle, Lorcan. “Let me introduce you to some people. We’ll let Callie talk with her grandmother for a bit.”

Jack hesitated, but Lorcan had a hand on his back and was already steering him toward a group of young women and men, who I was pretty sure were all fairies. Some of those girls were awfully pretty too. Something made me uncomfortable about letting Jack go away like that, but I was having a hard time concentrating. The music swept over me too, sinking into my skin, making me feel all light and easy. Was it possible to get music-logged like you could get waterlogged from lying in the bathtub too long?

“Aren’t they magnificent?” Grandmother said, her gold-and-midnight eyes sparkling as she looked toward the bandstand. “Mr. Basie is but lately come to our court. I expect he will be invited back again soon.”

“But… why did you bring them here?” Because it wasn’t just the musicians who were humans. Most of the dancers were too. There were some fairy couples scattered among them, but mostly it was humans out there. I could see the difference now. It showed up in Jack as he stood talking and laughing with the pretty girls on the edge of the dance floor. There was something missing from him, and them, or maybe there was something extra with him. I couldn’t make up my mind. But he felt different, and so did the dancers, and so did the band. “And why so many?”

“Bring them?” Grandmother laughed. “We do not bring them. They come to us, my dear.” She beamed proudly across the dance floor. “The makers, the beautiful, the ones cast out because their light was too brilliant for the world beyond. The ones who wish true and deep with their whole hearts for more than they have. They come here, and we love them.”

“We do?”

“Oh, my dear, of course we do, and they need our love. They are so lonely, so unsure, so hungry for the success of the daylight world. They come here and bring that hope and those wishes to us, and we accept all they have to give.”

All. That one word was heavier than the others. It made the music falter. Except it couldn’t have, could it? I rubbed my temple. I couldn’t sort out my feelings. All the music and happiness were like the wind around my ears. They pushed and pulled at me. But there was something else too. Something tugged at my mind, trying to tell me that I shouldn’t relax too much, but I couldn’t hear it plainly.

“Is something wrong, dear?” asked Grandmother.

“I, um… I was wondering… about the music. On the way here, I was listening to the music out on the street and it made me feel kinda funny.”

“Oh, my dear.” She laughed, but nicely. “Yes. Music is strong drink for our kind. It’s so full of feeling and unmet wishes that when you’re not used to it, it can go straight to your head. But you’re home now, dear. You’ll take no harm from the entertainment we have for you. In fact, I think you’ll find it quite… liberating.”

Uncle Lorcan was coming back across the room alone. He bowed to me. “My dear niece, may I have this dance?”

“I can’t dance.” That wasn’t strictly true. I’d danced with Mama in the parlor just for fun. She’d taught me a little swing and how to jitterbug, and every kid at school had to learn how to waltz. But I’d never actually danced in front of, well, people.

“I’m sure you dance beautifully. It’s in your blood, after all.” My uncle held out his hand, and Grandmother smiled and gave me a little push toward him.

I was blushing all over, but I let him lead me out onto the floor. The music had changed, slowing down from the swing time to a slow, country sound. One, two, three, one, two, three. Uncle Lorcan put his hands under mine and began to waltz. It was polite, formal, and easy, a simple rhythm that my feet seemed to know better than my head. All the while, Lorcan hummed under his breath, and I remembered Shimmy’s humming, and remembered how I’d first met this man.

“Why did you try to get me to think you were my papa?” I asked him.

He smiled, small and kind of sad. “It was something in the nature of a test, I’m afraid. I didn’t know what kind of person you were, and I had to find out. I am pleased to say you passed with flying colors.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to make that face. You don’t realize how important you are, Callie LeRoux-or I should say Callie deMinuit. Without an heir, the Midnight Throne has been in deep danger.”

“But you were here. You said Papa abdicated. So wouldn’t that make you next in line?”

“If this were a human court, yes. The problem is, you were born before your father completed the ceremony of abdication. He did not know that, of course. But by our laws that makes you the legitimate heir, and me, well, I am second in line.”

“But Grandfather’s the king, isn’t he? He can just change the law.”

“You’re still thinking like a human, Callie. Human laws have no real hold on their people. It is different for our kind. Our laws-the laws of light and shadow-are born into us. If they are broken, our whole world, our very existence, is broken. You are the heir to the Midnight Throne, Calliope, and will be as long as you draw breath.”

I felt like I should say something, although I wasn’t sure what. “I’m sorry,” I tried. “I didn’t want to be…”

Uncle Lorcan shrugged. “We can none of us help being born, my dear niece. That is one thing our kind shares with the likes of your young man.” Uncle Lorcan nodded toward Jack, who was watching me while one of the fairy girls leaned in and whispered something in his ear.

I felt my face flush all over again. “He’s not my young man.”

“Well, you would be the one to know.” Something I couldn’t read glittered in my uncle’s eyes. “But you need to take care, Callie. Not everyone wants you here.”

Fear touched the back of my neck, a cold, heavy feeling like the press of Morgan’s gun.

Uncle Lorcan nodded once. He knew I’d gotten the message. His serious whisper vanished, and he was all smiles again. “Now, you’ve talked enough with your dull uncle. Let me take you back to Her Majesty.”

The music had changed again. No one else stopped dancing, but Uncle Lorcan led me through the swaying, spinning couples. The human dancers seemed to turn pale as we passed, and their faces… they were all smiling, but their smiles seemed strained. There was something shifting and rippling between me and them, like a gauzy curtain had fallen over them. That was familiar too, but before I could place it, I was back beside Grandmother.

“Well, my dear, how do you like your celebration?” She spread her hands out to take in the entire hall.

“I love it, but…”

“And is not Mr. Basie’s music so wonderful?”

“It is, but…”

“I think your friend would like a dance, my dear.”

My tongue froze against the top of my mouth. Jack was coming across the floor, leaving the fairy girls behind. I’d never danced with a boy. I mean, not really. Not one I liked. There was waltz class at school, but that was a lot different. This was Jack standing in front of me in his fine evening clothes, making me feel funny again. He looked so much older dressed like that, with the wonderful music rising up behind him. He could have been Fred Astaire smiling for Ginger Rogers.

Jack bowed to me, just like he had to my grandmother. “May I have this dance?”

I giggled and made a curtsy. It seemed the thing to do. Then Jack took my gloved hand in his and led me onto the dance floor.

“I probably oughta let you know, I can’t actually dance,” he confessed.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. Because now that I was in the middle of the dance and the music, I knew I could dance however I pleased. What’s more, I could help Jack do the same, as easy as breathing. Easy as wishing.

I took Jack’s hands, arranging them so one held mine and the other rested against the small of my back. The current of the music and the magic ran through me into him, and just like that, Jack could dance too.

And he was really good. He could swing and sashay and tango and lindy and jitterbug. He swung me around and lifted me up high. I laughed and came down and whirled around with him. I was swimming in the music like a dolphin in the ocean. It had gotten into my blood and my feet. I could have flown to the moon or danced along a high wire. I could do anything. This place was perfect, with its colored lights, its deep shadows, and its music, and I was perfect in it. For the first time in my entire life, I was comfortable in my own skin. This was right where we needed to be. I knew it for sure.

Jack was perfect too. He steered me beautifully during the slow numbers, and when Mr. Basie’s band picked up the pace again, we stomped down and kicked back into a swing step.

“Callie…,” Jack whispered like someone coming up for air.

“I know!” I cried as the next song began. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

There was just a heartbeat before his great big grin spread across his face. “Sure is!”

Jack gripped my hands tightly, and we plunged in deep among the taller, slower dancers. We spun around each other, kicking and jumping high. The music washed through me. I was made of music.

But then a new noise rippled beneath the music. It was a kind of distant roaring, like the wind rushing around the eaves. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw someone fall down.

I blinked and turned my head, trying to see better. All at once, I wasn’t in the middle of the glittering crowd anymore. I was in a dim and dusty pavilion. Daylight filtered through tiny strips of window high above. Around me, people in faded dresses and overalls staggered around the dance floor to the strident, off-key music of a tired band. Next to the door hung a sign:

FAIRYLAND DANCE MARATHON!

27 DAYS AND COUNTING!

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT TO FALL?

But Jack, following the music, turned us again, and I caught sight of my grandparents on their thrones. I was in their dance hall again, and I knew that other place was just my imagination. The dance marathon was a whole world away. This was my party. I could dance forever; I was that strong and that free. I grinned at Jack.

But Jack didn’t look quite right anymore. He was kind of pale, and his coffee-and-cream freckles stood out sharp against his skin. He was sweating, and he had to close his mouth around his breathing to smile at me and swing me around again.

KANSAS CITY DANCE MARATHON. The words from the flyer I’d pulled out of Shimmy’s handbag flickered in front of my eyes again. Why was I thinking about that? This wasn’t a dance marathon. This was a celebration, the celebration of my homecoming.

Jack stumbled. I tightened my grip on his hands. His cold hands.

“Jack?”

His jaw sagged open again. “Callie…,” he croaked. “Callie, I think something’s wrong with me…”

But what could be wrong, with the music and the lights and my grandparents smiling down at us? It was perfect and magical. Like time was standing still.

Like time was standing still. My head surfaced briefly above the current of the music. How long had we been dancing, anyhow? An hour, maybe? I had no idea. There were no clocks in the hall, and I hadn’t worn a watch. There were big bay windows that looked over the midway, but as I turned again, I saw all the heavy curtains were closed. I couldn’t see anything through them but some faint, flickering light. The peaked ceiling sparkled like glass, but it was just a kind of shimmery solid silver that didn’t seem to be letting anything in, either dark or light.

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.