Dust (Of Dust and Darkness) - By Devon Ashley Page 0,20
to her feet. I reach to pull her back, apologizing for scaring her. She returns to the floor and releases a long yawn, stretching her arms. “Where do we go to pee?”
“There’s a fissure in the wall about half way down.” I stare in disbelief at her for a moment. She’s kidding, right? “What?” she asks.
“You don’t go outside? You go right here in the cave? Doesn’t it smell in there?”
She shakes her head. “It’s really not that bad. It rarely gets used.” Another yawn.
“Why’s that? Does everyone hold it in all day?”
“No. Truth is, once you’ve been here a while, you really don’t go all that often.” I scrunch my eyebrows, trying to figure out how that could possibly be true. “Look. We’re all skin and bones here. What food goes in, our bodies tend to keep. And what water we drink typically sweats out through the day. Yes, we all go sometime, but honestly, it’s few and far between.”
“That’s awful.”
“You can go outside if you want, but a spriggan is going to go with you. Personally, I don’t want one of them watching me go.”
I moan. I don’t want an audience for this either. I snatch my lantern and follow the cave until I reach the fissure. It’s a skinny opening, and I have to enter sideways and leave the lantern behind, but it widens once I get in. Like Holly said, the smell isn’t bad. I tiptoe along the edge and crouch in a spot in the back. I relieve my bladder, trying not to think about how many times this fissure has been used without cleaning it. I wish I had some leaves to wipe with, but no way was I going to actually search the floor blindly. I tiptoe again to get out, determined to touch the floor as little as possible.
When I get back to my station, Holly is already asleep. I’m quick to drift off again, and when the pixies awake me a second time, I manage to react without panicking. We do this over and over again through the day. Like Holly said, pretty much every hour. Towards the end, I think my internal timer kicks in because I begin to wake up on my own, expecting the spriggans to be making their rounds again.
As the end of the day nears, I haven’t really had any questions answered, but I do feel a little more refreshed. My muscles aren’t complaining as much, though my stomach sure is.
A whistle pierces the air. “Come on,” Holly says, pushing herself to her feet. “Day’s over.”
Thank Mother Nature! Now I can eat something. I follow her lead, grabbing my lantern and disposing of it just outside the cave. I’m the last to fall in line so I have a spriggan practically up my backside. There’s no wind as we progress and my skin feels slick and grimy. I feel the spriggan’s hot, sticky breath heat the backside of my neck and it sickens me. How does someone who does nothing but sit outside all day smell so badly by day’s end?
When the line stops I figure we’re back at the pit. The spriggan behind me stands guard as the others carry my fellow pixies to the bottom. Once the line disappears, a set of rough hands snags my arms. As we rise into the air, I realize I’m not being taken to the pit. I see nothing but a burned out wasteland with nothing but a stark skeleton buried halfway under the sand. I see no plants, no water, and no pixies. Where did all the pixies go before me? Juniper, Holly? Lily and Ivy? The violet-headed pixie, whoever she is?
I prepare my feet for an impact that never comes. We descend beyond the wasteland, into air that ripples like waves in water and tickles my skin, and I suddenly see the pit and all the pixies scattered about. I look to the sky and I still see sky. They’ve glamoured our prison! No wonder these pixies have never been rescued. No one could see them even if they flew overhead. And who would stop on a bare wasteland with nothing more to offer than a bare-boned skeleton? No one.
The spriggan drops me several inches before my feet can touch the ground, and I fall forward on my hands and knees upon impact. Jerk.
Some of the pixies are lining up to take a shower. What’s odd is they line up like they’re set to march, standing