It matters.
My face wanted to screw up tight when I read that.
Because the mirror can show us stuff. You can work it.
Jack read this, made a face, and stared out the window for a while.
A mule cart took shape in the dusty distance, coming toward us. Shimmy’s hum changed pitch, and the wordless tune slowed down. As we passed the cart, I saw a black man in dungarees slouched in the driver’s seat, with about a ton of baled cotton piled high behind him. We drove by slow and easy, but he didn’t look up. I would have bet all the money I didn’t have that he didn’t even see us.
Shimmy’s hum picked up tempo and turned all happy again. I pulled Jack’s notebook back toward me.
Jack read it, and his face went funny and tight.
Do you?
For a second, I thought he was going to tear the book in two, he looked so angry.
We have to find out. If they’ve got Hannah somehow like they got your folks, we have to get her away.
I thought about this. Hannah was dead; how could anybody be holding her prisoner? But then, Bull Morgan was dead and they had him up and walking around. But then, the Seelie were liars. But then, Letitia Hopper was one of them and she’d told me some true things.
It was just too many thoughts, spinning too fast. I tried to sort out the one that was really important. Jack wanted me to find out whether the Seelie had Hannah like they said they did.
Jack thought about this.
Get her talking.
He drew an arrow to point between Shimmy’s shoulders.
She already likes you. Find out what you can.
He glanced at Shimmy to make extra sure she was still watching the road, then wrote four words slowly and carefully.
We steal this car.
I nodded once. Jack erased the last line, closed the book, and stashed it in his coat. The movement caught Shimmy’s eye and she glanced back at us. Jack yawned and wiggled like he was trying to scratch an itch between his shoulder blades.
“Miss Shimmy, are we gonna stop soon? I gotta”-he glanced at me like he didn’t want to offend my delicate sensibilities-“stretch my legs.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “And I’m hungry.”
Shimmy sighed, short and sharp. “All right, all right. Next roadside stand, we stop. But no funny business. I ain’t got enough juice to be chasin’ the pair of you all over hell and creation, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chorused.
Shimmy snorted at our docile agreement and kept driving.
We’d reached a county where the spikes of sunburned cotton stems still stuck up above the dunes. The broken bolls trailed sad streamers of white fluff that combed the blow dirt out of the wind. The road sign said BURDEN. The cluster of gray houses and one lonely gray church were behind us almost before we saw them coming. But on the far side of Burden, Kansas, there was a low white building all on its own. Gas pumps and picnic tables stood watch in front of it, and a peeling sign read FLORA’S.
Shimmy eased the car to a stop on the patch of dusty dried grass beside the fry shack.
“Here, young man, you go and make yourself useful.” Shimmy pulled a beaded purse out of her handbag and laid two fifty-cent pieces on Jack’s palm. “You go in and buy us some food, and be sure you bring me all the change.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jack pushed his cap back on his head and put his wide-eyed young boy look on. He walked into the shack, jingling the coins in his pocket the whole way. I could see him through the window as he stepped up to the counter. Somebody had worked hard to keep that glass clean. The fry cook, a skinny man in a white shirt, glowered at Jack, his face as hard and ugly as grease at the bottom of a jar. Jack pushed those coins across the counter, and the fry cook nodded. But then he looked through that sparkling-clean window at me and Shimmy, and his face tightened up into ugly again.
Shimmy didn’t seem to notice. She just took a white hankie out of her handbag, dusted down a spot on the picnic table, and sat. The fry cook nodded, turned back to his flat top, and began cracking eggs from a big carton onto the grill.
“Well, I suppose there’s some use having that boy around after all.” Shimmy got out her compact and looked herself up and down in the mirror. But I wasn’t really watching. Shame curdled through me from the cold suspicion on the fry cook’s face. I’d been out in the sun for days now, without a hat or gloves. I looked down at my hands, and to my shock, I barely recognized them, they were so brown. Mama would’ve had a fit. I touched my tangled hair, which had come loose from its braids days ago. If I went in there, would that man let me sit beside Jack on one of his stools? Or would he throw me right out again?
I didn’t want to think about that. I had enough problems. Starting with how to get Shimmy talking. Jack wanted me to find out about Hannah, but I had a whole heap of my own questions I wanted to tuck into.
“Shimmy?”
“Mmm-hmm?” She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with one fingertip.
“Why didn’t you say anything about the prophecy?”
“Prophecy?” She snapped the compact shut and stowed it in her handbag. “What prophecy?”
“Oh, that!” Shimmy laughed, but for the first time her laugh sounded thin, like she was stretching it too far. “That’s been around for donkey’s years. Some fool’ll trot it out every time a half-fairy girl gets herself born, and pretty soon everybody’s in a tizzy.” She held her hand up to her mouth like she was whispering sideways to some other body leaning in close. “ ‘Is it her? Is
But I wasn’t ready to let it go so easily. I couldn’t forget the turning-key feeling, the way I’d opened the time window to show the railroad work camp, and how I’d felt it again when I opened the doors between the theater and the normal world. “Can all of… us open gates?”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Shimmy said breezily. “Ain’t nothin’ to it.”
