Lawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier Read online

  The horse emerged from the woods, lost and confused. It saw him and slid to a stop, as fearful of him as it would be of a cliff edge. He pulled himself up into the saddle before it could decide. Shots ripped out from the trees.

  They ran.

  Carson emerged from the smoke and cacophony of New York. He had a freshly tailored suit of a generous cut and a rakish hat that the shop-girl freely told him looked dashing. He was bound for the port and from there Europe. Maybe later Istanbul or Cairo. Before he left, he bought a leather-bound copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from an upmarket store and wrapped it in exquisite paper. This he pressed into the hands of a bored US postal agent along with Lizzy’s address and several hundred dollars. He had no way of knowing whether the book would get to her, but he chose to believe that it would.

  3

  Pixie Season

  Seanan McGuire

  My mama tried not to raise any fools—I can’t speak for my father, never having met the man—but I’m not proud. I’m willing to stand up in front of whoever cares to listen and say that, at least in the beginning, the whole mess was partially my fault. That doesn’t mean I’m taking the blame alone.

  It had been a long, hot summer at the Lazy Daisy Ranch, and tempers were running as high as the temperature. Cattle ranching in Arizona is never easy, and when you’re rationing water and the AC in the bunk house is broken again, it’s only natural for folks to get a little snippy. I’ve been here long enough to know how to hunch my shoulders and wait for things to pass. It would’ve worked, too, if not for two small problems.

  Someone was making messes in the stud barn. Nothing big—just knots in the rope and kicked-out slats in the stalls—but it was enough to keep us in busywork, and pretty well annoyed. And we had a new ranch hand.

  Enter Celia.

  Some folks seem to think being alive makes them an expert at everything there is, like getting born is an automatic graduation from the university of life. Celia Osborn was one of those. She walked big, she talked big, and she had a way of looking down her nose that made a person feel lower than a rattlesnake’s belly. That wouldn’t have been so bad—we’ve had troublesome folks around here before, and you can’t afford to turn away willing help when you’re trying to keep cattle fed through a dry summer—except that I seemed to be her “special project.” Seemed like every time I turned around, she was there, taking an interest in whatever I’d been doing.

  Still wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t felt the need to correct me. And even that might not have got under my skin so much if she hadn’t been right three-quarters of the time. Girl had no concept of social niceties, but she knew how to tie a knot and how to milk a hose for the last drop of water, and that was enough to make it clear Boss Jones wouldn’t fire her any time soon.

  By the time we hit August, I’d taken to avoiding her. Eight years at the ranch means I pretty much set my own chores. If she was on barn duty, I was fixing fences on the back range; if she was fixing fences, I was rooting out stumps or braiding ropes or plucking cactus spines out of the dogs. We got a lot of cactus-spiked dogs that summer—it was like they’d forgotten that saguaros sting and taken to running at them full-tilt.

  Shuffling the chores didn’t fully keep her from finding me, but frankly, any day where she didn’t bother me before noon went down in my books as a good one. Of course, nothing works all the time. I was examining some holes in the wall of the stud barn—they looked like mouse holes, save for the suspicious lack of either droppings or tracks—when she clamped up behind me and demanded, “Dusty, what are you doing?”

  “Looking at mouse holes, Miss Osborn.” I turned to face her. She’d been exercising horses all morning. I knew she had because I’d assigned her chores myself, and no one had ever seen Celia skip out on something she’d been told to do. You couldn’t tell it to look at her. She was fresh as a daisy, assuming daisies were brown and spiky and glaring at me.

  “Why are you looking at mouse holes?”

  “Because they’re a nuisance, ma’am.”

  “Don’t we have cats for that?”

  “Well, ma’am, they don’t seem to be doing much looking.” I stood, dusting my hands against my jeans. “If the cats took an interest in the mouse holes, I suppose I wouldn’t need to.”

  She hunkered down, transferring her glare to the holes. “I can’t see where a few mice would be a problem for something as big as a bull.”

  “They get into the feed, nibble, and make messes. Some of the bulls are fair irritable; they hear too many things rustling in the dark, someone may get stomped on.”

  “Meaning me.”

  “I’d like to think you’d have enough sense to stay away from the stud bulls.”

  “You never know.” She rose. “Stranger things have been known to happen.”

  “I suppose that’s true, ma’am. You heading off?”

  “I need to finish exercising the horses. I was waiting for the dust to settle before I took the second lot out.” Her gaze was challenging, daring me to accuse her of neglecting her duty.

  I knew better. Sometimes you get more work done by knowing when to take a break. “Enjoy, ma’am. I’m going to go start marking the dead cactus for this year.”

  Her expression sharpened—something I hadn’t realized was possible. “Marking them? For what?”

  “Some of those saguaro get pretty tall, and when they pass on, they fall over with no real respect for what might be standing in their way.” I shrugged. “It’s time to start figuring out which ones need to be taken down this year.”

  She stared at me before turning on her heel and stalking off without another word. I frowned after her. The look on her face hadn’t just been confused—it had been angry, verging on outraged. Over cutting down a few dead cacti?

  “Maybe she wanted the job herself,” I said. Something behind me giggled, the sound as clear and crystal-pure as the first drops of rain falling during a seasonal storm. I whirled, too slow to see the source of the laughter, but fast enough to see faint eddies in the dust at the base of the nearest mouse hole. That was the confirmation I’d been hoping not to find.

  We had pixies in the stud barn.

  Pixies are the cockroaches of the supernatural world. You’ll probably never have to deal with them if you keep things clean and looked after; they’re not as invasive as gremlins or as random in where they pop up as poltergeists. Most folks never see a pixie in their life, no matter how much magic they live with. Back when I traveled with Mama and the circus, we dealt with pixies once every two or three years—one of the sibyls would forget to clean up her entrails, or the handlers would get behind in mucking out the menagerie, and there we’d be again, up to our necks in senseless pranks and endless acts of tiny vandalism. I hate the little bastards, have ever since the time they filled the trailer with tree frogs and left me trying to calm my baby brothers for the rest of the night.

  Most people think of pixies as sweet little things that twinkle and shine and grant wishes, but like I said, most people go their whole lives without seeing a pixie. Pixies break things for the fun of breaking them, and while they’re individually about as smart as grackles, they can be clever enough to present a real nuisance when they’re in a big enough flock. They’re a hive intelligence, like ants, but nowhere near as benign. They’re also near impossible to get rid of once they’ve established themselves: they breed like rabbits and sting like wasps, and they’re the last thing any functioning ranch needs to contend with.

  I was not amused.

  There’s a lot of residual magic roaming around the Arizona desert. Coyote keeps a pretty close eye on the land, and when the moon is full and bright, someone who knows where to look is likely to see the saguaros dancing the night away like tall, elegant aristocrats. Add the European monsters and ghosts that followed the settlers, and the number of pixie infestations we get out here starts making a lot of sense.

  I stayed in Arizona because I felt at home there. Mama knew it; that’s
why she was willing to leave me behind. The Lazy Daisy was strange enough to be a fit for my own eccentricities—but I’d never figured on a barn full of pixies. Boss Jones was a good man. He never fired somebody for doing their best, even when that stuck him with someone who didn’t get as much done as he’d like, and he never questioned the superstitions that are part of running a healthy ranch.

  But that was also the problem: he thought it was just superstition. He was one of those men who could see a woman ride her broom across the moon and dismiss it as swamp gas and beer. He had the sort of specialized blindness that only comes naturally to people who know, deep down, that it’s safer not to see. He’d never believe me if I said we had pixies in the barn.

  So the boss wasn’t going to be any help, and we haven’t had a working witch around the place since Astrid struck off to find the Fountain of Youth. A couple of the boys knew some parlor tricks, but they wouldn’t know what to do with a pixie: there’s a difference between catbone charms and magic. Pixies are the second sort, and that meant I’d be dealing with them on my own unless I wanted to put the boys in harm’s way.

  I got on with the day’s chores, trying not to show how concerned I was. There’s always something that needs doing. I was distracted enough that I made it all the way to dinner without tripping over Celia, and by the time I realized she’d settled next to me, it was too late to move gracefully. I kept shoveling eggs and salsa into my mouth, hoping she’d take the point and leave me alone. I needed to get back to the barn before moonrise if I wanted to lock the pixies out. If she didn’t start talking, I might make it.

  No such luck. She cleared her throat and when I didn’t look at her, said, “Dusty. Did you find your mice?”

  “No, ma’am, I can’t say I did.” I gave in to the inevitable and turned to face her.

  Celia scowled. “Why do you call me ‘ma’am’ all the time?”

  “Because it’s polite.”

  “I have a name.”

  “You’d rather be called Miss Osborn?”

  Her scowl deepened. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant. But my mama would have my hide if she heard me calling someone I’ve only known a few months by their first name.”

  “You call me ‘ma’am’ because you’re afraid of your mother?” She sounded faintly amused. Not a familiar emotion, coming from her.

  “If you’d ever met her, you’d be afraid of her, too.” I rose, collecting my plate, and said, “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I have chores to finish. Enjoy your dinner.”

  I walked away and left her watching me, expression somewhere between unhappy and annoyed. I couldn’t read that woman to save my soul; she might have approved. She might also have wanted me dead. I honestly had no idea, and as long as there were pixies in our barn, I didn’t have time to worry about it. I just kept walking.

  When dealing with a pixie infestation, first you need to check whether there are any local spirits you’re trying to hang onto. Chasing pixies out of the kitchen can also get rid of the brownies, for example, and that won’t sit well with them; clean up one problem, turn around to find that your ousted brownies have gone boggart and are making trouble. So it was sort of a relief that our pixies were where they were: the only spooks we have living with the stud bulls are a few ghost cats that have been around the ranch since before I got here. I spent a few hours in the early evening setting out bowls of spoiled milk and plates of fish bones, luring them away from their standard haunts with the ghosts of their favorite foods and then telling each of them what I needed. They can’t talk—they’re cats—but they seemed willing enough to move into the bunkhouse for a few days. So there was one problem down.

  After taking care of the local spirits, it’s time to set your pixie traps. I raided the kitchen for basil and rosemary and mixed them into the next morning’s hay; nothing drives pixies out of a place faster than the smell of rosemary. The bulls gave me a healthy berth as I nailed horseshoes above each of the barn entrances, intending them to serve as warnings to the pixies—hang around here, those horseshoes said, and you’re likely to find yourself stuffed into a cold iron cage and sold to some witch’s kid to act as a nightlight. Then I went about the rest of my chores whistling and happy, sure we’d have a pixie-free barn before dawn. It couldn’t be a very advanced infestation, or we’d have been seeing a lot more signs, so I was fairly sure those simple measures would do the trick.

  They might have, if I hadn’t come back from checking the perimeter fences to find that someone had swapped out all the hay while I was away. They’d also taken down the horseshoes, nailing yarrow branches to the inside of the windows. Yarrow is a fairy plant: putting it up in a place already contending with a pixie infestation is like dousing your sheep in barbecue sauce because you want the coyotes to stay away from them. I could already see the signs of the hive starting to spread. Leave it alone for a week and they’d have grass growing on the floor and branches sprouting from the shingles, and then I’d have to explain why the milk cows were throwing unicorn foals instead of good, basic calves when the spring came.

  Not my idea of a good time—and not a safe thing to let happen. Magic is dangerous when it starts chaining like that. I yanked the yarrow branches down and poured iron ball bearings and salt over the mushrooms growing in the corner, then retreated to plan my next set of traps. If somebody was sabotaging my efforts to clear the hive out, I’d need to be subtle. Otherwise, anything I did would be taken down again the minute I turned my back, and it’d be a case of trying to fight a constant uphill battle, without actually getting rid of the damn things.

  Stupid pixies. They hadn’t even fully established themselves yet, and they were already starting to cause trouble. If they managed to get a complete hive set up and start really making mischief, well...

  I didn’t even want to think about it.

  My second batch of traps was keyed to play into the barn décor. More iron ball bearings in the corners, yes, buried under a thin layer of dirt where they’d be harder to spot. Fresh salt licks made with blessed salt from the plains of Utah that I knew for a fact had been treated by a certified shadow priest who practiced veterinary medicine on the side—I’d been saving them for breeding season when the bulls would need to be especially virile, but now seemed like as good a time as any to break out a little extra ammunition. Anise and mustard seeds in the feed, where they’d wind up in the manure and get spread everywhere, no matter was done to try and stop it, and finally, finely ground mint around every doorway and window frame. The little bell-brained bastards wouldn’t be able to stand the barn after the bulls had had a day or so to eat and digest. I was willing to wait if I had to.

  The next day dawned with no signs the pixies had spread during the night; the sugar cubes I’d left on my windowsill were untouched, and it’s rare to find a single pixie that won’t go nuts over sugar, much less a whole hive. Pixies don’t know how to practice self-restraint. I went out onto the range with the cactus clearing crew, heart light, sure that the problem was finally taken care of.

  We spent the day chopping down dead saguaro, and I put all thoughts of trouble—the pixies, the person who’d sabotaged my traps, the fact that the ghost cats seemed a bit too comfortable in the bunkhouse and might not be willing to move back to the barn—out of my head as I helped shift the trunks into the pickups.

  Saguaro can take a good amount of damage over the years, but eventually they die and decay where they stand, becoming a danger to fences, men, and livestock. I always feel bad chopping them down; they’re the lords and ladies of these deserts, and it feels like they deserve a better funeral. But we burn what we cut, and that sends their ashes back into the desert, so maybe that’s all the funeral they’d want. At the time, I’d never had the opportunity to actually ask a saguaro.

  There was just one black spot on my day: Celia, who’d somehow managed to petition the boss to get herself added onto the cleanup crew. Once she’d requested the duty, I couldn�
��t exactly deny her, but having her around took a lot of the pleasure out of the simplicity of working hard under a hot sun. She wasn’t just efficient, she was cranky about it, hoisting chunks of cactus into the trucks and glaring at everyone around. I didn’t see why she’d requested the job if she didn’t want to do it, but that was her business, not mine.

  I was taking a minute to pluck the cactus spines out of my sleeves when Joe came up to me, glancing over his shoulder, all anxiety and strain. Joe usually looks like that, has ever since he got turned into a human. I guess being raised as a jackrabbit encourages jumpiness, and with Astrid gone, he’s just gotten worse; after all, no witch means no turning back into a man if something bunnies him up again.

  “What’s wrong, Joe?” I’ll admit, I was expecting him to say he’d seen a snake. Or a spider. Or maybe an unusually large horsefly that he thought was the beginning of a swarm.

  “Miss Osborn isn’t wearing any gloves,” he said, so fast the words all ran together.

  All right. I hadn’t been expecting that. “She took them off?”

  “No!”

  “She lost them?”

  “No! She isn’t wearing any! She hasn’t been wearing any.” He gave me a worried look, large brown eyes grave. “I’m afraid she’s going to prick her finger on a thorn and get an infection and get gangrene and then die.”

  “Thanks, Joe,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. Hypochondriacs have nothing on a man who used to be a rabbit. He twitched but managed a worried smile, staying in the shadow of the truck as I walked toward Celia.

  She was working by herself by that point, gathering the smaller chunks of cactus off the ground and loading them into a wheelbarrow. I frowned as I caught sight of her hands and realized that Joe, twitchy as he was, had been telling the truth; she wasn’t wearing gloves. She was just scooping bits of cactus off the ground, expression dour but not pained, and dropping them as pretty as you please into her pile.