Page 69 of Junk Magic

Oh, I thought, staring at it like an acolyte seeing the face of God. I grabbed it. And didn’t register anything else for a while, the piled high plate in front of me completely absorbing my attention.

There were a few beans on there, dribbled around like a sauce, but nothing green, nothing bread-y, nothing extraneous. Just a mountain of ribs studded by a couple of hamburger patties and a fat sausage unlike any that I’d had in the house. God bless Caleb, I thought fervently.

And then I didn’t think again for a while.

I came out of the food haze an unknown amount of time later, dimly aware that I had sauce on everything, that my jeans didn’t fit right, and that I was happy. Deliriously so. I pushed the empty plate away, spilling a few stripped bones onto the ground, and another ice-cold beer appeared in front of my nose as if by magic.

“No, you’re nothing like a newly turned Were,” Cyrus said, with a thread of laughter in his voice.

I downed the beer, sat back, repressed a belch, and regarded him hazily. It seemed to take a moment to remember how to speak, with an idea in my head but nothing coming out of my sauce-stained mouth. “What?” I finally croaked, and it sounded like wolf speak.

Cyrus just grinned and leaned over and kissed me. He had barbeque sauce on his lips, and I grabbed the back of his head and licked it away. There was more laughter at that, and then spontaneous clapping, and I glanced up to see that we had an audience of essentially everybody.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling like I was surfacing from a dream.

“We need to get you to the desert.”

“Why? Is it time?”

“It is for you,” Cyrus said dryly. “Come on.”

Chapter Nineteen

We headed for a place in the desert so far outside of Vegas that I doubted any tourists would ever find it. Which was just as well since my dignity was shot to hell. Cyrus had avoided having me stick my head out of the window the whole way there by taking me on the back of his bike, but I’d been sniffing up a storm anyway. And was continually amazed at the new world I discovered.

Even the dust was fascinating.

Instead of the dry annoyance I was used to, clogging my throat and coating any exposed skin whenever I rode, it was a revelation. It carried motes of a campfire in the distance, or maybe a wildfire burning some of the local mesquite. It brought traces of cinnabar, sulphur and salt from desert deposits likely miles away, yet peppering the breeze like spice. But most of all, it introduced a multitude of growing things.

The latter surprised me the most, and not just because the Mojave wasn’t exactly green and lush. But because scent, sound, and sight were getting jumbled up in my head, and becoming impossible to separate. Resulting in a multisensory experience that had me staring around in awe.

There was the constant background hum from the creosote bushes that grew everywhere: earthy yet refreshing, with the smell of soil after rain. They smeared the horizon like the sea, calm and green, except where tiny, yellow flowers danced in the breeze like sunlight on waves. And like the ocean, many of them had been there for time out of mind, being among the longest-lived desert dwellers.

They were interspersed with Dorr’s sage, fresh and bright, like cool mint on my tongue. Its bushes studded the landscape with a deep blue violet, the branches hanging so heavy with summer flowers that they mimicked pools of water in places. And like water, they murmured softly as we passed, like tiny waves licking the shore.

But the softer elements ended there. Because prickly pear was next, its sharp, fruity scent bursting on my tongue, like underripe strawberry mixed with bubblegum, and in my vision, with fireworks of yellow, hot pink and mauve, the colors of its flowers. Its sound was just as aggressive as its scent, with high, almost bird-like trills, as if a scattering of pissed-off parrots had descended onto the desert sand.

Those were the loudest notes, either so close or so numerous as to threaten to drown out everything else. But interspersed among them were other sensations, adding variations on a theme. And making the already rich landscape even more complex.

The rose-like odor of Palmer’s penstemon was ever present, which I’d been considering for my yard because it was so hardy and so sweet. It sounded like a glissando of bells but flashed on the horizon like colored lightning. Pink and white and pale violet, it shocked me with its power, sending frissons over my skin even from this distance.

It was joined by the elusive vanilla scent of Ponderosa pine, which smelled so soft but sounded like thunder in the mountains. The massive trees were too far away to be seen, but I could feel them stretching arms high into the sky, providing nests for all types of scurrying and flying things. While their roots reached deep, deep, so very deep, communing with stone and earth and water, as if they alone stitched the world together.

And, finally, came the overripe cantaloupe reek of a Joshua tree, flowering late on the top of some hill and born aloft by the breeze. It was merely an echo, high and soaring, as if from miles away. But it was as aggressive as an opera singer, making the distance immaterial in its determination to be heard.

There were other notes, as well, like every bit of animal scat for miles that found its way to my nose. But instead of being disgusted, I breathed it in, filling in the gaps between the flora. Until I could almost see the animals, too.

My eyes caught flickering images of a mule deer, twitching its overlarge ears as we zipped by; of a desert tortoise with the rock-like protrusions on its shell helping it to blend into the landscape; of a Gila monster peeking out of its den; and of a whole flock of roadrunners flitting through the sand and across the sky, to the point that it was almost filled with them.

Or maybe that was merely one bird who moved around a lot; I didn’t know anymore. It was getting to be too much, this new way of seeing, and once again felt more like an assault on the senses than a broadening of them. Halfway to our destination, I grabbed the back of Cyrus’s shirt and buried my face in it, allowing the familiar musk to suffuse the air around me. I badly needed something to ground me and he did the trick.

After a while, I could smell only him.

That changed when we arrived at our destination, and everyone piled out of Caleb’s makeshift school bus, which despite its appearance had somehow kept up. The old truck that I no longer used much, but kept around for when I needed to haul things, had come, too. Danny had stuffed the Weres into the backseat and truck bed, somehow fitting in the overflow from the van, and as soon as it stopped, they spilled out like water.

Seeing them move so fluidly reminded me of those at the grow farm doing the same, in a long line of different colored fur. And, for an instant, the landscape around me wavered, and was replaced by another rocky backdrop, this one in the midst of a savage assault. I could hear the crack of breaking bone, taste the fear in my mouth, see the blood, sweat and bile flying, along with what looked like a severed limb—

And then I was back, panting slightly and very confused. Because that wasn’t right. Was it?

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