nature’s mightiest multipliers—takes the golden dust from a trickle to a roar.…” Gary said.
Zarina stood behind Gary and watched as the Blue Dust dropped speck by speck into the golden dust. The stream of golden dust grew bigger and brighter than before, cascading in a waterfall down
the side of the tree.
“No matter how many times I see it—just, wow!” Zarina said. She thought it was beautiful.
“Indeed,” Gary agreed.
Zarina knew that Blue Pixie Dust was created when the light of the Blue Moon shone through a moonstone at exactly ninety degrees. That’s why the Blue Dust was so rare and precious, but
still, Zarina wondered about other possibilities.
She asked Gary, “But, if there’s Blue Dust, why
can’t
there be other colors?”
“Because there aren’t,” Gary answered.
“And maybe those other colors do other things. What if there was—I don’t know—purple? What if there’s pink?” Zarina asked.
Fairy Gary chuckled. “The day someone finds pink pixie dust is the day I trade in my kilt for trousers.”
Zarina’s eyes lit up. “Well, what if we don’t find it? What if we
make
it?”
Fairy Gary looked at her in a serious way. “Listen carefully, Zarina: We do not tamper with pixie dust; it is far too powerful.”
“But if we don’t, we’ll never fully understand what it’s capable of,” Zarina said.
“That is not our job. We’re dust-keepers,” Gary told her. “We nurture the dust, maintain it, measure it, package it, and distribute it. A beautiful tradition, day in, day
out, passed from one generation to the next to the next to the next.”
Fairy Gary continued, but Zarina wasn’t listening. She’d taken off her bracelet and dipped it into the well of golden dust. She watched as it rose into the air, and then flicked it
with her finger into the path of the Blue Pixie Dust.
The combination of Blue Dust and golden dust supercharged her bracelet! Like a torpedo, the bracelet shot up. It bounced around the tree, ping-ponging off the limbs of the tree
until—WHACK—it hit Fairy Gary in the face.
“Oh no. Fairy Gary! Are you okay?” Zarina asked.
Gary grunted.
“Technically, I didn’t touch it this time.” Zarina frowned.
Gary simply took her bracelet away. He removed the empty Blue Dust vial from the tree receptacle and held it toward Zarina.
“The cap.” He said it, and Zarina put the lid on the vial. Then Gary lectured her, “Let me be absolutely clear, Zarina: Dust-keepers are forbidden to tamper with pixie
dust.”
With that, he flew away, leaving Zarina alone at the tree.
Learning to Kill: Stories