Read The End of Magic (Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy) Page 24
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There was indeed food in the streets and the two ate from passing carts of tomatoes, corn, and apples. There were also stands up and down the street with boiled eggs, fresh bread, and pitchers of water at convenient stations for people to stop at during their labors. They smiled upon seeing the two kids and made a space for them to step up and eat.
“This is a beautiful city you have here,” Duncan tossed out casually, trying to break the ice.
“Indeed, it is,” an older man agreed. “We’ve put a lot of work into her in the last hundred years.”
The other people saddened, the unspoken truth that they were preparing to abandon it left unsaid.
“All this food is being taken underground?”
“What we don’t need to survive is,” the man answered. “God bless the United States Air Force for giving us a place to escape to.”
Duncan was familiar with the Air Force and had seen several pictures in the Magician Histories of USAF fighters locked in combat with dragons and wyverns. “They had a base near here?”
“Indeed,” the older man said, “and that’s where we’re mostly from. Oh, we’ve grown as people from the outlands have joined us, but a hundred years ago, General Jack Adams led our people out of the base and into the sun and we made our home here in Shreveport. I think the old General would be sad to see us returning to the base. He never intended it that way.”
The others agreed, and General Jack Adams was obviously someone important in their history. Duncan decided to change the subject. Beside them were a series of planters where tomato vines grew straight up the walls along trellises. The tomatoes were fat and ripe, ready for picking. “These are bigger than anything I was ever able to grow.”
“You are from the Magician city, yes? New Dallas?”
“Yes, sir,” Duncan answered hesitantly, still unsure of how people would react to him once they knew where he came from.
“Well, I suspect the magic had something to do with that,” the old man told him. “It’s the opposite of nature, the enemy of the exact nature of the universe. I suspect your tomatoes were simply rejecting living among that much magic. That you managed to coax them into growing at all is surprising.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” Duncan replied. “I often thought plants were far smarter than we gave them credit for.”
“Of course they are. They respond to love and hate and emotion just like we do. They just don’t have the capability of expressing those emotions through speech.”
Duncan didn’t mention his mother’s angry rosebushes that could do just that. They not only expressed their opinions, they acted on them.
“How come you don’t use trucks and jeeps like Jim does?” Jessica asked. “It seems like it would be easier than hauling all this stuff by hand.”
“Indeed, it would. And even if that stuff they run the ancient vehicles from the base on…what do they call it? Gasoline? Even if we had more of that stuff, which we don’t, it makes a horrible stink and the plants don’t like it. We’re a simple people. We like working with our hands and our feet. There’s an honesty in that, you know? It’s not like the Magicians who can just wish for something and it’ll be there. We earn our life.”
“I understand.” Duncan said, and he really did. He understood what it was like to have to provide for yourself when everyone else around you merely had to wish what they wanted into existence.
The man clasped him on the shoulder and smiled. “I reckon you do, son. I reckon you do.”