Dust by Arthur G. Slade Page B

has finished its display," Abram spoke, bowing. The lights brightened. Abram ran his hands across the glass, glanced at Robert, then back at the mirror.
    In that moment Robert felt wrath, shot like a bolt toward him.

CHAPTER NINE
     
    The mirror now reflected two hundred and fifty-nine bewildered faces, people who looked as though they had just woken up in a strange place. Abram adjusted a lever behind the mirror, then laid it flat. Robert couldn't see the surface any more, but it caught the chandelier's lights and cast them onto the ceiling, studding it with stars.
    Abram turned to the townspeople. His smile was gone, and he seemed more like a man about to deliver a eulogy than perform a magic trick.
    "I'm not finished yet. I have another surprise about something dear to your heart. The very future of this community." He put his hands together as if he were about to pray. "Forgive me for becoming serious during this entertainment, but my topic is very important. I have but one message: Together we can end this drought."
    The words were like stones cast into a pool; astonishment rippled through the crowd and over Robert.
    "What does he mean?" his father asked.
    "Allow me to explain," Abram said. "Many of you know me from church, and others have met me at my farm, but no one knows that I am, first and foremost, a meteorologist." He gestured toward the ceiling. "Meteorology, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the study of the atmosphere, of weather patterns, so that we can accurately predict the weather. It is a science in its infancy. I am a scholar who has learned how to influence the weather. What makes snow, hail, wind?" He paused.
    Robert heard the wind whistling outside. He recognized that Abram was like the reverend, building words into a sermon.
    "Long have I sought to understand these things. I have developed hypotheses that I have kept from my colleagues. Secrets. Horshoe is the perfect place to test my theories. With your help, we can make it rain as often and as hard as you wish. It is, of course, too late for this year's crop, but next year at this time we will be sitting with bins so full of wheat, and fields so stacked with hay, that the whole world will look on in amazement."
    He looked from face to face; his eyes pierced Robert, then passed by. In that moment he felt Abram's intensity, his belief in his own words. Potential, that's what Robert saw in those eyes. Promise.
    "I know. I know. Fool's gold, you're thinking! You'd be daft not to." Abram's eyes narrowed. "But you are also thinking: What if he can make it rain? What if next year we could grow the crops we deserve?
    "I will bring rain!" He pounded his fist into his palm, startling Robert. "I guarantee it. But only with your help. You've already witnessed the impossible reflected in a mirror. Soon the impossible will be real. Your fields will be green. I will show you how."
    As the lights dimmed, Abram reached into one of the clay jars that had been sitting on the stage and cast a handful of red dust over the mirror. From a second jar Abram withdrew a palmful of blue dust. He tossed it into the floating red cloud. A cinnamon smell filled Robert's nostrils. He breathed it in, salivating. The dust thickened into a fog-like smoke that split into three different trails. They glowed green, yellow, and violet, then changed colors and curled into a cylinder, which rotated, reminding Robert of a dazzling kaleidoscope. Again, the lonely wail of a distant train. He blinked and began to feel tired.
    The cylinder was now brownish red. It grew to about twelve feet in height, a tower of earth-red bricks. Robert couldn't figure out where it had come from. It looked solid enough. How could Abram make it appear from a handful of dust?
    "This is Raithgan, the rainmill," Abram said. Four white vanes appeared near the top of the tower and spun counter-clockwise. Abram pointed, and the spinning stopped. "Here"-he gestured at three spokes sticking out of the vanes—"are