Dandelion Iron Book One Read Free

New Morality is a mother’s voice, calling her children home. It is late. We are alone. Night is coming. But if we listen, we can hear our mother calling us to dinner because the kitchen is warm and there is hope, always hope, for those who listen.
    —Sally Browne Burke
From the Eighth Annual International
New Morality Conference
June 21, 2057
    (i)
    Like I said, my sister was coming with hard news.
    But then Wren was hard.
    How she got that way was a mystery we didn’t talk about much, but we thought about all the time.
    Maybe it was ’cause Wren was the middle sister in a time of trouble. Maybe it was ’cause she liked beer more than milk growing up, or maybe it was simple genetics. Either way, Wren courted the Devil when he didn’t come calling on his own accord.
    I figured Wren prolly got a calloused heart by growing up on the hip of a woman who had to fight every day to put food on the table. With a sick husband and a big Burlington ranch falling to pieces, Mama didn’t have much time to give Wren what she needed. Heck, I’m not sure anybody could have given her what she needed. Wren’s real name was Irene, but after five seconds, Mama knew she had named her wrong—Irene was a Wren, a soul that had to fly ’cause sitting still hurt too much.
    She was late-night gorgeous, black hair, black eyes, and skin like desert-bleached bone. She walked as if the earth was bowing down before her beauty.
    My oldest sister Sharlotte was Wren’s complete opposite in everything including how much of Mama’s affection she got. Mama held Sharlotte close to her heart, especially after Elwyn died as a baby. That was when Mama still worked salvage, living hand to mouth and under fire. She hadn’t counted on meeting Charles Weller, hadn’t counted on getting pregnant, though God built our species to be fruitful and multiply. Or so we’d been taught.
    My sister Shar and Mama were cut from the same stiff cloth. Both were upright, hardworking and concrete-corset stubborn.
    Sharlotte was the oldest, born near the end of Mama’s salvaging days. Four years later came Wren, and four years after that came me. By the time I was born, Mama had mellowed some, but then I wasn’t a problem. By then I had a passel of mothers around on the ranch, so I couldn’t walk two steps into trouble without getting caught and thrown back onto the straight and narrow.
    We should’ve had a big family full of girls, but that wasn’t meant to be. Lots of embroidered blankets for the baby girls who died—Elwyn, Fern, Willa, and Avery. Mama would’ve thrown the blankets out, but Sharlotte kept them in her bedroom, folded on her bed.
    My classmates at the Academy couldn’t understand why Juniper folks wanted big ol’ families, and it wasn’t ’cause we were Catholic. No, down on the farm, it boiled down to simple economics—the more kids, the more free labor.
    And if you struck it rich with a viable boy? Even better.
    But women having babies without proper healthcare, too much work, and iffy nutrition added up to more dead babies and dead mothers than most Yankees liked to consider.
    Yankees. That was what the Juniper folks called other Americans. Even Southerners. It was ironic, but Juniper folks grew up on beefsteak and irony.
    After all the death, only three Weller girls remained—Sharlotte, Wren, and me. We all boiled over with what the Hindus call shakti , raw female power.
    Maybe that was what had poisoned Wren against the world. All that death.
    No, something happened between Wren and Mama early on, something bad. Or maybe I just wanted an easy explanation. In this life, easy answers generally aren’t worth a rotting haystack left out in the rain.
    (ii)
    Mrs. Justice’s office smelled like books, money, and the Nyco floor polish. Everything shined—the floor, the bookshelves, the wainscoting, and her big desk. Mrs. Justice was just as shiny, ramrod straight behind the desk. Wren lounged in a chair in front of it. A lacy yellow dress