PodCastle 408: Tumbleweeds and Little Girls - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Jeff Bowles

* Narrator : Julie Hoverson

* Host : Jen R. Albert

*

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PodCastle 408: Tumbleweeds and Little Girls is a PodCastle original.





Rated PG.

Tumbleweeds and Little Girls

by Jeff Bowles

 

They had the tumbleweed ambassador on the news a month before the big battle. The news guy and news girl said he was intelligent, and then a local representative of the Plains and Wildlife Service translated for him because tumbleweeds can’t talk and must sign everything by rolling and hopping and what not.

“We mean your people no harm,” said the Plains and Wildlife Service guy. He spoke kind of slow and choppy. I guessed he wasn’t actually, what do you call it? Fluent in tumbleweed?

He said, “The war has started, whether you realize it or not. The Prairie Queen has an army of deer and antelope and coyotes. She’s got the power of fire. She murdered our Wizard Father and made her castle from our dead tumbleweed brothers and sisters. The crazy bitch!”

I winced at this last word. I’m only twelve years old, after all. My dad used to talk real rough like that. He used to cuss and laugh and say to me, “Don’t repeat that to your mother, Amie Masterson. I don’t want to fight no little girl.” Then we’d roughhouse a bit. My dad died last year, though. Some kind of cancer. Mom never told me which.



I don’t usually watch the late news. I’m supposed to be in bed. But Mom passed out on the sofa early. I laid a blanket over her and picked the empty wine bottle off its side so it wouldn’t drip on the carpet.

The Plains and Wildlife Service guy said, “Have you not noticed her spot-fires outside your city? We want to kill your precious girls!”

The tumbleweed popped up into the air and spun angrily.

Plains and Wildlife Guy said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We want to utilize your precious girls. We have no defenses. We need soldiers. The Prairie Queen cannot stand against the wealth of your girls. Or so we believe.”

There was some more talking. I was getting sleepy.

The news guy said, “And of course we know the city has been expanding into the Queen’s prairieland at an exponential rate.”

And the news girl said, “Right you are, Tom. In retrospect, that may have been a huge mistake. Oops.”

And then a commercial for local heating and cooling repair came on.

I went to kiss Mom on the forehead. She moaned softly, smiled for a second, and then settled into a noisy, listless snore. Mom is a good mother, but I think Dad dying did some stuff to her. I guess that’s normal. She never used to drink wine.

There was a knock at the door. I was scared for a second, but only because Mom said never to open the door to strangers at such a late hour.

There was another knock.

“Mom,” I said, “someone at the door.”

Mom didn’t wake up. I nudged her, shook her, but still nothing, all snores, drool dribbling from the corner of her mouth. I went to the door, looked through the peephole.

There was nobody there.

“The heck?” I said. I slid back the deadbolt and opened the door.

A tumbleweed sat on our welcome mat. It had a leather glove duct-taped to its scrawny, scratchy limbs. It was kind of a big tumbleweed. The color of autumn wild grass. It leaned in to, like, look in our house.

“Is this because I’m a precious girl?” I said.

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