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  SNOWMAKER

  Book 1 of

  The Prime Wranglers

  By

  Aaron S. Bentzel

  SnowMaker is a work of fiction. Names, places, and characters, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Aaron S Bentzel

  All rights reserved

  Published by Flowerbox Books

  www.flowerboxbooks.com

  For Jo

  Thanks for the Floo Powder

  It’s come in handy

  Contents

  Part I: Survivors

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II: Church Mice

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part III: SnowMaker

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part I:

  Survivors

  Chapter 1

  If you’ve ever been lost in the desert, you know what it feels like to have death looking over your shoulder. The sun cooks the skin on the back of your neck. There’s no shade to relieve you for miles. You lift your foot – impossibly heavy – to take the next step, and the sand laughs as it rolls off your boot. Your thirst is so intense that it scratches your throat.

  I’ve been there, and at the time, I would have sold my soul for a glass of water, or given my right arm for a train ticket home. Coming west was my own decision, and one that I nearly died for. But for some reason, I survived. In the middle of the desert I found an oasis.

  The first time I saw Seward City, I was sure it was a mirage. A whole city, tucked in among the dunes, as if it had been plucked from somewhere back East and plopped down in front of me. The buildings had wobbled with the distance and the heat, and the light around the place acted strange. Now and then it would flicker purple, tracing the shape of a dome around the city. I remember rubbing my eyes, but the flickering persisted. I thought I must be losing my mind.

  From every direction dunes of sand rolled up to the dome, but inside, vibrant grass and colorful blossoms bloomed. The city was protected somehow – safe and comfortable and pleasant. I wished with all that was left of me that it were real.

  It turns out that it was. Seward City the place was called, and it was as real as you and me. I started a new life there.

  For those first days and weeks after wandering in out of the desert, I couldn’t believe my luck at having happened upon the place. Now, less than a full year later, I occasionally found myself taking its comforts for granted – things like the roof over my head and the steady supply of food and water.

  Things like kisses from Zee Calhoun.

  He had me pressed up against a wall, one big hand on my waist, the other wrapped around the back of my neck, fingers tangled in my hair. Both of our hats – the wide-brimmed kind worn by cowhands – had fallen to the floor long ago. He kissed my neck, teasing soft groans from me. I arched my back and turned my head to the side to give him more room – and found my face pressed up against a fuzzy fur coat.

  My first thought was that someone had snuck up on us, and the jolt that traveled through me made me gasp. But there was no one in the coat. It swung, perfectly empty, where it hung on the rack. I laughed at my own jumpiness.

  Zee’s lips left my skin with a wet smack. “What is it?” he said, a smile in his voice. “My whiskers?”

  “No.” I spat out a mouthful of fuzz, still laughing. “It’s these stupid costumes.” To either side of me, big, overblown jackets, frilly-fronted shirts, and not a few capes stretched out to the ends of the room, hung on a pole that projected from the wall. Mr. Gomery called it a dressing room, but the place was so crowded with racks of clothes, there didn’t seem to be much room left for dressing. “Of all the things to build out in the desert,” I scoffed, “a theater?”

  Zee gave a snort and shook his head. “Tell me about it.”

  “You have to hand it to the Sewards. They sure do have a flare for the dramatic.”

  “What they have,” Zee said, coming in for another kiss, “is a lot of money and a lot of confidence. A little too much if you ask me.”

  “Hey,” I said, softening my voice and putting a hand against his stubbly cheek. There was anger in his voice – genuine anger – and it niggled at the bottom of my stomach. What Zee and I shared seemed so delicate sometimes. He was a Hualtecan, hardened by a life lived in the West, and I was a scrawny kid from back East. Then again, I guess any relationship between me and another man would have seemed delicate. The world wasn’t made for people like us. Our love and the life we shared shouldn’t have been possible – wouldn’t have been anywhere but here. It was precious and had to be protected. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  The light from the portable lantern at our feet flashed in his eye, and he leaned in to kiss me on the mouth. “Not upset,” he said. “Not at you, anyway. Just don’t like how many chances they’re taking lately.” He jerked his head over his shoulder to where the door stood open to the outside. There, moonlight shone on the snow.

  I sighed and pulled Zee close. “Don’t you think it’s just the tiniest bit romantic? I mean sure, the theater is a little strange. But how lucky are we to have snow out here in the desert?” I moved my hands down to the seat of his jeans and squeezed the cold, wet spot there. On the floor, the snowball I had thrown at him earlier sat, crumbled and melting. “You know what I think?” I bit my lip, flirting as hard as I knew how. “I think you’re just sore that I got one over on you.”

  “You think you got one over on me, huh?” He squeezed back. But his playfulness lasted only as long as our next kiss, and as we came apart, my chilly hands sliding down the shoulders of his denim jacket, his eyes were again hard with concern. “It is romantic, but…” He shook his head. “This is serious, Cazo. This could go really wrong for us if we’re not careful.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, trying to coax some levity back out of him. “We need water out here one way or another. When Mr. Seward was having it shipped in from back East, you thought that was a bad idea. Now he’s using a SnowMaker, and you think that’s a bad idea, too. I think sooner or later you’re going to have to admit that you just don’t like Mr. Seward very much.”

  His cheeks dimpled in a smile. “Well, you’re not wrong there. He is an Easterner, after all.”

  “Hey!” I said, playfully pulling away from him.

  “I don’t mean like that,” he chuckled, grabbing after me. “Not like you. He’s the worst kind of Easterner – a dude. Now, maybe where he comes from it pays to flash your money all around and try to stand out from the crowd. Out here, though, that tends to attract the wrong kind of attention. There may not be many people out here, Cazo, but there are some. And they’re not all sweet farm boys from West Carolina.”

  “East Carolina,” I corrected.

  “There either, I guess,” he said. “They’re thirsty people out here, Cay. If one of them finds his way here – and don’t shake your head at me like that’s impossible. You found us, didn’t you? Now, if someone finds his way here, he’s going to take one look at this place and all this snow, and he’s going to know there’s something funny going on. Even if he’s dim-witted, it wouldn’t be so hard to guess that there’s a Prime making it happen. And once he’s reckoned all that, he’s going to get to thinking that having that Prime all to himself might be real usefu
l.”

  I knew he was right. Primes lived all over the world, so far as I knew. Even in a small farming town like where I was from, you came across one now and then. Most of what you found there was fairly harmless – pigeons that could beat up a little whirlwind by flapping their wings, or a pig that could turn its skin to rock and avoid the slaughter. Nuisances to farmers, sure, but nothing truly dangerous. But in the West – wild and untamed – there you could find Primes with real power, and many a brave, or foolish, adventurer had come here looking for one.

  I had been one, in fact, and definitely on the foolish side of things.

  “Snow in the desert,” Zee sighed. “Water on command. You know what it’s like out there, Cay – how desperate the desert can make you.”

  Again, he was right – maybe more right than he knew. Just hearing him talk about it was enough to make my throat feel dry and scratchy, to make the phantom cries of the vultures echo through my memory.

  But I forced the memories back and dug my fingers deeper into his heavy jacket and the strong arms underneath – the things that were here, now. I hadn’t put the desert behind me, exactly – out here in Seward City, it surrounded me on all sides. But as long as I was here, inside of the city and its dome-shaped barrier, I was safe. As smart as Zee was about ranching and wrangling, he was wrong about this. I knew he was.

  “You worry too much,” I said. “We’re safe here. Mr. Seward has taken precautions.”

  “This is the West, Cazo.” He pinned me with his gaze. “You can’t take precautions against that.”

  “You know,” I said. “For someone who was born out here, you sure don’t have very many nice things to say about the place.”

  He answered this with a kiss, and another, wandering lower until the scruff of his chin rubbed against my collar bone. But this was the only answer he gave.

  It put me a little on edge. For all that we shared a bed and had seen each other every day for the better part of the past year, there were still great gaps in what I knew about Zee. He had told me that he was born in the desert, on the Hualtecan side of the border, and that he had been riding horses and driving cattle all his life. But what sort of things had he seen out here that made him so hopeless, I wondered. And was it somehow my fault that he wouldn’t talk to me about them?

  He must have sensed the dark turn my thoughts had taken, for in the next instant he had his arms wrapped around me and lifted me up off of my feet. I squealed and clung to his neck.

  “One thing I’ll say for Mr. Seward,” he said over the sound of my giddy laughter. “He has the good sense not to try and come between the two of us!”

  He swung me around the dressing room almost like we were dancing. My boots swatted costumes and sent hangers scraping across their poles. Surrounded by the low, orange light of the lantern, I remembered the last time we had danced – at Yule, in the sitting room up at the Big House. The light had been low then, too, and Mr. Seward and Mr. Gomery and Ms. Vambray had watched us and smiled – just like we were any other couple.

  Zee was right. Nowhere else – in the East or the West – had I found acceptance like the kind Mr. Seward and his family offered. It was the lack of such acceptance that had driven me from my home, and finding it was the reason I wanted to become a Prime Wrangler.

  But as Zee wheeled me around the room, his foot crossed into the shadows under the hanging costumes and disturbed something that was lurking there. It hissed and shot across the floor in a white streak, scampering out the open door.

  Zee jerked so suddenly that he nearly threw me across the room. “Damn cat!” he howled. The flare of anger frightened me, and I clung a little bit tighter to him. But the moment passed, and as the reality of what had happened set in – a big, strong cowhand, spooked by a little cat – well, I had to chew my lip to keep from smiling too wide.

  “I’ll get her,” I chuckled, sliding out of Zee’s arms and picking my hat up. “You’ll find Mr. Gomery’s jacket faster without me here to distract you anyways.” I winked at him and slipped out the door.

  The theater faced out onto Seward City’s central square, its shops and storefronts bathed in starlight and huddled tonight under a thick blanket of snow. A tall clock tower crowned the square, and the ticking minutes were just about the only sound to hear. Out beyond that, on the other side of a huge tract of pastureland, stood the stable where Zee and I lived and the Big House. Even across the distance, the Big House, with its steepled roof and windows spilling golden light onto the snow, looked like one of the cards my mother used to send out to her friends at Yule time. I stood there with my jacket open for a minute just admiring it. How lucky was I to have found a place like this out here?

  True, Seward City hadn’t turned out to be quite the paradise it had seemed on that long-ago day when I’d first glimpsed it. “City” was probably too generous a description, but it was one that Mr. Seward insisted on. The central square was really all that there was to the place, and aside from Zee and me, the only other human inhabitants were the three Sewards and their housekeeper, Marta. The shops and buildings stood empty, all just for show. But Mr. Seward assured us that the people would come soon enough, and that they would build houses and take jobs in the shops and come to see the productions in the big, empty theater. All it would take was one, well-placed track of railroad, and that we could leave to him, thank you very much. According to Mr. Seward, our city’s star was just about to rise, and it was all thanks to our herd of cattle.

  They were also the reason that, as I strolled out into the square with my hands tucked under my armpits, I whistled.

  The mass of meaty shoulders, twitching ears, and sideways-looking eyes that was Seward City’s cattle herd occupied the pastureland between the square and the Big House. It was more for their sake than us humans’ that Mr. Seward made it snow here. While the desert had plenty of open land for them to graze, the summer had been particularly dry, and with the water shipments from the East at an end, the desert scrub needed a little extra help to grow. A Water Prime would have been the perfect solution – maybe a RainMaker or a WaveCaller. But Primes with useful powers were rare to begin with, and Water Primes were so rare as to be considered extinct. Mr. Seward’s SnowMaker was the next best thing. One night each week, the Prime used its powers to cover the city in snow, and the next day the sun would melt it. The sage and the scrub drank the meltwater, and the cattle ate the sage and the scrub. It was the circle of life, and here in Seward City, it all started with the SnowMaker.

  For all of the fortune the cattle were supposedly going to bring us, though, they spooked easy. Any loud noise or sudden movement could set them off. So, on Zee’s orders, anyone going out after dark or in the early morning had to whistle to help keep them calm.

  It was a bit of a hassle. Like I said, Seward City wasn’t perfect. But for out here in the desert, it was pretty damn close.

  “Hester!” My breath puffed out in front of me as I called for the cat. “Hester! Come here, girl!”

  I stopped whistling and listened – and sure enough, I heard the soft jingle of a bell. Zee might not have thought much of Mr. Seward, but I thought he had some pretty clever ideas. That bell on Hester’s collar was one of them, given how often she tried to run away. I followed the sound down the alley between the courthouse and the general store, snow crunching under my boots.

  “Come on, you,” I said, scooping the cat up into my arms. She mewed, but didn’t otherwise protest – she was an old cat, after all. I turned back the way I had come from, scratching under her collar the way she liked, when a voice called to me from behind.

  “Please. Help me, please.”

  The voice was raspy and thin, and hearing it like that in the dark alley made my skin crawl.

  At the far end of the alley, between the two buildings on either side stooped a shadow. She wore a ten-gallon hat and some sort of poncho, but the darkness hid the rest of her features. The snow stretched out between us like a carpet but ended abruptly just at
the toes of her boots. The snow only fell inside the barrier, and out there where the stranger stood – out there was the desert.

  From the folds of her poncho she pulled out an empty hand, and shakily, she reached it forward. It didn’t get far before it came up against the barrier, which flashed to life at her touch. I jerked away at the sudden flare, but after a moment the light began to dim. It didn’t go out entirely, though, and I could still hear its low, droning buzz. When I turned back, I saw the stranger’s hand pressed up against it, and the barrier crackled and sparked where it touched. Washed in the purple glow, the stranger lifted her weary eyes to me. “Please,” she said. “I can’t…”

  But before she could finish, her eyelids fluttered. She slumped forward, falling towards me, but she never hit the ground. The barrier caught her, and again it hissed and flared where her body connected. It held her up, limp, on the other side.

  I can’t get in. That’s what she had been going to say. I knew, because I had said the same thing the first time I had come upon Seward City. After days of wandering in the desert, days without food, subsisting on drops of water from my canteen, I had found salvation. But an invisible wall surrounded it, and I could not get in.

  My heart thrummed and the barrier buzzed, both sounds crowding my ears. Whoever this person was, I had to help her – I had to save her like I had been saved. Hester grumbled as I hefted her in my arm and, with my other hand, reached into the pocket of my jacket for one of her treats. The old cat was a Prime, and her power was creating barriers. The one that surrounded Seward City was one of hers, and she alone controlled who could get in and out. And while she didn’t belong to me and, consequently, didn’t have to answer my commands, Mr. Seward had trained her well; for the right kind of treat she would obey me.

  “Cazo, don’t!”

  The echo of Zee’s voice hung in the air.

  “She’ll die out there,” I said as Zee crunched his way through the snow to my side. “I have to lower the barrier.”