I make a big show of swooshing down out of the tree, branch by branch, slinging my hair like a ghost shadow behind me. I hold my hand out to him. “You better come with me. Otherwise the bad guys might come back and kill you dead with their hooks and their hammers. Come with me and let’s get you something to eat.”
He takes my hand and we walk through the woods and back toward Gruff’s camp.
I hope I know what I’m doing.
The path is old, from way before me and Gruff ever wandered these woods, the kind that is cut and forgotten, the good kind. You can barely stand up, the trees are so thick and low. The branches form a roof almost as thick as thatch, and when it rains only tiny droplets get through. You could dodge them and never get hit. The water pools in the curve of the leaves and you can sip from them if you want.
I stop us at a tiny clearing out from the main trail, maybe half a mile from camp. The boy is slow and he keeps crying. He says his shoes are hurting his feet. I tell him to go barefoot, like me, that it’ll make his feet tough, but he doesn’t like that.
“Just you wait here, okay? I’ll be back with food in just a minute. But don’t go anywhere.”
He stares at me with his face all dirty.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s dark. And there are noises.” The tears start again. “What if the bad guys come back for me?”
“Jeez, you’re a scaredy-cat. I never met a kid so scared in my whole life.” He just cries harder. “Okay, well. Let me teach you a song. To keep off the bad things.” And I sing him the nothingsong my momma taught me. I make him sing it with me, his voice almost as high as mine, until he knows it. He learns it real fast, and his fingers move at his side like he’s playing a piano.
“Just keep singing until I come back, okay?”
He nods but doesn’t stop singing.
“Good boy.”
When Tommy can’t see me anymore I cut back out toward the road. I walk awhile back to the robbery spot. The carriage is gone, the horses trotted back toward town I guess. The dress still dangles in the tree. I snatch it off the branch and it tears a snitch at the shoulder. Too bad. Maybe I can fix it back at the camp.
THREE
It’s darktime now and the moon is out, barely, just a moon smudge. Bats fling themselves through the trees and are gone like dark falling stars. At night the woods come alive, all the hidden things scurrying in the black. What is either fireflies or ghost eyes. They glimmer and blink away and I’ll never know.
I left Tommy in a safe place, but I need to hurry. I figure I should be able to sneak some food out and be gone in no time. I walk faster, feeling my way by memory and moonlight. I know we’ll have to move camp again soon, but I hope we get to stay here for a little bit longer. Right now is the best camp we’ve ever had. It almost feels like a home. Soon I can hear the music, and when I break into the clearing I can already smell the beans cooking, and I see all Gruff’s boys. Lemon hobbles past, grunting at me, lugging wood toward the fire. I nod at her like nothing’s different.
Gruff’s got his robe on, but it doesn’t seem soiled tonight. It looks regal, like Gruff’s an old fairy king, even down to the purple of his teeth. The men are up and dancing, the music good and wild. Old Andrew, with his three-foot beard and accordion, one-legged Leebo, with his crutch and viola, and old Mister Marty, with his goiter and his story songs.
“How are you this fine evening, Goldeline, my dear?” says Leebo, bowing for a flourish.
“I’m just fine, Leebo. Glad you got your music going.”
I figure now’s a pretty good time to go try on my new dress. I’ll put it on and dance around a little and say hi to everybody, and then I’ll sneak the food off for Tommy. I hope he can wait. I hope he won’t get too scared. I hope nothing bad happens to him when I’m not there to protect him.
This time the camp is hidden in a clearing in the thick heart of the woods. No one could ever find it unless they knew where to go first or were just plain unlucky. Lord knows how Gruff got to it. There’s all kinds of thornbushes round about the edges, and in the mornings after a big night they have blood on the prickles where the men went off to pee and fell. There’s about nine or ten tents in all, just patchwork stuff we slung together, and a fire pit in the middle. When we have to move again, the whole camp will be up and ready to go in an hour. Gruff’s tent is the biggest because he’s the leader. It has two whole rooms in it with a long canvas sheet to separate them. Gruff calls one his “war tent” because that’s where they’re supposed to plan the jobs and discuss strategies, but mostly they just play cards in there. The other is the one where he sleeps. He’s even got a mattress, not just a pallet full of feathers and leaves like the rest of us. My tent is the smallest. It’s so small only I can fit in it, and even I can’t stand all the way up inside.
In my tent I have a mirror with a gold handle that Gruff got for me, and my pile of books. I have the shawl I wore at Momma’s trial but I don’t want to talk about that. I sleep with the shawl under my pillow and smell it sometimes hoping it’ll smell like Momma, but it only ever smells like ashes.
I light a candle and try out my gown. It doesn’t look too good in my mirror. I’m not big enough, and the dress sags down my chest. Worse, I’m too short and there’s no way to keep it from dragging in the dirt. I feel like a dress-up doll. But then, maybe, in the right moonlight, with the campfire glow on me, maybe it’ll do. When I walk out of the tent, the hem follows me like a ghost shadow.
Gruff claps his hands. “Boys, don’t she look gorgeous? Ain’t our Goldy the northernmost star?”
“She’s a doll,” says Buddo. “Like one of them rich-girl dolls that blink their eyes.”
“I’m no doll,” I say.
Gruff about falls out laughing. “Hear that, Buddo? She’s no doll.”
“Geez, sorry. Shoot, Goldy, you know I didn’t mean nothing by it,” says Buddo.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Ought to stick her in an orphanage,” says Pugh.
“Knock it off, Pugh,” says Gruff. “That’s my Goldy you’re talking about, good as my own. Besides, she helps out on the jobs. She earns her keep, don’t she, boys?”
“A straw dummy could do her job,” Pugh mutters.
“I’ll do you a right good job,” I say.
All the men laugh.
“I wouldn’t cross this one, Pugh!” says Gruff. “She’ll stick you, she will. She’ll get you right and good in the end!”
“She’s a brave one for her size, she is,” says Murph, tipping her glass to me, and I blush a little.
“We’ll see,” says Pugh, and then he wanders off away from the fire.
Gruff gets down on a knee in front of me. With his scraggle beard, his earrings dangling, he looks like a gentleman pirate from a storybook.
“You look pretty as your momma in that dress,” he says. “God rest her soul.”
It makes me go cold and warm at the same time. It makes me so happy it hurts and so sad I could die. I feel it all over me like a warm coat, like sadness and pain might swallow me whole. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.
Gruff grabs my hand and the music starts and we get to dancing. My dress floats and whirls around me, and I spin so the hem never touches the ground. This is a bandit night at its best: the glow and the warmth of the camp in the dark woods, the light of the fire and us singing and dancing and hollering around it, the people songs and the nighttime songs and our laughter all mixing together into something new and hopeful, a kind of promise, or maybe a wish. An owl hushes us from the trees up where I can’t see any owl but I know it’s there watching me. I wonder what the owl thinks of us. I wonder what Momma would think of me, dancing and all dressed up, her own daughter a bandit?
I hope she wouldn’t be too mad at me. I hope she’d see me and smile.
Soon I’m laughing as hard as the rest of them. We dance and we twirl and I’ve never felt like this, never fe
lt so pretty in my whole life. All the boys are out clapping and dancing and singing, and me and Gruff are the stars. Everyone is watching us spin around the campfire, us ghosts and legends, the ones all the Townies are so scared of. It feels wonderful to be a ghost, to be as pretty as Momma, as white-haired, lovely and dancing before a fire. It’s a good time, when there aren’t many. I bet this is what Moon Haven is like all the time, how it is in my dreams. It’s all I want for forever. But I can’t stay. I got to get back to Tommy. What if he’s scared? He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know anything. And I left him out there in the woods all alone.
I tell Gruff I got to pee and sneak off to the tree line. Dunce is dozing by his tent with a whole bowlful of beans, and I take it without him even noticing. Keeping a close eye out for one-eyed Pugh, who hates me, who could ruin everything, I sneak my way out of the camp and run as fast as I can all the way back to the tree where I left Tommy.
When I get there, Tommy’s curled up like a pup, whimpering.
“I couldn’t scrounge up much,” I say, “but I got you some real nice beans.”
“I thought you left me,” he says. “I thought you weren’t coming back tonight. I thought I was going to get all eat up by wolves.”
“There aren’t any wolves here, stupid,” I say. “Maybe some coyotes, but they won’t do anything except ruffle you up a bit. Nope, worst you got to worry about eating you up is mosquitoes.”
“You don’t talk much like an angel,” he says.
“Well how the heck are angels supposed to talk?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Not like that.”
“You ever met an angel before?”
“Nope.”
“Then shut up about it. I’m an angel and I say whatever I want,” I say. “Anyway, are you going to eat these beans or what?”
I hand him the bowl and he sniffs it.
“Smells like something died in there.”
“That’s a heck of a thing to say, Tommy. You know this grub here is a gift from God, right? Like the Book says, ‘If you refuse the gifts of the Lord, you refuse the Lord as well.’ You refusing the Lord, Tommy?”
“No, ma’am,” he says, and he gets to eating.
“That’s what I thought,” I say, but I’m smiling. Ma’am!
“Can I ask you a question?” he says.
“Shoot.”
“Why are you wearing my momma’s dress? It was her favorite thing, and Aunt Barbara wanted to keep it.”
I forgot about the dress. I look down and it’s all dirty and torn from the path. It hardly even looks like the same pretty thing I had earlier.
“God told me to wear it.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“I don’t know. He’s God. He can say whatever He wants and you just got to do it anyway.”
“I guess.”
Tommy starts to crying again. I can’t blame him. I cried for a whole year after my momma died. I still do sometimes, when I know Gruff isn’t watching me and there’s no one around.
“Hold up a minute,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t leave me,” he says.
“Be brave for a little bit, okay?”
See, right by this spot there’s a bunch of blackberry bushes. Sometimes I come up and sit in the tree and read my book and eat fistfuls of blackberries all day. I pick some and run them back to Tommy. He takes one and eats it and smiles a little bit.
“Good, huh?”
“I was scared you were going to leave me again.”
“I’m not going to leave you, all right? I’m your angel. I’m here to protect you. For now, anyways.”
“I thought angels stuck with the same person forever,” he said.
“Think we’ve established you know squat about angels,” I say.
A lightning bug dangles its glow over my face and hushes. I cup it softly in my hands.
“Hey, Tommy, watch this.”
I pray a silent prayer to it: please don’t hate me for this, lightning bug, I just got to borrow your light. I squish it in my palms and bury my face in the goo. When I look up Tommy screams.
“You’re glowing!”
“I know! Watch!” I catch another one and smear its light over Tommy’s cheeks. He rubs them and a snatch of glow sticks to his finger. Then he darts off into the dark.
“Tommy? Wait, this isn’t funny. Where’d you go?”
I chase after him but I can’t see him. He jumps out from behind a tree. He doesn’t scare me but I fake a yell.
“Ha! I gotcha.”
I chase him and he chases me and pretty soon we’re cackling and screaming, our faces glowing like stars. Tommy trips over a tree limb and I tackle him and we both fall down laughing, which pretty quick turns into crying, and me and Tommy cry each other out on the roots and tangles and dark wild earth of the woods.
I wake up with the daylight. Tommy’s munching the last of the blackberries, teeth as purple as brand-new grapes. It’s shady and cool under the tree. All the day bugs are waking up, whirring into the light. A fawn and two baby deer walk by, stepping soft as ghosts. Tommy whistles and they bolt off, gone quicker than a happy thought.
“You spoiled it,” I say.
“Deers got ticks on them,” he says.
“How would you know?”
“Sure do taste good though. My daddy used to shoot a deer any chance he got.”
“What was your daddy like?”
“He was the tallest, bravest guy you ever met. I one time saw him arm-wrestle a riverboat captain and he beat him in no time flat.”
“When did he die?”
“Three years ago, when I was seven.”
Tommy’s ten? That’s only one year younger than me. He acts like a six-year-old. His voice is all high and he cries all the time. If he were Gruff’s boy, Gruff would whoop his butt right into being a man.
“That’s right,” I said. “Three years ago. Hard for me to keep it straight.”
“Why’s that?”
“Heaven time don’t work the same as earth time, Tommy. A day with God is like a thousand years, don’t you know that?”
“Never heard that one before. A whole thousand years?”
“Doesn’t feel that way,” I say. “Sometimes it passes quick as a summer morning. Other times it’s like a cold winter night that won’t even end. Heaven time is a tricky thing.”
It’s fun being an angel. Good thing I know so much about the Book. I remember how Momma used to read me fairy stories, and Gruff would tell me all about the ghosts of the woods. But I feel like I grew up knowing the Book like it was already in me, every word. I know all the good stories. The one-eyed man and his talking donkey, the money in the catfish’s mouth, the shepherd prince and his magical songs. Stories from the Book are the best stories there are.
Oh no, what time is it? I’ve messed around for too long. Gruff will be missing me. Someone will notice, Pugh or worse. They would kill Tommy if they found him, no question. They might even kill me too. All of a sudden I realize how dangerous this is, what I’ve gotten the both of us into.
“Will you take me to Aunt Barbara soon?” says Tommy. “I bet she’s worried about me.”
“Tommy, I got to go,” I say. “I promise I’ll be back later.”
I run off toward camp as fast as I can go.
When I break the tree line all the boys are just waking up, cussing, hair sticking up with night sweat. Leebo cooking breakfast. The whole camp is in a groggy haze. I sneak up to Gruff’s tent, but I don’t have to check inside because I can hear him snoring from ten feet away.
I feel a small joy hopping in my chest. I got away with it. No one even noticed I was gone.
I spend an hour lounging, laughing with the boys, all of them still tired, all of them a little annoyed by me. I giggle and hop and sing, whatever I can to be noticed, to be as irritating as possible. I dance around Pugh so long I think he’s going to smack me. Even sweet Leebo, head in his hands, eyes dark with rings around them, wave
s me off.
“Why don’t you go out in the woods and run around for a while?” he says. “Nothing but old folks here, and not a one of us feeling much like fun.”
I play it perfectly, and it couldn’t go any better.
“Okay, Leebo,” I say, and kiss him on the cheek.
He chuckles a little, then grabs his head and moans. Soon I’m back out in the forest, no problems from anyone. Even better, I bring presents. Nothing amazing, just a few things I could fit into my pack, a few things we had some extras of. Like a leather flap that John Gooding used to use as a tent, before he took off to the Northlands. Said he wanted to see what other places were like, what the ocean was. Said he wanted to off and see the whole world. I liked John Gooding. He was only six years older than me, and handsome too, except for his nose, which was crooked from a socking he took over some old lady. That’s what he called her, his “old lady.”
I also got a storybook—with pictures even, folks on camelback and great dunes rising high as palaces—and some leftover beans from last night. When I get back to the tree it’s almost noon, and Tommy’s waiting on me, not looking near as scared as last time. That means he’s trusting me.
“Beans again?” says Tommy.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” I say. “Birds aren’t ungrateful, and all they get is worms.”
“But I don’t want beans. They stink.”
“Some birds don’t even get worms. They get dead stuff. They don’t even like food until it gets to stinking. You ever think about that?”
“Well, I ain’t any bird.”
“Nope,” I say. “You’re a growing boy, and as your very own guardian angel, I say the Lord hath provided unto thee beans. So eat your durn beans.”
“You don’t have to get all huffy,” he says. “I’m the one who got robbed by bandits. I’m the one trapped in the woods.”
Goldeline Page 3