The third man rides us straight to the jail.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he says. “It’s just the safest place for y’all, till we can get everything sorted. I’ll off and fetch the doctor.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the real inside of a jail. It looks about like I thought it would, one cell, iron bars, and a little cot. There aren’t any prisoners, which is all right with me. The third man lays Tommy down on the cot, helping him prop his leg up so it doesn’t hurt. Hanging on one of the walls is a wanted poster, one of me and Tommy, our faces in black ink with WANTED printed in huge letters up top. I don’t know, it makes me feel good seeing it. I can’t explain why. Maybe something left over of Gruff in me, something that is a little proud to be on a poster, to have folks out searching for me. To be a wanted woman, a real bandit. If I didn’t think they’d get mad I would roll it up and keep it for myself.
“I’ve never been in a real jail before,” says Tommy.
“Me either,” I say.
“I don’t like it,” he says.
“Can’t say it’s my favorite.”
“Goldeline?”
“Yeah, Tommy?”
“Our adventure’s over, isn’t it?”
Adventure? I never thought of it like that. I always just thought it was life.
“I guess so,” I say.
“Thank the Lord,” says Tommy.
We’re not in the jail ten minutes before the doctor comes calling. He’s bald, with a white mustache, spectacles on his nose, bumbling around like he just woke up. He sets about examining Tommy’s leg. He’s followed by a fat lady in a fancy purple dress, long and frilly with ruffles. The dress is so tight I don’t know how she crammed her body into it. There’s some danger to her, like her dress could explode and spill her naked butt out at any moment.
“Where is he?” says the woman. “Where is my darling Thomas?”
I’ve been at Aunt Barbara’s a year now. It was fine, all good times, at first. For starters, Aunt Barbara is the richest person I ever met. Her house has two stories, built just for her, if you can believe it. I even had my own bed, my own room. First week home she took me shopping, bought me all kinds of dresses, all colors, perfume, my own bone-handled mirror. She taught me how to put on makeup, which I did until Tommy saw me one day and laughed himself silly.
“You look like a clown,” he said. “You look like you could be in the circus.”
I would have clobbered him, except that’s not how it worked with Aunt Barbara. In fact, you couldn’t hardly do anything at Aunt Barbara’s house. She wouldn’t tolerate any noise, not while she was reading, or had ladies over, or even when she was just sitting there, not doing a thing. You had to sit quiet, in shoes that pinched your feet. And the dinner parties, the tea parties. Never say a word, hold your back straight, chin up, keep quiet, like I was some durn porcelain doll.
Don’t scowl, Goldeline. You have such a pretty face when you smile with it.
Don’t sigh.
Don’t droop your head, it’s rude.
Don’t interrupt.
Don’t.
Don’t.
Don’t.
It’s all I ever hear.
Tommy wasn’t much help either, at least not at first. When we got to Carrolton, he went around telling everybody I was his girlfriend. It was hard to put a stop to that. I was scared of hurting his feelings. But once he got it through his skull that I wasn’t anybody’s girlfriend, we were fine. Best friends even, like I never had before. Aunt Barbara has an upright piano, her very own, and she always let Tommy play whenever he felt like it. It was good to have a house full of music.
Winter was lovely, with a big fire in the hearth and all these blankets and warm clothes and never being cold. Especially when Aunt Barbara was at one of her million social engagements and it was just me and Tommy in the house. Aunt Barbara tried taking me to some of her events and dinners and things, but I failed her so bad at all of them that she finally just let me alone. That was much better, when she left me and Tommy sitting by the fire. That’s when it felt most like family. I’d read to him from an old fairy book, or sometimes I’d just make up a story of my own. Those were the best times, the happiest I’d had since Momma died.
Still, I didn’t like the other kids much, all Tommy’s friends. Because he made friends real fast, even though he’s still got a little bit of a limp. People always wanted to be his friend because of all the stories. Our stories, his and mine. He’d tell them to any kid who would listen, rattle off about him and me being bandits, me being the legendary “Ghost Girl of the Woods.” I liked that part, all the other girls, dainty soft little darlings who I could whoop with my pinky finger, looking at me with big terrified eyes. I liked parading around them in my fancy dresses, bossing them, knowing I was prettier and smarter and tougher than they’d ever be.
“You got to stop it,” Tommy said to me one day. “Being so mean to them. How do you ever expect to make any friends if everybody’s scared of you all the time?”
“I don’t want any other friends,” I said. “You’re my friend. That’s the only friends I need. Why do I have to have any other friends?”
He sighed and hopped away, with his limping broke-legged step.
I started spending more and more time alone, at the edge of Carrolton. My favorite spot was right outside the city, near a fringe of old buildings and a short stone wall about waist high, just before the town vanished into woods. It was as close as I could get to somewhere I loved and still be in the town. Nearby was an abandoned church, the congregation long driven out or died, with an old graveyard sitting right next to it. Only twenty or thirty busted and unkempt headstones were left, and the church building was roofless except for the spire, a crooked finger pointing up to heaven. It was maybe my favorite place in all Carrolton. I would go there and hide on my own sometimes, just to be secret.
On those days I would lean against a headstone and watch the sun crawl across the sky, the shadows of the tree limbs stretch into bony fingers and gray out into the dusk light. Sometimes the tree shadows on the grass were like words in a book, and sometimes I thought I could read them, like the trees were spelling out stories with their hands. It was like everything was talking to me. The leaves would swirl and I could catch a glimpse of something, a picture and a word. Caterpillars thick as baby arms traced their names on tombstones. I would sit and watch the spiders build homes in the air, strands of string wispy as breath, like the spiders were speaking out their world. The spiders would catch bigger bugs in the webs, hung up on spider words, and spin their dinner up tight, wrapped like a present. I would listen to the animal sounds windblown from the forest, the strange scratching song of the woods while a cold breeze prickled my neck.
Sometimes it felt like the woods knew me, that as I lay dozing the wind would whisper my name and I’d jolt awake, startled, Bobba’s voice still ringing in my ears, the faint smell of baking wafting through the air. On those days I hated the kids in town most of all. Tommy would bring a kid over to play and I’d rather spit than speak his name.
Even so, life with Tommy and Aunt Barbara was fine, more or less. But then I did something. At least, I think I did, and it made everything go wrong.
A month ago, Tommy asked me to go play hide-and-seek with some of the other kids, a few boys, and this one horrible girl, a pigtailed, gappy-toothed blabby rich girl named Sylvia.
“Ugh,” I said, “why?”
“Because she’s great!” Tommy said. “When you get to know her, you’ll just love her.”
That’s when I realized Tommy had a crush on Sylvia. What was even worse was that he expected me to become friends with her. But I said I would go, and I promised to be nice.
We played on the edge of Carrolton, by my happy graveyard place. Playing there was my idea. I figured if I had to be with the other kids, at least it could happen somewhere I liked.
Sylvia counted at base, the giant oak tree that marked the beginning of t
he woods. I didn’t much want to play, so after everyone ran away to hide, I snuck off into the woods, even though it was off-limits. I missed the woods so much I couldn’t help it. Besides, Sylvia had only counted to sixteen. She still had thirty-four more to go. I crept past her and into the trees, just a few hundred feet, not far at all. I nestled behind a sprung-out root of a big leaning oak. I figured I could sit awhile and let Sylvia run down someone else before I snuck back and took my usual hiding spot behind an old cracked tombstone that just said Stump on it.
It was nice and cozy in my spot. I took off the shoes Aunt Barbara made me wear and let the dirt touch my toes. A bird sung out, a robin. They always sound so sad to me. It was the loveliest sound I’d heard in months, a mystery voice, not at all human, calling from where I couldn’t see. I decided this was my new favorite spot, and I would come here any time I wanted, even if it was in the woods and off-limits. This was a safe spot. I shut my eyes and listened and smiled, let all the forest smells and sounds and feels swallow me up.
“I caught you!” chirped an awful girl voice. I opened my eyes. Sylvia stood there, her ugly finger poking out at me. “I caught you and that means you’re it!”
“How did you know I was out here?” I said.
“I saw you when I was counting,” she said. “I peeked.”
“You cheated,” I said.
“Well, you cheated first,” said Sylvia. “The woods is off-limits. Everybody knows that.” She was so pleased with herself it made me want to sock her. “Doesn’t matter anyway. You’re still it.”
Sylvia skipped off through the trees, toward the town wall, singing, “Goldy’s it, Goldy’s it, I caught Goldeline!”
I got mad. It was her voice I think, the shrill horribleness of it. It made me crazy, like when rusty metal is scraped together. I shut my eyes and plugged my ears and tried to block it out. But in my mind I still saw Sylvia, plain as day, skipping toward town. I saw all the darkness of the woods stirring, black and alive. I twitched my fingers, gathering it all together, all the dusky damp places, the tree shadows, the cool spots under rocks—I gathered the dark together into something I could hold, twisted and gnarled as an old oak branch, cold and heavy in my hands. I swung it at Sylvia, straight at her knee. It was all in my head that I did this, like a make-believe game I was playing alone with myself.
I opened my eyes when I heard the crack, like a tree branch breaking from frost. Sylvia’s leg snapped to the side, right in half, at the knee. She screamed and fell into the dirt. Sylvia rolled over and lifted her leg and when she did the bottom part, shin and ankle and foot, flopped over wrong.
Sylvia screamed and screamed. All the kids came running up.
“What happened?” said a kid named Wallace. He lived up the street from me and Tommy. I liked him okay.
“She tripped,” I said.
“You tripped her,” said Wallace. “I know you did.”
“How could I have tripped her from all the way back here?” I said.
Tommy ran up and stopped, staring at me all weird.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Look,” he said, and pointed behind me.
A cardinal perched like a rose on a bare branch, eye level with me. I hadn’t seen one in so long. It cocked its head to the side, gazing up at me, eyes black and questioning, like it was listening to me, waiting for my command. When I didn’t move it darted off into the woods, just a normal bird. But its eyes had scared me. Like the cardinal had expected something from me.
And there was Tommy, staring at me too. Tommy knew. He walked over to Sylvia and held her hand until the doctor came. She cried all over him.
Tommy stopped asking me to play after that. It was fine, if lonely. I didn’t like those other kids anyway.
When Aunt Barbara said that me and Tommy would start school in the fall, I told her that I didn’t want to go.
“But, Goldeline, darling, you’ll do so well in school,” she said. “You’re so very smart. I’ve hired Mrs. Jessup from the parish to come and instruct you. She’ll help you catch up to all the other kids.”
“I don’t need any catching up,” I said.
“That is for me to decide,” said Aunt Barbara. “Oh, don’t make such a face. It isn’t like I’m the devil now. Haven’t I been good to you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “You’ve been very good to me. But . . .”
“That’s the spirit,” she said. “We’ll make a lady out of you yet.”
I just sat and stared at a spear of sunlight come through the window. All the dust dangled and floated in it, glowing like magic. Funny how light can do that, make crummy old dust glow. It made me miss the woods, the trees, where light did all kinds of amazing things that it never got to do in a city.
It only took me a week to hate Mrs. Jessup. She just wants to teach me Book stuff, and not even the Book stuff I like. She wants me to learn the sacred catechisms, the holy creeds, which of the seven candles get lit during worship and in what order, all that ceremonial junk. I try to ask her about the story about the witch who gave the sad king bread, or the time God’s big finger wrote mysteries on the banquet hall wall, but she won’t have any of it. Nope, all Mrs. Jessup wants to talk about are rules and rules and more rules. But what about the stories?
No one here will ever let me alone. What’s worse, when someone finally does—like Tommy, my only true friend in the world—I miss him. I don’t understand anything about myself, how I feel. I don’t understand what happened in the woods with Sylvia, same as what happened with the Preacher, except darker, meaner. I know I did something, and it was magic. I just don’t know how.
But I want to know. I want to learn. About Momma, about magic, about where I come from. I know Bobba’s out there, somewhere. I know she’s got some answers for me, if I can only find her. Something tells me I will. Something tells me Bobba knows I’m coming for her, that she’s getting impatient already, waiting.
I started stealing things, small stuff, like apples and teaspoons and even a butter knife once, just to do it. I keep them all in a secret spot, under a loose board in my closet. I know it’s wicked of me, but it makes me feel better, like I’m not totally stuck, like I have a little bit of power in the city world.
I miss the woods. I miss campfires and waking up at dawn, covered in dew. I miss hearing owls at night, wandering wild and alone, nothing but bandits for friends. I miss the music and the wine. I miss the whole forest singing to me, telling me its secrets. Mostly though I miss Gruff. I miss him every day.
That’s why I’m leaving tonight. Aunt Barbara’s off at a gala somewhere, and there’s nobody to look after me but a maid and she’s long asleep. I think Aunt Barbara will be glad to be quit of me. I think I’m doing her a favor.
Tommy is different, though. He hasn’t hardly spoken to me since what happened to Sylvia. We’re barely even friends anymore, not like we used to be. But I can’t just leave him without a good-bye. After he goes to bed, I sneak up to his room and creak open the door. He’s asleep already, and he doesn’t stir. I pull the covers back and crawl into bed with him.
“You’re leaving?” he says.
“I thought you were sleeping,” I say.
“Is it because of Sylvia?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Yeah, I guess I did. I just didn’t know it would do anything,” I say. “I’m sorry, Tommy.”
“I love you,” he says.
I pull him close to me and we hold each other, same as we did those nights in the forest, clinging together like the broke-hearted orphans we are. No one else could understand what it’s like between me and Tommy, what we went through, like we’ll forever have a secret that’s just ours, that we can always come back to, that will always draw us back together. I hope so, at least. When Tommy’s breathing slows and he fidgets his feet a little under the covers, I know he’s actually asleep. But as I slide out from under the covers, Tommy, still sleeping, gra
bs hold of my foot and kisses it once softly. My heart clenches in my chest. I don’t know. It almost makes me want to stay. But I pull myself free, fix the blanket around him, tucking him in like I know he likes. I shut the door quiet behind me and try not to ruin it all by crying.
In my room I pack a light bag, just a spare dress, a jug of water, some bread, my favorite fairy book. I put on Zeb’s momma’s cloak, smoke-colored and easy to miss. I guess it’s mine now, as much as anything is. It’s still dark night out, the moon a gray smudge under the clouds. Rain sizzles on the roof, just enough sound to cover my footsteps down the stairs, the door creaking shut. Outside I feel free already. The streets are empty, there’s no one to catch me.
I open my mouth and taste the wild free drops of the rain. They splash on my nose and I laugh and hum one of Momma’s songs, the nothingsong, just me and the owls and bats and all the hidden creatures in the night. I know there’s a road outside of town, and past that some woods, dark and lovely, and I don’t know but maybe there is a light for me to follow, a candle stuck in a window somewhere, calling me home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Mary Marge Locker, genius and love of my heart. Thanks to Mom and Dad and Chris, the best family a guy could ask for. Gigantic thanks to Jess Regel, the greatest ever, without whom none of this would be possible. From the bottom of my heart, Jess, I cannot thank you enough. Thanks to Andrew Eliopulos for the keen eye and brilliant editorial work. This book wouldn’t be what it is without your kindness, patience, and heart. Thanks to Matt Wise for the earliest faith, for being the first person to give me a shot. Thanks to Matt Saunders for the most amazing cover of all time. Thanks to Megan Abbott, for the friendship and guidance and more than I can even begin to list right now. Thanks to William Boyle, the best dude in the entire world. Thanks to Jack Pendarvis, forever and always my friend and hero. Thanks to Liam Baranauskas, the wise and brave. Thanks to McKay McFadden, E. M. Tran, Brendan Steffan, and the esteemed members of the Good Idea Club. I didn’t know there were people like you guys in the world, and I’ll never stop being grateful. Thanks to P. S. Dean, brother of my soul, as well as all the Heroes of 804. Thanks to Len Clark always, my first-ever creative partner. Thanks to Michael Bible for opening this door wide for me, and for loving books just the same way I do. Seriously, Michael, I really, really appreciate it. Thanks to Robert Savoie, the truest friend anyone ever had. Thanks to Gary Sheppard for keeping me sane. Thanks to Phil McCausland, because wow, what a guy. Thanks to David Swider, the best boss ever. Thanks to Tom Franklin, friend and fearless leader. Thanks to Jay Watson for the time and edits and difficult questions, most of which I found a way to answer. Thanks to Douglas Ray, my brilliant forever-friend. Thanks to Gerry Wilson and Stephanie Seabrook, my first guides into the writing world. Thanks to Nic Brown for the wisdom and hangouts. Thanks to Bryony Harrington, who inspired so much in this book. Thanks to Bethan Raines, dear friend so full of grace. Thanks to Alex Taylor for the first read, when it was just an idea. Thanks to Mark Linkous, because his world is one of my favorites to escape into. Thanks to Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster, whose songs lived in my brain the whole time I was writing this. Thanks to John Bellairs. Thanks to Lewis Nordan. Thanks to Mermee and Yia Yia, who I miss with all my heart. Thanks be to God. And thanks to all the readers of the world, young and old. This story is yours.
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