The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  “About eleven,” I said.

  I was wild, and you can’t put a wild person in a cottage. I would be sharp and wild, and they would send me to jail.

  How did I know this house was a cottage? For one thing, the roof started high on one side and came down low on the other. It slanted almost to the ground. It was a cottage because there were little outbursts of roof everywhere, and windows beneath every outburst, and panes of glass in the windows. The panes of glass were shaped like diamonds.

  Chimneys rose from different roof-bursts, but no smoke blew from any of them. That was bad. Gentleman Jack had told me about Grandmother’s house, and everything about it was good. One good thing was that it had eleven chimneys, and during the winter, all the chimneys were warm and puffing out smoke.

  That was the right kind of house to have. Who wanted such a small house and one where the two sides didn’t match? Who wanted a house that was painted a color like a dream?

  “It’s yellow,” said the dagger. “There’s no color like a dream.”

  But it wasn’t yellow. Yellow was a terrible color. Yellow was muddy ribbons and revolver spit.

  Everything was wrong. I should have been with Gentleman Jack and our five bricks of gold. We should have been arriving at Grandmother’s house, looking at the eleven chimneys and the eleven puffs of smoke.

  I pictured it all so clearly. We’d go through Grandmother’s door, into a big entrance called a foyer. We’d walk over black-and-white marble. Then we’d come to Grandmother’s sitting room. It was called a sitting room, but she would stand up when she saw us. She would come toward us, her arms outstretched. She would put a hand on my cheek and her hand would feel like silk.

  “Skin doesn’t feel like silk,” said the dagger. “Skin feels like skin.”

  But I knew what Gentleman Jack meant. I’d never touched silk, but I could guess how it would feel.

  Then Grandmother would put her hand on Gentleman Jack’s cheek and she would say what she always said when he came home.

  “This is my boy, returned from the road,” she would say. “This is my boy, bright as the sun.” Those were the words that showed she loved him.

  The stone steps turned into wooden steps, which led to a porch. A carpet lay outside the door. There was writing on the carpet and a picture of a sunflower. I knew Grandmother had carpets inside her house, but I had not known you could have carpets outside a house.

  The Judge clicked a key into the door. I knew about doors and keys. Gentleman Jack was interested in them. He liked to open doors that locked him in, he liked to open doors that locked him out. There were no doors to the hideout, of course. There were no doors to a cave in the side of a cliff at the bottom of a ravine.

  Click. Now the door was open. It was thick, which meant it guarded the house. Click. Now it was bolted.

  The cottage had a foyer, but the floor wasn’t made of black-and-white marble. It was made of planks of indigo wood. On it lay a blue carpet with flowers. Wood and carpets were never as good as marble.

  There was a curve in the wall, with a little table pressed into the curve. There was a drawer in the table. The Judge opened the drawer. It held a single key. The Judge dropped his key in the drawer. Now there were two keys.

  Now it was full.

  They had a whole drawer just for their keys. They had a whole table just for a drawer. They had a whole room, which was just for keeping a table, which was just for keeping a drawer, which was just for keeping keys.

  There was another door on the other side of the foyer. It was set with a pane of glass. You could look through to a shining stretch of corridor.

  “You should know,” said the Judge, “that my wife has not been well.”

  I hadn’t imagined the Judge would have a wife. Would she look like him, all cliffs and scratches? I’d show her I was wild. I’d show her I was dangerous. She’d tell the Judge to send me away, and I’d run and walk and crawl back to the hideout. I wouldn’t think about the pinto, I wouldn’t think about the yellow ribbons. I’d think about walking and running on my own wild feet. I’d go down the mountain and through the indigo trees, across the Jordan River, over the red clay road.

  I’d save myself, then I’d save Gentleman Jack. But first I had to meet the Judge’s wife, who was not well.

  “Mrs. del Salto will want to know what to call you,” said the Judge.

  “She can call me the Robber Girl,” I said.

  The Judge led me down the corridor; we stopped at an opening. “She prefers the parlor,” said the Judge. There was no door to the parlor.

  It was so dark, I could hardly see the person inside. She was all in black, and the only reason I could see her at all was because she was walking up and down. Her skirts flittered away the dark. The Judge knocked even though there was no door. He knocked at the pale, gleaming wood that surrounded the opening.

  The flittering stopped. “I’ve brought a guest,” said the Judge.

  “Not a guest,” said Mrs. del Salto. “Don’t tell me you brought a guest.”

  That was not what Grandmother would say when we went to her house. First she’d say what she always said to Gentleman Jack. “This is my boy, returned from the road. This is my boy, bright as the sun.”

  Then she’d touch me with her hand, which would feel like silk, and she’d say, “This is my girl, returned from the road. This is my girl, bright as a star.”

  The Judge laid his hand on my back. He pressed me into the parlor. In a big, fancy house, like Grandmother’s, it was called a sitting room, but in a cottage it was called a parlor. Grandmother’s sitting room was bright with crimson velvet chairs and sofas, but the parlor in a cottage was dark.

  The Judge stepped into the room. He made something hiss; two lamps burst into light. They hung on the wall, above the fireplace.

  “I like the dark,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  But now I could see the parlor. I saw lace curtains and fat, heavy cushions. I saw a chair embroidered with pale flowers. I knew the word Embroidered because of the embroidered initials on Gentleman Jack’s gloves. But how did I know the word Tapestry, which was what another chair was made of?

  How did I know the words Tapestry and Cottage? It was as though I’d discovered an extra pocket filled with foreign coins. I knew about foreign coins because Doubtful Mittie had one from the place he came from. It wasn’t all one color, like coins in the Territories. It had a silver rim and a gold-colored middle.

  Now everything was light, except Mrs. del Salto. She wore all dark; she absorbed the light.

  “You brought a child,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  The Judge said nothing. He bent over the fireplace, laying wood on the andirons, scooping on coal.

  “Don’t tell me you brought a child.”

  The Judge didn’t have to tell her. She could see for herself. Mrs. del Salto was like my mother. She didn’t want me.

  “She has nowhere else to go,” said the Judge.

  That wasn’t true. I could go to jail, I could go to the hideout. I’d meet Rough Ricky there and we’d make plans to rescue Gentleman Jack. But the Judge wouldn’t let me go to jail, and neither of them knew about the hideout.

  The fireplace bloomed with flame. The coal shifted and popped. The coal was noisier than I was. Gentleman Jack had said I must not be noisy in Grandmother’s house or I would disturb Grandmother.

  That was the way I liked it. I’d had a lot of practice being quiet. It went with my Affliction. When your Affliction makes you unable to speak until spoken to, it means you can’t talk about the time before Gentleman Jack rescued you.

  “Talking will make you remember,” said the dagger.

  “Remembering would be a betrayal of Gentleman Jack,” I said.

  “She needs a place to stay,” said the Judge. “It seems she’s been living with the Gentlemen.”

  His voice leaned on the word Gentlemen. You could tell he didn’t think it was the right word for Gentleman Jack and his men.

  Now
Mrs. del Salto would tell me Gentleman Jack was bad and that I shouldn’t talk to him. Gentleman Jack had told me over and over what the people in Blue Roses would say.

  “What will they try to make you believe?” That’s what Gentleman Jack would say.

  “They’ll tell me you should be caught and hanged. They’ll tell me I should live in a regular house and go to school.” That’s what I would say.

  But my mother was from Blue Roses, and she was the one who was bad. I’d been five, or maybe six, and she left me in the wilderness to die.

  Gentleman Jack had saved me just in time; he saved me when the buzzards were already circling overhead. I didn’t remember it, though. That’s why I was sometimes glad about my Affliction. It made me mostly unable to talk, which meant I couldn’t talk myself into remembering my mother, who wanted me dead.

  But Mrs. del Salto said nothing. She stood so still and for so long that her dress rusted around her. She absorbed all the light of the wall lamps, of the fire in the fireplace. She shrugged. I knew what that meant. She didn’t care about me.

  It was good she didn’t want me, because I didn’t want her. I didn’t want anything belonging to her, especially not the cottage with its doorknobs and keys.

  “The child is picking at her skin,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  It was my thumb, which was rough and scratchy. I could make the skin come off in flakes. Sometimes I could make it come off in strips.

  It was good Mrs. del Salto was hard. It was good she wasn’t like Grandmother. I knew what Grandmother looked like because I had a photograph of her. I knew she’d be soft, like this room—like the parlor—all pearl and cream and lace and feathers. She’d be like the wing of a dove.

  “The girl may stay one night and no longer,” said Mrs. del Salto. “And not in Magda’s room or Isaac’s room.”

  “In the attic, then,” said the Judge.

  “We needn’t bother with a bath,” said Mrs. del Salto. “Not for just one night.”

  “Is she to sleep in those britches?” said the Judge.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  That was a smart decision. She wouldn’t like what would happen if she tried to take my britches. My britches were one of the things I cared about. I also cared about the dagger in the sheath around my waist and about the watch in my pocket. It had belonged to Grandmother when she was young. Gentleman Jack gave it to me because Grandmother’s photograph was inside the watch and I liked to look at it. The watch didn’t tick, but that was all right. We’d get it fixed in Netherby Scar.

  I cared about Gentleman Jack, too—I cared about him most of all—but I didn’t care about too many other things.

  I was glad to leave the parlor, with its glass windows and the lamps that were set with little half-moon handles. That was so you could turn them on and off. It was all too fragile, the glass that could be broken, the lamps that were too easy to turn off.

  I followed the Judge down the corridor to some stairs. There was a carpet on the stairs. They had a carpet outdoors and a carpet on the stairs. I’d been surprised by the outdoor carpet, and now I was surprised by the stairs carpet. After the stairs came a landing with a polished floor and doors and doorknobs. The doors had closed-up faces, but the Judge opened one of them. It grinned onto a twist of stairs. Up we went to the attic, where the floors were painted white. Then into another room, where again the Judge made fire hiss into lamps on the walls.

  The attic room was all slants and curls and funny bits of ceiling. There was nothing in it except a cupboard and a table. On the table sat a miniature house. Its roof came as high as my head. I’d seen this house before. I’d seen the roof-bursts, the diamond windows, the way one side of the roof slanted almost to the ground.

  The miniature house was exactly like the cottage.

  I wanted to ask about it. I wanted to ask how big it was, but that was stupid. It was as big as it was big. Or maybe it was as small as it was small. Maybe I should really ask, How small is it?

  The Judge answered the question I hadn’t asked. “The dollhouse is one-twelfth the size of the cottage.”

  “I don’t care how big it is,” I said.

  “Everyone asks,” said the Judge. But I wasn’t everyone.

  Now the Judge was leaving. He was going to leave me in the room, he said. He was going to call me when it was time for dinner.

  Once he left, I could run away. I couldn’t go out the front door because I’d have to pass the parlor, where Mrs. del Salto was busy being not well. But an indigo tree grew just outside the window. It would be easy to scramble down. Indigo trees have scaly bark, which is good for scrambling. I’d wait until after dinner, though. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feed myself if I went to the hideout. Of course not. I’d caught squirrels lots of times. I knew how to skin and cook them. I knew how to catch a trout and kill it with a stone.

  But it would take hours to get back to the hideout, even on my wild feet.

  I would let myself look at the dollhouse. I would let myself have dinner. Then I would leave.

  THE DOLLHOUSE WAS PRESSED into a bit of wall that wasn’t exactly straight but wasn’t exactly a corner. It wasn’t the kind of corner that made a sharp point with another wall. It wasn’t the kind of corner that was in a hurry. It was a place where two walls curled softly into a third. The dollhouse sat on a low table that had been cut to fit into the non-corner.

  There were real steps going up to the dollhouse, and there was a real carpet outside the door, with a sunflower, and there was a real door with a real doorknob. The doorknob was no bigger than an apple seed. A human-size person couldn’t wrap her fingers around the doorknob. A human-size person would have to use her fingernails. She’d have to click her nails behind the doorknob and pull.

  I clicked my fingernails around the apple-seed doorknob. It was made of real metal. It was set solidly into the door. It was a good door and a good doorknob.

  I peered through the door into the foyer. Now I knew more about foyers than before. A foyer was where you kept a key.

  In the foyer was a little table. In the table was a little drawer. But I couldn’t see past the foyer into the rest of the dollhouse. I stepped back so I could see the whole. Maybe there was another door, a bigger door. A seam ran down the front of the house, top to bottom.

  I plucked at it. The whole front of the dollhouse was a door. The right side swung open, the left side swung open. In the right side of the dollhouse was the dollhouse door. So there were really three doors, two that opened the front of the dollhouse so regular-size people could look in, and a small one set into the right-hand door. That was the dollhouse door. It was one-twelfth the size of a regular door, so the dolls could walk in and out.

  “Dolls can’t walk!” said the dagger.

  I knew that, but I was just imagining it. I was pretending to imagine it.

  “Think about real things!” The dagger had a real-thing kind of mind.

  I saw into the three rooms along the front of the dollhouse. The smallest was the foyer, in the middle. It was exactly like the real cottage: the table, the drawer in the table, the knob on the drawer.

  “The drawer won’t open,” said the dagger.

  Would there be a key in the drawer?

  “There won’t be a key,” said the dagger.

  I reached my hand into the foyer. I ran my finger along the top of the table. The real cottage wasn’t dusty, but the dollhouse was dusty. The knob on the drawer was too tiny to fit your fingernails around. I licked my finger and touched it to the front of the drawer. It stuck to my finger and popped open. I knew from counting money that something light, like paper, will stick to a wet finger.

  You had to count money precisely. Otherwise Gentleman Jack got mad.

  “I told you there’s no key,” said the dagger.

  I hadn’t said there would be a key. The whole point of having the drawer open and empty was that now I could get a key. I could fill up the drawer.


  “You can’t fill it up when we’re leaving tonight,” said the dagger.

  The dagger was right. I couldn’t get a key before tonight, which was when we’d leave.

  To the left of the foyer was the parlor. Now, with the front of the house peeled away, I saw the whole parlor at once. It was like the wing of a dove—the embroidered cushions; the feathery chair; the mantelpiece, which had cream-and-rose tiles.

  I hadn’t noticed the tiles in the regular-size house. They were painted to look like flowers. I saw the dollhouse room better than I’d seen the real room. That was because it was small and concentrated. It was distilled. Gentleman Jack had told me about distillation, how you take a liquid and boil it so that at the end there’s less liquid but it’s purer. It’s more truly its own self.

  The dollhouse parlor was the distillation of the big parlor. It was the distillation of feather gleam and dove wing.

  If this was a dollhouse, where were the dolls?

  “There are no dolls,” said the dagger.

  “You said the drawer wouldn’t open,” I said. “But it opened.”

  “You expected a key in the drawer,” said the dagger. “But there was no key.”

  “I didn’t expect a key.”

  The attic of the dollhouse was almost as high as my chin. It was identical to the attic in the cottage. There was the same cupboard, the same unhurried corner, the same table, and on the table—on the dollhouse table—sat another dollhouse.

  It was a dollhouse of the dollhouse. Who could have made it? You would need elf fingers to make such a tiny house. It must be one-twelfth the size of one-twelfth the size of a people house. “Inside that dollhouse,” I said, “there might be another dollhouse. And inside that dollhouse, there might be another dollhouse.” Did the dollhouses keep getting smaller until they were too small to see?

  “Ridiculous!” said the dagger.

  The regular dollhouse had suddenly become big, and the dollhouse’s dollhouse was the thing that was small. I opened the dollhouse cupboard. In it was a bed—a bed in a cupboard! On the bed lay two dolls.