The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  I wondered if my mother had sat at a democratic table, pinching out everything that was light. Trying to pinch me out. Pinching at everything that was light and life.

  “Monica!” said the Judge.

  “It’s too bright,” said Mrs. del Salto. She pinched out the other candle. Her fingertips were stronger than flame. It was better that way. There was still a lamp burning from the wall, but now it was harder to see the stain.

  The Judge turned away from Mrs. del Salto and her strong fingertips. He looked at me instead. “Gentleman Jack killed the Federal Marshal only six months ago,” he said. “You must remember it.”

  “I like remembering it,” said the dagger.

  I poked at the skin of my thumb. I peeled off a strip, I made it bleed. Now that Mrs. del Salto had pinched out the candles, my blood came out black.

  “It was the best day!” said the dagger.

  “When people see a crime, we ask them to tell us what happened,” said the Judge. “It’s called testifying.”

  I licked my thumb. I swallowed down the taste of blood. I couldn’t stop remembering the Federal Marshal, and I had to tell myself I was tasting my blood, not his. My blood was black, but it tasted like pennies, which were copper.

  “Usually we don’t ask children to testify, but this is a special case.”

  When someone asks you to testify, you shouldn’t be drinking milk. Your stomach turns the milk sour, and then it burns you, on the inside.

  “We don’t tolerate murder,” said the Judge, “and the murder of a federal marshal is especially serious. We do everything we can to bring the murderer to justice.”

  Your stomach does that so you know what you’re feeling. The name for this feeling is Worry.

  I spoke to the dagger instead of the Judge. “I’d never tell anyone about the Federal Marshal,” I said. “Gentleman Jack knows that, doesn’t he?”

  “Other people have betrayed him,” said the dagger with a kind of shrug in its voice. “Maybe someone betrayed him for milk in a yellow cup.”

  “I have to see Gentleman Jack,” I said.

  “Pardon?” said the Judge.

  “Right now,” I said. “I have to see Gentleman Jack.”

  What if Gentleman Jack thought I’d betray him? That would be the worst thing in the world.

  “Not now,” said the Judge.

  “Now,” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” said the Judge.

  “Now,” I said.

  “Even the Sheriff goes to sleep,” said the Judge. “The jail is locked; I don’t have a key.”

  “Can’t you see?” said Mrs. del Salto. “The child isn’t going to testify.” At least she understood me, in her pinchy way.

  “Is that true?” said the Judge. “Are you not going to testify?”

  “No,” I said. Or should I have said Yes? Yes, I was not going to testify? No, I was not going to testify? Even the Judge’s questions were tricky.

  “Let’s get the child to bed,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  To bed? But I’d just said I wouldn’t testify. Wouldn’t they send me away?

  “They think they can persuade you,” said the dagger. “We can stay the night. It will be easier to find the hideout tomorrow.”

  “After I see Gentleman Jack,” I said, “but before the blizzard.”

  I knew the house now. The Judge didn’t need to bring me to the attic. But he did and he brought some bedclothes with him. Bedclothes is a stupid name. A bed doesn’t wear clothes, and anyway, there was no bed.

  It turned out I was wrong. The Judge opened the door to the cupboard and said, “Lo!” Inside the cupboard was a bed. Even the dagger was surprised. We’d seen the cupboard-bed in the dollhouse, but neither of us had thought there’d be a cupboard-bed in the regular house. I could tell the dagger wanted to dislike the idea, but it was hard to dislike. It was so neat and compact. So hidden away and high off the floor, like the nest of a bird.

  There was a separate space at the end of the cupboard with a rod running across the top. “For hanging things,” said the dagger.

  The Judge put the clothes on the bed. Now it was dressed. “Ready?”

  I nodded. I was ready to be a bird in a nest. I was ready to turn round and round in the nest to make it fit my shape. But first there came a big noise, which made me jump. The Judge wasn’t startled, though. Instead, he made a quarter turn, so he was staring at the blank wall behind the dollhouse; and the sound kept going; and after a while, I realized that the sound was made by bells; and that the bells were low and sweet; and that, actually, the bells made a tune; and then at last I heard the Judge muttering something that went to the rhythm of the tune. And now I wasn’t startled, but I was still ready to be a bird in a nest.

  And then the bells stopped ringing and the Judge stopped muttering and everything went back to normal.

  “Not exactly normal!” said the dagger.

  On the windowsill was a lamp made to look like a candle. The Judge showed me how to turn it on and off with a switch. It wasn’t filled with fire, just with electricity, which waggled in the glass like a fishtail.

  But electricity is dangerous. It can turn you into lightning and kill you.

  The Judge folded himself out the door. It clicked behind him. I pulled at the door, just to make sure. It didn’t open. The door was thick, which meant it guarded the attic. That was good. Without a door, you couldn’t have a doorknob. Without a doorknob, you couldn’t open or shut a door. The doorknob was heavy; that was good, too.

  I fit my palm over the knob, which was a roundness of brass. The Judge’s hand would have been too big for it, because it fit perfectly into the cup of my hand. It was an egg in a nest.

  “It’s not an egg,” said the dagger. “It’s brass!”

  It’s better to shut a door than to open it, but I opened the door just so I could shut it again. I liked listening to the way it clicked.

  “I know all about metals,” said the dagger.

  Below the knob was a little handle. It was shaped like the number 8, or maybe it was like a peanut in its shell.

  I turned the peanut so it lay on its side. It made a different click from the doorknob click. I turned the doorknob and pushed the door. It didn’t open. The little peanut knob was a bolt. I clicked it open and shut it a few times. Yes, when the peanut stood upright, you could open the door. When it lay on its side, you couldn’t.

  This was not like the hideout, where there were no doors or knobs or bolts. You could open a door with a doorknob, but you could also close it; you could lock it with a bolt. You could lock other people out, you could lock yourself in.

  “It’s a betrayal of Gentleman Jack to think the cottage is better than the hideout.”

  “I never said that!” I said.

  “It’s what you mean.”

  It was not. The dagger was made of carbon and iron, which made it un-bendy. Sometimes it was so un-bendy that it couldn’t understand certain things.

  “Gentleman Jack likes loyalty and he likes bolts,” I said. “It’s not one or the other.”

  I flipped the peanut onto its side. I locked the Judge out. I locked myself in.

  THE DOLLS WERE SITTING on the floor where I’d left them. The mother doll spoke as though no time had passed. “We’re going to give you a name. A special name for a girl with piping in her voice.”

  “Gentleman Jack’s going to give me a name,” I said, even though a robber girl shouldn’t talk to dolls. And anyway, I had no piping.

  “Stop talking to nobody!” said the dagger. “You’re making my edges go cold!”

  “Your voice tells us your name,” said the mother doll. “Your voice tells us your name is Starling. Starlings can whistle and warble and make smooth liquid sounds.”

  I could whistle, but I couldn’t warble or make smooth liquid sounds. My voice was as un-bendy as the dagger. And anyway, whistling was bad luck.

  “If you talk to nobody,” said the dagger, “that means you’re going crazy.”


  “It’s a good name,” said the mother doll. “Starlings fight for their families. A starling is a warrior bird.”

  “I am iron, with carbon added,” said the dagger. “If I didn’t have enough carbon, I would be too soft. Then I might go crazy.”

  “You brushed the dust from our eyes,” said the father doll. The dolls could open and close their eyes. It was good to have eyes that opened and closed.

  “You sat us up,” said the mother doll.

  “If I had too much carbon,” said the dagger, “I would be too hard. Then I might go crazy.”

  “When you’re made of china,” said the father doll, “your heart is made of china.”

  “When a person has a china heart,” said the mother doll, “it can easily break.”

  “But I am just right,” said the dagger.

  “There will be no danger of broken hearts,” said the father doll. “Not now that Starling is here to complete the tasks.”

  “Tasks?” I said. Sometimes Gentleman Jack gave me tasks. It showed him I was useful.

  “Tasks,” said the father doll. “Like in a fairy tale, you know.”

  But I didn’t know. “If Gentleman Jack asks me to perform a task, I do. I don’t listen to anyone else.”

  “There are three tasks,” said the mother doll.

  I didn’t know about fairy tales, but I knew about tasks, and I knew that two was the right number of tasks. Two was the number of tasks Grandmother gave Gentleman Jack and his no-account brother. Whoever could finish the tasks would get to have her empire. They went like this:

  Fetch unto me the mountain’s gold,

  To build our city fair.

  Fetch unto me the wingless bird,

  And I will make you my heir.

  Of course Gentleman Jack would win. It was nice of him to have put the tasks in a rhyme to help me remember them.

  “And to Grandmother,” I said. “I’ll listen to Grandmother when I’m in her house.”

  “You will not go,” said the mother doll. “The Indigo Heart is a magnet. It attracts the people it wants to attract.”

  “It keeps the people it wants to keep,” said the father doll.

  “You will stay here,” said the mother doll. “You will perform the tasks.”

  “The tasks go in a certain order,” said the father doll. “First you bring us a dog.”

  “A dog for the dollhouse?” I said.

  “Not the dollhouse,” said the mother doll. “For our house.”

  It took me a moment to understand. The mother doll thought I’d meant the dollhouse’s dollhouse. The word Dollhouse wouldn’t mean their own house to her. Of course not. The dolls wouldn’t think they lived in a dollhouse. They wouldn’t think that any more than I’d think I lived in a people house. They probably didn’t even think of themselves as dolls—not the way people thought of dolls—even though when they spoke their lips didn’t move and their faces didn’t change.

  “Then you bring us a collar,” said the mother doll.

  “A collar for the dog.” I glanced through a quilt of shadows into the dollhouse. I remembered a dog with a collar. I remembered holding the dog’s collar. It must have been a hollow memory, because inside the memory was a silver echo.

  Or maybe someone else was holding the dog’s collar and I was watching. Maybe there was a little boy holding the collar.

  “Stop remembering!” said the dagger.

  The dagger was right. Gentleman Jack didn’t want me to remember the Before Time.

  “The Before Time is when your mother left you to die,” said the dagger. The dagger loved talking about how my mother had left me. She left me in the wilderness, and Gentleman Jack saved me.

  “It’s good for a dog to have a collar,” said the mother doll. “It means the dog’s not too wild.”

  “The third task is a baby,” said the father doll.

  “A baby to play with the dog,” I said.

  “It would be best,” said the father doll, “that the baby not be made of china.”

  “China is too fragile,” said the mother doll.

  “China can break,” said the father doll. “We don’t want our baby’s heart to break.”

  “Our hearts won’t break,” said the mother doll, “now that you’re here. Now that you’ll perform the three tasks.”

  There was no point telling them I couldn’t perform the tasks. That soon I would be gone. “The baby can hold on to the dog’s collar,” I said. “That’s how the baby can learn to walk.”

  That was true—the thought of the baby holding the dog’s collar was true—even though there would be no actual dog or collar.

  “That’s an excellent thought,” said the father doll. “Make sure it’s a good stout collar.”

  I thought about the tasks, and they tumbled into a pattern. Sometimes a pattern helped me remember things—like the task rhyme, which helped me remember the things Grandmother wanted. Gentleman Jack didn’t like me forgetting, which I mostly did.

  “Except,” said the dagger, “you shouldn’t remember the Before Time.”

  That was true. There were lots of things I should remember and lots of things I should forget. Sometimes I got them mixed up, and then Gentleman Jack would say I was dull. But maybe I could remember this pattern:

  One’s for a dog,

  Two’s for a collar.

  Three’s for a baby—

  Now I’d have to find something that rhymed with Collar. But it didn’t matter if I found the rhyming word. It didn’t matter if I finished the tasks. What mattered was getting Gentleman Jack out of jail. What mattered was keeping Grandmother’s watch polished so it could give me a safe and silvery feeling. That’s what Grandmother was like, safe and silvery.

  Tonight I would sleep in a cupboard bed. First I’d turn off the electric candle, carefully, so I wouldn’t turn into lightning. Then I’d close the cupboard door. Last, I’d turn around and around in the bed. I’d make it into a nest.

  I didn’t like the night. I was awake for too much of it; there was too much time to worry. I was used to sleeping in the hideout, with other people breathing and turning over and muttering in their sleep, which sounds like clanking marbles. I wasn’t used to sleeping alone.

  When I couldn’t sleep in the hideout, I used to practice throwing the dagger. I couldn’t worry when I threw the dagger. The dagger-throwing part of my mind took over. But I couldn’t throw it here, not in the cottage.

  “Why not?” said the dagger.

  “I might hit something,” I said.

  “That’s the whole point,” said the dagger.

  My memory was holding its breath, just waiting for me to grow careless and start remembering the Before Time. I wouldn’t let that happen. I turned over and pressed my knuckles into my eyes. When I did that, I couldn’t see anything, not even the things inside my head. It was all a red darkness, which came with a feeling of heat and a feeling of smell.

  “You can’t feel a smell,” said the dagger.

  That’s where the dagger was wrong. You can feel a smell. Now came the heat and the smell-feeling. They got caught in the cracks of my lips. They made my eyes sting and cry.

  I lay there. My eyes were bleeding acid. I listened to the terrible stillness. No birds sang, no squirrels scrabbled through the indigo tree. The air held its breath, waiting for snow.

  “Air can’t hold its breath,” said the dagger. “Air is breath.”

  But the air was waiting for snow. I was waiting, too, and I was also waiting for morning, when I could go to the jail and tell Gentleman Jack I’d never betray him.

  “Sharpen me!” said the dagger. It wanted to be sharp and bright for Gentleman Jack.

  “I already sharpened you,” I said. I wanted to be sharp and bright for Gentleman Jack, too, but I didn’t get sharp like the dagger.

  “Polish me!” said the dagger.

  “I already polished you.”

  Then came the bells that had startled me last night. I wasn’t a
s startled by them this morning, though, which was bad. I didn’t want to get used to anything in the Indigo Heart.

  It was still dark, but maybe the bells would awaken the Judge. I had to be ready to catch him. I crept down the attic stairs, down to the second-floor landing. Quieter still, on the steps to the first floor, where the bright rods held the carpet in place. And here was a funny thing: there were pineapples on the ends of the rods. I knew about pineapples because once Doubtful Mittie had bought me chunks of pineapple on a skewer. I’d watched the pineapple seller slice through the rind and cut the golden insides into chunks. There’s a reason for cutting and skewering pineapples, which is to eat. But what’s the reason for a carpet rod of pineapples?

  That was where the Judge found me when he came downstairs. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “Since dark,” I said.

  “I guess you’re waiting to see Gentleman Jack,” he said.

  I said I guessed I was.

  The Judge asked if I was also waiting for breakfast. I said I guessed I wasn’t. But the Judge said we weren’t leaving right away, so I might as well eat. He said he was going to fix a tray for Mrs. del Salto.

  Fixing a tray is a funny thing. You can fix a tray because it’s broken, but you can also fix a tray for someone when you make them food and put the food on the tray and open a closed bedroom door to bring it to them in bed.

  I didn’t know that people could eat in bed!

  And then you have to spend a lot of time behind the closed door, talking to the person in bed.

  When the Judge finally came downstairs, I said I wanted to fix a tray of butterscotch for Gentleman Jack.

  “He has a sweet tooth?” said the Judge.

  “It’s his one vice,” I said.

  The Judge didn’t have any butterscotch, but he had something called lemon drops. He said we didn’t need to fix a tray of them. He said it would be easier to put them in a bag.

  It was almost noon when the Judge turned the good, solid bolt on the good, solid door. We stepped out into the cold, where the sunflower carpet surprised me all over again. I followed the Judge down the porch stairs, then down a clatter of steps carved into the pink rock. We were high in the Indigo Heart. We had to walk downhill to get to the Sheriff’s office, which was in the middle of the town of Blue Roses.