The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  Betsy, Tilda, and Gabriel were supposed to show Mrs. Elton they knew a history lesson. They took turns reciting what they had learned, which was about the Indigo Heart.

  Here’s what Betsy said: “In the beginning, when the earth was created, it was given a heart. The Blue Rose sang it out of stardust. That heart is the Indigo Heart and it’s the center of the world. If you listen, you can hear it beating.”

  “What does the Blue Rose bring us?” said Mrs. Elton.

  “She brings us marvels,” said all the children together. “She brings us the gift of children.”

  Here’s what Gabriel said: “For many years we, the people now known as the Rosati, wandered the world, for none of the inhabitants of the rivers and seas, mountains and deserts, would permit us to settle in any of those places. The Blue Rose saw our wanderings, and understood and appreciated the values by which we ordered our lives; and when she fell to earth as a shooting star, we followed her through forty days and forty nights until at last we reached the Indigo Heart, which was the Blue Rose’s to keep or lend, as she pleased. There, in the snow, the Blue Rose caused seven blue roses to bloom. It was this marvel that showed us we’d reached our true home.”

  “What does the Blue Rose bring us?” said Mrs. Elton.

  “She brings us marvels,” said all the children together. “She brings us the gift of children.”

  “Does the Blue Rose always bring us what we crave?” said Mrs. Elton.

  “She is wiser than we,” said all the children together. “She brings us what we need.”

  “How, then, must we receive her marvels?” said Mrs. Elton.

  “We must accept her marvels with an open heart,” said all the children together. “We must seek to know why we need them. They will otherwise turn against us.”

  Here’s what Tilda said: “The Blue Rose taught us to care for our new land. We learned that she, the Blue Rose, is made of stardust, and that the Indigo Heart is likewise made of stardust, and that should we ever dig into the Indigo Heart, we would also be digging into the Blue Rose. We must maintain our new home inviolate. No matter how many precious metals lie buried in the stardust, we may never dig into the stuff of stars.”

  “Remember,” said the dagger, “that the Judge has a substantial stake in a gold mine. Don’t just sit there, letting them lie to you!”

  Sometimes I did just sit there. Gentleman Jack said the same thing. It was good that the dagger reminded me to be wild. Six inches of carbon and iron would remind you to be wild.

  I stood up so Mrs. Elton would ask what I wanted, so that then I could speak. She waited a long time; I waited a long time. “What is it?” she said at last.

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “People like the Judge and the Federal Marshal made it up to explain why they don’t want other people digging for gold. The Federal Marshal ran Gentleman Jack out of the Indigo Heart.” I was trembling, but it was the good kind of trembling. It’s what happens when you save up all your wildness and anger and you let them off their leash.

  “The Federal Marshal was jealous that Gentleman Jack found so much gold. He didn’t make him leave because of stardust.”

  “Get out of here,” said Mrs. Elton. “You’re nothing more than a filthy savage. Your britches are barbaric.”

  I leapt at Mrs. Elton; I snatched her stick. The stick was easy to break because I was strong with trembling. The snap was very loud, or maybe the school had gone very quiet.

  “Get out!” said Mrs. Elton.

  I pushed past Betsy, Tilda, and Gabriel, clumped by the front edge of the platform. I turned up the aisle. The aisle had too many rows of desks. It went all the way from the first-level children to the biggest children in the back.

  It was the longest aisle in the world. My mouth was full of fire. The doorknob turned. It was a knob for letting you out.

  The whole world spread itself, shining, before me. I remembered what the Judge had said, that a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

  I turned down Main Street. I couldn’t avoid the burnt house, but I could hold my breath so the smell of fire wouldn’t scorch my throat and wouldn’t pinch off my breathing. I didn’t turn up the path to buttercream cottage. I kept along Main Street. Mrs. del Salto would not want me back after I’d been savage and barbaric at school. She’d be sitting in the cottage, eating ashes and salt.

  And because I had no key, the door wouldn’t let me in.

  THIS WAS THE SECOND TIME I had run to the Sapphire. The streets were piled with snow. I took the boardwalk so I could go fast. I ran past the pillars that supported the overhanging roofs. I ran past the stores and the signs that hung in the store windows. They all said Open. I knew the word Open because it started with the friendly letter O, which invited you to step through its round mouth.

  The store windows caught at the reflection of my hair. It was savage, which was good. When you’re savage, you can make Betsy Elton be sorry. I wished I could make everyone be sorry—everyone who says you can’t dig for gold in the Indigo Heart, but then goes ahead and digs when they think no one’s looking.

  The street opened up into the square, where the buildings faced one another from four sides. That must be where the Line was, because here began the disreputable part of town. If you kept following Main Street through the disreputable part, you’d reach the star steps, which went skittering up and up—up the mountain to the Shrine. There were stairs everywhere you looked, leaping up the sunset face of the mountain, falling all over themselves down the sunrise face, down the tangled streets and into the valley. A new wind suddenly sprang up. I knew the wind; it even had a name: the Chinook. When it came, winter had to leave. The ground was piled with snow, but the Chinook smelled of spring. It stirred up the smells of dirt and wet and indigo. It smelled sharp and watery, it smelled of the promise of green and growing things.

  The Chinook came fast in the Indigo Heart. Gentleman Jack said that the weather changes more quickly in the Indigo Heart than anywhere else. It had been so cold this morning, the snow had squeaked. Now it was warm enough to melt the snow, and the squeak along with it.

  I ran past the spindly indigos. They didn’t grow well on Main Street—on the disreputable end of Main Street, where they probably drank lots of coffee and smoked lots of cigarettes. When I’d told Mrs. del Salto that Gentleman Jack gave me coffee sometimes, she’d said that coffee would stunt my growth. And then she said, “Cigarettes, too.”

  If Nilsson had carved the dog, maybe I’d get it today. What if I could get the baby before May sixth? What if there was time to watch the baby learn to walk? The baby would hold on to the dog’s collar and stagger and laugh, and the dolls and I would laugh, too, and the mother doll would say, “Such a big boy, walking!”

  The bells rang. I kept running, but everyone else stopped. It was interesting to watch them, to see how they all turned to face the Shrine. The Rosati wanted to face the Shrine when they sang the song of praise to the Blue Rose because the Shrine was dedicated to the worship of her.

  The bells faded, and I heard the piano now, the sideways music from the Sapphire. It tugged me down the street, past an infinity of stairs tumbling downhill, panting uphill. The music was familiar and so was the whistle of the peanut man: “Peanuts! Fresh, hot peanuts.” I stepped into the sharp smell of the saloon. It was quieter than before. I knew the sound of cards slapping on the tables. I knew their smell, too. They smelled of mildew and damp, and of the color yellow.

  Last time I was here, I’d seen Flora, first thing. But this time I saw only Lord John. He beckoned me to his card table with a jerk of his head. I stood beside him until he’d finished dealing, then he reached into his jacket pocket. “Nilsson made you that dog.”

  He pressed something into my hand. It felt right, warm and wooden, but I looked at it through squinted eyes. If it wasn’t quite right, I didn’t want to see it all at once.

  But it was absolutely right. It was a rough brownish dog with just enough spiky fur at the shoulders. The dog
was big but not too big. He was as high as my longest finger. His legs were jointed, and his tail . . . he could wag his tail! He didn’t have a collar, but when he did, he’d be big enough for a baby to hold it and stagger around.

  He stood on my palm, looking a little off to the side. He was a shaggy dog. You could prickle your finger onto his coat. He was a good dog.

  I looked around the Sapphire for Nilsson.

  “There’s no Nilsson here,” said Lord John. “You’d have to travel awfully far to find him.”

  I thought for a minute, then I knew. “Dead?”

  “Dead,” said Lord John. “It looked like mountain fever.”

  We looked at each other. “You get mountain fever when it’s hot,” I said. “He shouldn’t have worn Doubtful Mittie’s hat.”

  Poor knobble-faced Nilsson. I could hardly even picture him; I mostly just remembered his knobbles. He’d put on the hat two men had died in, and he’d died, too. All that was left of him was the dog.

  Then it occurred to me that he’d died so much faster than Doubtful Mittie . . . or maybe the right word was Sooner. He’d died so much sooner. I tried to explain. Doubtful Mittie had worn the Federal Marshal’s hat for months before he died, but Nilsson hadn’t even worn it for a week.

  Lord John understood. “We live in a place of power,” he said. “The Blue Rose is made of stardust, and the Indigo Heart is filled with stardust. Boons craved of the Blue Rose are granted more quickly and more fully than they are in the rest of the Territories. The same is true for breaking the rules—the consequences of your actions come faster and hit you harder.”

  “There’s nothing harder than death,” said the dagger.

  Nilsson was gone, but he’d left a good dog. White oak was better than indigo, better than red oak. Its pores were smaller, it was stronger.

  A clatter of icicles fell from the roof. The Chinook was setting the water to running and the snow to shifting. It was different outside the Sapphire from how it had been before, and it was different inside, too. For one thing, there was no Nilsson. And the light was different. Now it came purring through the front, stretching itself slantwise, kneading its paws into the floor.

  Lord John took me to see Flora. We went up a broad staircase, down a corridor, and into a dark room. There lay Flora, asleep in a big bed. Lord John just whispered her name and she woke up.

  “It’s awfully early, John,” she said. Then she saw me and pushed herself up against the pillows. Her arms were long and pretty, and so was her hair, all in a tumble.

  A derringer lay on a little table beside the bed. I’d never seen one before, but Gentleman Jack had told me about them. They were guns for ladies, he said, because they were small enough to be strapped into a garter and because they couldn’t shoot straight. Then he’d laugh.

  I always wanted to laugh, too, but I didn’t know what was funny, and I couldn’t ask. It would just make Gentleman Jack look at me and remember how dull I am.

  I set a finger on the derringer.

  “Careful,” said Flora.

  “Do you wake up at night and kill people?” I said.

  “Sometimes,” said Flora.

  “Gentleman Jack says a derringer doesn’t shoot straight,” I said.

  “Gentleman Jack’s the one who doesn’t shoot straight,” said Flora.

  But Gentleman Jack had shot straight at the Federal Marshal: straight enough that the Marshal had sat on his horse, looking surprised; straight enough that the Marshal had held his belly, the blood leaking around his fingers. Then I remembered backward, to why Gentleman Jack had shot the Marshal, which was that the Marshal stopped Gentleman Jack from digging for gold. That he chased Gentleman Jack out of the Indigo Heart.

  But that talk about stardust and digging up Blue Roses was just lies so the people in charge could keep the gold to themselves.

  “She needs to practice her story,” said Lord John, “so the jury will believe Gentleman Jack was at the Fair and could not have killed the Marshal.”

  “I want to tell Gentleman Jack we have a plan,” I said. “I want to make him happy.”

  “You’ll need to practice saying you were at the Fair,” said Lord John, “and describe what you did at the Fair, to make the jury believe you.”

  “Start with the date,” said Flora.

  “It was August twenty-sixth,” said Lord John, “but you can’t be expected to know that. It will sound rehearsed.”

  August twenty-sixth. I wished Lord John would let me remember August twenty-sixth. I could remember it; I wanted to remember it.

  “Just say you were at the Harvest Fair,” said Lord John. “That will sound natural, coming from a child.” Lord John told me what Gentleman Jack and I were supposed to have done at the Fair. He told me about the pink lemonade Gentleman Jack had bought for me. He said it was cold and tart. He told me about the tall man with three shells and one pea, and how the man put the pea under one of the shells and switched the shells around so quickly, you couldn’t tell where the pea was.

  He told me about the huge horses from Belgium with calm dark eyes and hair growing down over their feet. Gentleman Jack had given me carrots to give them, but I had been too afraid of their massive heads.

  “I was not afraid!” I said.

  “You were afraid,” said Lord John.

  He told me about the enormous tent where they served dinner. He told me how I had eaten turkey and dressing and apple pie.

  “No apples in August,” said Flora.

  Lord John paused. “Blueberry pie.”

  I liked the way they were serious about the story. I liked the way they made all the imaginary details line up with real-life details.

  There came a pause, into which came the familiar whistle. “Fresh, hot peanuts!”

  “You went back to the lemonade barrel,” said Flora, “even though they were almost out. Gentleman Jack paid five cents for another cup, but it was watery because all the ice had melted.”

  I nodded. I had never had lemonade, but I could guess how it felt, expecting a cold, tart explosion but getting only warm, sugary water.

  “At the end of the day,” said Lord John, “you had a piece of gingerbread and you were sick.”

  “I was not sick!” I said.

  “You were sick,” said Lord John.

  “I was not sick!” I said.

  “She was not sick,” said Flora.

  “Fine,” said Lord John. “She was not sick.”

  Lord John and Flora laughed. “Now you can tell Gentleman Jack we have a plan,” said Flora. Her gown was filmy and covered with white embroidered flowers. White on white. I liked the way it looked. “Now you can make him happy.”

  “But I can’t see him,” I said, “until I’ve gone to school for eight days.”

  “Have you gone to school?” said Flora.

  “Once,” I said.

  Or maybe half of once. I prickled my fingers onto the dog’s fur. There were prickles on the dog, and prickles on my insides. The inside prickles were because I knew the Judge would find out what happened today at school. The outside prickles were because of the dog’s good, strong fur.

  “He can wait eight days to be happy,” said Flora.

  I didn’t want Gentleman Jack to have to wait, but at least I’d have two happy things to tell him. There was the story about the Fair and the news about the Songbird for Grandmother.

  Now Flora stood up. And you could see now—now that she was standing up—

  “You have a baby bulge!” I said.

  “I do,” she said.

  “Is it a baby craved of the Blue Rose?” I said.

  “I asked the Blue Rose for a baby girl,” said Flora, “if that’s what you mean.”

  A girl? Why would anyone want a girl!

  I thought back to what the children at school had said about the Blue Rose. “But the Blue Rose brings you what you need,” I said. “Not what you want.”

  Flora and Lord John were quiet a moment, then Flora said I was abs
olutely right. “We hope it will be a girl,” she said. “But it is good to remember that we must be prepared for either flavor.”

  “And to receive the child with an open heart,” said Lord John. “Because otherwise—”

  And here Lord John, Flora, and I spoke at the same time. “Otherwise, it will turn against you.”

  Then we laughed. It was nice to know what to say—to know it so exactly, you could say it with other people, like a song. Then you knew you’d said the right thing. But I had to be careful with Flora. I couldn’t start liking her too much, or trusting her. She’d lied about the Songbird. She wanted to keep him for herself.

  I passed the peanut man when I left. “Peanuts! Peanuts!” he said in the Whistling. “Hot roasted peanuts!”

  I wished I were a Songbird and could whistle to Gentleman Jack. He’d hear me from his jail cell, across the Line, in the genteel part of town. Then I wouldn’t have to wait eight more days, or even nine, to make him happy. I’d whistle that I’d found his Songbird.

  I passed into the thick, oozy smell of peanuts. “Fresh, hot peanuts!” It was amazing how you could understand the peanut man. He couldn’t whistle the hard sounds of the words, like the T in Hot or like the P in Peanuts, but his whistle could capture the other sounds, like the Ah in Hot, the Eee and Uh in Peanuts. And when you thought about the words, they went up and down in a certain way—there was a music to them—and the whistling words made the same music. If the lowest sound were the Number One, and the highest sound were the Number Four, then the song he sang went like this: Three-One-Four-Three.

  I wondered about the rules of the Whistling. If someone whistled to you, was that like speaking to you? Did it mean you could speak? Did it mean your Affliction wouldn’t silence you?

  It did.

  “I want to whistle something to Gentleman Jack, in the jail,” I said.

  “He won’t understand,” the peanut man whistled.

  “Why can I understand?”

  “It’s a gift to be able to understand the Whistling. Besides me, there are only two people in Blue Roses who understand. First the Sheriff, now you.”