The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  Mrs. del Salto came into the library with Veronica and asked Veronica if she knew where the photograph of Magda and Isaac was. Veronica said she had no idea. Mrs. del Salto sighed and said she must learn to be philosophical.

  Philosophical?

  “Philosophical,” said the dagger, “means—”

  “It means,” I said, “that Mrs. del Salto doesn’t suspect I have the photograph.”

  “It means—” said the dagger.

  “It means,” I said, “that I don’t ever have to think about it again.”

  I didn’t try to hide the nursery rhyme book. I was beginning to understand Mrs. del Salto. She wouldn’t like it that I’d stolen Magda’s pocket to make a tablecloth or that I’d stolen the photograph to make a mirror, but she wouldn’t mind if I looked at Magda’s books.

  “Magda loved that one,” said Mrs. del Salto, looking over my shoulder. She read a bit of it aloud, and all the S’s that had lain on the page came sailing out, like waves:

  “I saw a ship a-sailing,

  A-sailing on the sea.

  And O, but it was laden,

  With pretty things for thee.”

  I remembered it.

  “You do not,” said the dagger.

  It would be all right to remember the rhyme. It wasn’t like remembering my mother, who’d abandoned me. I remembered the rhyme like a dream; I couldn’t hold on to it. I had no wardrobe filled with whiteness to weigh down my memories.

  And just then Mrs. del Salto said she was going to make me a dress for the Feast of the Blue Rose. That was a coincidence, right when I was thinking about wardrobes and memories. Would we hang the dress in the cupboard bed to keep my memories from floating away?

  “Come with me,” she said. “I have something for you.”

  “Good or bad?” I said.

  She laughed a little. “Good.”

  I followed her outside, to the front porch. This was the second time I’d seen her outside. And then she surprised me even more by sitting on the porch.

  It wasn’t warm, but it was March and it wasn’t exactly cold. You could sit on the porch.

  “You asked the Judge about jacks,” said Mrs. del Salto. She placed a little net bag beside the sunflower carpet. In the bag was a red ball—

  “That is a ball for jacks.” I heard Betsy’s voice in my memory.

  But there was more. The bag was filled with stars. Blue metal stars. The stars were the jacks. That’s what Mrs. del Salto was telling me. She patted the porch. I was supposed to sit there, too.

  Jacks was a game where you bounced the ball, tried to pick up a star, and then tried to catch the ball with the same hand. Mrs. del Salto tried. She missed.

  I tried, I missed.

  Mrs. del Salto tried and this time she didn’t miss. “I used to play when I was a girl.”

  And looking at her now, her cheeks a little flushed, a tendril of hair escaping its pins, I could almost imagine her as a girl . . . look at her eyes! They weren’t flat black buttons anymore. They shone almost as bright as her black opal. What had she been like before she stopped the clocks and started eating ashes and salt?

  I thought of Magda’s and Isaac’s graves behind the house, and then I thought again of the graves behind the burnt house, and again I wondered why some graves were marked with stones and some with wood stars. I wouldn’t ask Mrs. del Salto, though. It would make her think about her sorrows and how she could never accept them, and then her eyes would turn back into buttons and her mouth would slide off her face.

  I threw the ball, I missed the star. But I didn’t care. I understood this kind of game. It was like throwing the dagger. I had practiced throwing the dagger until I could make it hit anything I wanted, and I would practice jacks until I never missed the ball and could pick up all the stars. I took turns with Mrs. del Salto. There was only the sound of the ball hitting the porch and the whisper of our hands across the planks.

  Mrs. del Salto must have left her house when she was a girl. She must have gone to school and turned round and round with the other girls, singing the circle song.

  Then Mrs. del Salto’s hand stopped whispering and she glanced into the sky. I followed her gaze, up and up, to a cloud of birds. No, not a cloud, a ribbon, a liquid ribbon, streaming under and over itself. The ribbon folded over; it twirled around itself, like a candy cane.

  The birds swept and moved as though connected by magnets. Maybe they were. Maybe the forces that drew people to the Indigo Heart also drew the birds together.

  “Beautiful!” said Mrs. del Salto.

  “How do they do that?”

  “No one knows,” said Mrs. del Salto. “It’s called a murmuration. A murmuration of starlings.”

  But Starling was my name!

  “That’s the reason I like your name,” said Mrs. del Salto.

  I reached for the metal stars lying on the porch. The starlings murmured through the sky. The starlings were like the jacks, the jacks were like the starlings. When I learned to play jacks, I’d make the metal stars fly like starlings.

  I KNEW ABOUT TIME NOW. I knew how the days of the week lined up like the fingers on a hand, always in the same order.

  “There are seven days of the week,” said the dagger, “but you only have five fingers.”

  They were always in the same order, but they were different sizes. Monday was usually a thick day, like the thumb. Friday was a shorter day, like the little finger. But like fingers, they could bend. Sometimes a Monday might go quickly, like this past Monday, when an upper-level boy recited a poem called “The Tyger.” Then time bent its usual shape. But the pattern of the days was always the same, just like a person’s fingers.

  “You don’t have seven fingers,” said the dagger.

  “It’s just the idea of a pattern,” I said. “Not the actual pattern.” But I knew the dagger wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t made of anything bendy.

  Five seven-fingered weeks had passed. Prairie crocuses now dotted the sunny side of the schoolyard. They were taller than my hand and of a beautiful lavender. I knew from Mrs. del Salto that lavender was one of my colors. The Judge said crocuses were the first spring flower. He said they lived on the edge of the snow. I knew he meant just the idea of the edge of the snow, not the actual edge, but you could never explain it to the dagger.

  Recess was always slow to come and quick to pass. I paid no attention to the big girls, singing their circle song. I wouldn’t want to be like a donkey grinding corn, going round and round, always in the same place. I sat on the stoop behind the school. Thunk went the jacks ball. Swish went my hand around the jacks.

  Thunk, swish. Thunk, swish. Thunk—

  Silence.

  A great hand pressed at my mouth. I lunged for the dagger, but another hand grabbed my wrist. That hand squeezed; the other pressed my lips into my teeth.

  Now the ball made a different sound. Bumpity-bump-bump, dribbling down the stairs.

  “Have you forgotten?” said Rough Ricky’s whispery voice. “Never drop your guard.”

  I knew Rough Ricky would never hurt me, but my heart was like the ball, bumpity-bump-bumping against my ribs. He un-pressed my lips. I smelled ashes and burning, but now my face was cold.

  “You need to sleep with one eye open,” said Rough Ricky. He thrust a piece of paper into my hand. It was folded, but you could tell it was a map. “Meet me where I’ve drawn the X.”

  “After school?”

  “After school,” said Rough Ricky. “Don’t leave early. Stick to your schedule.”

  I understood. Doing things out of the ordinary would attract attention, and for Rough Ricky, attention would get him arrested.

  “After school.” He faded into the trees and was gone.

  I was covered in Rough Ricky’s burning smell. Could anyone else smell it as I walked through the nose-door of the school? As I sat between Molly and Peter, on the too-short bench? But everything was as usual: Peter still drew horses on his slate; Molly’s fingernails still s
hone like moons; there were still words on the blackboard, and if one of them was the word Book, I still couldn’t read it. I remembered Agnes’s sharp voice: “That new girl don’t know nothing.”

  I’d learned to listen to Mrs. Elton just enough that if she whirled around and asked me what she’d just said, I could repeat a few words. That was all it took to make her believe you were paying attention.

  Today we talked about the Blue Rose, because the Feast of the Blue Rose was in two weeks. The sixth level told the story of how the Blue Rose had made roses bloom in the snow, which was why she was the special Guide of unborn children. That didn’t exactly make sense until one of the fifth-levelers said that making babies grow was kind of like making roses grow under difficult conditions.

  The seventh-levelers said that the Blue Rose was one of the Seven Star Sisters and that it was her light that led the people to Blue Roses, where they could settle, with no one to boss them around or turn them away. Six of the Seven Sisters had star names, like Astra and Estella. The Judge had told me they were mostly from Latin, which was an old language people didn’t speak anymore.

  But the Blue Rose didn’t have a star name. She was named after the marvel she’d performed of making seven blue roses bloom in the snow.

  She was the special Guide of the Rosati. People from ordinary places could come and ask for boons, but their places weren’t special, like Blue Roses and the Indigo Heart.

  The eighth-levelers said the Blue Rose mostly stayed on Earth, which was why you mostly couldn’t see her with her sisters at night. Sometimes, though, she went back to visit them, and then she shone brightest of all. If you craved a boon of her then, you could be pretty sure she’d listen.

  I already knew this. I knew as much as the eighth-levelers, me, Starling del Salto! There’d been a Dark Moon last night and I’d stayed up late to see if the Blue Rose had joined her sisters in the sky. If she had, then it would have been a good night to crave a boon for Gentleman Jack.

  Or maybe I should crave two boons, one for the gold and one for a Songbird. Maybe craving two boons was more polite than craving one boon with a bunch of things in it. But it hadn’t mattered anyway: there’d been only six of the Seven Sisters.

  There were only two more Dark Moons between now and the new Day Zero. I had to hope that on one of them, she’d be in the sky with her sisters. It would be funny if I could crave a boon of the Blue Rose that she show up and grant my boon.

  My thoughts went sliding off to Rough Ricky, how he’d surprised me and pressed my lips into my teeth, and how he smelled of burning, and how the jacks ball and my heart had gone all sideways and bumpity-bump-bumped down the stairs, and then I couldn’t think about it anymore.

  Betsy was speaking. I listened to her, even though her tongue was usually like a thorn. She said that people ate cinnamon on the Feast of the Blue Rose because the Blue Rose was the Guide to new life and that cinnamon made you live forever.

  “Flesh can’t live forever,” said the dagger. “It’s carbon and iron that never die.”

  I’d never tasted cinnamon, but I bet Mrs. del Salto wouldn’t have it in the cottage. She wouldn’t want to have something that made you live forever. Living forever didn’t go with ashes and salt. But then, seconds later, I was back to thinking about Rough Ricky. My heart thudded sideways, and inside my chest I heard the ball go dribbling down the steps.

  “You can’t hear inside your chest,” said the dagger.

  I could read a map. That was the important thing about reading. I saw Main Street on the map. You could tell it was Main Street because it was wider than the others, and also Rough Ricky had drawn a star where the Sheriff’s office was. But my actual feet were not on Main Street. They were on a street parallel to it. Main Street was the street where everybody went because of the stores, which meant lots of people could see me. That would be attracting attention. So now I was walking on a street where people lived, not where people went.

  The houses on the street were smaller than buttercream cottage; their gardens were square and neat. Lots of purplish flowers grew in the gardens. I saw the lively blooms of larkspur, the graceful drooping necks of bluebells. And then, about halfway down the street, in among all the purple flowers, grew two blue roses. They really existed, those blue roses!

  Maybe the people who lived in this house were going to have a baby—or maybe two babies. A baby for each rose. That was an interesting possibility.

  Or would it be a rose for each baby? Which came first?

  You never knew with the Blue Rose.

  The map told me to go left on 3 Street. It was good it was called 3 Street, because I could read numbers. Three Street was a shamble of stairs, dragging themselves into the valley. Beside the stairs were shacks, digging their heels into the earth, trying not to fall. There were no buttercream cottages here. There were only shacks, held together by tar paper and spit. There were windows, but there was no glass, only oil paper. You can’t see through oil paper.

  The stairs were too tired to try to be stairs. They were like a tune that didn’t make sense, all scattered notes with no idea to hold it together. The rich people in Blue Roses lived up high, on streets with names like Forest Lane and Indigo Cove. The poor people lived below Main Street on streets that were too tired to have names. The tar-and-spit houses leaned against one another, trying to stand up.

  Now the shacks trickled out; the stairs gave up entirely and turned into a muddy path that plunged into the bottom of Blue Roses. The earth fell away into a gulch, and 3 Street gave up being a street and turned into a riverbank. Water swooshed around a bend of the river and rushed on, far as I could see.

  Here I was on the bank of the Jordan River, deep and wide. The Judge had said there was milk and honey on the other side. But today there was just a herd of cows. A boy with a switch was tending them. One of the cows raised her head and watched me. She had a red face with a white star on her forehead. She stared at me with calm, dark eyes. The boy raised his switch but not to herd the cows. He was waving. I waved back.

  Indigo trees sprang from the sides of the gulch, just barely holding on to crumbs of earth; from the riverbank burst a mass of prairie crocuses, dressed in lavender, just as I would be on the Feast of the Blue Rose. And then a whistle, a regular whistle, with a tune inside of it instead of the Whistling. I knew that tune, but I couldn’t remember it. It hovered on the edge of my mind. I tried to grab it, but you can’t just grab your memories. You have to pretend not to pay attention to them, which makes them mad. You have to trick them into sneaking up on you from behind.

  What if I listened to it sideways?

  “You can’t listen sideways,” said the dagger.

  “You said you could listen sideways,” I said. “You said it on day ninety-three.”

  I remembered it very well. I’d been trying to hide my thoughts from the dagger. I’d gotten better at it since then.

  I knew the tune, and I knew words went with the tune, just the way I knew the sun was out, even though you couldn’t see it through the white eggshell sky. You knew the sun was out because the prairie crocuses were tilting up their faces and opening their mouths to drink in the light. The crocuses knew about the sun, even if they couldn’t see it.

  “Crocuses don’t know things,” said the dagger.

  The cattle were a red-and-white mass, moving in the opposite direction. I looked over my shoulder. Somewhere in that mass must be the boy with the switch, the boy who had waved, but I couldn’t see him. Somewhere in the mass must be the cow with the red star. I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was there, just the way the crocuses knew about the sun.

  I felt as though the words Father and Mother might be in the song. The song was melancholy, because it had sad spaces between the notes, and the words Mother and Father fit exactly into the sad spaces. And into another of those sad spaces fit the words Milk and Honey.

  I skipped in and out of willow roots that laced the bank. I didn’t want to remember the Before Time,
but I couldn’t stop my mind from remembering. I couldn’t help hearing the tune the boy had whistled and realizing that once I’d known the words that went with the tune.

  “There are no words,” said the dagger.

  The branches cast shadows on the riverbank. That’s another way you know there’s sun. There must be sun if there are shadows.

  Around another bend of the river, and there he was, Rough Ricky, leaning against a willow. He patted the ground beside him. I sat by the fire, which smelled of burning. Rough Ricky smelled of burning. Rough Ricky and the fire, they smelled just the same.

  “You live in the Judge’s house?” said Rough Ricky.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then you know where the gold is,” said Rough Ricky.

  “No,” I said. I wished he’d said it with a question mark. It was easier to say No to a question mark than to a period.

  “What do you mean No?” said Rough Ricky. “Blue Roses is filled with gold.”

  I tried to think of something I knew about gold. “There never were five bricks of gold,” I said. “They were a trick to capture Gentleman Jack.”

  “Nonsense!” said Rough Ricky.

  “Flora said it was a trick,” I said.

  “Well, if Flora said so . . .” Rough Ricky’s voice trailed off. He trusted Flora. “But I need some cash to break Jack out of jail.”

  “To pay people to help you?”

  “Exactly,” said Rough Ricky.

  “What about the other Gentlemen?” I said.

  “The Gentlemen took some serious hits. That Sheriff’s a fine shot. We had two lost lives—in addition to Doubtful Mittie—one lost finger, one lost eye, three bullets that still need digging out, and one hundred percent loss of courage. I need fresh men who aren’t spooked.”

  I knew something else Rough Ricky probably didn’t know. “Gentleman Jack will be out of jail on May sixth,” I said. “That’s only sixty days.”

  “How do you reckon?” said Rough Ricky, and I explained about the trial and how Lord John had a plan to fool the jury so they’d let Gentleman Jack go free.