The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  “Not water!” said the dagger.

  The Judge handed the reins to a couple of boys who, for a penny, would walk and water the horses. He explained we had to leave the horses here and walk. You couldn’t drive to the star steps on the Feast of the Blue Rose. Main Street ran straight and narrow to the foot of the star steps, where only a couple of carriages would fit.

  I followed the Judge closely. I was afraid of getting lost, even though that wasn’t a wild thing to feel. But wherever the Judge went, the crowd melted away—

  “Not melted!”

  Now I could be wild and also not get lost.

  All through the square stood tables laden with shiny things and rose-shaped things and blue things and good-smelling things. People everywhere were pushing coins at the merchants, eager to celebrate the Blue Rose with a blue feast-day flag with rose-shaped cutouts, or a balloon twisted and folded to look like a star, or an opal—

  There were tables of opals—vast fields of opals—just waiting for their person to bring them to life. I looked at Mr. Elton’s tables. He had plenty of green opals, but none of them was quite the right color. None of them was quite the most valuable green of Gentleman Jack’s eyes.

  Children dressed in blue robes stood on overturned crates, piles of blue roses at their feet. But how could that be? Blue roses were marvels. They didn’t grow naturally. The Judge explained that they were dyed. “If you set white roses in a mix of dye and water, the roses will turn the color of the water.”

  He bought three blue roses, the stems wrapped in paper to protect from the thorns.

  “Roses should be red!” said the dagger.

  Everyone around us carried a blue rose.

  “Bloodred!” said the dagger.

  The Line between the genteel and disreputable ends of Main Street ran through the middle of the square, and before long we’d drifted into the disreputable end, where all the fun was to be had. This was the part where the Sapphire was, the part that ten-year-old girls weren’t supposed to know about. But I did. That’s because I belonged to Gentleman Jack. That’s because I was wild.

  There were lots of people I didn’t recognize. The Judge said they were pilgrims who’d walked to the Indigo Heart from other parts of the Territories. He said that walking a long way showed the Blue Rose how very much you wanted the boon you craved. Riding and driving were less convincing because they were so much easier.

  This part of Main Street was awake and alive. The windows had flung up their shades and rubbed the darkness out of their eyes. The signs on the doors invited you in with their big friendly O’s. The Sapphire was so open that its double doors were pressed all the way to the walls, the sideways music spilling out.

  All the children were welcome here on this feast day, and no one worried about the saloons and roulette parlors. The shops had opened their doors, giving out paper roses with bendy stems. Mrs. del Salto showed me how you could wrap the stem around your wrist, so it looked as though the rose were growing from your skin. She said the stems were made of lengths of flexible wire, with fuzzy fabric wrapped around them so your wrist could be comfortable.

  The peanut man was out with his cart, but he wasn’t whistling. He was selling peanuts just as fast as he could. I asked Mrs. del Salto why he always whistled and never spoke.

  “He comes from a place where the people in charge don’t like other people disagreeing with what they say. They made sure he’d never speak again.”

  That was a terrible thing to think about. But I hoped he wouldn’t want to talk to me more because I was almost the only person who understood him. No, what would be even worse would be if he wanted me to talk back.

  It was so exhausting to talk to people.

  Other carts along the road sold something that smelled rich and sweet. “Horns!” said the Judge. They were crispy fried pastries sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Custard spilled from their open mouths.

  “Named after the Horn of Plenty,” said the Judge. “The Blue Rose has always given us an abundance of blessings.”

  This was the first time I’d had cinnamon. It had a deep taste, as though you had to mine it from the ground, like gold. No wonder it made you live forever.

  We passed Betsy in the crowd. Her chin was smeared with cinnamon and sugar. I wiped at my own face. I refused to look like Betsy. You could have surface eyes like Betsy, marble eyes, brown and dead. Or you could have alive opal eyes, like me. Mrs. del Salto said I had star opal eyes, and she never said anything but the truth, not even to make you feel good.

  Betsy glanced at me, then stared. It wasn’t polite to stare; I knew that now.

  “You began your stay in Blue Roses,” said the Judge, “by discomfiting Mr. Elton. And now I believe you are doing the same to Betsy.”

  “Discomfiting?”

  “Make them feel uncomfortable.”

  I guessed it wasn’t very comfortable to see someone you’d called an ignorant robber girl wearing a velvet sash and collar. Betsy wanted my clothes, you could tell. She wanted lavender and velvet and grosgrain laces.

  I thought about what Gentleman Jack or Rough Ricky would think if they saw me now. Probably Rough Ricky wouldn’t notice. He didn’t pay attention to beauty, not like Gentleman Jack. Gentleman Jack would notice all the beautiful things I wore.

  We passed through the piano music; we passed out of it. We walked along a little twisty road that rose out of the gorge. We crossed a bridge over one of the many branches of the Jordan River; we crossed another bridge over a riot of indigo trees. In the distance, great pink needles poked up toward the clouds. The Judge said they were the spires of the Shrine. The tallest spire was called the belfry, because that’s where the bells hung, the same bells that rang morning, noon, and night.

  Now we came to the star steps. So many steps! Many more than from Main Street to buttercream cottage. I asked how people who were old or sick could come to the Shrine, and the Judge said there was a road going up the far side of the mountain, and that if you were infirm, you were allowed to drive.

  “So if you’re firm,” I said, “you have to walk?”

  The Judge laughed and said Yes.

  Up we went, up and up. It was good I was wild and used to climbing and running. The Judge and Mrs. del Salto were slowing and getting slower. The Judge said I could go ahead. I would be safe, he said—safe from people like Rough Ricky—because there could be no violence on the star steps. “That is one of the Blue Rose’s immutable rules. No violence near or in the Shrine.”

  I didn’t ask what Immutable meant. My feet were too itchy. They wanted to go. It was nice to be alone but not alone. To pass people on the steps and feel them looking at the back of my beautiful dress. To have them see my wild, dancing feet.

  As I climbed, the bells began to ring. I imagined what they’d look like—long lily throats, wide joyful mouths. I imagined what it would be like to climb into the belfry and ring them. The big sound would shine through you. You would sing and ring like a bell.

  As I neared the top, the steps grew narrower, and the line moved more slowly. The line was stringing itself out—now we were walking in threes, now in twos, now single file. It was then that I saw three women standing at the top of the star steps. They wore blue gowns and spoke to each person who passed.

  “Priestesses,” said the dagger.

  The line went slowly. I heard snips and snatches of what the priestesses said. They said words like Weapons, Surrender, Prosper. I was three steps away when I heard all of what they were saying. “No weapons shall be allowed in this place dedicated to the Blue Rose,” said the middle priestess. “Surrender them here, or they shall fail to prosper.”

  “Fail to prosper,” said the other priestesses. “Fail to prosper.”

  Another step up revealed the pile of weapons lying at their feet. There were knives and guns and bullwhips and even a slingshot. “Fail to prosper,” said the priestesses.

  What should I do?

  “They don’t know you have me,”
said the dagger.

  “They can’t know, can they?” I said. They were priestesses, but that didn’t mean they could see the dagger in my stocking. That didn’t mean they could see the thoughts about the dagger in my head.

  The pendant grew suddenly cold. It went through no in-between stages. All at once, it lay like a chip of ice against my chest. Except that a chip of ice would melt and the opal did not melt. The inside of my head grew gray, and cold. It was so cold it hurt my teeth. I pulled the pendant up and turned it upside down to look at it. The blue light was gone. It was like a gray fish eye, except that fish eyes are alive and this was dead.

  Had I killed it? How could I get it to light up again?

  Now I was first in line. Now the priestesses said the words they’d said to everyone else: Weapons, Blue Rose, Surrender, Fail to Prosper.

  The middle priestess stretched out her hand. “Fail to prosper,” said the priestesses. “Fail to prosper.”

  I walked past the priestesses. They did not stop me. They didn’t know about the dagger, even though they were priestesses. They were just regular people.

  I waited for the pendant to warm up again. I waited until the Judge and Mrs. del Salto had caught up with me, which took a long time. But the pendant remained chilly and aloof.

  We walked along a path that led through a cemetery to the Shrine. Beside the path stretched an untidy line of people. The Judge said the people were waiting to crave a boon of the Blue Rose.

  A massive statue of the Blue Rose loomed on the face of the Shrine. The wiggly line of pilgrims stretched away into the distance. If I were to crave a boon right now, I’d ask that the pendant go back to its blue fiery self. I’d ask that the pendant warm up to me. That it not lie against my chest like a chip of fish eyes.

  We stood and gazed at the statue. It was carved into the stone above the doors of the Shrine, with roses carved all over the rest of the front. The Blue Rose wore a crown of stars, and her head was turned to the side so you could see the front and back.

  “She has an eye at the back of her head!” I said.

  “She is our Guide to endings and beginnings and middles,” said the Judge. “She can see backward and forward.”

  “What you can’t see,” said Mrs. del Salto, “is the eye on the top of her head. There’s no point seeing the past and the future if you can’t also see the present.”

  On went the bells, and on and on. We went into a dim, hollow space. The bells made extra echoes inside the Shrine “This is our row,” said the Judge. We slipped onto a polished bench with a high, straight back.

  The Shrine felt just right. Everything was the center of everything else. The Indigo Heart was the center of the world. The town of Blue Roses was the center of the Indigo Heart. The Shrine was the center of the town of Blue Roses. And at the center of the Shrine was the foundation stone, which was the very first stone they put into place when they built the Shrine.

  First we all sat down. The polish on our bench was so hard it pressed into that place you weren’t supposed to talk about, which is opposite another place you’re not supposed to talk about.

  A priestess called us to the front, row by row. We took turns filing past the foundation stone and laying our roses upon it. The foundation stone was where the seven roses had grown when the Blue Rose led her people to the Indigo Heart. It wasn’t big enough for all the roses lying in drifts and piles of cream—

  “Not cream!” said the dagger.

  “I’m not talking about the color,” I said. “I’m talking about the feeling of cream.”

  “The feeling should be bloodred,” said the dagger.

  I added my rose to the piles. The roses together smelled of a wild, sweet wind. Before you returned to your row, you were supposed to take some of the rose seeds that lay in a number of small bowls scattered about the foundation stone.

  The Judge collected a few and skittled them into my palm. “It’s symbolic,” he said. The seeds were brownish and irregular. They didn’t match up with an important word like Symbolic. It was hard to believe that a beautiful thing like a rose could grow from them. The foundation stone was in the center of the Shrine, the rose was in the center of the seed. That’s where the rose slept, dreaming of the future.

  Roses weren’t uncomplicated, not like daisies, say, which spilled out all their secrets at once. No, a rose was made up of frill upon frill of mystery, becoming more profound and dense until you reached its heart.

  I liked the idea of the rose, sleeping in the seed, dreaming of the future.

  The bells stopped. A priestess came to the front. The Judge pressed a penny into my hand. “For the collection plate,” he whispered. But I’d never heard of a collection plate and I didn’t like the word Plate. You could sit and stare at a plate and not know how to eat the food on it.

  “You hang on to that penny,” said the dagger.

  The priestess talked about roses. Her voice made a big, joyful sound, like the bells. She said that certain kinds of roses grew naturally in the Indigo Heart. They were wild mountain roses, which could grow in extreme temperatures. But the ones that grew for the Blue Rose, the ones that had grown in the snow, ordinarily only grew in mild climates or in hothouses. That was why these roses were marvels, in addition to their blueness, of course.

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

  “She brings us marvels,” said the assembled in a single voice. “She brings us the gift of children.”

  The priestess told of her marvels, of women who’d traveled to Blue Roses, climbed the star steps, and craved the boon of a child. And whenever the Blue Rose sent a child, she caused a blue rose to bloom outside the family’s door.

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

  “She is wiser than we,” said everyone together. “She brings us what we need.”

  “How, then, must we receive her marvels?” said the priestess.

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

  “What must you do on the night of the Dark Moon?”

  “We must look to the night sky,” said the assembled. “It is thus we may see the Blue Rose visiting her sisters.”

  Mrs. del Salto had said something similar, hadn’t she? That it was on the very darkest nights you could see if the Blue Rose had returned to the sky. I glanced at her opal rings. They were made of stardust. And it then occurred to me that maybe the black opals were a special gift from the Blue Rose. You could see the Blue Rose better during a dark moon. You could see the underneath colors in an opal better when the opal was black.

  “And when she visits her sisters?” said the priestess.

  “That is the time to thank her,” said the assembled.

  “We must thank her for whatever gift she might have given us,” said the priestess, “or might be going to give us.” It was so confusing when you had time running in both directions.

  “It is also a propitious time to crave a boon of the Blue Rose,” said the priestess.

  There came a series of standings up and sittings down and openings and closings of a songbook. Music was playing from flutes and pipes. The Judge had told me about them. He said they played flutes and pipes to celebrate the Blue Rose, because they made a sound kind of like the Whistling and the Blue Rose liked it when you sang her praises in the Whistling. The music didn’t go sideways, like the slippery music at the Sapphire. But it wasn’t straight-ahead, either. It was delicate as silk—

  “You don’t know about silk!” said the dagger.

  It was delicate as moonlight on water.

  I held tight to my penny. I looked at the stained-glass windows. They were very pretty with the sun shining in. I remembered that the Judge had said the house down the street from school had had colored glass in the windows before it burnt. I remembered eating peanuts with the Judge, way back on Valentine’s Day. I rem
embered how, when we’d finished, the bag was semitransparent with oil. It was a little like the stained-glass windows in the Shrine.

  Now the collection plate came around. People were dropping coins into it. I stood up; I sat down. I smelled the penny, warm from my hand.

  “Keep the penny,” said the dagger.

  The collection plate came down our row.

  I thought about giving away the penny. The opal grew suddenly warm—yes, warm! I touched it. It warmed my fingers, and also the inside of my head. My brain crackled with blue fire. It was a friendly fire, it helped me think.

  The Judge now held the collection plate. I could see it without turning my head. I had very stretchy eyes. I’d never seen so many coins at once.

  “Pennies,” said the dagger. “Worthless.”

  The opal grew warmer still. It was helping me decide, in a friendly way. I held my hand over the plate. I felt the heat of all those coins. Money is power and power is hot.

  Or maybe it was more that an opal is lucky and luck is hot.

  I let go of the penny.

  “That was stupid!” said the dagger. “You might need that penny.”

  “I thought you said pennies were worthless,” I said.

  The Judge smiled at me and passed the plate over my lap to Mrs. del Salto.

  “What did the Blue Rose give us?” said the priestess.

  “She gave us the Indigo Heart.”

  “How did she create the Indigo Heart?” said the priestess.

  “She sang it into existence,” said the assembled.

  “What do we do to thank her?” said the priestess.

  “We sing her praises,” said the assembled. “Over and over, three times a day.”

  “How do we sing her praises?” said the priestess.

  “We sing her praises through our Songbird.”

  “But we have no more Songbird,” said the priestess.

  “We have no more Songbird.”

  I thought about Gentleman Jack trying to get a Songbird for Netherby Scar and wondered if someone was trying to get a Songbird for Blue Roses. Someone like the Judge, maybe, or one of the priestesses. I was going to crave a boon of the Blue Rose of a Songbird for Netherby Scar. Could you crave a boon of the Blue Rose for a Songbird for the Indigo Heart? It was hard to think about clearly. The people in the Indigo Heart wanted a Songbird to thank the Blue Rose in the best way possible, so she’d grant the boons they craved. But if there was no Songbird to help thank the Blue Rose in the best way possible, how could she grant the boon of a Songbird?