“Liar!” said the dagger.
“What do they call you?” said Gentleman Jack.
At last—the familiar question about my name. “I said I have no name.”
“Is that what I asked?” said Gentleman Jack. “I asked what they call you.”
I hadn’t exercised judgment. This wasn’t one of the old questions, after all. “They call me Starling,” I said.
There came a silence, hard as glass. Gentleman Jack clasped his hands behind his back. Hold the bars, Gentleman Jack! I thought. Then I could hold them, too, and we’d each be holding on to the other. “What is Grandmother’s emblem?” he said.
“It’s a bird,” I said.
“What kind of bird?”
I didn’t know, so Gentleman Jack had to tell me. “It’s a starling.”
I should have realized. I’d seen enough starlings. Starlings are distinctive, with their short tails and long, slender beaks. I remembered how the engraving traced the outline of the starling’s wings, short and pointed, so when it flies, it looks like a star.
“What’s my last name?” said Gentleman Jack.
“Royal,” I said.
“Does it match me?” said Gentleman Jack.
It did.
“Does the name Starling match up with you?”
I understood what he meant. If Grandmother’s emblem was a starling, that meant it was too fancy for me. It was too Royal for me. In Netherby Scar, people treated Grandmother and Gentleman Jack like royalty. Everyone knew their emblem and where they lived.
“It’s just for here,” I said. “Just so I can go to school.”
“I said I’ll give you a name,” said Gentleman Jack. “A proper name. A name that matches up with you.”
That meant it would be ugly.
“Don’t use that name,” he said. “Promise!”
I promised. It was another promise I’d break. So I had to say something extra good.
“I can climb the star steps for you.” Now the words were out. “I’ll crave the Blue Rose to bring you the gold and a Songbird.”
“No!” he said, not even bothering to keep his voice low. “The Blue Rose is tricky. Years ago, I craved a boon of her, but she turned around and spat in my eye.”
Maybe that’s kind of what Mrs. del Salto had been saying, in the carriage ride home, on the Feast of the Blue Rose. Maybe she was saying that she’d craved some boons and the Blue Rose had spat in her eye. I was sure both Mrs. del Salto and Gentleman Jack knew that the Blue Rose doesn’t bring you what you want, that she brings you what you need. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be mad about it.
It was then I saw the problem with my plan. It’s funny how saying something aloud makes you understand it better. I had only to tell Gentleman Jack about it in order to realize I couldn’t ask the Blue Rose for anything. It would take far longer than three breaths and a swallow to climb the star steps, and unless the Blue Rose was the sort of Guide who spoke to you first, my Affliction would keep me from craving a boon.
Ask me, Gentleman Jack. Ask “Who rescued you in the wilderness?”
“You rescued me,” I’d say.
“Why did your mother leave you?” Gentleman Jack would say.
“Because of my Affliction,” I’d say.
“What did you do to get your Affliction?”
“I don’t know,” I’d say, which would get me thinking about what terrible thing I might have done to get this Affliction. It meant I couldn’t crave a boon of the Blue Rose. It meant I had an ugly voice.
Ask me, Gentleman Jack! Ask me who saved me in the wilderness.
Gentleman Jack did not ask.
Ask me, Gentleman Jack! Ask me what I owe you.
I’d tell him I owed him my life. I’d tell him I owed him my gratefulness. But Gentleman Jack didn’t ask. That was the way I had to leave him, pressed into himself and wanting Flora and gold bricks and a Songbird, but not wanting me.
The Judge and I stood in the kitchen. He was making a door so the guard dog could go in and out. It was really just a flap in the bottom half of the kitchen door. The flap locked automatically when it shut so people like Rough Ricky couldn’t scramble in. The dog would have to learn to hit a lever to unlatch it before it could go outside, and then it’d have to learn to wait outside until somebody let it back in.
The Judge could do big, clumsy things like hammering planks over a window or making a dog door. But what about the dollhouse, which was little and delicate? “Hand me another nail, would you?” he said.
“Did you build the dollhouse?” I said.
The Judge said Yes.
“Did you build the cottage?”
The Judge said Yes, with a lot of help.
“Which did you build first?”
“The cottage,” said the Judge. “I built the dollhouse last year, for Magda’s birthday.”
“You mean the one when she was going to turn eleven?” I said.
“That’s the one,” said the Judge.
But Magda had been dead on that birthday, on October sixteenth. He’d built the dollhouse for a dead girl?
“I promised her,” he said. “I started in early summer, because I knew it would take a long time. And then along came the smallpox—”
He puffed out a breath. “There seemed no reason not to finish it.”
That seemed like an extra-good thing to have done. I suddenly saw the actions people chose to take as a long string of decisions. I saw them as beads, trembling on a wire. On one end of the wire were the really bad deeds, the kind that would give you an Affliction. Like killing a child. Then your hands would be stained with blood. In the middle of the wire were regular deeds. Some might be a little bit bad, like Betsy saying I was an ignorant robber girl. Some might be a little bit good, like the Sheriff giving me Gentleman Jack’s wanted poster.
I thought of the bag of peanuts the Judge and I had shared so long ago. I remembered the exact day. It was the day Mrs. Elton had embarrassed me in front of the whole class for not knowing about Valentine’s Day. It had been a Thursday, and it was also Day Eighty-One in the countdown to the new Day Zero. I remembered how the bag had been semitransparent with oil, like the stained-glass windows in the Shrine. I thought about how the dolls wanted a baby and that giving them a baby doll would be pretty good.
“Some say,” said the Judge, “that promises are like piecrust, which means they’re made to be broken. But I could not believe that and still be a judge. One must keep one’s promises.”
The Judge was good in a stained-glass kind of way. I was good in an oiled-paper kind of way.
“The Blue Rose instructs us to keep our promises,” said the Judge. “It’s her second precept.”
My ear was getting ready for something un-fancy, like the first precept. My ear was right. The second precept went like this:
Keep your promises:
T’was you that made them.
Let not others say:
T’was you betrayed them.
At the very far end of the wire were the really good deeds, like the Judge keeping his promise to a girl who was dead. I’d never do that. What was the point?
“You will bring our baby?” said the father doll.
“I will bring your baby.”
“You will not leave?” said the mother doll.
“I will not leave.”
I was making piecrust promises. Why not? I was no judge. I might as well make the dolls happy while I was here. I might as well complete the tasks I was able to complete. I might as well pretend I’d bring the baby, even though that was impossible.
“The baby is made of wax,” said the mother doll.
“He cannot crack,” said the father doll.
“He’s perfect.”
But the baby was in the General Store, behind a glass window, on a shelf too high to reach. It didn’t feel bad to lie to them. It didn’t feel good. It felt like nothing.
I reached for the pocket watch. Looking at Grandmother’s photogra
ph would make me feel something. But the photograph didn’t work as it usually did. My eyes kept getting stuck on unimportant things, like the bonnet of eyelet lace and the tiny embroidered letters—too tiny to read.
“You can’t read anyway,” said the dagger.
“I brought Oakheart a collar,” I said. Can a person feel nothing?
“A collar!” said the mother doll. A person can feel nothing if she’s a robber girl.
“A collar!” said the father doll. “You are a wonderful girl.”
A robber girl can feel nothing if she squeezes her stomach so her stomach flap doesn’t float open. So her bitter stomach juice doesn’t flow into her heart. I reached for the string of beads Lord John had given me. I wound it twice around Oakheart’s neck and tied it. It made a wonderful collar.
“A dollhouse dog doesn’t need a collar!” said the dagger. “A collar is to tame a dog, but a dollhouse dog isn’t wild.”
The beads were supposed to make the judge and jury believe Gentleman Jack had been at the Fair when the Federal Marshal was killed. I was using the beads as a collar right now, but it wasn’t a betrayal of Gentleman Jack. That’s because Gentleman Jack had taught me to hide things in plain sight. The beads were in plain sight, and when the time for the trial came, I’d unwind the beads from Oakheart’s neck and bring them with me.
“A dollhouse dog isn’t even alive!” said the dagger.
“The collar’s the right size,” said the father doll, “and so many beautiful colors.”
The baby was the last task. But I’d made a piecrust promise. I had no money. I couldn’t get the baby.
“Best of all,” said the mother doll, “there’s only one more task.”
THE NEXT DAY, the schoolyard wasn’t separated into groups of boys and girls. It wasn’t separated into groups of small, medium, and large children. All the children stood in a mixed-up lump, holding lunch pails and books and satchels.
The Brewster Boy’s hands were empty and stuck out from his grubby shirt sleeves. They hung from his raw, knobby wrists. He looked like the indigo trees along Main Street, undergrown and spindly from too much coffee and too many cigarettes. Was that the way I’d looked on my first day of school?
“This is exciting!” said the dagger.
It was exciting. The Brewster Boy was here to give Betsy Elton a scare.
“You hate Betsy,” said the dagger.
“I hate Betsy.”
There was no throwing of balls or wrestling in the dust or singing in circles. No climbing into the cottonwood tree or playing jacks on the solitary stoop behind the school. There was only the schoolyard and the children and the Brewster Boy.
He looked at me. I turned away. I didn’t want the others to think I knew him. Once I had been like him, with my broken nails and sticking-out wrists and scratched-up thumb. But even on my first day of school, my hands hadn’t been empty. The Judge had given me a slate and a lunch pail. Even then I’d not been quite alone. The Judge had been with me.
My wrists did not stick out now, and my cuffs were garnet. Garnet is two things. It’s a color, and it’s also a precious stone. The color of both is the same: garnet is not quite as bright as crimson, but it’s still bright. When I’d arrived in Blue Roses, I’d not been used to wearing bright clothes. But now I felt like myself in this dress. Glass buttons ran down the front, and because they were a deep red and sparkled, they looked like garnets.
“Look beneath his jacket,” said the dagger. It meant the jacket of the Brewster Boy. I saw what I’d already known would be there; I saw what the dagger saw. No, that wasn’t right: the dagger could only see what I saw, but sometimes it noticed things first. Buckled around the Brewster Boy’s waist was a belt. From the belt hung a sheath; in the sheath rested a knife.
Even though I could see only the handle, I knew what kind of knife it was.
“A bowie,” I said. Garnet made me feel like myself. I clung to that thought.
“A bowie,” said the dagger. But it was hard to remember about garnet, with the dagger so pleased and the handle of the bowie so big.
You could tell it was a bowie because of the handle. You could tell because of the guard at the bottom of the handle, right above where the blade began. It was meant to protect the Brewster Boy’s hand from slipping onto the blade and losing a finger.
“Because he’s clumsy,” said the dagger.
“He doesn’t need a knife to scare Betsy.” Why had he brought a knife?
“A knife will scare her, all right,” said the dagger.
Mrs. Elton rang the bell. Usually the children pretended not to see her or hear the bell so they could go on wrestling and picking dandelions and singing and climbing trees, and today was a good day for climbing because the air was extra blue. But now they weren’t doing anything. There was too much time before Mrs. Elton rang the bell. Too much time to do nothing.
“I want to bite the Brewster Boy!” said the dagger.
“No blood today,” I said. “Just scaring.”
The Brewster Boy strode toward the school. He made a hole in the blue air.
Mrs. Elton was ringing the bell when she saw the Brewster Boy, and now the bell was ringing, ringing, and the Brewster Boy passed her and entered the school, and the children filed silently up the stairs, and the bell kept ringing, even though there was no need.
Everybody was already inside.
Mrs. Elton came in now. She passed the Brewster Boy, who stood against the back wall. We all sat in our places. She passed the bigger children and the medium children. She was no longer ringing the bell, but the echo was loud in my head. She passed the small children, then turned, shaking her pointer.
“How many times have I told you not to fidget?” The pointer jabbed at Peter, but Peter wasn’t fidgeting.
“How many times,” said Mrs. Elton, “have I told you to direct your gaze to the front of the classroom?”
But Peter was directing his gaze.
“What are you allowed to do, Peter?” said Mrs. Elton. “You are allowed to look at me, and where else are you allowed to look?”
“At my books,” mumbled Peter.
“What’s that, Peter?” said Mrs. Elton. “Speak up!”
“At my books, ma’am.”
Mrs. Elton said she would hear the lowest level first.
“A bowie knife,” said the dagger, “is an all-purpose knife.”
That was true. Gentleman Jack’s Lucretia was a bowie knife. Gentleman Jack sometimes said that Lucretia was long enough to be used as a sword, sharp enough to be used as a razor, and heavy enough to be used as a hatchet.
But the Sheriff had taken Lucretia and given Gentleman Jack a penny so Lucretia wouldn’t bite him.
“I’m a single-purpose knife,” said the dagger. “You can’t use me for skinning.”
No, you wouldn’t use a double-edged blade for skinning, because you’d cut off your fingers.
Mrs. Elton asked the first level what we were supposed to have studied last night. No one in the first level said anything. The Brewster Boy was too big; he squeezed the thoughts out of my head.
“You can throw me better than a bowie,” said the dagger.
Mrs. Elton called on the second, third, and fourth levels, but no one knew the lesson. They sat behind me; I heard their voices mostly as a scratching at my spine. Now came a scraping of footsteps. The first-level children looked around, only to see the second- and third-level children looking around, only to see the rest of the children looking around, only to see the Brewster Boy shuffling down the aisle. Mrs. Elton stood on the platform. The Brewster Boy stood on the floor. He was spindly, but he was as tall as she was.
“Do you have a slate?” said Mrs. Elton, even though you could see he had no slate. I hated Mrs. Elton, but I had to admit it was brave of her to pretend this was an ordinary day of school.
The Brewster Boy had no slate.
“Do you have chalk?” said Mrs. Elton.
The Brewster Boy had no chalk.<
br />
“I don’t got a lot of learning,” he said in his almost-man’s voice. He slouched up the aisle, stopping at Betsy’s row. No, he slouched down the aisle. Going up the aisle was for getting out of school. “But still and all, I reckon I’m going to sit here and ain’t nobody going to stop me.”
He took the empty seat next to Betsy. He slid the bowie from its sheath. It sounded like rustling silk. “I got this beauty here, and I got me enough learning to scrawl this little gal’s name on her face.”
But he was only supposed to scare her.
“Scrawling will scare her,” said the dagger.
The Brewster Boy slashed the knife, he slashed too close to Betsy’s face. He was not supposed to hurt her.
“How do you write your name, little gal?” said the Brewster Boy. “I don’t spell too good, and it would be a shame to get it wrong.”
I hated Betsy. I hated Mrs. Elton. You’d think it would be delicious to see them being scared, but it wasn’t. You’d think you could count on your feelings, but no: they scurry around like mice, leaving horrid droppings wherever they go. You’re always having to clean up behind them.
“I can count on my feelings,” said the dagger. “Vengeance is delicious, so hot and raw.”
The Brewster Boy was slashing again, and so close to Betsy’s face! Had he misunderstood me, or didn’t he care if he went beyond scaring into hurting?
At least I had my garnet dress, my bright courageous dress. I stood up. The dress stood up. I squeezed down the first-level aisle, and so did the dress. Together we turned our backs on Mrs. Elton and walked up the center aisle—yes, up, up!—toward the door. I stopped when I reached the Brewster Boy. I stood as tall as I could; the brightness helped me be tall. The glass buttons burned with cold flame.
Betsy had pressed herself against the back of the bench. Her brown-marble eyes were very dark, or maybe it was that her face had gone pale. I was glad, which Mrs. del Salto would say wasn’t nice. But I liked not being nice.
The Brewster Boy’s gaze shambled over to meet mine. He hadn’t expected me to approach him, shining with buttons. This wasn’t part of our plan. But I had to speak to him, which meant someone had to speak to me first.
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