A wolf in a person’s bedroom is a startling thing, but I was so tired. You need energy to be startled. Then I looked at it more closely and I knew it was no wolf. It was the dog the Judge had promised, the dog that would protect me from Rough Ricky and keep him from stealing my opal pendant. It was a gift from the Judge. I’d wait for him to talk to me, and then I’d have to remember to thank him.
It was so easy to forget to thank people.
The dog was black and tall and lean, with pointy ears and a narrow face. It stood quite still, and when I spoke, it sharpened its ears, twitching them toward me. That meant it was alert; it was listening. That meant it was wild. It didn’t look like the kind of dog to let a baby stagger around holding on to its collar.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. The footsteps were attached to feet; the feet were attached to the Judge and Mrs. del Salto. They came into the room; they talked too loud. They said how much they had worried about me and how glad they were I was better. Even Mrs. del Salto said so. Worried. Glad.
Frantic.
But I couldn’t really listen. The dog kept pacing the attic floor. Tick-tick-tick went its nails. Of course the ticking hadn’t been the pocket watch; the pocket watch didn’t go. The ticking had been the dog’s nails. How strange that the dog’s nails should sound the same as a watch. The watch was wound down, the dog was wound up.
I closed my eyes.
The dog was not like the dog I’d expected. For one thing, it was not a boy. You’d think a guard dog would be a boy.
“A girl dog can be just as good as a boy dog,” said the Judge. “Some people think a girl dog is more protective of her person. Some people think a girl dog tends to roam less and stay closer.”
The dog was not like Oakheart, rough and bouncy and shaggy. She was narrow and aloof. She was altogether a sharpish sort of dog, but she had a softish sort of name, which was Paloma. Her name started off with the popping P sound, but it didn’t live up to its beginning. It grew mushy on the L, and by the time you got to the M, you were bored to death.
The Judge and Mrs. del Salto talked and talked. I closed my eyes and let their words swim all around me. I only opened my eyes when they said I should never have fought the Brewster Boy.
“But I won!” I said.
“Did you?” said the Judge. “Let’s look at the outcome: the Brewster Boy is unscathed and you are wounded.” He’d already told me my forearm had been badly cut. He’d already told me I might not regain the use of my hand, which was my right hand, and also my dagger hand.
I should feel terrible about it, but I’d save it for later. I’d save feeling terrible for when I had energy.
But I remembered all the conversations with Gentleman Jack and the dagger—was it better to kill someone or to hurt them? Bits of these conversations tumbled through my head. Being more sure, cutting tendons, getting into more trouble.
“Did I cut a tendon?”
“Well—” said Mrs. del Salto.
“Yes,” said the Judge.
Later, I would care.
“What’s the date?” I said.
“April seventh,” said Mrs. del Salto.
“What’s the date?”
“April seventh,” said the Judge.
I had missed the Dark Moon. But it didn’t matter. Gentleman Jack hadn’t wanted me to crave a boon of the Blue Rose, anyway.
“What’s the date?”
“April eighth,” said the Judge.
“Twenty-eight days to Day Zero,” I said.
“What do you mean?” said the Judge.
I shouldn’t have said that aloud, but it’s hard to be careful with bells and ticking in your head. “Nothing,” I said.
“Can there be such a thing as a Day Zero?” said the Judge.
“There can be the idea of a Day Zero,” I said.
“There once was a time,” said the Judge, “back in the very old days, when the number zero hadn’t even been invented.”
I asked how that was possible. The Judge said that ancient people went merrily along, counting the things they had—wool and wine and wives—without making the depressing discovery that they could also count the things they didn’t have.
I wished I’d never heard of zero. What was the point of anything?
I slept too much, and my sleep was smeared with dreams. A lot of them were about the Federal Marshal. In my awake life, I tried not to remember the Marshal, but you can’t not remember things in dreams. I dreamed that Gentleman Jack killed Marshal Starling. He’d shot him in the stomach, which meant it was a belly wound, which usually meant death. And then I’d dream that when I woke up, the dream would turn out to have been true, which it was. It was a dream within a dream.
It was during one of these dreams that I heard the dagger, sharp and cool. “It’s no dream!” But I knew the dagger wasn’t with me in the cottage, so I must have been dreaming. It was a dream within a dream within a dream.
“I’m no dream!” said the dagger.
I woke up.
“A double-edged blade is no dream,” said the dagger.
But where was it? I heard it but couldn’t see it. I was confused about where the dagger had gone.
“Six inches of carbon and iron is no dream.”
On the bed lay a square package. It was beautifully wrapped in cream-colored paper with a raised pattern you could trace with your fingers. Some of Betsy’s Valentine’s Day cards had raised patterns. Molly had let me touch hers. The ribbon was the same color, and it also had a raised pattern, which felt like velvet.
“Open the box!” said the dagger. “You’ll see I’m no dream.”
I pushed myself up on the pillows with my left arm. I tugged at the ribbon with my left hand. My right hand would hurt too much. It was funny how I didn’t really care that I’d wrecked my right arm—my throwing arm. I didn’t care that all the moving parts under my skin had been tightened, like screws. They had no stretch.
“Hurry!” said the dagger.
In the box was the belt and the sheath, and in the sheath was the dagger. I slid out the dagger. It looked the same as always, but why shouldn’t it? The dagger never changed.
“That’s because I’m perfect,” said the dagger.
I remembered now: I’d asked Betsy to hide the dagger for me. She’d been clever to wrap and send it to me like a present.
I pictured Betsy, standing before the rolls of wrapping paper in the General Store, choosing the fancy one with the pattern you could touch. She had stood before the spools of ribbon and chosen the velvet one to match. They were different patterns, but they were meant to go together.
She hadn’t sent a card, though. I remembered how pretty her Valentine’s Day card had been. Maybe she’d stood in front of the cards, choosing the one with the roses for me. I hadn’t looked at it since Valentine’s Day. It had lain beneath the dollhouse carpet all this while.
“Are you listening?” said the dagger. “Are you alert?”
I hadn’t heard anything.
“Footsteps!” said the dagger.
It was easy to hide the dagger. There were drawers built in right under the bed.
“A wild thing would have heard them approach,” said the dagger.
In came the Judge and Mrs. del Salto. “We come bearing gifts,” said the Judge. He held the yellow cup; Mrs. del Salto carried a plate. That was like fixing a tray. There was no actual tray, but it meant I could eat in bed, so the idea was the same. The del Saltos saw I’d unwrapped Betsy’s present, but they didn’t ask what was inside. They were like that. They let you be private.
“No more of that poultice stuff?” I said.
“Far from it!” The Judge raised the cup. “Nectar.”
Mrs. del Salto raised the plate. “Ambrosia.”
The yellow cup made a familiar pattern in my hands. It smelled of hot chocolate. Was that nectar?
That was nectar.
Ambrosia was a cinnamon roll.
“Now I’ll live forever?” I said
.
“Precisely!” said the Judge.
A cinnamon roll is like a secret: there’s a length of pastry, which is sprinkled with cinnamon, then coiled up like a snake, and baked, and iced. You unroll it and discover secret deposits of cinnamon. Then you eat it.
But I would wait to eat it because I didn’t like people watching me eat.
Paloma sat beside me. Her nose twitched, but she didn’t so much as sniff at the cinnamon roll, even though it smelled so dark and gooey and not-too-sweet.
“She’s very well trained,” said the Judge. “We let her into the kitchen, with a great ham sitting on the table. She never touched it.”
“A dagger would touch the ham,” said the dagger. “A dagger would touch it a million times.”
“Not a million times,” I said.
“It’s her training,” said the Judge. “It’s so no one poisons her. She’ll only eat food we give her.” He looked at me. “You give her, that is. It should be you.”
If I was the only person who could feed Paloma, how would she eat when I was gone? “How did you feed her when I was sick?”
“We know the command that allows her to eat.”
I couldn’t drink the nectar with my dagger-throwing hand. My skin was winched up around my fingers.
There was another way I knew they’d fixed me a tray, which was that they spent lots of time behind the closed door of the person who got the tray, talking to that person. I know, because that person was me.
“Betsy owes you a great deal,” said the Judge. “You were brave to have saved her.”
It wasn’t bravery. Don’t you have to be scared to be brave? Anyway, it was my fault the Brewster Boy had tried to scrawl her up.
“How can you be wild?” said the dagger. “Now that you can’t throw me?”
What if I was losing my wildness? This notion snagged at unpleasant thoughts—memories of how I’d felt about my garnet dress, of how I’d felt like myself in it. How I’d then wondered what it meant to be Myself. Whether there was a new Myself and an old Myself, and if so, whether the new Myself had been tamed.
If I thought about getting the baby doll for the doll family, did that mean I was tame?
“You could steal it,” said the dagger. It didn’t like the idea of the dolls, but it liked the idea of stealing.
What if the dagger was right and I was losing my wildness? What if I didn’t actually care about throwing the dagger? Why did I feel the trickling-honey sense of relief?
“Thank you for bringing me Paloma,” I said. I’d stored it up for so long that I said it without thinking. Did that mean I was tame?
Paloma’s ears made little cradles to catch her name.
“You are most welcome,” said the Judge.
You were supposed to thank the Blue Rose, even if she hadn’t given you anything yet. Even if you hadn’t even craved anything yet. “What if you crave a boon of the Blue Rose but she sends you something terrible?” I said.
“Then you have to consider,” said the Judge, “whether you accepted what you were given with an open heart. The thing that appears to be terrible may in truth be the answer to your dearest wish.”
“Gentleman Jack said the Blue Rose spat in his eye,” I said.
“I’ve often thought the iron has entered his soul,” said the Judge.
But iron and souls didn’t go together, did they? Iron was a dagger-ish thing and souls were a shrine-ish thing. The Judge said it was just a useful image, like the image of restoring the yellow cup’s bloom. He explained that when the iron enters someone’s soul it means he gets disillusioned with life. The Judge thought Gentleman Jack believed the world was out to cheat him, so he had to get what he wanted by stealing.
The Judge remembered about Steal a March. “If the iron’s entered your soul,” said the Judge, “then of course you’d think you need to steal a march to get what you deserve.”
When the Judge and Mrs. del Salto left, I took the dagger from the drawer. I ate the ambrosia and drank the nectar. Because of my right hand not working, I’d have to start all over learning to eat neatly. I gave Paloma bits of the cinnamon roll. I scooped up a fingerful of the not-too-sweetness and held it out to her. She took it with her lips, like a fish. She barely touched me with her fish lips. I was the only one who could feed her. That was so Rough Ricky couldn’t poison her.
“Tell me the old words,” I said. “The ones from when we lived with Gentleman Jack.”
The dagger would never forget. “Gold, Primrose, Stagecoach, Grateful.” Its memory was made of iron and carbon, which was stronger than flesh and blood.
“Primrose, Stagecoach, Grateful,” I said.
I would turn my memories of Gentleman Jack into cold metal.
“Stagecoach, Grateful,” I said.
“Grateful,” I said.
Gold, Primrose, Stagecoach, Grateful.
Primrose, Stagecoach, Grateful.
Stagecoach, Grateful.
Grateful.
I lay in bed, remembering to be wild. The dagger had said I’d forgotten. The dagger said I’d forgotten to listen, and listening was part of being alert, and being alert was part of being wild.
But it’s hard to be alert when you’re sick. “Wild things get sick,” I said.
“Yes,” said the dagger. “And then they die.”
I lay in bed, wondering if Paloma was wild. She’d been trained, but what did that mean? Training and taming—were they the same things?
“Exactly the same,” said the dagger.
But I wasn’t sure. “Do you think learning to read is a taming thing?”
“Extremely taming,” said the dagger.
“Do you think Gentleman Jack is wild?” I said.
“Extremely wild,” said the dagger.
“But Gentleman Jack can read,” I said.
The dagger didn’t like that. It liked to win every argument. “That’s because he’s a man. You can train a man but not tame him.” Its voice was cool and sharp. That’s what happened when it got angry. When I got angry, I grew hot.
I grew hot all at once, just the way the Judge turned a handle and the lamps sprang into life. One minute they were cold and dark, the next minute they blazed with fire.
“Are boys better than girls?” I said.
“Ten times better,” said the dagger.
“The Judge said a girl dog is more protective of her person.” But the Judge and Gentleman Jack were different. If Gentleman Jack were to have a child, he’d only want a boy.
I rolled over and slid open the drawer. Before, it had been a hiding place for the dagger, from the Judge and Mrs. del Salto. I would turn it into a prison for the dagger. But instead of bars there were piles of petticoats and drawers and stockings. The dagger would call them taming things.
I imprisoned the dagger beneath the taming things. Serve it right.
“Don’t leave me here!”
But I was sick of the dagger. I left it in piles of petticoats and drawers and stockings. I left it to be tamed.
I CURLED UP IN BED. I was inside a seed.
“Don’t be stupid,” said the dagger. “A person can’t get inside a seed.”
I was inside a rose seed.
I curled myself into an egg. I was a seed, I was an egg.
“Make up your mind!”
I would bloom into a bird. I would turn around in my nest.
“You can’t be a seed and an egg and a bird,” said the dagger.
But I could. That’s because I was bendy.
Paloma followed me wherever I went. She followed me down to breakfast. Her nails made clicks on the attic steps, then little sighs on the pink-cheeked carpet with the brass rods and pineapples.
On the way back up to the attic, her nails went click again. Click, not tick. I must have been very sick to mix up the clicking of her nails with the ticking of a watch, especially a watch that had no tick inside.
I knelt on the floor, my chin resting on the edge of the spinning platform. I wa
s too tired to hold up my chin. I was cold and tired because I’d been sick. Paloma sat beside me, but she didn’t rest her chin anywhere. She was too noble for that.
The dolls sat in the parlor, folded into the wings of a dove.
“Not real wings,” I said, before the dagger could say anything. “Just the idea of wings.”
I unhooked the watch from the library wall. You could open the watch with one hand. That was lucky, because even though I could no longer use my right hand, I could still use my left. I looked at the photograph of Grandmother and thought about being with her. I was glad I’d disobeyed Gentleman Jack. Her photograph helped me think about how I’d sit in a crimson velvet chair, and the watch would be ticking, and our hearts would be beating.
“We like it when the house is open,” said the father doll. “Then we can see the indigo tree through the window.”
“And the blue sky behind the indigo tree,” said the mother doll. “We also like it when the house is closed and we can be cozy and private.”
“Do you think,” I said, then I wondered what I was going to say. I started again. “Do you think you should be grateful to me?”
The mother doll and the father doll turned to look at me. Their eyes clicked when they closed, but they also clicked when they opened. The father doll’s eyes were brown, the mother doll’s eyes were blue.
“Grateful?” said the mother doll.
“Grateful?” said the father doll.
“To me.” Now I wished I hadn’t asked, but I had started and I couldn’t stop. “Grateful for bringing you mirrors and tablecloths and clocks. Grateful for bringing you Oakheart?” The words turned to rocks in my mouth.
“Gratitude has to spring up of itself,” said the mother doll. “It has to spring up freely.”
“Sometimes,” said the father doll, “gratitude can be a burden.”
The dolls were stupid.
I discovered a wonderful thing. I could speak to Paloma without being spoken to first. Or maybe Paloma really was speaking to me, and it was just that I couldn’t understand. “You’ve never seen the second floor,” I said. She clicked down the attic stairs behind me.
I showed her Isaac’s room. It was the same as before: blue walls, blue cradle, yellow spindles. Except in the cradle there now lay a blanket—blue stars, white background, a fringe all around. It was exactly like the blanket I’d made for the dollhouse cradle. What an interesting coincidence.
The Robber Girl Page 25