It glanced off a few spindly fly-people, struggling in the muck. They buzzed as we rode by. They buzzed for pennies, for crusts of bread, for scraps of blankets. It was cold in Netherby Scar. It was hard to remember it was spring in the world above. One fly-person buzzed at us louder than the others. He bumbled his way free of the muck. He had a stinger. He came stumbling and stinging toward us.
Gentleman Jack beat him off with his whip.
It was still dark when we reached the two-cent path that led to the first floor of the world. The walls leaned into us, just as the ravine walls had done on the very first Day Zero. But there had been twelve of us then, an arrow of us, with Gentleman Jack, Rough Ricky, and me making the point.
“Me too,” said the dagger. “I have the best point.”
Now there was no more Rough Ricky. Now there was no more point.
We ducked beneath rocky ledges, scraped past swallows’ nests. I’d first seen the nests when I climbed into the canyon. I’d thought I’d be here for a long time. I’d thought I’d see the cliff swallows return.
But I was already leaving. Maybe the nests were empty because it was still so cold in Netherby Scar. Maybe the swallows would return when it got warmer. I wouldn’t, though. I would never return.
We crested the two-cent road. We gained level ground. The cigar man looked up. There was only one of him. There were three of us, plus Gentleman Jack’s whip.
“Plus me!” said the dagger.
The cigar man watched from his lopsided face: he still had his old black eye, smeary and yellowing, and now a new black eye, pouchy and purple. Gentleman Jack danced his horse sideways, toward the cigar man. The cigar man danced sideways to avoid it. Gentleman Jack danced the cigar man right up to the brim of the canyon. He waited until the cigar man yelled before wheeling his horse around.
We set off again in our weak, scraggly line. “That was amusing,” said Gentleman Jack.
The horses made it seem as though I’d never walked to Netherby Scar. They ate up the hungry miles of the outward journey. I thought about the long road beside the railroad tracks, about hiding in the tall grass, about eating grasshoppers. But at least my britches had gotten bigger. They no longer squinched at my middle.
“You’ve gotten smaller,” said the dagger.
It was funny to think I’d gotten bigger with the Judge and Mrs. del Salto and smaller with Gentleman Jack. But wasn’t that the way it always was? Didn’t I always get smaller with Gentleman Jack?
That was a strange new thought, and with it came another. John was a bigger name than Jack. Each name had just one sound, but John was the real name, and Jack was the short name.
I remembered what Gentleman Jack had said about liquids that were distilled and liquids that were diluted. When you distilled something, you boiled it until all the extra water evaporated. Then the liquid became more truly its own self. John was the strong version of the name. John was the distilled version.
When you diluted something, you poured extra water into it. It became less its own self. Jack was the weak version of the name. Jack was the diluted version.
“Jack’s not the weak version,” said the dagger.
I was tired of the dagger listening in. I hid my thoughts from it the way card players hide their cards. They hold them close to the chest. I thought about holding my cards close to my chest. The dagger couldn’t understand something like hiding your cards.
I had other new thoughts. I thought that Gentleman Jack had no shrine but Lord John had a shrine. I thought that Grandmother had given Gentleman Jack the weak version of the name he shared with Lord John. I thought that Gentleman Jack could bring Grandmother a hundred gold bricks, but she’d never love him best.
“You’re crazy,” said the dagger.
We arrived near evening. Gentleman Jack said it would be dark by the time we reached Blue Roses, which was good. “We’ll operate under cover of darkness.”
“I like darkness!” said the dagger.
It would be extra dark because of the Dark Moon.
“I like extra darkness,” said the dagger.
I let the red clay road tug me into the Indigo Heart. I was tired of so many things now. I was tired of the dagger jabbing me with exclamation marks. I was tired of resisting the magnets in the Indigo Heart. Maybe the dolls were right. Maybe the Heart kept pulling me back because it wanted me.
Or maybe because I belonged here. Had I made a Leap of Faith, just as the del Saltos’ ancestors had done when the Blue Rose first appeared? The Leap had been to follow the falling star through forty days and forty nights. The Faith had been the del Saltos’ belief they’d find their true home.
Which they had.
We followed the uphill branch of the Jordan River. The Jordan roared at us with its big, spring voice. Now the riverbank leveled out, now came another sound, a sweet, sad whistling. It was the cattle boy. He didn’t have his cattle, but, as always, he had his song. He raised his hand, I waved back. I remembered the words of the song, I remembered them along with the tune.
My mother dear will unto me
Fetch milk and honeycomb.
My father dear will for us three
Build our enduring home.
Before, in Netherby Scar, I’d thought how similar the task rhyme was to the cattle boy’s song. But now I thought it wasn’t all that similar. There was still some fetching going on, but the fetching in the cattle boy’s song wasn’t in the form of tasks. The fetching was in the form of gifts.
Surely the gift song had come first and Grandmother had stolen it to make it into her rhyme. Giving people tasks was the diluted version. Giving gifts was the distilled version.
We angled up and over toward Main Street, up splay-fingered steps, through crook-fingered alleys. Up and over, up and over, until the sideways music of the Sapphire slid downhill to greet us.
That’s where we left the horses, across from the Sapphire in a sip of darkness. The Dark Moon was munching up the last light by the time we slipped past the billiards hall and onto Main Street. The pillars held up the roofs as usual, and the metal bowls were attached to the pillars as usual, but no fires burned in them. That was so you could see if the Blue Rose was in the sky.
But the Sapphire was bright. It was all burning candles and glowing cigars and the greasy light of oil lanterns. Hot coals glowed from the peanut man’s cart. He whistled from across the street. “Hello!”
I could whistle Hello back to him; I knew I could. It seemed so easy—the breathy H, the slippery L’s, the easy sounds of the Eh and the Oh. But even though Gentleman Jack was already halfway across the street, he’d hear me because the Whistling is meant to be heard over long distances. He’d hear me and get mad.
I waved, instead.
A huge man stood outside the Sapphire. The doors were open, but you had to pass the man in order to get in. The music tried tugging you inside by the earlobe, but the man was stronger than the music. He was stronger than an earlobe. He looked like a bull, with his thick neck and huge chest. He stepped in front of the door.
Gentleman Jack came up to him. He jutted his chest forward. That was his way of showing he was the boss of everyone. But the Bull had a different way of being the boss. He slammed his hand into Gentleman Jack’s chest. Gentleman Jack flew backward and tumbled off the boardwalk.
He took his time getting up and brushing off his clothes. He came back to us, smiling his crescent cat-smile. “Time for plan B.”
The Brewster Boy produced a bottle filled with liquid. The liquid, of course, was lye.
“And the fuse?” said Gentleman Jack.
“Right here, boss.”
It wasn’t really a fuse, but that’s what Gentleman Jack liked to call it. It was one of several metals you could mix with lye to make it explode. Rough Ricky called it a catalyst. You didn’t add it until the last minute, in case the mixture got too eager.
I couldn’t warn anybody. No one had spoken to me for too long. I wouldn’t think about the bad lu
ck that came with whistling, or about Gentleman Jack getting mad. I’d think about Flora, and Lord John, and all the others, trapped in the Sapphire as it burst into flame.
“Fire!” I whistled. I would make the peanut man hear me, even though he was busy scooping peanuts into a brown paper cone. I whistled the two tones in Fire—the first high, the second lower. I whistled the two sounds in Fire—first the Eye, then the Ur.
The peanut man jerked round to look at me, then sprang away from his cart. The Bull stood aside to let him into the Sapphire. Gentleman Jack shook the bottle; he raised his arm.
The bottle was small, but the noise it made was big. The Sapphire screamed as the front walls convulsed with flame and smoke. I stood in an explosion of lye. I knew the smell, of course, but how did I know the coughing and choking that came with it? How did I know the way your throat seizes up, like the pivots of a watch?
“Your throat’s not like a pivot!” said the dagger.
People came streaming from the Sapphire, coughing and choking, too, yet also looking back to make sure the danger was real. To make sure they hadn’t left their cards on the table for nothing.
The fire was stronger than the Dark Moon. It lit up the night. I knew the strength of fire—
“You don’t know about fire!” said the dagger.
I knew the smell of lye—
“You don’t know about lye!” said the dagger.
It was the smell that tugged at the strings of my memory. Smells are like that: they can open a door to the past. In the past, a house had been alive with flame. In the past, fire had skittered along the walls, then buckled the window frames and shattered the glass.
“You don’t know about anything!” said the dagger.
I knew how the house cried out, how its voice popped and cracked. How it exhaled hot, sharp breaths, smelling of resin.
“It’s not a house,” said the dagger. “It’s a saloon.”
The dagger hadn’t realized that I’d walked through a door into the past, a past in which a house was alive with flame. That I remembered blue glass and amber glass. That I remembered how the flames had admired themselves in the glass, then gobbled them up, both colors at once. I remembered a child screaming. I remembered that there were words, hot in my mouth, but that the pivots of my throat had seized. I couldn’t make a sound. I remembered Doubtful Mittie.
Now I remembered the strength of the fire. I remembered the strength of the smoke and lye. I remembered Doubtful Mittie scooping me into the crook of his elbow, where I dangled upside down, where I saw the floorboards breathing flame, where the flames reached for my face as we leapt, where he yelled—
“Not yelled!” said the dagger.
Then we were outside, where there was wind and there was smoke and there was air and there was lye. The wind was in the air; the wind was in the smoke. The smoke was in the wind, and the lye was in everything. You can’t turn your back on air. Even if there’s smoke and lye in it, you have to keep breathing.
Your throat hurts, your chest hurts. Then everything goes dark for a while, and when you wake up, you taste vomit and blood. All this I remembered—
“Not remembered!”
—I remembered, while the Sapphire blaze unfolded before me. I was in the past and I was in the present. Flames leapt to the indigo trees in front of the Sapphire. Indigo burns with more snap than other trees. They smacked and snacked with a bright, smoky flame.
“The horses!” said Gentleman Jack.
If the fire leapt Main Street, it would first snack on the indigo trees that grew at the edge of the gulch, and then it would reach our horses, which we’d tethered in the gulch. Probably it couldn’t snack on the horses because horses aren’t quick and gobbly enough.
It would just plain eat them.
“Quick, boy!” said Gentleman Jack, and then the Brewster Boy was gone.
The fire would keep running and chewing, although sometimes it might choke on a rock, the way a careless eater might choke on a chicken bone. But finally it would reach the river. It would stub its toes on the river’s edge and drown.
The fire burned so bright, it turned people into shadows. Gentleman Jack had smoked everyone out, including Lord John and Flora, and—and Flora’s baby! She wore it swaddled to her front. I wanted to look at the baby. I wanted to touch the baby. But too much was happening.
First, there was the derringer that appeared in Gentleman Jack’s hand. The only reason to carry a derringer is to be able to conceal it until you’re ready to shoot. A derringer isn’t much good for anything else. It’s famous for shooting every way except straight.
Second, there was Lord John, who took a step back. “Are you planning to shoot me, Jack?” he said. “Shoot an unarmed man?”
Third, there was Gentleman Jack. “Don’t tell Mother.” The derringer raised its muzzle.
“Have a care, John!” cried Flora. But there was nothing Lord John could do. The derringer sniffed the wind. Click! It licked its lips.
The world reduced itself to revolver sniff and throat burn. I remembered the throat burn from the other fire. My throat still burned from the other fire. The indigo trees danced with flame.
The derringer cracked.
Lord John exploded away from it. He exploded toward the Sapphire. Flora bent over him. “John!” she said. “John!” It was Lord John who had the real name. Gentleman Jack had the diluted name.
Lord John raised himself to his elbow, which was not the smartest idea, because it showed Gentleman Jack he was still alive. Gentleman Jack fished into his pocket. I knew he was searching for a new cartridge: a derringer can only shoot once. Gentleman Jack was going to reload, then finish Lord John off, just as the Judge had finished off the pinto.
I found I’d already made my plan. I’d made it long ago, I just hadn’t realized. I ran to Gentleman Jack, holding the dagger on the open book of my palms. I thrust it toward him.
“Is that for me?” he said.
“You don’t have Lucretia anymore,” I said.
I hid my thoughts from the dagger. “Breathe spirit,” I thought. I was going to breathe spirit into Lord John.
Gentleman Jack paused a moment. You could almost hear him thinking that a dagger was more accurate than a derringer. That a derringer was for ladies because it didn’t shoot straight. That you didn’t have to reload a dagger. He snatched it up. “You have kept it clean,” he said. With the other hand, he dug into his pocket. “You have kept it—”
I whipped around. I’d never take his penny. I bolted down Main Street. I bolted toward the Shrine.
“Wait!” called Gentleman Jack. His feet pounded behind me, faster and faster, trying to outrun the rule of knives and pennies.
Gentleman Jack was faster, but I was lighter. Sometimes light things are stronger than heavy ones. Some light things, like willow branches, can bend but not break. The indigo trees along Main Street were light, like willows, from all that coffee and all those cigarettes.
Thank the stars the wind was blowing east. If it shifted, the trees on the gulch side would sizzle up, like Gentleman Jack flicking his switch lighter.
I reached a tree, I leapt. The branches bent beneath me, but I was light and windy and rushy, and indigo bark is scaly, which is excellent for climbing. Gentleman Jack was only seconds behind me. He grabbed a branch, and for a long, suspended moment I thought it might support his weight. But there came a snap; the branch broke. Gentleman Jack stood in the street for just the pinprick of a second. Then he launched himself at the trunk and shook it, as though I’d fall like a ripe apple.
I found myself remembering the story of the Fair. I remembered Flora saying I couldn’t have eaten apple pie because there were no apples in August. But there were no apples in May, either, which is what it was, May fourth. Gentleman Jack couldn’t shake me to the ground. I clung to the excellent clingy bark.
“What are you playing at?” said Gentleman Jack. He reminded me of Grandmother saying, “Don’t play dumb with me.” It was
the kind of thing the Royals said.
I didn’t answer. Soon the rule of knives and pennies would play out. I remembered how fast I’d run the day the bowie had bitten me. I’d been fast, but the bowie had been faster, leaping and biting and . . . and . . .
And now it was happening! The dagger twisted from Gentleman Jack’s hand. It streaked away; it sliced through drifts of smoke. But it didn’t go far. It flipped around and arced back toward Gentleman Jack. A comet of silver struck his shoulder. It was bright and beautiful. It was bright and brutal.
Gentleman Jack had made Lord John stagger back. Now I made Gentleman Jack stagger back. He stumbled against the rise of the boardwalk. He lurched his palms to the boards, eased himself down.
Such a liquid honey feeling ran through me: the dagger had stuck Gentleman Jack. It truly was sharp again. It had struck and it had stuck. Down the road, the fire crunched at the Sapphire, just a cottage length away. It chewed on the indigo trees, but so far it hadn’t crossed Main Street. If it did, it would blow downhill, where it would have to cross a couple of stone bridges—unless it drowned first. Maybe it would bite into them, maybe it would break its teeth.
“Get some help,” said Gentleman Jack. “Someone who won’t call the Sheriff.” His voice was tight, stretched over the pain beneath.
“What about my Affliction?” I said. Bells clanged in the distance. “Someone will have to talk to me first.” They weren’t the Shrine bells with their long lily throats. They were the tinny tone-deaf bells of the fire engine.
Gentleman Jack still hadn’t realized I’d meant the dagger to strike him. Maybe the thought that I could betray him made such a new shape—all lumpy and jutting out—he couldn’t fit it in his mind.
“The Brewster Boy will talk to you,” said Gentleman Jack.
“He’s seeing to the horses,” I said.
Gentleman Jack sat for a bit without speaking. The indigo trees burned in distinct spires of flame. He reached for his striker. I imagined him commanding his striker: “Let there be light!” And of course there would be light.
The Robber Girl Page 33