The striker flame showed that his lips had gone gray. The dagger was a plug, keeping in the blood, but he was bleeding from inside. It was funny how separate from the Sapphire we seemed, even though we were no more than a stone’s throw away.
I waited for the dagger to say something sharp, like “Depends on who’s throwing!” But it was silent.
“There is no Affliction,” said Gentleman Jack.
His words punched the fabric of the night. Of course I had an Affliction! His words weren’t real, but they stayed in my mind: no Affliction. No Affliction.
“I invented the Affliction to protect you,” said Gentleman Jack.
No Affliction.
“You were so young,” said Gentleman Jack, “I couldn’t trust you to keep the secret.”
He wanted me to say, “What secret?” but I wouldn’t. Quick, think about something real. Think about the dagger—it was real. “When you have edges and a tip and carbon,” it had once said, “you’re as real as anything.”
“The secret,” said Gentleman Jack, “that your father was Marshal Starling.”
Marshal Starling? No, don’t believe him. Keep thinking about real things. Think about the fact that the dagger was buried about three inches in Gentleman Jack’s shoulder. That was real. Think about the fact that it takes only an inch to make a person bleed to death. That was real.
“The Marshal drove lots of people away from the Indigo Heart,” said Gentleman Jack, “not just me. People who wanted the gold, people who had a right to the gold, people who were his enemies. They’d have killed you if they knew he was your father.”
But the Federal Marshal was Gentleman Jack’s enemy. Did that mean Gentleman Jack was protecting me from himself?
The night was stretched all out of shape. I watched the flames running faster and faster to keep up with themselves. They were running out of things to eat. I kept thinking of real things. I made my mind into a magnet so the real things wouldn’t slip away.
Real: beneath the job name of Federal Marshal was a person name, Starling.
Real: my own name was Starling.
Real: people in the same family had the same names.
“Quick!” said Gentleman Jack. “Before the Sheriff finds me. I can’t even use my good hand.”
He meant his right hand, his knife-and-gun hand. He meant if the Sheriff, or the Deputy, came along, he wouldn’t be able to protect himself.
The dagger was stuck in his shoulder, not his hand. But I knew now that things in your body were all connected with other things. Things that could be severed. If you hurt your forearm, you could wreck your dagger hand. If you hurt your shoulder, you could wreck your knife-and-gun hand.
Bits of information lay scattered about, like puzzle pieces. I was beginning to put some of them together: if Marshal Starling was really my father, then Mrs. Starling was my mother, which also meant my mother had been the Songbird.
I tried to be surprised, but my surprise was all used up.
I’d lived with Marshal Starling and the Songbird in the cottage with the blue and amber windows. I thought about the pocket watch. Of course, Gentleman Jack had taken it from the Marshal after he’d killed him. It was hard to think of the Marshal as my father, but I’d get used to it. I’d make myself get used to it. I remembered Gentleman Jack picking through my father’s pockets. Gentleman Jack had taken the watch in plain sight—the sight was extremely plain. Why hadn’t I realized?
It should have been easy to realize. For one thing, he’d given it to me on August twenty-seventh, which was the very day after he’d killed the Marshal. Also, the photograph in the watch was of my mother, which was why I resembled her. Lots of the puzzle pieces had been lying right in front of me, but I’d been so addicted to my version of the truth, I couldn’t take in any other possibilities.
I thought about the graves behind the cottage. One wooden star for me, because my body had never been found. One stone marker for my mother, Lyra Starling. One stone marker for my father, Aldo Starling. I thought about the Sheriff—it had probably been the Sheriff—boxing up the Marshal’s body and bringing it to Blue Roses to be buried beside the graves of his family. Beside the stone marker for their little boy—
My brother, Darrell Starling. My brother, who’d worn a little embroidered cap when he was a baby.
The graves were in plain sight. The names were in plain sight on the markers, except for the wooden star. The wooden star belonged to me. It was good there was no name on the marker, because now I had a new name. My old name would probably have been pretty and have had a good meaning. But now I was used to Starling.
Another thing in plain sight was that I matched up with my name. Starlings were warrior birds that would fight for their families. So would I. Starlings were feathered iridescence, and so was I, with my opal pendant and opal eyes.
It was time to climb down now, even though the excellent indigo bark wanted me to stay. I shimmied down the trunk. The bark was scaly, except for a raw, pale patch where a branch had once grown. Gentleman Jack had broken it trying to launch himself into the tree. I picked it up.
“Find someone sympathetic toward us Royals!” said Gentleman Jack.
I waited for the dagger to demand that I find help for Gentleman Jack. But it was silent. Maybe that’s because it was stuck in Gentleman Jack, and Gentleman Jack was the kind of person who made you be silent.
Gentleman Jack was the kind of person who gave you white wounds. Gentleman Jack was the kind of person who made up an Affliction. Gentleman Jack had said he’d give me a name, but it had only been a piecrust promise. I was glad of it now. He’d have found a name he thought fit me, which meant it would be ugly. Not a name like Starling, which belonged to the Starlings’ emblem. It didn’t belong to the Royals, which meant the name Starling with its melodies and murmurations wasn’t too fancy for me.
It belonged to the Starlings. I belonged to the Starlings.
I crossed Main Street, sizzling the branch through the air. The dagger had once said Starling del Salto was a quarter inch too long. But a quarter inch can make a big difference. It can make the difference between whether someone bleeds to death or lives.
Starling. The name sang inside my head. It was just the right length. I listened to the fire engine’s tin-can voice. I listened to the hoses hissing out water. I listened to the flames gasping for air.
I listened to Gentleman Jack yelling at me to get help. “Why are you just standing there?”
Someday I’d forget all about Gentleman Jack. Someday I’d push his memory to the backwater of my mind. But first I had to notice what things were in plain sight, before they disappeared. I had to look at things as though I’d never seen them before. Gentleman Jack’s gloves were in plain sight. I noticed them especially because they were dirty and torn and soiled with plink water. Grandmother had no shrine for him filled with extra frills and piles of fresh, clean gloves.
I bet she’d never embroidered the initials GJR on his gloves. Of course she hadn’t.
I found a safe spot on the boardwalk, about two Starling lengths from Gentleman Jack. It was too far for him to grab me. I waited until three breaths and a swallow had passed. I would bring my Affliction into plain sight.
“Take off one of your gloves,” I said. Out came my words, plain as plain.
My voice was in plain sight.
“What?” he said.
I swished the branch through the air, and it made a sound like Gentleman Jack’s whip. “Do it, or I’ll unstick the dagger.”
“What?” said Gentleman Jack.
I tipped the branch against the dagger. “Then you’ll bleed to death.”
Gentleman Jack hissed with pain. He hissed back his lips. He bared his teeth. His mouth was an abandoned cemetery. His teeth were tombstones of decay. I tried to be surprised again. I’d forgotten I’d used it all up.
“Go on,” I said.
Gentleman Jack used his left hand to tug at his right-hand glove. His eyes flickered sidew
ays. He wanted you to call his eyes Green. Green eyes were uncommon and precious. But his eyes were really the color of mud, which was everywhere. That’s why the green opal hadn’t warmed up to him. He flicked the glove onto the boardwalk.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Gentleman Jack’s hand looked like Lord John’s, long fingered and elegant. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it looked like Doubtful Mittie’s, all raw liver-splat. I’d told the Brewster Boy that Gentleman Jack would never harm a child. I’d believed it then, but now I wasn’t sure.
It turned out I hadn’t used up all my surprise. Gentleman Jack’s hand was worse than Doubtful Mittie’s, worse than Rough Ricky’s face. At least Rough Ricky’s burns had turned to scars, but Gentleman Jack’s flesh was raw and bubbling. It was mostly white—but not a fresh white, not like snowdrops, say, which are so alive they can grow when it’s snowing. It was a flat, dead white, marked with red rivulets and canyons and yellow ooze and drip. The fingers were tenements of raw flesh, staggering up and down. He had only two fingernails. Strange that this made me think of Molly and her pale moon-nails. His index finger was a melted candle. It wept yellow tears.
There were no surprises left. I remembered the Mother Goose rhyme, the one I made into the task rhyme. It talked about a secret.
How had I known that Gentleman Jack had a secret?
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy.
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
Never to be told.
Here was one of them: Gentleman Jack had said he couldn’t use his good hand, but those words hid another secret:
Gentleman Jack didn’t have any good hands.
GENTLEMAN JACK HAD STOPPED SHOUTING. He’d dropped the strike lighter. It lay on the boardwalk, beside one of his bad hands. When you’re bleeding under your skin, you stop being able to do things like call light into existence.
I couldn’t call light into existence, either, but it came to me when I needed it, which was now. Warmth burst from the opal. I glanced down. My shirt was buttoned over the pendant, but the blue fire flashed through. Warmth and light meant Go!
But where was I supposed to Go? What was I supposed to do? If I had the dagger, it might tell me not to do something, and then I’d know that was the very thing I should do. It had told me not to learn to read, because reading is taming, but it turned out that reading is a joy.
If a taming thing is joyful, I’d choose tameness over wildness.
I could think of all the things Gentleman Jack or the dagger had told me to do, or not to do. Then I’d do the opposite, especially if the opposite was joyful.
Then I’d Go!
Gentleman Jack had forbidden me to show the pocket watch to anyone. But it was too late for that. Mr. Elton had seen the Starlings’ emblem on the case.
Gentleman Jack had ordered me to destroy the Songbird’s photograph so no one else could see it and realize I looked like her. But it was too late for that. Mr. Elton had seen the photograph. He’d seen that I resembled my mother. My face was in plain sight, being as it was on the front of my head.
Gentleman Jack hadn’t wanted me to speak without being spoken to first. But it was too late for that. I’d turned against Gentleman Jack, which had forced him to reveal that my Affliction was a lie. Why had he created the Affliction in the first place? Perhaps because he wasn’t sure how much I remembered about my family and the fire. He wasn’t sure what I’d be able to tell other people and get him arrested.
Gentleman Jack had forbidden me to whistle—
That I could still do! I would do whatever he’d forbidden. I’d whistle for the Sheriff, and it wouldn’t be any old whistle. I’d call out to the Sheriff in the Whistling.
There was music in what I wanted to say. There was always music in words. The name Gentleman Jack was a little song: high, medium, low, high.
Three, two, one, three.
It would be difficult to whistle the hard sounds, like the T in Gentleman. I’d have to whistle around them. But I thought I could make the softer N sound, and I knew how to make the softer L sound from the way the peanut man taught me to whistle Paloma.
I would need to whistle the words South and Sapphire, but they only contained soft sounds. Vowels were the easiest to whistle, and next easiest were the soft sounds.
I licked my lips and made a little practice whistle, which Gentleman Jack would say was bad luck. He’d be right, too. It would be bad luck for him.
“Gentleman Jack,” I sang out in the Whistling. “South of Sapphire.”
Speaking the Whistling was a little like learning to read. You felt that you’d never be able to read, and then all of a sudden, the squiggles on the page turned into friendly, smiling words, like Well, and Bell, and Tell.
I must have known how to speak the Whistling in the Before Time.
Gentleman Jack found his voice. “You’re the Songbird,” he said.
“In plain sight,” I said.
“Tell me again about the Songbird,” said Gentleman Jack. “It never was Flora’s baby?”
“It never was Flora’s baby,” I said.
It turned out that Gentleman Jack didn’t have excellent vision, like me. It turned out that even when things were in plain sight, he didn’t see them.
Like this: “You have such an ugly voice,” said Gentleman Jack. “How could you be the Songbird?”
“Breathing smoke and lye damages your voice,” I said.
Like this: “Why did you turn against me?” said Gentleman Jack.
“You were supposed to accept me with an open heart,” I said.
Like this: “You owe me all your gratefulness,” said Gentleman Jack.
“Gratitude has to spring up naturally,” I said, which is a thing in plain sight if you have any brains.
It was Flora who found us first. I recognized her from pretty far away by the shape she made in the air. She had the same baby bulge as before, except now it was strapped to her outside. Her fierce, clear voice reached us before she did. “At last you found a Songbird, Jack!” It was the voice that made the men in the Sapphire sit up and shut up.
But Gentleman Jack could not sit up.
But her voice grew soft when she talked to me. “The Sheriff got your message,” she said. “He’s still busy with the fire, so he sent me on ahead to keep an eye on Jack.”
Keeping an eye on Gentleman Jack meant taking out a revolver and pointing the eye part at Gentleman Jack.
It turned out Flora already knew about the casinos and the diamond stickpins and the marble floors and the champagne dinners and the opals that came with a Guarantee of Good Luck.
Here’s what else she knew: “You craved the boon of a Songbird,” said Flora, “and the Blue Rose sent you Starling.”
“Don’t call her Starling!” said Gentleman Jack.
“The secret’s out, Jack,” said Flora. “The whole town knows who she is. The whole town knows that the name Starling belongs to her.”
I had the peculiar thought that I’d had a name vacuum, because Gentleman Jack hadn’t kept his promise to give me a name. A vacuum is kind of like a magnet. A vacuum will attract something to fill it up.
“Anyway,” said Flora, “the Blue Rose isn’t going to follow you to Netherby Scar just because you stole a Songbird. You can’t simply transplant her like—like some prize tomato!”
I thought about this. “The Blue Rose is made of stardust,” I said, “and the Indigo Heart is made of stardust—”
“Just so,” said Flora. “You can’t separate them.”
You couldn’t take the Blue Rose away from the Indigo Heart. If you put her in an envelope and sent her to Netherby Scar, the envelope would come back marked RETURN TO SENDER.
That was why people from other parts of the Territories made pilgrimages to the Indigo Heart. They even walked to the Indigo Heart. You couldn’t worship the Blue Rose in a pl
ace with no stardust. Which was why you had to take care of it and not dig it up. You had to keep it knotted into itself so it wouldn’t be at loose ends.
My own loose ends had knotted themselves up. A knot for me and the Judge. A knot for me and Mrs. del Salto. A knot for me and Flora, even though Flora had tricked me into thinking she wanted to help Gentleman Jack. Now I knew the truth. She wanted to get Gentleman Jack arrested and convicted.
“You’re Gentleman Jack’s reliable source?” I said it with a question mark, even though I knew the answer.
“I am,” said Flora.
“But not very reliable,” I said, because she had lied to him about the five bricks of gold.
“Not very reliable,” said Flora.
I remembered the story about the Fair she and Lord John had come up with. “But what about the Fair?” I said. “What about the peas and the shells and the beads?”
“I’m sorry we misled you,” said Flora. “There was no truth to the story. The details were all wrong.”
Flora and Lord John had been going to let me be caught telling a lie in court! But what about the apple pie and how they’d changed it to blueberry because of no apples in August? It had made me think they were so kind and clever.
“No one would have blamed you,” said Flora. “You’re just a child and everyone knows how persuasive Gentleman Jack can be.”
Yes, a knot for me and Flora. I understood why she’d tricked me. She had to make sure the jury would convict him.
No knot for me and the dagger. No knot for me and Gentleman Jack. He’d never wanted me. If the Blue Rose had put me in an envelope and sent me to Gentleman Jack, he’d have sent it back with the message DEFECTIVE: RETURN TO SENDER.
No knot for Flora and Gentleman Jack. She’d only pretended to have been knotted up with him. But a sturdy three-way knot for Flora and Lord John and the baby.
“Is the baby a girl?” I said.
The baby made a mewling sound. Flora jiggled the baby, which was like saying “Yes, a girl!” And suddenly Gentleman Jack didn’t matter. Flora and the baby were about life and love. Gentleman Jack and Grandmother were about disappointment and death. I inched closer. “Can I look at her?”
The Robber Girl Page 34