Goldeline Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR MOMMA

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  After the job, when it’s all over, when Gruff lets me climb on his shoulders till I’m way high up with the leaves, the reds and greens and oranges, all the pretty colors, only then do I get to take off the cloak. Gruff always puts me on his shoulders after a job, after it’s over and we’re off celebrating, having a good time. Then I get to be his little girl again, his little Goldeline. But I got to wear the cloak till then.

  I wait in the tree line, hiding, just a little off from the road. The woods are still and quiet, not a bird or a squirrel in sight, like the trees know something’s going to happen, like the whole woods are waiting for it. Gruff and his men hide deeper in the trees, painted up and ready with their knives and hooks and swords, same as they’ve been all morning. It’s boring, all the waiting around.

  Plus it’s stuffy in my cloak. Even fall here is too hot for something so thick and heavy. But Gruff says to wear it because it keeps me hidden.

  “The cloak makes you look all derelict,” Gruff says, “like a pitiful little orphan girl.”

  Which is what I am, I guess. But I don’t like to think of it that way. Because I got people of my own. I got Gruff and his boys, the wild and free woods. I’m no orphan. I’m a bandit.

  But here comes a carriage, so I got to go work now.

  It’s a black thing, shabby and hobbling, a long cart with a big canvas covering over it. That means they got something to hide, something worth something. Gruff’s going to like that. The cart’s drawn by two horses, and it’s going pretty slow. The driver is a skinny man with gray hair and a mustache, smoking a pipe. He’s looking up at the clouds, squinting at the air, like he’s daydreaming.

  Well, this should be easy.

  I hop out of the woods into the road and let my hood fall down, and my hair spills out all white and lovely, “a splash of summer snow” Gruff calls it when he’s being sweet. I’ve never seen snow except once, and it was just a piddly couple of inches that melted in a day. But I’ve seen my hair in a mirror before. Nobody I ever seen has hair like me, except my momma. I wave my arms at the driver and say, “Please, sir, stop. I’m lost. Help me.” And the driver slows on to a stop because I’m only eleven and I don’t look but ten, tops. If I was any bigger or older or rascally-looking, you can bet he would have run me right over.

  The driver’s a little spooked, you can tell. There’s rumors about these woods, stories people tell of changeling babies and ghosty demons and dead white witches that go howl and moan with their torches in the night. Bandits too, the most fearsome in the land. But none of that can be me because I’m just a little girl, and it’s daylight anyway.

  “What can I do for you, little girl?” says the driver.

  He’s got no idea what’s coming for him. The covering opens up and a man pokes his head out, red-faced and huffing. “What are you stopping for? Don’t you know it’s not safe to stop here?”

  This man I know. I’ve seen him before. This man is a Townie, from Templeton, a tiny place in the Hinterlands. It’s where I’m from too. I remember him from the last day. He was there for all of it. I remember his fat face screaming at Momma. He was right up front, right there next to the Preacher, one of the loudest Townies of all. You bet I remember him. When he sees me, his mouth falls open and his eyes get real big, like he knows exactly who I am too. Well, not exactly who I am, but close enough.

  This isn’t just going to be easy, it’s going to be fun.

  “It’s the Ghost Girl,” the man says, his face stricken, aghast. “It’s the Ghost Girl of the Woods.”

  I smile real big at him.

  Gruff and the boys burst from the wilderness, some with their faces smeared with blackberry juice and some with bags on their heads that have eye slits and mouth holes outlined in red. They got knives and hooks and swords, and they have rags soaked in the tea I brewed for them, made from the forgetting herbs, the only bit of magic Momma ever taught me. They rush the cart all scream and holler, the horses bucking from fright, the whole forest done waiting, gone wild and exploded with demons.

  This time I swear I’m going to watch, I’m not going to get scared and shut my eyes again. But at the last second I pull my cloak over my face and walk away, same as I always do. I cover my eyes and hide until Gruff and his boys have the Townie and driver tied up, until the forgetting herbs work their magic, until Gruff and his men have carried them into the woods. Sometimes the people come back from the woods, terrified, spewing wild stories about a Ghost Girl who let chaos loose around them, how they woke up in the woods days later with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Those are the lucky ones. Some people never come out of the woods at all.

  It doesn’t make me happy, but it does something else, like there’s a horrible hurt deep in me that only this kind of thing can touch. The punishment of the Townies. Maybe it’s justice—what they deserve—but really I just think it’s revenge.

  And revenge can be an awfully wonderful thing.

  Gruff’s boys tear through the carriage, upturn bags, dig for anything that could be traded, sold, or eaten. Sometimes a book for me, or even just something pretty.

  “Hey, Gruff,” says one of Gruff’s boys. His name’s Pugh and he’s old and scraggly and only got one eye. Pugh doesn’t like me much, which is fine by me, because I think he’s the closest thing to wicked we got. Still, Gruff trusts him, so I guess I got to also. “You want to take a guess as to what all these barrels are full of?”

  “I’d wager it’s nothing less than the northern vineyards’ finest,” says Gruff. “A quality drink indeed. Illegal too, seeing as how the Preacher done banned the stuff.”

  He wipes some of the scary off his face, till he looks a bit more like my own Gruff. Tall and dashing, like a bandit king from a fairy story. He’s fortyish maybe, with his hair going a little in the front and pulled into a long ponytail in the back. He’s got a little bit of a gut too. But his mustache is long and elegant, and his forehead looks noble, his eyes laughing under the thick black eyebrows.

  “Best to let me check it myself,” says Gruff. “Wouldn’t want one of my boys getting himself poisoned.”

  Gruff takes his knife and stabs it in the top of one of the barrels. He cups a hand in the rich dark purple of it and brings it up to his lips. Then he spits it out and makes a sick face.

  “Chuck it,” he says. “It’s gone bad.”

  “Got to be kidding me,” says Pugh.

  “You’d think we’d get a break now and then. Just a little something to sip out in these woods, where it’s so dull,” says old sweet Leebo, wiping sweat off his forehead.

  “Don’t nothing ever go right for us,” says Mince, whose dad was a butcher. He robbed half our knives from his pop’s shop back in Templeton. “Luck of a bandit.”

  “Aw, I’m just messing with y’all,” says Gruff. “It’s the best we ever had in these parts. Guessing old Mr. Greencoats here was doing himself a smuggling business. Guessing he was trying to run this under the nose of the Preacher, make himself a little profit.” Gruff cuffs another handful of the dark purple and
slurps it like a dog. “Well, I figure we can say we were the instruments of justice for once.”

  “Yeah,” says Pugh. “We carried out the law right and proper, didn’t we?”

  “Let’s huff this junk back down to the camp,” says Gruff. “A barrel to a pair of men. No whining. You’ll be complaining plenty when all this is drunk up and you’re wanting more. Gonna take us all day if we ain’t quick about it. Come on now. Get to it.”

  “What should I grab, Gruff?” I say.

  He jerks his head back to me, swift and fierce, like he forgot I was even there. He looks scary, lips purple, face smeared with berry juice, and for a second I’m scared, same as how Mr. Greencoats the Townie must have felt right when Gruff and his boys burst out of the woods. It makes me feel pretty low, if you want to know the truth about it. But then his face unscowls and his eyes soften and he wipes his mouth and he’s my own sweet Gruff again, the one who took me out to the woods, the one who saved me. He bends down on a knee and looks me right in the eyes.

  “Goldy, my angel,” he says, “you ain’t got to grab a thing. You just carry yourself right back to camp and see if you can get some of the other boys up and moving. Lazy bums might hop off their butts for once.”

  “Will do, Gruff,” I say, and he laughs.

  I like this part. I get to bring good news to Gruff’s boys. “Blessed be the messengers,” says the Book, “when the news is good. But woe be unto those who bring bad tidings to the King.” I think I can ignore that second part for tonight. I know all about the Book from when I was little. It’s rare folks even get to read a copy of the Book on their own. I hear most towns don’t have but one copy, and that’s the one that’s locked up tight in the reliquary, where only the higher-ups can get to it. But me, I probably know more Book stuff than any other bandit in the whole woods. I take off the cloak and fold it over my arm, happy to skip my way back to the camp, singing the nothingsong Momma taught me, a messenger with nothing but good news to bring.

  Tonight the camp is quiet. We’re all pretty worn-out from the job today, even though we got some good stuff, even though we got plenty to eat tonight. Gruff’s boys are talking, telling stories by the fire. About fifteen of them total, the good-for-nothings, that’s what the Townies called them. All the lazy ones who never help with the jobs, who just loaf around all day. Gruff always says the only thing you can count on everyone showing up for is mealtime. We even got a couple of women too, like Murph, who’s six feet tall and has one front tooth, and Lemon, who used to be Mince’s wife. She’s shorter than me but mean as a bobcat, and I’m a little bit scared of her.

  Gruff just calls them all his boys.

  You can hear a few men just out of the reach of the fire, and their laughter explodes from the dark like their own kind of light. Sometimes even Murph will sit me down and tell me a story. She looks tough but her stories are the best, about her days as a sailor slinking up and down the coastline, about storms at sea, about rogue waves higher than the treetops. I’ve never seen the ocean. I’ve never even seen a mountain.

  Gruff comes strutting out of the tent in his evening robe, a tattered velvet thing pilfered from some rich guy in a job a few months back. It doesn’t fit him quite right, and his stained undershirt hangs tight over his belly. He’s got a jewel-crusted flagon for a cup, and he’s pouring good drink out into the nice goblets, passing them around to everyone. It’s a reward for a job done right, even to the ones who didn’t do a thing. You’d think we were the rich guys, all the stuff we got around here. I even have a decent library hidden in my tent. I keep every book that isn’t too heavy or isn’t all mucked up. Gruff smiles when he sees me.

  Momma said I could trust Gruff, that he was a good man, as far as men go.

  See, Gruff was good to Momma and me, sometimes gave us food when we didn’t have any, potatoes and meat and vegetables, stuff he probably stole from somewhere. But Gruff was kind, and I can’t really say that about much of anybody else I ever knew. That’s why I took up with Gruff and his boys after the Townies killed Momma. The people in Templeton I mean. The Preacher and everyone wanted me dead too. The same wicked in her was in me, the Preacher said, on account of how we both had magic. Said he could see it in my eyes, gold-flecked, same as Momma’s. That’s why she named me Goldeline, because of my eyes.

  After all the men are passed out, me and Gruff go off to a secret spot, a little clearing where there’s a stream and a great big rock, where you can lie on your back and hear the trickle of water and feel the cool of the rock on you, where you can best see the sky. I’m tired and feeling a little bit lonesome, missing Momma, missing our hut in the woods where I was always safe, where I knew I would always belong. I look up at all the stars and point to all the pictures in them, the archer and the saint and the dog and the dippers, the birds and the dragons, the constellations I know already and the ones I just make up on the spot. It’s a nice game, to draw pictures with the stars.

  “Tell me a story,” I say.

  “What about, darlin’?” says Gruff.

  “Tell me about Moon Haven.”

  “Lord, Goldy. Again?”

  “Please,” I say. “You don’t even have to tell me a story about it. Just describe it to me. It’s my favorite place in the world.”

  “Angel, you never even been there.”

  “That’s why I need you to tell me about it again.”

  “A’ight,” he says, sighing. “To start with, law don’t take in Moon Haven. It doesn’t know what to do with itself. That’s why folks like you and me can get along just fine there, without any trouble. Gambling, circus animals, magic—the good kind, like what your momma had—anything you want, right there in Moon Haven. Right there in the heart of it, you know what they got? A courthouse? Heck naw. What they got is the most wonderful place of all.”

  “What is it?” I ask, same as always.

  “What it is,” says Gruff, “is the Half-Moon Inn. You never seen a place like it. I doubt there’s any other place like it in the whole world. There’s dancers, women who you wouldn’t believe. Mermaids, I seen a mermaid there, they had her out on display. It was just a dummy of course, stuffed, because you could never yank a mermaid out of the water without her turning straight to dust. But you could see how pretty she would have been if she was real. You could see how a sailor would drown himself for her. And a lady with the whole story of the world tattooed on her body. You could read armies fighting, great battles and love and stars, all kinds of things written into her, from her neck down to her toes.”

  “They got stuff for girls there too?” I say.

  “Sure thing. They got dresses, all colors, silk and everything else. They got seamstresses, they got madams serving tea and cake. They got dollhouses for days, a million different kinds of dolls, porcelain, all different kinds of hair, anything you want. A special place for kids to play with them while the grown folks go about their business. Whole barn out back full of bunny rabbits for girls to pet. What are you wanting with little-girl stuff anyhow? You ain’t any little girl anymore. You’re an outlaw, like me.”

  “Pretty big inn to have all that in it,” I say.

  “Shoot, it’s the biggest inn in the Hinterlands. Tall as a castle, but made out of wood. Got a flag with a skull and jewels for eyes on it, flies high over the whole woods. The doors are higher than a normal house, bear rugs all over the floors. Just like a king’s palace in a storybook, I guarantee you. All you could dream of they got in the Half-Moon Inn. There’s an old lady with no eyes who can read your future in a deck of cards. Speaks through her daughter, little blond girl, not too much older than yourself, by the name of Zemfira. You two would be friends, you and Zemfira would. She could talk to dead people too, anybody you want. Spirits, you know, dancing like little fires over your head.”

  “Could she talk to Momma for me?” I say.

  “Course, Goldy, you bet. Could even talk to old dead Ajur Redbeard if you wanted, fiercest pirate that ever sailed. They got acrobats and
knife-throwers and sword-swallowers and swashbucklers and Siamese twins, anything you could want is in the Half-Moon Inn. Could’ve spent my whole life in the Half-Moon Inn.”

  “Why’d you ever leave?” I say. “If I was there, I’d never leave. It would be my home forever.”

  “Well now.” Gruff coughs. I like the way it rumbles in his chest, like he has a dragon hidden inside him, big and powerful and fire-breathing. “Guess I got crossed up a little. Cards, women, you know how it gets. Or maybe you don’t. Heck, I hope you don’t. Let me put it like this. Old Gruff took a fancy to a gal, ’bout nineteen, name of Helena Gregg. She just happened to have herself a husband, not that I knew anything about it. Boy, he was a bruiser. Could break boulders with just his skull, that kind of guy. Like to whooped me into mush.”

  “How’d you beat him?” I say.

  “Honey, here’s something you got to learn, and learn it good. Sometimes you got to stand your ground and fight. Win or lose, take what’s coming to you. Other times you got to turn tail and head for the woods. Like we done, after Templeton. No use fighting God and the law at the same time, a dangerous combination if there ever was one. No use getting pounded by some hillbilly husband over a little misunderstanding, know what I mean? Also, there was an issue with money.”

  “Money?”

  “I’m not the best gambler there is. Always pay my debt. Eventually anyhow. Pay my debt when I can. I’m an honest man. Except for when that debt is so high dadgum royalty couldn’t pay it. Again, sweetheart, that’s when you pack your bags and slip out through the window. Shimmy down on your bedclothes. Get out in the darkness, leave not a track behind.”

  “I want to go,” I say.

  Gruff looks at me a little confused for a second, like he forgot we were talking about Moon Haven altogether.

  “Course you do,” he says. “And you’ll get to, one day, mark my words. When you’re a real bandit, of course. Because only real bandits are allowed at the Half-Moon Inn.”

  See, Gruff doesn’t think I’m a real bandit yet. I know Gruff’s boys agree with him. Some of them—Pugh, Lemon, even old Buddo—laugh at me, still treat me like a kid, even though I’m the one who goes out in the road and waves down the carriages, even though I’m the only one who can mix up the forgetting herbs. So what if I get scared and have to close my eyes sometimes during the robberies? If it wasn’t for me, for the Ghost Girl of the Woods, the Townies would know it’s just flesh-and-blood people out here looting them, and then they wouldn’t be scared anymore. In fact, they’d come after us. I’m the only reason we can survive in the woods. Sometimes it makes me so mad I could spit.