Goldeline

to stop. But only three of Gruff’s boys showed up today, and I have to do extra to help. The rest are all at the camp, loafing, waiting on Gruff to bring back food or money. But even if all the boys leave and it’s just me and Gruff I’ll stick by him and one day we’ll go to Moon Haven and be happy forever together.
The carriage is fancy. Velvet curtains, pillows on the seats. Rich stuff. Not much we can use though, just knickknacks, some sewing things, a stiff-bound book too heavy for my pack. I don’t know why, but it seems like it belongs to happy people, like these are the things you get to have when you’re a person with a family.
But then something wonderful happens.
I pick up a blanket bundled on the floor and there’s a boy with bright-red hair hiding underneath. Like a changeling boy from a fairy story. He’s got both hands covering his mouth, trying to keep from crying out. He’s my age, I think. A little younger. He looks at me with the scaredest eyes, and it makes me remember the awful day when Momma died. I look into his eyes and I know just how he feels because that’s how I felt that day too.
I stop for a good long minute. Then I do something maybe stupid. I know I shouldn’t, I know Gruff would beat me raw, I know I’m putting us all in danger, that what I’m about to do is permanent, can never be undone, and maybe it’ll ruin everything. But I can’t help it. It’s like there’s a little voice in me that sings, Look in his eyes, Goldeline. He’s just the same as you.
I stick my head out of the carriage and check to see if Gruff’s looking. He’s not, so I drop the blanket back over the boy.
“Don’t move for a really long time, okay?” I whisper.
I walk over to Gruff and tug on his shirtsleeves.
“You find anything?” he says.
“Nope,” I say. I say it just like I’d say it if it were the truth. See, I’m a real good liar.
“Well I did,” he says. Gruff pulls a white dress from the trunk. It’s so pretty you could call it a gown. It shimmers and sparkles in the sunlight. I never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
“For me?” I say.
“For you,” he says.
I can hardly believe it. It’s the finest thing anyone has ever given me.
“You hang on to that dress now. Don’t let it drag in the dirt.” Gruff turns to Dunce and Buddo. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starved.”
“Hey, Gruff?” I say.
“Yeah, Goldy?”
“If it’s okay with you I’m just going to walk around by myself for a bit.”
“Sure, Goldy.” He bends down on a knee and looks me fierce in the eyes. “Just don’t cross the road, off into those other woods. Nothing there for you. I don’t want to be crawling around the woods all dadgum night looking for you. And if you hear anybody coming down this way you make a run for it. Keep to the trees where they can’t follow you. You hear me?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Let’s go, boys,” says Gruff.
“Hey, Gruff?”
“Yeah, Goldy?”
“What’s on the other side of the road? Ghosts?”
“Yep,” he says. “And worse.”
“What’s worse than ghosts?”
“You remember the stories, Goldy. I told you a million times.”
“Tell me one more.”
He sighs. “It ain’t just ghosts out there, though there are plenty of those. Dead bandits who never stopped robbing after they died, drowned women come up with lungs full of black water. But there’s worse stuff than that, stranger stuff, wilder stuff.”
“Like what, Gruff?”
Gruff looks at me serious, his eyes gone fierce.
“Bad people, Goldy. Folks who ain’t got any code. Folks who will skin you alive just as soon as wink at you.”
“That’s why you won’t let me cross to the other side of the road, to those other woods?”
“That’s why. Now hush up. We got to get to camp and get some grub. All this action’s got me hungry.”
They walk back into the tree-line dark.
When they’re gone, I hang the dress on a tree branch so it won’t get dirty and climb a bent limb up high and wait. Below me the dress flows and dangles in the wind like a lady’s in it. A dancing ghost lady in her white dress out for the night, all the ghost music us breathers can’t hear.
I shut my eyes until I see blue butterflies under my eyelids and sing the nothingsong so quiet the wind won’t bother to blow it anywhere. I do something I don’t do a lot. I pray to Momma to help. That’s the kind of thing that the Preacher will burn you up for, blasphemy, even worse than the robberies Gruff has done.
I hear little footfalls in the road like a squirrel scamper and I open my eyes and it’s the boy. He stops dead still and glances over his shoulder, like he’s worried Gruff is still out in the woods, waiting for him. He runs again, but pauses at the dress. I look down on him from up in my tree and it makes me sad. See, it’s probably his momma’s dress, not mine, and it never will be mine. Not really. That’s the problem with stealing, with being a bandit. Everything you got is really someone else’s.
The wind twirls the dress on the branch. He reaches out to touch the sleeves but I want the dress for me so I grab a twig off the tree and snap it in two. It cracks like a rifle shot in the silent woods.
The boy screams and runs down the road toward town. I watch him till he’s almost gone. I know what it’s like, being alone in the world, scary things everywhere. I know just what it’s like. If I let him go, he’ll find his way to town fine, so long as a bear or something doesn’t get him. There’s only this road,