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,
