Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

I’m so excited it takes all of me not to start running, to sprint through Moon Haven, straight to the Half-Moon Inn, straight to where I know my Gruff will be waiting.

But I don’t. I wait till the last carriage passes, till it’s just Tommy and me and the empty road. I put my hood down low over my face even though it’s hot, just in case somebody might be able to spot me somehow. I stand out is all, with my hair and everything. Besides, you don’t see two dirty kids wandering into a town alone too often. Especially not a town like Moon Haven.

The waiting is almost torture. The walls surround the whole town, and I can’t see inside. I don’t hear any music coming out of them. I don’t smell any food either, just a weird charred smell, like a bonfire long gone out. A few men in hats stand outside the gates, smoking cigarettes, and that’s about all. Maybe the fun stuff doesn’t get started till night. If I know anything about bandits, they sleep late in the day and stay up late at night. That’s what Gruff and the boys did anyway, until it was time for another job.

“This doesn’t feel good,” says Tommy. “I mean it. Everyone looks scared.”

“They’re probably just groggy from staying up too late and having too good a time,” I say. “Now remember. Stay quiet and don’t look anybody in the eye. I’m going to go see about getting a place to stay. You go buy us some food.”

I hand him a few of Zeb’s coins.

“Where am I going to get food?” he says.

“I don’t know. There should be merchants and food carts and a market and all kinds of things. There should be food as far as you can see!”

“Think they’ll have pie?” he says.

“I wouldn’t doubt it. But you’ll have to find a bakery for that.”

“I bet we can buy us a whole pie,” he says. “To celebrate.”

“Any kind of pie you want,” I say. “You ready?”

Tommy nods. I take a deep breath and walk out of the woods, through the gates into Moon Haven.

The streets are wide and muddy, mostly deserted. A few derelicts sleep on a street corner. Some dirty kids throw rocks at an orange cat. Most of the buildings are dark and quiet. Some have busted windows and their signs are hung crooked, the paint old and chipped. There’s no parades, no dancing, just gloom, gloom everywhere. And for the life of me, I can’t see any building big or grand enough to be the Half-Moon Inn. Not the way Gruff described it.

“There’s a bakery,” says Tommy. It’s a small place, but the windows are lit, and people come and go carrying bread. Maybe there won’t be any pies, nothing like that. But at least we’ll have something to eat.

“Go be quick,” I say. “We can meet back here in five minutes.”

All of a sudden he’s scared.

“Don’t leave me alone, Goldeline.”

“I’ll be right back,” I say. “Now go get us some grub.”

He walks off toward the bakery, and I’m glad of it. Now I got to find Gruff.

An old lady sits on her front porch in a rocker. She’s got a big wart on her nose, and one of her eyes squints. I’m scared of her but there’s nobody else around, so I guess she’ll do. I walk up to her and ask her in my sweetest little-girl voice like how I used to do on jobs, “Please, ma’am, can you tell me where the Half-Moon Inn is?”

“You come the same as all of us did, I wager. Young thing you are. Same as I was when I first come to Moon Haven.”

“Please, ma’am. I have to meet a friend there. It’s important.”

The lady laughs. “Oh, I know how it is. You come expecting the lights, didn’t you? You come expecting the artists, all the big murals, nothing but music everywhere, food and drink and laughing folks, that’s what you expected. I can see it. I can see it all over your face.” She spits on the porch boards. “I come looking for the same thing. Thirty years ago, at best. Don’t look it now, but I was a right fair catch then. Secret was the foot.”

The lady pulls up her skirts and there it is, plain as day, a foot carved right out of wood. She knocks on it.

“Hollow! Lost the real one in a poker game,” she says. “Let me tell you, honey, don’t ever bet your left foot on nothing, you hear me?”

“The Half-Moon Inn, ma’am. Can you tell me where it is?”

“That old dump? It’s right over there,” she says. “Or was, anyhow.”

Dump? No, she can’t be talking about the same place.

“It’s not a dump,” I say. “It’s an inn. The biggest, most incredible inn in the whole world. Full of trapeze artists, and acrobats, and singers and . . .”

“I know, honey, I know,” she says. “Those are the same stories they told me too, when I was your age. Doesn’t matter anyhow. It’s all gone.”

The street’s getting dark now, weird dusk time, when bats and night creatures come out, when long black cats stretch themselves in alleyways. The moon up there like a sad lady’s face. This is Gruff’s favorite time of night.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“They burned it down,” she says. “Just yesterday. Burned down the only place for people like us. Took the men out, flogged them in the street. No jail here, being a gambling town, a bandit town. So they tied them up. The gamblers, the magicians, the fortune-tellers, all of them. They . . . they . . .”

The old lady shuts her eyes, like she’s gone weary all of a sudden, like she’s about to keel over and faint.

“Who?” I say. “Who burned it down?”

“The Preacher,” she says. “Come down from Templeton.”

A cold hand grips my heart, all my songs gone quiet. As the lady talks I can see it in my mind, how the Preacher came to Moon Haven with