Plain Kate

Kate herself kept to her work. The bow was nearly finished. The Wheat Maiden haunted her. The carved face was smooth and beautiful—but in its narrow sadness and quizzical brow, Kate saw her own reflection.

At night she locked herself in her drawer and lay awake in the hot darkness. Her thoughts chased themselves until Taggle came in through the little door she’d made him. He flopped on her face. Plain Kate cuddled him under her chin like a fiddle, and they both went to sleep.

And so it went, for a week. Then one night someone took an axe to her stall.

¶

Lightning. She thought she’d been hit by lightning. It was that loud.

And cold. Night air got dumped over her as if from a bucket. Something smashed into the blanket by her head. Taggle’s claws raked her throat as he bolted out of his hole.

She was awake now. There were daggers of wood everywhere. Her safe little drawer was a nest of splinters. And again something clapped past her ear. An axe. Kate screamed.

The axe yanked free and came again. Air and light and falling things hit her.

Plain Kate yanked the door lever. The drawer lurched and jammed.

Her stall was shattering. Smashing through a gap came that swinging axe.

She pounded her fists against the drawer above her. Something gave way to her hands. She shoved and scrambled and hit air.

Plain Kate lurched to her feet. The square was quiet, full of fog. Whoever had wielded the axe was gone. A few folk had clustered outside the inn door, drawn by the noise. Linay was sitting up on his white blanket, looking sleepy. Heads hung from windows. The town’s watchmen came pounding through the river arch. And everyone was looking at her. She didn’t feel anything. She didn’t even feel frightened. She had gone so far beyond frightened that it would take a while for fear to catch up with her.

The running watchmen stopped when they saw it was only her. The drinkers from the inn had begun to talk again, and wandered inside. Windows closed. Plain Kate stood alone. Her muscles were so tight that they made her tremble, the way wood trembled when bent almost to breaking.

Her father’s stall—her home—was a jagged, jumbled ruin. Tools and half-finished carvings were scattered across the wet cobbles. One pale deer, still whole, leapt toward the edge of a splintered piece of awning. She lifted it and looked at it for a while. Where shall I put it? she thought. I don’t have anywhere to put it. She took four steps away from the wreck, and set the deer gently on bare stones.

Taggle came back and tangled around her feet, bleating. She stooped, stroked him between his ears, then picked up an awl that had spun out from the shattered heap, a little way. She set the tool down beside the deer. She edged back toward the wreck. She moved one broken drawer. Things tumbled out of it. It made a lot of noise, but Plain Kate said nothing. No one came. She worked without a word, sorting carvings and tools from junk and straw.

After a while, Linay came over from his white blanket and worked beside her, and he too was silent.

Plain Kate knew that the axe had come because of the rumors Linay had twisted into life. Perhaps he had even sent the axe wielder—a nudge, a seemingly innocent word in the right ear. But she took his help because some of the things she had to move were heavy, and because his strange, washed-away face was hollowed as if someone had died. He pulled her parents’ marriage quilt from under the last of the rubble. She saw the axe holes in it, the way the fog moved through them like snakes.

¶

Plain Kate folded the quilt into a mat; she hammered some broken planks into a rough workbench. Day came. Summer thunder cleared the market square. Soaked and cold, Plain Kate worked alone to finish the bow, her hair dripping into her face, stinging her mismatched eyes.

When the bow at last was finished, it was as good as anything she’d ever made. It had no ornament, but its simple lines were beautiful, like one bird against the sky.

And now that it was finished, Kate had no more work to do.

She sat for a while, empty as the empty square, thinking. Then without a word she stood up. She picked up the bow like a sword and went off to find Linay.

The afternoon was damp and clammy. Plain Kate followed the faint sounds of the tambourine around the puddles and the horse droppings, through the river-ward gate of the town. Down by the docks she found Linay sitting on the roof of the hold of a small boat. It was the punt she’d seen him on the night the fish had swarmed: a small, neatly made little barge, painted grass-green. Linay was singing a sad song about river spirits, to entertain the men who were smearing pitch in the chinks. She walked toward him, ignoring the looks that beat on her like rain. Big Jan grabbed her arm. “You’re not welcome here, witch-child.”