Plain Kate

“So your uncle…” A question had been growing in Kate’s mind for days, growing as her shadow thinned and twisted. “Did he die? He said he’d kill himself. Did he die, without his shadow?”

“He—” Drina paused. “He went mad. Eventually—the clan spoke death to him. They cast him out. He went alone.”

“But what happened to him?”

“You don’t understand,” said Drina. “We spoke death to him. He died to us. His name was closed. He went alone.”

It was a Roamer thing, but Plain Kate understood it better than Drina thought. Toila was coming. In Toila they would test her, and after that she might well be cast out. When they stopped next, Taggle snuggled his head up under her chin and purred while she clung to him. “Not alone,” he rumbled. “Not alone.”

¶

The vardo inched on, farther into the wild country. One evening they camped near a charcoal burner’s hut, deep in the woods. It was abandoned: The woodpiles were covered with bird droppings, the black doorway drifted with last year’s leaves. Plain Kate didn’t like the place, but it did mean she and Drina had little work to do—there was a well for water, and wood for burning.

Kate was almost out of cured wood for carving. She rummaged through the woodpile until her arms were smeared with black rot and her face was sticky with spiderwebs. She did not hear Drina behind her. When her shoulder was touched she jumped and knocked her head hard on a branch that stuck out from the pile. She sat down, feeling sick. Taggle sprang down and pressed his nose to hers as she leaned over and tried to get her breath.

“I’m sorry!” Drina crouched over her. “Are you hurt?”

Taggle’s amber eyes shone inches from her face. “Would you like me to claw her for you?”

Kate put a hand to her head; her hair was damp, but with rain, not blood: There was no warmth. “Not hurt,” she said. She fuzzled the cat between the ears. “No clawing.”

“I only wanted to say—let me braid your hair.” The way she said it made it sound like something dangerous. It took Plain Kate a few moments to remember the story Drina had told about her uncle carving out the heart of his own shadow: He made a rope of his hair and soaked it in blood…

Plain Kate felt her throat tighten. “Are you sure?”

Drina took a moment in answering. She sat down beside Plain Kate in the wet moss. “I saw you, mira. Yesterday, when the sun broke over the river for a moment. Your shadow—it was like a river flowing away from you. Too long. Thin like a needle. And it pointed toward the river. Toward the sun.”

Oak and beech trees brooded over them, muttering in the rain. Plain Kate looked down at her knotted hands. They looked strange: The space inside her fingers held no shadow, only more washed-out gray air. It was as if they were not real.

“We must do something,” said Drina, “and it must be soon.”

Plain Kate turned to look at Drina, and then beyond her, to where the charcoal-burning sheds stood like hives of shadow. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Even if we can’t—thank you.”

“Now! None of that!” Drina stood up, shaking her skirts clean and suddenly sounding like Daj. “You’re not going to die, you know!”

So Plain Kate got up, and followed Drina into the red vardo, where the younger girl perched on the bunk and brushed Kate’s hair, and then plaited it. She was singing as she did it, something tuneless, her breath warm on Kate’s scalp. Kate promised herself that no matter what happened, she wouldn’t forget this: having her snarly hair brushed slowly smooth, feeling the warm fingers on her scalp and then the shifts and tugs as Drina made up the braid.

Taggle, all the while, insisted he should be next when it came to fussing over fur.

When they were done, Plain Kate had a small braid, the width of a finger, dangling over each ear. Drina tucked them up on the crown of her head and covered them with one of her own scarves: a bright bit of blue rag with a pattern of stars. She arranged it over the tips of Kate’s ears and tied it at the nape of her neck. “There. Now you look like a Roamer.”

“Not especially,” said Taggle.

They both ignored him.

“Let it dry there,” said Drina. “Keep it covered. Don’t let my father see.”

Then she turned to chase the cat with the comb, threatening to braid his tail. The pair of them romped off, leaving Kate standing very still under the rain-hissing canvas. She could feel her shadow lifting and twisting away.

¶

When they were breaking the morning camp, Plain Kate went to Daj to explain that she was out of wood.

Daj looked around at the trees, the charcoal burner’s woodpile. She said nothing, eloquently.

Kate winced. “Cured wood, I mean. Green wood—living wood—shrinks when it dries. If you carve green wood your work will crack.”

So Daj rumbled and bumbled, and took Kate off to the men’s fire, where she found Stivo hunched up over tea while the other men oiled harnesses and tack. She dragged him up by the ear.

“Take this little one into the forest,” she ordered. “She needs wood.”