Plain Kate

“What of me?” groused Daj’s husband, Wen. “I don’t want to sleep with all these squirming puppies!” Plain Kate remembered seeing Daj and Wen hold hands and kiss in the shadows between the men’s fire and the women’s, and guessed the true source of his disappointment. He was still casting glances at Daj when Behjet and Stivo took him in.

Plain Kate was not much impressed with bender tents. They were made with just a few willow saplings stripped into poles, then bent and thrust into the ground at both ends. A sheet of canvas went round the poles, and some rope secured the whole thing—though not very well. They were muggy and mud-floored. Plain Kate, who had slept for years in a drawer, would have preferred to sleep in the vardo. But Drina spread her arms to touch both walls, as if she’d been given a palace.

“With my mother’s people, I stayed in the maidens’ tent. But here there are no other maidens—everyone’s married. So they made me mind the little ones.” She set about stacking a small fire in the middle of the space. “I am glad you’ve come, Plain Kate.”

Kate found her throat tightening. She wanted to answer—I am glad too—but it suddenly seemed an impossibly hard thing to say. “Is this the place?” she asked. “To do the spell?”

Drina sobered—mostly. A delighted smile was still teasing around the edges of her face, like tendrils of hair curling out from under a scarf. “While we have walls, yes. So that no one stops us.”

The way she said it made Kate wonder if perhaps someone should.

¶

But of course no one did. They had stopped, Plain Kate learned, to breed the horses, a project that required both laughter and serious talk, and took everyone’s attention. There was human business too: trading of news and goods, songs and stories. Pan Oksar’s farm was a bustling, happy place, even in the mud and endless rain. So it was that when Drina lit the fire in the center of their tent, turning the walls golden and the little space cozy with flickering light, for the first time that Plain Kate could remember, they were quite alone, and likely to stay that way.

Drina leaned forward, nursing the newborn flames with twigs and splinters. Smoke and flares of light swirled across her dark face.

The same light rippled through Kate and she felt herself waver like water. She put a hand in Taggle’s warm, solid fur. “So,” said the cat. “You’re cooking something?”

Plain Kate said nothing. There was an ache around her eyes because she had been holding them wide open. “I saw my mother do this,” Drina explained. She seemed embarrassed, tentative. “There was a woman who had lost her memory. My mother bound it back to her with a rope of hair. She bound it with the hair and she called it back with—”

Drina stopped. A silence hung, in which the wet wood popped up and sputtered.

“Blood,” said Kate.

Drina nodded.

“And fire?” she asked.

“Fire,” said Drina. “You gather up the spell slowly, you see,” she said, and Kate could hear the ghost of Drina’s mother’s voice as the Roamer girl repeated something she had not herself thought through. “As a tree gathers the sun. But to loose it all at once—fire is one of the best ways.”

“It really seems a pity not to cook something,” said Taggle, who saw only one use for fire.

“Later.” Plain Kate put a hand on his back. “Drina, are you sure—” she began, but then saw how the quickening fire was throwing Drina’s and Taggle’s shadows sharply against the wall of the tent. Her own shadow was spread out over the glowing canvas in writhing swirls, thin as smoke at midday. She closed her eyes and felt the light go through her like arrows.

“…be afraid,” Drina was saying, when Kate heard again. “It’s only a few drops.”

Plain Kate took a deep breath. “What do we do first?”

“Cut the braids off,” said Drina. “Can I use your knife?”

Kate handed her knife over and undid the scarf with the blue stars. She could not help stiffening as Drina came toward her with the knife raised, drawing back as Drina’s shadow fell across her face. The braids smarted and tugged at her temples as Drina sawed at them with the knife. Finally they came free: The two cut braids were coiled up in Drina’s palm like a pair of young snakes.

“Just let me—” said Drina, leaning toward her again, knife trembling in her hand. Plain Kate winced, but before she even understood what was happening, Drina had cut her on the top of her ear.

Plain Kate gasped and clamped her hand over the little wound. “Sorry, sorry!” Drina tugged Kate’s hand away and put her own hand in its place. “But it’s one of the best places to get blood—lots from a little wound, and you can cover the scars.”

Warm blood trickled behind Kate’s ear and down her neck. “It’s all right,” she said. She could feel the silky ropes of her own cut hair against her skin. When Drina pulled them away, the braids glistened here and there where the blood had wetted them.

Kate fingered the wound. Truly it was only a nick; she could hardly feel it. “Now what?”