Plain Kate

At the raged shore between the cut and uncut wheat, there was a splash of poppies. Something dark lay in them like a log. She would sit down on that, she thought, staggering, and—

She saw that the log was a body. A half-grown lad with wheat-bright hair lay sprawled there with his scythe stuck in the ground beside him. Kate toppled to her knees.

Taggle sniffed the lad’s face. “He’s alive. He had fish to eat…but…Katerina. I smell the thing. The thing has done this to him.”

Kate took the boy’s limp hand, shook the rough-clad shoulder. The lad didn’t stir, didn’t even sigh in his sleep. Like Wen, she thought. Like Stivo and like Wen. She shut her eyes and tried to get up, but fell forward instead. She might have passed out. Time stopped, blankly.

When it moved again, Taggle was butting at her hand. She could feel the lump on his skull where the axe had hit him, a gnarled spot under his soft fur. “There are more of them,” he hissed. His fur was on end. “The thing. More sleepers. The thing has been here.”

“The white shadow.” Plain Kate gagged and spit out the sourness in her mouth. “The thing that killed Wen and Stivo.” She looked at the limp, sleeping lad, then yanked the scythe out of the earth, and, leaning on it, staggered to her feet. She stood panting.

Taggle was looking at the sky, a ridge of fur standing up from his spine. Plain Kate looked up too, her skin beginning to goose-bump with a slow-dawning fear. It was dimming toward evening. A fog twined off the river, snaking over the road. It would be night in an hour or two; the fog would come; the white creature would come with it. It had killed Stivo with one touch. She had no defense. “We have to go back,” she said.

So they went back. Exhausted, Kate went stumbling and limping, hauling her burl, leaning on the scythe, until its smooth handle rubbed through her scars. She arrived at Linay’s boat in purple twilight, both hands bloody, stooping like the angel of death.

Linay raised his eyebrows. “That was a long bath.”

Taggle bit him. Kate collapsed at his feet.

eleven

a ghost in the river

“That cat of yours really is something of a bother.” Linay was perched on the edge of the bunk; Kate saw him blurred then silhouetted as she struggled to get her eyes open. She was awake again and confused again. It took her a moment to put the boy in the poppies and the bear cage and the willow pool and the violin bow and the axe in the darkness all together, and in the right order. They swirled around Linay. They were all his fault, and there he was sitting beside her, dressing a wound on his wrist, whistling. “He’s bitten nearly to the bone, look!” He held up one—scratched—finger.

It was day again, and either dawn or sunset. The light at the hatch was soft and birds were singing.

“Sit up, then, fair maid. You should be able to manage that. Though perhaps you ought not strike out on pilgrimage again.” He reached for her hand and pulled her up. Her own hands were bandaged, softly and well, in clean linen.

Linay flexed his hand closed, then mimed his fingers rippling over the violin’s fret. His bitten finger seemed stiff. “It will make a merry mess of my fingering.” He looked at her, smiling but humorless, implacable as snow. “You’re lucky I do not hurt him.”

Plain Kate went cold. She could hear Taggle on the deck, yowling. And Linay sang softly, giving words to the cat’s song:

Oh bats, oh bats, oh snacks with wings—

Come and hear how Taggle sings!

Oh squirm, oh squeak, my wriggly bats—

You’ll make a gift for lady cats!

“I would be sorry to hurt him, Plain Kate. Truly I would.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Blood,” he said lightly. Then, as if remembering he’d said that once before, he added, “Yours this time, Kate, my girl. I’ve given most of what I can spare.”

She was sitting in his reach, backed into the corner of the bunk. He was between her and the hatch. It was getting dark. She lifted her chin—and felt her new scars tug. “If you want blood you should have killed me in my sleep.”

Taggle’s yowls faded as he struck out to hunt and make kittens. Linay was still smiling. “But that’s not how magic works, fair maiden. Magic is”—he spread his bony hands grandly—“an exchange of gifts. A shadow for a heart’s wish, for instance.”

Kate narrowed her eyes. “What do you need blood for?”

Linay looked at her. The looking seemed to go deep. “Perhaps I’ll show you,” he said.

¶

They went out onto the deck. It was cool and clear, just past sunset, and the evening star was opening its eye and the crickets were getting louder. They had gone farther into the hill country, where the river split like braided hair around shouldering, wooded islands. Alee of one of these, the boat rocked at anchor.

There was a fog bank not far behind them.