Plain Kate

Days passed. Linay brought back from his wanderings leather leggings and a farm boy’s smock, and she folded the long linen dress away, gladly. The next day he gave her a roll of hand tools: a rasp, a chisel, three kinds of gouges, an awl, and a carving knife. Kate, whose old knife was as much a part of her as her name, put the new knife away, but she used the other tools gratefully.

“No cat would do this,” said Taggle. “Fight.”

“I am fighting,” she answered. But slowly it stopped being true.

She tried to stop herself from feeling the surge of tenderness that came to her when he worked to heal her hands: the liquid song that had once set her father’s smashed fingers, the crooked sunburned part of Linay’s white hair as he bent his fair head. He is dangerous, she told herself. He does not love me. I do not trust him. I am only going to Lov to get back my shadow.

He does not love me. I do not belong here.

thirteen

shadow

Adrift in a green barge on the tea-colored, slow-flowing Narwe, Plain Kate carved and bled.

She sat on the pole man’s seat, knife in hand, drowsy in the sun. The burl wood wings were almost finished, full of long, strange twists of wood grain, less like feathers now than like long hair spread in water. They had an uneasy beauty. But the lump between the wings would not show her its face. She had cut away the rough and rotten wood and found a smooth knot, like an acorn. Was it a sharp chin and a high forehead? An owl’s beak and flaring ears? Its blank curve told her nothing. She sat with her knife above it and did not know what to do. If the thing was a mirror, then her heart was blank.

She tried to summon up her father’s voice: Be brave. Trust the wood. Lift your knife.

Kate touched the knife to the smooth curve, took a shallow stroke. The blade hit a knot and shot from her hand, skittering across the deck. Kate stood and fetched the knife. She thought about throwing the carving into the river, and maybe following it in.

Taggle was leaning out from the prow like a figurehead, his whiskers quivering close to the water. Kate glanced: Catfish stirred in the willow roots, slowly working their white mouths. Taggle was staring at them, cross-eyed with desire.

“I’m going to lie down,” she told him.

“Fish, fissssshhh,” he answered.

She eased down the ladder into the warm dim hold—and saw Linay.

He was kneeling beside the bunk. On top of the quilts was the box made from the ruins of her father’s stall. Linay had one hand stretched above it, and blood was dripping from one fingertip, into the box.

“Don’t come closer,” he said.

She came closer.

From a few steps away she could see inside the box. It was empty, but it held darkness as a bowl might hold water. The clotting shadow inside seemed to bubble around the blood, like fish after bread crumbs.

She stopped coming closer.

And Linay closed the lid.

“My shadow,” Kate whispered.

“All things need to eat.” Linay shrugged and lifted his pricked finger to his mouth, sucking away the blood. “Tears are better than blood, but some days one just can’t weep. And the shadow must be fed or it will wither to ribs and eyeholes—useless.”

“Useless,” she said softly, “for what? Why do you need it?”

“To raise the dead and spread the fire.” He answered her as if sunk into his own dreams. Then he roused and looked daggers at her. “You’re sharp, Plain Kate. Be careful, or you’ll find yourself cut. If you love your life, do not open that box.”

And he stalked out.

Plain Kate stood looking at the closed box. She put her hand on the carved hart and let its antlers prick the tight new skin on her palm. It was her father’s carving; it was as familiar to her as her own breath. Did something stir? Behind the thin wood, as if behind the surface of a mirror, did something press its hand to hers?

Her heart gave a little lurch as if at a hero’s hurt in a story. “Yes,” something answered her. “Mine.”

Tears, Linay had said. If she wept, would it come to her? She could almost have wept, wounded by the new hope.

¶

The next day, when Linay went foraging in the abandoned country, Kate climbed back aboard the barge. She went below and sat on the edge of the bunk, looking at the box. Taggle climbed into her lap. “Hello,” he said, then rolled over and peered up at her appealingly. “I am fond of you and present my throat for scratching.”

“Taggle,” said Kate. She knitted her fingers through his fur. “I… ”

There’s this itchy spot, you see,” he said. “Just over the left jawbone. Oooooo, yes, therrrrre…” His voice trailed away into a purr.

As you love your life, Linay had said. But she had to see. If there was any chance of getting her shadow back—“I have to try.”

“Oooo, you’re succeeding.” Taggle’s claws bared and velveted as he kneaded at the air. “You’re talented, I’ve always said so. Ooooooo…”

“We’re not talking about you.”