Plain Kate

She closed her eyes again. The light from the hatch was blinding, and the rock of the barge huge and sickening. She felt Taggle lean into her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but before she could answer, she dropped into a stunned sleep.

¶

Sun. She had been damp so long, and the sun felt so good. Waking, Plain Kate lay still and let it wash over her.

Then she remembered and flailed up. A white hand on her chest pushed her back. Linay was leaning over her, smiling. “Had another adventure, did we?”

“Let me up,” she snapped, swatting his hand away. She pushed herself to sitting. She was not in the hold anymore, but on a mat of moss and willow branches by the campfire. She shuddered to think of him scooping her up and carrying her ashore.

Taggle was beside her, stretched limp on his side. “Taggle!” Kate was terrified for him.

“Oh, honestly,” sulked Linay. “I’ve only sent him to sleep. He was my gift to you, Kate, when you gave me your shadow. Do you really think, after so much distance and so much darkness, I would break that exchange?” He drew a thumb between Taggle’s ears. “Wake, cat.”

The cat woke spitting and hissing and leapt at Linay. The magician lifted his hands and sang. The cat seemed to hit a spiderweb midair. He dropped, and pushed again toward Linay, but couldn’t reach him. Plain Kate was just glad to see that Linay already had cat scratches across his nose and neck: evidence that getting her out of the boat had not gone smoothly.

“We really don’t like you,” the cat growled.

“And I really don’t blame you,” Linay said, sighing. “But you must listen to me. You cannot steal your shadow back, Plain Kate. If you set it loose without my help, it will kill you. I am not sure, indeed, how you survived this time.”

She wished she had Taggle’s claws, to swipe him. “Leave me alone, Linay.”

He sat transfixed—hurt, she thought. Then he stood. “We will rest here the day,” he said, his back to her, tending the fire. “And I will bleed tonight. But tomorrow we must again travel.” He walked off into the willow trees and out of sight.

¶

Plain Kate slept, and woke feeling stronger, and warmer for Taggle’s chin fitting neatly in her hand. Still, the sun was slipping away. Upriver, she could see a wall of weather: fog and cloud. A cold draft was blowing it toward them; she could smell its dampness. She sighed: more rain. “It’s as if it’s following us,” she muttered, ruffling Taggle’s fur.

“We draw it. Like a bear on a chain.” Kate sat up and Taggle sprang to his feet. Across the fire, Linay was sitting on a stone, skinning a rabbit. “I’m a weather witch remember? The moods of wind and water.” He thrust a sharpened stick through the rabbit like a man who knew swords. “That fog is hungry.”

“You,” said Kate. “You made the fog and the rain. All of it. Through the whole country.”

There was horror in her voice, but Linay bowed modestly as if it had been awe. “It is no small work, I admit. I’d be ashamed to tell you the dark things I’ve done for such power. Your shadow is only the latest—and almost the last. I have been preparing this journey for years.”

“But—” She couldn’t begin to tell him what she was thinking. He’d made the fog and rain, the crops failing in the wet, the damp fear she’d seen growing like a mold in the Toila market. Even Taggle’s ears were edging back as it sank in.

But then, Taggle was still a cat. “I’ve been wet,” he snarled. “My paws were damp for months.”

Linay shrugged one marionette shoulder. “The fog is the rusalka’s home. She needs it as a frog needs water. It is half her skin. Even the blood-spell would not bring her without this fog.” And he sang:

Foggy little oxbows

Forest pools where no one goes

Lost links of the river dreaming dreams

“Without me she’d be trapped in some lonely place where the fog never lifts. With me, she can travel. All the way to Lov.”

Plain Kate pictured it. The wall of fog was creeping up the river, just faster than a man could walk. In it, the rusalka. Anyone she found, she would take—take like Stivo, take like Wen. This was the dark story they were telling in Toila. By now it was a horror. The countryside was emptying in front of it like a forest emptying in front of a fire.

And she had been helping him. Giving him blood for the drawing spell. For weeks. Kate shook—and turned sideways and was sick.

Linay raised an eyebrow and propped the impaled rabbit up over the fire.

Plain Kate felt gray and cold. Waiting for the Roamers to burn her had been no worse than this. “Why?” she said. “Why are you taking her to Lov?”

“Oh,” he sang. “I have reasons. I have plans and schemes.” He ripped a leg from the roasting rabbit and threw it, bloody, to Taggle—who leapt back. “Come and eat your dinner.”

¶

Plain Kate carved. She carved to keep from shaking. She carved to think.