Plain Kate

“There is something for you, Kate.” Drina came down the steps with the lantern in her hand. Kate saw that in her hand was a small braid of white hair. “She gave me something.”

“I’m done with magic,” said Kate.

“A gift,” said Drina, and laid her hand against the side of Kate’s face, where the burn scar was thick and twisted. “A song.” She bent her head, and she sang.

Kate knew the song. Linay had sung it to heal her burned hands, night after night on the haunted punt. And before that, once on a spring day in the marketplace of Samilae, Lenore had sung it for her father. Linay had sung it sad, full of minor falls. Lenore had sung it like a lullaby. Drina sang it gravely, slow and soft: a hymn.

Under Drina’s hands, Kate’s scars pulsed and stung. She tried to hold still. Across the fire, Taggle watched solemnly. After a long while, Drina dropped her hands. Kate lifted hers. Her fingertips mapped the new skin. It was tight and tender, but the slick, bubbling scar was gone. “Will you be a healer?” she asked.

“Maybe,” said Drina. And then, because hope will break the heart better than any sorrow, she started to cry. “It’s what my mother taught me.”

¶

In the morning, they held what funeral they could, with nothing to bury but the charred fragment of Kate’s carving: an eye and forehead, bit of wing. “For Lenore,” said Kate. “And Linay.”

“We don’t say…” Behjet corrected her gently, but Drina interrupted, saying it softly: “For Lenore and Linay.”

And Taggle said what was the traditional blessing in that country: “May all the graves have names.”

“I will carve a marker for them,” said Kate. “But there is something I must do first. Linay stole me a knife once. I am going to go get it.”

Behjet frowned. “That city—it might still be dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” said Taggle stoutly. “She is fearless. And anyway, I am going with her.”

And so Kate and Taggle walked together, back toward Lov. They started early, their shadows stretched together, cat and human, down the long road behind them. “Your voice,” said Kate. “How…how long?”

“A—” Taggle stopped, head tilted. “I cannot make sense of time.”

“It’s not a matter for cats,” said Kate softly.

“No.”

“You will always be my friend,” she said.

His tail quirked and he growled fiercely, “I should think so.”

A last day. The country seemed as if a great curse had been lifted. White clouds drifted across the mirrored puddles on the road. Kate’s shadow grew stronger as the sun swung up the sky.

“Do you remember that horse of Behjet’s?” said Taggle. “The one who gave us such a jouncing?”

“Xeri,” said Kate.

“I clawed his ankle. And the camp dog, the brown one. I rode on his back for half a mile.”

“I remember.”

“And the—the—” he stuttered. “That bird, big—”

“The heron.”

“I could—”

“You could have killed him,” said Kate. “You could have taken him from above.”

“Ah,” said Taggle.

“You’re the king of the creatures,” said Kate. “You’re a panther, you’re a lord.”

They went in silence for a while. The road’s edges were embroidered with aster and wild carrot, glowing white and purple in the sun.

“Taggle?”

“Mmmmm…” he mewed.

“It’s nothing.”

“I’m here,” he said, thick-tongued. “I—”

“You will always be my friend,” she said.

Evening, the bridge to Lov. Ahead of them, Kate’s shadow was spread like a cape across a puddle. Taggle leapt the water in a silver arch, effortless, graceful. He turned back and quirked his whiskers: a cat’s beckoning.

“Taggle?”

“K-Katerina,” he stuttered. “Yessss…” My voice is still here, he meant. But it was a cat’s hiss in his answer.

“Let me carry you,” said Kate, and picked him up.

“Merow,” he said, and butted fondly at her ear.

They came round the city. Small boats bobbed in the pool outside the water gate. White storks paced among them. And there was the green barge. Kate hoisted Taggle onto her shoulder and waded out and climbed aboard.

So much had happened to her here: The tiny piece of decking seemed too small to contain it. But the red vardo was small too. And the lowest drawer of her father’s cabinet had been smaller still. Perhaps it was time to stop choosing small places.

Taggle poured himself out of her arms and hopped down into the hold.

She followed. That space too seemed smaller than it had, and more ordinary. The coiled ropes were looser, the wild herbs more stale. Lightning had lived there, but now it was gone.

The bunk was made up, and the box that had once held her shadow was resting in the middle of it. The stag on the box lid seemed almost alive in the swaying light. Beside it on the blanket was her white dress with its lace trimmings, the jar of salve that had healed her hands, the roll of hand tools, the knife she had refused to take. They were bundled together and tied with a red ribbon that had cost a kopek or two. Kate pictured Linay making up the bed and heading off to die. Had he been thinking of her? Had he wanted her to have the things that he’d given her, in the strange time when they had been almost friends?