Plain Kate

Plain Kate didn’t know what to say to that. A sure place—it was too big a thing even to think about. Behjet had read her heart’s wishes as well as any witch. Not alone.

“Off you go then,” said Behjet. “It’s busy work to break camp; I’m sure your hands will find something.”

***

Plain Kate found Mother Daj still sitting on the wagon steps. The rooster was mostly plucked, and Daj wore a spray of glossy tail feathers tucked into her turban. She was presiding over two younger women shaking out great rugs and another bent over a jumbled box of gear. At Daj’s feet, a girl a little younger than Kate was scouring a pot. The girl looked up with eyes as bright and frank as a sparrow’s.

“Mother Daj,” Kate asked, feeling shy. “Can I help?”

“There’s naught that needs carving this minute,” Daj answered. Kate swallowed—it was such a quick dismissal. Daj seemed to see the twitch and guess the reason. Her face softened, and she said, “Drina, lass. Finished that, nearly?”

The girl with the pot replied,“I have to go for more sand.” Her voice was a sparrow’s too: clear and piping, hiding nothing. She had a narrow nose and a wide mouth, and big eyes that were uptilted, like a cat’s. Though younger than Kate, she was taller, and softer: a girl who had never been hungry. Her long black hair was bound back with a scarf of green and yellow; her dark skirts were embroidered with poppies.

“Take this one,” said Daj, pointing an elbow at Kate while she turned the chicken over. “This is Kate Carver, who will go our way a while.”

“Plain Kate,” corrected Plain Kate.

“Hmph, so you said.” Daj eyed her. “As you’d have it, kit. But you’re not so plain as it needs remarking on every moment.” Kate blushed, and Daj smiled softly, and said, “Drina here will show you about. Keep you from being trampled.” She lifted the limp, feathery head and pointed around with it. “What with the great bustle.”

So Drina picked up an empty pail and led Plain Kate down toward the river. They climbed over the loose wall of stones at the edge of the sheep meadow and into the unkempt land where the river sometimes flooded. The grasses there were tall and bent with water. Sapling birch trees trembled and dripped in the misty rain. Plain Kate’s leggings got soaked and heavy. Drina’s long legs shone wet, and her skirts drooped around her knees. The two girls went silently, sneaking glances at each other.

“You wouldn’t really get trampled,” offered Drina after a while. “Daj was joking.”

“Oh, it was funny,” said Kate. She meant it but it came out dry, and Drina laughed.

“Anyway—you must be used to more people than this.”

“Yes, but—” Plain Kate wasn’t sure how to explain. “They don’t usually talk to me.”

“Well,” said Drina, swinging her pail in a full loop, “if you go the Roamer way, we’re not short on talk. Lots of other things, but not talk, is what Daj says.”

“Is Daj your mother?”

“Oh, no!” Drina laughed. “She’s too old! I just call her that. Everyone does. It’s respect.”

“Call her…?” Kate was lost.

“Daj. Oh, you don’t speak the tongue. You’ll have to learn a little.Daj means‘mother.’ But she’s not, she just looks after me, because my mother is dead.”

“So’s mine.” Plain Kate was glad of it, for the first time. It gave her something in common with this cheerful, well-loved girl.

“Oh!” Drina stopped swinging her pail and stood there, skirt-deep in the soaked grass. She looked legless, like a chess piece. “Do you miss her?”

“No. She died when I was born.”

“Oh,” said Drina, and started walking again.

“I miss my father, though.” Plain Kate was trying to keep the flow of talk going. “He died four years ago, in theskara rok. He got the witch’s fever.”

And Drina—cheerful, smiling Drina—snapped at her, almost snarled: “Don’t call it that!”

Plain Kate felt her shoulders tighten and come forward as if to protect her heart.“Don’t call it—skara rok?”

“Don’t call it ‘witch’s fever.’ Witches don’t make fevers or sicken cows or kill crops or any of that.”

“I didn’t say they did. But witch’s—I mean, the sickness. Everyone calls it that.”

“I know.” Drina’s voice was softer now. They had reached the river at the inner side of a broad curve where a slope of clay and pebbles eased into the water. Drina walked on the margin, placing her feet delicately as a heron and watching her prints fill with water. “But it’s—with theskara rok, people look for someone to blame. Ugly people. Outsiders. Witch-whites. Roamers.”

Carvers, thought Kate. She thought she knew more about being hunted and blamed than Drina did, but she did not say so.

The winding river Narwe was turning again; there was a huge stone a pace or two into the channel, and jammed against it a wall of tangled trunks and limbs, remnants of some old flood, cut across their way. Drina blew through her lips in frustration.“Nothing here!”

“What are you looking for?”

“Sand. Clean sand, to scour the pots.”