Plain Kate

There was a long pause. The canvas roof of thevardo shone faint as the dark of the moon, and that was the only light.“My uncle summoned my mother’s spirit with just a piece of his own shadow,” said Drina. “A shadow gives a ghost life, I think. Power. With a whole shadow—I think a strong witch could raise the dead.”

“That must be why…” Kate trailed off.

“Why your shadow was taken. But what it means to be without a shadow…I do not know.”

***

The two girls whispered together deep into the night, slept close together with Taggle between them, then got up and stirred the fires, caught the chickens, and hauled the water. And from that day on they walked side by side.

Plain Kate tried to learn the rules of magic, which were stranger and harder than the rules of living among the Roamers. In truth Drina was not a good teacher. She only half knew things herself, and remembering tore her between the joy of her mother’s memory and the fear of her mother’s fate.

So Kate learned only a little.Magic is an exchange of gifts: That was the first rule. Thus, Drina’s nameless uncle had given up a piece of his shadow to give speech to the dead. And thus, Linay had had to make payment in magic for Kate’s shadow. Thus, the talking cat.

“A bargain,” said the cat, “at any price.”

All great magic requires a great gift. But even small magics asked something, Drina said. And so a witch would put little parts of hetself into a spell—hair, say, or tears.

“Blood,” said Taggle. “It’s always blood.”

Plain Kate narrowed her eyes at him.“What do you know about magic?”

“I,” he intoned, wrapping his tail over his paws and sitting up regally, “am a talking cat.”

“He’s right,” said Drina. “Blood’s the most powerful. Blood and breath. You shape the magic with breath—you sing it. That is why witches can’t lie, my mother said. Power flows along your words. Lying turns that power against you. It’s a real thing. It can kill you.”

“So your uncle…” A question had been growing in Kate’s mind for days, growing as her shadow thinned and twisted. “Did he die? He said he’d kill himself. Did he die, without his shadow?”

“He—” Drina paused. “He went mad. Eventually—the clan spoke death to him. They cast him out. He went alone.”

“But what happened to him?”

“You don’t understand,” said Drina. “We spoke death to him. He died to us. His name was closed. He went alone.”

It was a Roamer thing, but Plain Kate understood it better than Drina thought. Toila was coming. In Toila they would test her, and after that she might well be cast out. When they stopped next, Taggle snuggled his head up under her chin and purred while she clung to him.“Not alone,” he rumbled. “Not alone.”

***

Thevardo inched on, farther into the wild country. One evening they camped near a charcoal burner’s hut, deep in the woods. It was abandoned: The woodpiles were covered with bird droppings, the black doorway drifted with last year’s leaves. Plain Kate didn’t like the place, but it did mean she and Drina had little work to do—there was a well for water, and wood for burning.

Kate was almost out of cured wood for carving. She rummaged through the woodpile until her arms were smeared with black rot and her face was sticky with spiderwebs. She did not hear Drina behind her. When her shoulder was touched she jumped and knocked her head hard on a branch that stuck out from the pile. She sat down, feeling sick. Taggle sprang down and pressed his nose to hers as she leaned over and tried to get her breath.

“I’m sorry!” Drina crouched over her. “Are you hurt?”

Taggle’s amber eyes shone inches from her face. “Would you like me to claw her for you?”

Kate put a hand to her head; her hair was damp, but with rain, not blood: There was no warmth.“Not hurt,” she said. She fuzzled the cat between the ears. “No clawing.”

“I only wanted to say—let me braid your hair.” The way she said it made it sound like something dangerous. It took Plain Kate a few moments to remember the story Drina had told about her uncle carving out the heart of his own shadow:He made a rope of his hair and soaked it in blood…

Plain Kate felt her throat tighten.“Are you sure?”

Drina took a moment in answering. She sat down beside Plain Kate in the wet moss.“I saw you,mira. Yesterday, when the sun broke over the river for a moment. Your shadow—it was like a river flowing away from you. Too long. Thin like a needle. And it pointed toward the river.Toward the sun.”

Oak and beech trees brooded over them, muttering in the rain. Plain Kate looked down at her knotted hands. They looked strange: The space inside her fingers held no shadow, only more washed-out gray air. It was as if they were not real.

“We must do something,” said Drina, “and it must be soon.”

Plain Kate turned to look at Drina, and then beyond her, to where the charcoal-burning sheds stood like hives of shadow.“Thank you,” she murmured. “Even if we can’t—thank you.”

“Now! None of that!” Drina stood up, shaking her skirts clean and suddenly sounding like Daj. “You’re not going to die, you know!”