Plain Kate

“Well!” he said. “That was an adventure!”

“Oh,” said Kate. “Oh!” And she scooped him up and hugged him hard, feeling his soft fur and lanky strength. She squeezed him fiercely.

“Oof,” he said.

Drina whirled toward her mother, her face shattering.“What have you done?!”

“What I must do,” said Lenore. “What I could do: one small good thing, after so much darkness.” She unwrapped Drina’s turban slowly, tenderly, and then retied it as a girl’s headband, letting the extra length trail down Drina’s back like the hair she’d lost, like wings. “It is such a gift, to see you again.” She let her thumbs slide along Drina’s cheekbones. “But it is a gift I cannot keep.”

“No…” said Drina. And Kate, looking up startled, found that she could see Drina’s face through Lenore’s hands. “Don’t. Don’t go.”

“What my brother did, I cannot live with. He should have known that. And he should have known that a witch cannot give life, not perfectly, not forever.” Lenore looked at the cat. “Taggle.”

“What?” The cat shook his head so hard his ears made a noise like birds’ wings. “I’m not a murderous ghost, am I?”

“You’re a gift,” said the fading woman. “But not one without a cost. Kate, your shadow returns. As you gain it, so your friend will lose his voice.”

“Then I don’t want it! I don’t want my shadow! Taggle—tell her—”

“Bah,” said the cat, feigning a curled-tongue yawn. “Talking is complicated. What cat would want words?” But his golden eyes filled and shone with tears.

And Drina too was crying silently, though standing straight, looking her mother in the eye: Drina, brave as the sun.“Give us this moment,” said the ghost.

And so Kate took Taggle and they went out into the long soft light of the evening. She could smell the cat: warm and clean and strong. He was alive. Alive. And yet tears were running down her face. He reached up and blotted them away with one velvet paw.“Let us not waste our time in weeping. We must be about our business. We must find you a new knife.”

Kate swallowed three times before she could speak.“I know where there is one. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” said the cat, with a human nod. “Well. That gives us an evening free to cook things.”

***

A last evening. A good evening. How could it be a good evening? But it was. Behjet gathered up firewood and carried water and soon they had as homey a camp as could be managed, there by the unused grave. The river ran over smooth rocks and no fog came. Behjet caught a speckled trout and roasted it with wild dill and leeks. And Kate fried three kinds of spiced sausages, with onions and garlic and the last of the dried peppers.

She saved some for Drina, who came out of thevardo an hour late, alone. She paused there on the steps. It was nearly night. Stars swayed in the young birch trees. Fireflies blinked slowly over the river, wandering together in pairs.

“She’s gone,” said Taggle softly, to spare Drina the need of saying it.

Drina lit the lantern by thevardo door, and its light stroked her cheek as she nodded.“She is at peace.”

“I am sorry,” said Taggle, and Kate remembered when he had said it was not a thing for cats.

“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.”