Plain Kate

Plain Kate had not quite finished the Wheat Maiden objarka when Niki the Baker came to collect it for the new horse’s stall door. She was shamed but he shrugged it off and paid her anyway, then stood, shifting, as if he wanted to say something. Plain Kate was not much good at such things; she didn’t know how to help him find words. “Uncanny,” said Niki at last, poking at the leftover fish that was wrapped up in oilcloth at Kate’s elbow. “ ’Twas uncanny, those fish. You should take care, Plain Kate. People say…” He stopped.

Plain Kate crossed her arms in front of her, her fingers finding the bony knots of her shoulders.“What do they say?”

But Niki just looked away.“Take care, Plain Kate,” he said again.

In the damp heat of the afternoon, as she worked on Linay’s bow, Plain Kate felt that warning like a hand on her neck. She knew she lived mostly by the town’s thin kindness. She could feel just how thin it was, between her and the whispers of the market square. A strange smell, sour and stale, came from the smokehouse, roiling in the foggy heat. Linay’s tambourine rattled and jangled in her head.

Taggle came and presented her with a half-dead bat. Plain Kate hit it with a hammer and hid it in a drawer to eat later. It would not do to eat such things in daylight, not now, with people talking. When she looked up she saw people watching her as if she were already eating it, as if she had the membranous black wings coming out of her mouth. She looked down.

Taggle made a bleat that sounded like“want, want,” and butted at her hand.

“After dark. You can have some when I cook it.” She pegged together the wood for the bow.

The cat flopped down on top of her work.

“You’re in the way.”

“Wrmmm,” Taggle whirred. He rolled to show his belly, pink under his gray fur.

“Thanks for the bat, cat. But you’re still in the way.” She scratched him, then leaned her nose into his soft, warm fur. “Everyone’s watching us, Tag,” she whispered. “I—”

But Taggle flipped to his feet and hissed. Plain Kate looked up. Linay was lounging against the prop of her awning.

“I’ve heard your name in strange tales, Katie girl. They say you witched the fish.” And he sang, “Witch, fish, flinch, kiss—won’t you let me grant your wish?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.” He smiled. “I wonder how much it will take to make you change your mind.” And he sang:

Plain Kate, Kate the Carver

No one’s friend and no one’s daughter

Little Kate might meet her fate

Whittling sticks till it’s too late

Plain Kate stared.“You drew the fish.”

“But you caught them. And it’s about you they whisper.” Linay’s smile was long and narrow. “I tell you true, Plain Kate, I would not want to see you hurt. You know that, don’t you, about us witches: We tell the truth.”

She had heard the tale: that witches could not lie. People said that as the devil gave witches power, God bound their tongues to truth. It did not seem to her a likely story, and she did not trust Linay.

Linay’s tin-gray eyes glittered as he said, “I want you well. But there are other things I want more. And a swarm of fish might be just a beginning. Think on it. Your shadow for a heart’s wish. Is it such a bad bargain?”

“What Iwish,” she said, “is that you would go away.”

And as if answering a command, Taggle slunk around the awning prop, sprang out, swarmed up Linay’s shirt, and attacked his ear. Linay shouted and spun and flailed like a man who’d stepped on a beehive. All his dignity and all his menace gone in a whirl of squeaks and ungainly limbs. Plain Kate laughed. Finally the cat went flying out of the melee and bolted across the square. There was scattered applause.

Linay bowed.“Until tomorrow,” he said to Kate, and sauntered off, bleeding.

***

When they opened the smokehouse the next day, the fish were bones and ashes. They fell to dust at a touch. Only Plain Kate’s trout were still plump, smoke-yellow and pink, perfect.

The master of the smokehouse summoned her, and she had to go stand before him in the drizzle with her strong hands curled into silent fists. The master was a grand man, his hands fat and many-ringed, his white hair dressed in curls, yellowed with smoke, smelling of fish. His chair was grand too, with arms carved into the form of leaping salmon: her father’s work. She remembered helping him with it, his big calloused hands over her small calloused ones as he taught her the way of wood grain—oh, her hands had been so small, and she had been happy.

“I have decided,” the master said, leaning back in the beautiful chair, dry under his awning, “that your catch will be split among the men whose fish were in the batch. Since, after all, only luck has spared your fish alone.”

Only luck. He was daring her to contradict. No one thought it was luck. She looked at the salmon, so strong she could almost sense the whip of their muscle. There was a little crowd gathered at her back. She thought the salmon were swimming hard against the current of their looks.“That’s fair,” she said at last. “But I didn’t burn the fish.”