Erin Bow - Plain Kate

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

So Plain Kate got up, and followed Drina into the red vardo , where the younger girl perched on the bunk and brushed Kate’s hair, and then plaited it. She was singing as she did it, something tuneless, her breath warm on Kate’s scalp. Kate promised herself that no matter what happened, she wouldn’t forget this: having her snarly hair brushed slowly smooth, feeling the warm fingers on her scalp and then the shifts and tugs as Drina made up the braid.

Taggle, all the while, insisted he should be next when it came to fussing over fur.

When they were done, Plain Kate had a small braid, the width of a finger, dangling over each ear. Drina tucked them up on the crown of her head and covered them with one of her own scarves: a bright bit of blue rag with a pattern of stars. She arranged it over the tips of Kate’s ears and tied it at the nape of her neck. “There. Now you look like a Roamer.”

“Not especially,” said Taggle.

They both ignored him.

“Let it dry there,” said Drina. “Keep it covered. Don’t let my father see.”

Then she turned to chase the cat with the comb, threatening to braid his tail. The pair of them romped off, leaving Kate standing very still under the rain-hissing canvas. She could feel her shadow lifting and twisting away.

¶

When they were breaking the morning camp, Plain Kate went to Daj to explain that she was out of wood.

Daj looked around at the trees, the charcoal burner’s woodpile. She said nothing, eloquently.

Kate winced. “Cured wood, I mean. Green wood—living wood—shrinks when it dries. If you carve green wood your work will crack.”

So Daj rumbled and bumbled, and took Kate off to the men’s fire, where she found Stivo hunched up over tea while the other men oiled harnesses and tack. She dragged him up by the ear.

“Take this little one into the forest,” she ordered. “She needs wood.”

Stivo looked around. “She’s knee-deep in wood.”

“Different wood,” said Daj. “Show manners and mind your mother.”

So Stivo got up, hoisted the camp hatchet, and slouched off, leaving Kate trotting after him.

“You don’t need to come,” she said, once they were away from the others. “I’ve looked after myself a long time.”

“You go the Roamer way,” he answered. “We do not go alone.”

“And there are wolves,” piped Drina, appearing with a pail half full of blackberries.

“Aye, a few.” Stivo swung the hatchet idly, the way Drina swung her pail. “And so you’ll stay in the camp, cheya .”

“Plain Kate is going.”

“She needs the wood,” Stivo said. “For some reason the wood we have is not good enough.”

Plain Kate thought of explaining, but stayed silent.

“Daj said I could go,” said Drina.

“And I say you can’t, daughter. Be off.”

Drina slinked to a stop. Plain Kate hung back with her and Stivo strode on toward the woods, still swinging his axe. “ Stivo is your father?” She had never had anything but gentleness from her own father, and found the idea of Stivo being a father unimaginable.

Drina shrugged. “Daj looks after me.” But of course it was true. Behjet had told her that Stivo’s wife had been burned as a witch—Stivo’s wife and Drina’s mother were the same person. And that made Stivo Drina’s father. And Daj her…grandmother? Once again Plain Kate gave up on trying to sort out who among the Roamers was related to whom. It did not seem important to them. They were all family, mira , clan.

Stivo, ahead, had turned. “Come along, gadje !”

A family she was not part of. At least not in Stivo’s eyes. Plain Kate gave Drina’s arm a quick squeeze, then hurried after Stivo and his axe.

Around the abandoned hut, the wood was thick. Blackberry brambles hid under the skirts of the trees, growing across a forgotten wall of loose stones. Stivo was sitting on a big rock, eating blackberries.

Plain Kate looked around. “It’s a bit drier, anyway,” she offered. The thick trees were keeping off some of the drizzle.”

“This rain’s a curse. The horses are all chewing their feet and stinking with the thrush. Go through the whole herd, if this wet won’t stop.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, is it. Unless you can work the weather.” Stivo got up. “Off with you then. Find your different wood.”

It was dark beneath the big trees, and the brambles gave way fast to ferns. Plain Kate moved into them slowly. They rubbed around her waist, dripping and rustling. She heard something big moving behind her and shot a look over her shoulder. Stivo was following her, though not close. They went on without speaking.

Finally she found the right tree. A toppled walnut. Bolt struck, half-scorched, a year dead. It would be dense-grained and dry; it would take a knife. “This one,” she said. As she said it the drizzle broke again, and suddenly the fallen tree was struck by a finger of light. Plain Kate was startled for a moment, then saw that of course the tree’s fall had left a hole in the forest’s ceiling, just enough for the light to slant through. It struck her too, and for a moment she could see how what was left of her shadow spun around her like ripples of water.

She stepped back out of the light and nearly knocked into Stivo. “I’ve noticed,” he said, and her heart lurched. “I’ve noticed you spend a good deal of time with my daughter.”

Plain Kate said nothing.

“I can smell the trouble on you, Plain Kate,” he said, swinging the axe. “See that you do not bring it on my Drina. She is all I have left. Do you hear that? I will not see her lost because of some little girl they call ‘witch.’ ”

She turned to face him. “I’m not a little girl. I am Plain Kate Carver. I have lived by my own wits for many years. I am better than any apprentice, and good as many a master. And I am not a witch.”

Then she stopped. She was very aware of the blue star cloth tied at the nape of her neck, and the complex braids underneath. Don’t let my father see, Drina had said. These were the eyes she’d been afraid of. “I am not a witch,” she said, trying to sound sure.

“You had best not be,” he answered. And he threw the axe, past her ear. It struck neat and deep into the split heart of the tree.

¶

The Roamers kept walking and Plain Kate kept carving. The wild country sloped down and the trees thinned out. The Roamers’ vardo came back out into the river valley, where Daj said they were less than a week from Toila. The rolling hills were crested with trees, but the valleys cradled scattered farms. It was strange to see buildings after so long, and Plain Kate felt uneasy. There were so many who might see her sickly shadow.

The braids Drina had put in her hair tugged at her scalp. She could feel the river pulling at her shadow, or her shadow pulling her toward the river. It felt like waking from a nightmare and drifting to sleep again, knowing it is still there, waiting, just under sleep’s thin surface—something grasping and hungry.

So she slept thinly, drowsing over her knife and making strange things while half awake. She was doing that in the twilight, leaning against a stump in someone’s fallow field, when she came to herself and found Drina by her side.

“I don’t want your help,” Plain Kate blurted.

Drina reacted as if struck, jerking back. Plain Kate, still waking, reached after her. “No, wait, Drina—I only mean…” She put down her knife and scrubbed at her eyes. “Your father said—”

“My father—” Drina began, fiercely, angrily—but just then Ciri came toddling up to them. He was the young prince of the Roamers, a boy of two, the favorite of the dozen naked and cheerful children who chased chickens and snuck rides on horses in Roamers’ camps. Just now he had Taggle in a headlock.