Erin Bow - Plain Kate

Suddenly from the tent came a burst of shouting. Taggle streaked out of the front flap, running low and fast as a fox, the cage key in his mouth. Some of the Roamer men came crashing out after him. She saw Stivo with an axe in his hand.

Taggle was fast, faster than the men. He was bolting straight for her. He would make it, but then what—

Stivo threw an axe.

The flat butt of the axe head hit Taggle behind the ears. The cat tumbled tail over head and lay limp as a pelt. The axe head flew free of its handle. Stivo lifted Taggle by the back legs like a dead rabbit. He picked up the axe handle in the other hand. He strode over toward her with Taggle’s head swinging.

Plain Kate was sobbing. She didn’t want to cry in front of Stivo, but she couldn’t stop. He dropped Taggle’s body in the churned mud before the cage. “Is this your creature, witch-child?”

Taggle cracked open a yellow eye. “Her name,” he drawled, thickly, “is Katerina, Star of My Heart.”

Stivo leapt backward, dropping the axe handle and warding his face with crooked fingers.

“Taggle!” sobbed Kate. She reached through the bars for him. Stivo was still backing away. “Taggle!”

She fumbled and turned the cat’s warm body. He was squirming a little. “Hold still,” she whispered, and took him under the arms and cradled his head and eased him through the bars. She kept one hand on his heaving ribs as she pulled down the driest straw and built a bed for him. Stivo was gone. “Oh, Taggle,” she said. “Taggle, I’m sorry.”

He tried to look at her. His eyes crossed and he didn’t move his head. “I dropped the key.”

“Don’t worry. Little catspaw, little lord of lurking…” She stroked his side and watched him get limper and longer as he drifted off to sleep.

Suddenly he opened his eyes again. “Did you save any muskrat?”

“All of it.” She set it beside him.

“Mmmmm.” He blinked slowly and softened again. “When I rise from my nap…” And then he was really asleep. She watched him breathe. She watched the council tent, where voices were louder now and she heard Stivo sounding shrill with anger or fear. No one was coming—not yet.

Plain Kate looked at Taggle sprawled out hurt and limp. Then she leaned her shoulder and arms between the bars and reached for the axe handle. Her fingers brushed it and she inched it across the mud until she could pick it up.

The axe handle was split, it turned out, and the split was tied closed with a scrap of fraying gingham. It was sloppy work and it made her angry. She could easily have fixed it for Stivo, if only he had asked. Then he might not have hated her. She wedged the handle under her foot and pulled up the split wood until it snapped. She closed her fist around the scrap of wood and took her knife from her boot.

¶

Plain Kate carved and no one came to kill her. The men stayed in the tent. The women stayed away. Swallows swooped through the afternoon sky. Daj sang her drone over Wen, who did not even twitch. Taggle slept on, cuddling his muskrat like a child with a doll. All the while the hard wood curled away from her small blade, and no one saw.

She was so hot and flea-bitten that she was almost glad when evening came, though she could feel her time running out, the way the bread had in the skara rok . The key was now almost the same shape as the impression in the mud, but it would not go into the lock. She made it thinner, sliver by sliver.

With the day went the heat. Mist rose from the stream, from the river, from the wet ground itself. Kate huddled in the damp, dank straw. A fire was lit in the council tent, and the canvas glowed. Marsh light bobbed near the river, like a boat lantern. Another light came up to her through the fog and the shape of a man came behind it. It was Behjet with a tallow lamp. He was holding a blanket. He passed it through the bars. It reeked of horse. She wrapped it around herself.

“Is your cat all right?”

Kate tucked a corner of the blanket over Taggle, covering him from sight.

“He’s a fine little beast,” said Behjet. “But it is strange thing, don’t you see, a cat who steals keys. It makes a man think.”

Kate said nothing.

“My brother says he spoke.”

Still Kate said nothing.

“Stivo—” Behjet pulled at his chin. “Understand, Plain Kate. He lost his wife because she was a witch. He has nearly lost his daughter. His love has turned to anger. And his suspicion—just see. The stories from your city. The sleeping death that follows you. Your shadow. And now your cat, stealing a—”

Just then Taggle’s head slid out from under the blanket. “There’s bats out,” he slurred, stumbling up. “Listen, they sing to me!” He fell over.

“So it’s true,” said Behjet.

Plain Kate looked up at him, squinting through the fog. It was almost full dark, and she could not read his face, except that the moon was round in his eyes. “Behjet, I am not a witch. And I didn’t hurt Wen.”

And now Behjet said nothing.

“Behjet, what will they do with me?”

He looked over his shoulder at the ghostly light of the tent. “I must return to the council.”

“Please tell me,” she said, but he turned and walked away.

¶

The key was nearly done. It went into the lock and Kate could feel it catch and turn, almost turn. She had to widen her eyes to owl eyes to compare the pale wood key and the black ghost of the key in the mud.

The moon was bright but the mist blurred it. Daj chanted over her husband. The drone of it went on and on. It had become something unstoppable, like the noise of a river. Kate carved on and on and wished for something to stop her ears.

Finally she put the key next to the key hollow and could see no differences. She set the key in the key hollow and it went in like hand to glove. Maybe this time. She lifted the key. She crouched up on her toes and looked around. She would only get one dash.

Plain Kate fingered her key.

There was someone moving in the fog.

Kate froze.

She could not see who it was, or even what. It came up from the river, and at first Kate thought it was a woman dressed in twists of hair and cloud. But as she moved one limb grew long and another short; when she turned, her torso twisted like linen being wrung out. Sometimes Kate could see through her, and sometimes she couldn’t. Music came with her. She was beautiful and Kate wanted to—

Taggle staggered up and gave a horrible hissing howl. “Thing!’ he spat. “Thing!” And then Kate wanted to scream.

We called into the darkness, Drina had said. We don’t know what answered. This is what had answered. The sick shadow on the wall of the bender tent, the approaching horror. The woman-thing was drifting toward the vardo and the council tent. Plain Kate tried to shout for help, but couldn’t. The foggy music wrapped her up like a spiderweb and she couldn’t even move. She watched the creature slide closer.

Then she saw Stivo, lamp in hand, going out to tend to the stamping, crying horses.

The white woman came to Stivo past the edge of the camp, where the fog swirled. He dropped the lamp and oil splashed into the grass, flaring bright. He said something, one word that Kate didn’t catch, a raw shout of—fear? joy?—and threw his arms open for the creature. When he touched her his whole body twisted like a reed in water. Kate, watching, felt the impossible, horrible twist as if it was happening to her, but still she was frozen, hardly even—

Taggle yowled and bit Kate’s hand.

Kate yelped, and found she could move again. “Stivo! Stivo!” she screamed.

The woman turned toward her voice. She retracted her hand, and Stivo crumpled at her feet. Eyes like pits locked on to Plain Kate.