Erin Bow - Plain Kate

Linay’s bound wrist was jerking and jerking like a mink in a trap. He didn’t seem to be aware of it, or aware that he had pulled as far away from the growing fire as the lashing allowed. “Kate,” he said, his breath shuddering. And she lunged forward to cut him free.

Linay flung up a hand between them, and cowered as if from a blow. Kate found herself caught again, in his spell of glass air.

“I can do this. I can do this.” Blood dripped from his cut hand, from his bound and twitching wrist, and fell burning, burning, burning. “Lenore!” he cried, and sobbed as he cried.

“She wouldn’t want this!” Kate had to shout above the roar of fire. “Linay! Let me go!”

Flames were snarling in Linay’s clothes, hot yellow winds lifting his hair. Kate knew how it felt, the pain and panic. And yet still the force of his will held, and she was caught, helpless before the fire as a chestnut on the coals. Her masterpiece was turning black, flames eating through the thinnest places in the wings. “Look at her!” Kate shouted. “Look at her face and tell me she would want this!”

Above them the clouds rumbled and an ugly death stirred.

And from below, high and hysterical, came Drina’s voice. “Lie to her!” Drina shouted. “Lie to her—it will kill you. It can all be over. Just lie to her!”

Linay’s face—it too was turning black—suddenly calmed, suddenly hardened, and his eyes locked with Kate’s. “Yes,” he said. “Lenore would want this.” And he folded up as if he swallowed a sword.

The glass around Kate shattered. She plunged into the flame, clambering over the smoking wood, her knife in her hand. She sliced his wrist free, shouting, “Drina!”

Linay rolled from the fire, and Drina tugged at his arm. Blood poured from his mouth, where the lie had cut him. Kate leapt from the woodpile and crashed, rolling beside them. She saw Linay look at her, his eyes dreamy, and then they turned to the sky. “Sister…” he whispered.

Kate yanked her carving from the bonfire, scorching her hands. She waved it in Linay’s face. “Don’t!”

“Sister,” Linay whispered. “Please. Help me.”

And so called, out of the green-black sky, the winged thing came. Down into the trampled dead and nearly dead, the people heaped at the gates, it swooped like a striking eagle. Kate saw the double wings—fog-white and clotted shadow—saw the bodies sink into a sick, black fire.

“Take it back!” she screamed at Linay. She thrust Lenore’s carved nose at his nose, though his ice-pale eyes were thawing into dull water. “Take it back! Stop it!”

The wing Kate was holding snapped, and the carving fell to the stone and broke open along hot lines. Kate crouched over it, over Linay. “Please,” she said. He was dying in front of her, burned everywhere, his red mouth open. “Please stop it!”

“There’s only one way to stop it,” came a voice from her elbow. She turned. It was Taggle, sitting on the lip of the burning platform, solemn. “And you know what it is.”

Kate looked down at the knife in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” said the cat. The rusalka was coming across the square slowly, tearing at the piles of the dead. It grew bigger as it fed, filling the air above them like a ship at sail. “It has to be you who kills me,” said Taggle. “I was his gift to you. You must be the one to give it back.”

She felt her jaw open, her head shake itself from side to side.

“You can survive it,” said Taggle. “And that is all I want. You do not need me. You can find your own place, with your strength alone.” Behind him, the wings loomed. “Katerina, Star of My Heart. Be brave. Lift your knife.”

Kate met his golden eyes.

She lifted her knife.

And Taggle, who was beautiful, who had never misjudged a jump in his life, leapt toward her with his forelegs out-flung. He landed clean on the blade. There was a sound like someone biting into an apple. And then he was in her arms, with the blade sticking out of his back.

¶

Kate folded up. Taggle was curled in her arms, with the knife handle sticking out of his chest like a peg. She put her hand flat around it; it stuck out between her fingers. Blood came between them too, dark heart’s blood, bubbling like a spring. Drina tried to tug her farther from the fire, and Kate batted her hands away. “Taggle,” she sobbed.

The cat stirred, flinched—and smiled. Not a quirk of whiskers, but a human thing, turning up the corners of his mouth. “Katerina…”

The rusalka was coming toward them, its wings beating steady as a heart.

“Taggle,” whispered Kate. His heartbeat slowed under her hand.

“More…” His voice was only breath.

“More than a cat.”

“And I do not regret it.” His eyes clouded. “Could you…this itchy bit…”

She scratched his favorite place, where the fur swirled above the hard nub of his jawbone. The heat from the fire lifted tears from one side of her face.

Taggle took one more breath.

The rusalka’s shadow wings folded closed. Taggle’s heart fluttered. The rusalka took a step forward, shrinking, and the wings sagged. Another heartbeat. Another step. The darkness trailed from the white woman’s shoulders like the train of a dress. Another heartbeat, and the shadow-wing dragged itself against the cobbles.

And then it was a shadow. And Taggle’s heart was still.

Kate pulled her knife out. The cat didn’t stir. No new blood came.

She put her knife—her knife, her knife—down where the fire could take it, and she thought about lying down beside it.

Beside them, Linay was breathing, eyes open, calm as a man asleep. Below them, in the square, a woman stood. Her witch-white face was stiff with horror. Her shadow jittered behind her as the pyre blazed. The woman lifted a hand against the awful light, squinting. She spread her fingers and shouted something.

The fire went out.

Drina flung herself down the steps and into the woman’s arms. “Dajena!” she shouted, and then she was crying. “Dajena…” She buried her face in the woman’s shining shoulder.

“Mira cheya,” the woman muttered. “Drina. What are you doing here? Stay out of sight, I must see to this poor soul.…” But Drina wouldn’t move from her side. So she held the sobbing girl in one arm and tilted up her chin at the stone pillar. Then she stepped forward, dainty as a deer but grim-faced, and climbed the steps, Drina stumbling along beside her.

Kate stood up.

It was surprising, how light Taggle’s body was. All the substance of him seemed to have gone into Kate, into the bloody smock that stuck to her front—into her knife hand—into her body itself. Taggle was thistledown. There was nothing of him left.

And then Lenore and Kate were standing face-to-face, with Linay at their feet. He sprawled with arms and legs bent like a tossed puppet. He looked up first at Kate, then at Lenore, and then—blankly—at the clearing sky. “I feel strange,” he said. “I think I’m dying.”

Kate, with the little body in her arms, answered, “Good. We don’t like you.” But she knelt beside him and took his raw hand.

“Let me,” Lenore murmured, crouching beside them. Kate felt human warmth in the brush of her arm. “Who are you, brother? Tell me your name and I can help you with the pain.” Kate heard her voice slip halfway to song. “Who did this to you?”

“Oh, no,” Linay sang back. “I did it to myself. Don’t you see? A life for a life—how magic must be.”

“Linay?” Lenore’s voice broke with shock. “By the Black Lady—what have you done?”

Avenged your death, thought Kate. Undone your fate. Traded his life for yours. But she couldn’t say any of it.