Erin Bow - Plain Kate

Plain Kate felt muddled and strange. She hadn’t slept since the axe. The music seemed real; she could hear a fiddle in it, a voice singing in a language she didn’t know. She thought the river itself was singing, or the moon, or all the ghosts in the world. She shook herself, and out of the night the town’s wall suddenly loomed. Kate stopped with a bump.

“We have been fleeing,” Taggle intoned, “in the wrong direction.”

“Did you hear that?” There was still ghost music, somewhere.

“Yes,” the cat said haughtily, “it’s real. I can talk. You wished for it. And I was saying, this is the town where they were going to kill you.”

“I have to give the objarka to Niki.”

“Hrrmmmm,” he said. “Well. No one is trying to kill me .”

But just in case, he wormed his way under the basket lid. Plain Kate felt him settle against her shoulder blades. She squared them and set off into the dark streets.

¶

At the bakery, Plain Kate stopped in the doorway. She had meant to leave the Wheat Maiden on the doorstep like a baby—but she had forgotten that bakers rise early.

The half-moon mouth of the oven glowed with the coals ready deep within it. The long-handled peel lay across a table like a pike. Niki the Baker was standing at the dough trough, punching down the dough for white bread—dead pale, sticky stuff. Plain Kate watched the muscles bunching in his big arms. He looked up. “Plain Kate!”

She stood on the doorstep with the night at her back. “I brought…” She held out the objarka. “It’s finished.”

“Come in, come in.” Niki rubbed his sticky hands together, making worms of dough that dropped to the floor. “This has to rise for the morning baking. You needn’t have come so early—too early for anybody but bakers! Set her down, let’s have a look.”

Plain Kate set the objarka down and took a step back. She needed to go, but she couldn’t stop looking at the Wheat Maiden’s face. The truth, she kept thinking. The truth is—

“Plain Kate. Katerina. You’re running away.”

She shrugged.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you are. Ah, Plain Kate. Where will you go?”

She shrugged again, and Niki sighed. “But it’s wise, little one. Wise. There’s talk.”

She stood, still looking at the objarka. Niki faltered and looked at it too. “It’s very fine, you know, very fine work. You have a way with a knife, that’s sure, a blessed blade. This will be lucky for me, sure. But I’ll miss you.” As if the admission embarrassed him, he started to bustle. “I can give you bread. Two-day-old millet, only a little stale. And I think”—he was rummaging—“there’s some hurry bread, you know, for traveling. I—” He stopped as a thought took him. “You should go with the Roamers.”

Unexpected hope rocked her. Going with other people—even a foreign and despised people—would give her a real chance to survive. “The Roamers?” she echoed.

“Yes, that’s it, Roamers,” said Niki.

They both looked at each other, not sure of how one went about being taken in by outcasts. “I’ve dealings with them, you know, over the horse,” said Niki at last. “So they’ll talk to me, I suppose. They’re down by the sheep meadows.”

He stopped, seeing her face. “No fear,” he said, patting her hand. “Roamers are right enough.”

But he had mistaken her: She was afraid not that the Roamers would take her in, but that they would turn her away.

¶

So, at dawn in misty rain, Plain Kate found herself with Niki the Baker at the edge of the sheep meadows, just outside Samilae’s lower gate. The Roamers were just stirring: an old man uncovering a banked fire, two young women chatting and gathering eggs from sleepy chickens. Their bright-painted wagons floated in the morning dew-fog. On the far side of the camp, two dozen horses wove like shadows in the mist, and a young man in blue moved among them.

“Wait a moment,” murmured Niki, and left her standing by the low wall of stones and raspberry brambles that marked the edge of the meadow. She watched Niki go toward the horses and stood waiting. After a moment she shrugged off her basket. The lid lifted and Taggle poured himself over the side.

“Are we finished fleeing?” the cat asked, the last word swallowed by a huge yawn. He stretched forward, lengthening his back and spreading his toes, then sprang onto the wall beside her. His nose worked. “Horses,” he said. “Dogs. Hrrmmmmm. Humans. Chickens. And—ah, another cat! I must go and establish my dominance.” He leapt off the wall.

Plain Kate lunged after him. “Taggle! Wait!” She snatched him out of the air by the scruff of his neck.

“Yerrrrowww!” he shouted, hanging from her hand. “The insult! The indignity!”

Kate fell to her knees and bundled the spitting cat against her chest. “Taggle!” she hissed. “Stop!”

“I shall claw you in a moment, no matter how much I like you. Let me go !” He writhed against her chest.

“Tag, you can’t talk.”

“I can talk,” came the muffled, outraged voice. “I can also claw and bite and scra—”

“No,” she interrupted. “You can’t , you mustn’t talk. Listen to me. They’ll kill you if they hear you talk.”

The cat stopped twisting. “Who would? Who would dare?”

“The other people. Please, Taggle. They’ll think it’s magic. They’ll kill us both.”

“It is magic,” he said, reproachful. “And it was your wish.”

“I know—I’m sorry. But please.”

“Well. I am not afraid. But to protect you, Katerina, I will be discreet.” Plain Kate considered a cat’s idea of discretion, and was frightened. But it was the best she could do.

“Now, let me go,” said Taggle. “I have business to conduct in the language of fur and claw.”

“Good luck,” she said, and wished hard.

¶

Plain Kate was still sitting with her back to the wall when Niki reappeared with the young man who’d been tending the horses. “Up, up,” the baker fussed. Kate stood and kept herself from backing into the wall. “Meet someone. Meet Behjet, who sold me my horse. Best horseman among the Roamers, it’s said.”

The flattery made it obvious that Niki wanted something. Plain Kate wanted to wince, but the man just said, “And who have we here, Nikolai?” He was soft-voiced, slender, wearing a blue shirt with a green kerchief knotted round his neck: kingfisher colors.

“She is, this is,” Niki sputtered, “Plain Kate. Orphan girl, orphan to Piotr Carver.” He drew Plain Kate forward into the crook of his arm. “Behjet, she needs a place.”

“Among the Roamers, you mean?” The man, Behjet, wiped his palms on his groom’s apron. “That’s no small thing to ask. Where is she going?”

Plain Kate pulled away from the soft, doughy warmth of Niki and answered for herself. “Away.”

“Hmmm,” said Behjet. “And why’s that?”

From far off, Plain Kate heard Taggle’s yowl of victory. The cat was establishing his dominance. Finding his place. “Because.” Kate swallowed. “Because they’ll kill me if I stay here. They think I’m a witch.”

“Which she’s none of,” Niki added.

“Ah,” said the young man softly. Like all the Roamers, he had dark skin and wide, uptilted dark eyes. They were horse deep and horse soft; they made him look kindly. But still he didn’t move.

Niki fluttered his hands. “And you were saying you were in need of a carpenter, that you had to fix your wagons in every other town and wished for a carpenter among you. Plain Kate is a woodworker.”

“A good one,” added Kate. Her voice came out level. She was proud of that.