She was watching for Linay, but he still managed to sneak up on her.“Fair maid of the wood,” he said, making her jump. “How goes the work?”
Plain Kate steadied herself and shrugged.“It will be a good bow,” she said. “I am a good carver.”
“Too good, they say.” He tapped her nose. “They call you ‘witch-child’ already, Katie girl.”
“If they do, it’s because of you.”
He caught her words and sang them back at her:
If they do it’s because of you
What they see is because of me
That may be, that may be,
But I see what I say and I say what I see
He smiled at her.“Do you know what happens to witches, Plain Kate? Have you seen the fires?”
The sour smell from the smokehouse suddenly seemed stronger.“Over a few fish?” Plain Kate tried a laugh; it came out tight.
“Well,” said Linay with a bow, “there might be more.”
“Go away. Or I’ll set my cat on you.”
And he went away. But not very far.
¶
The next day there was no catch—or no catch of fish. Old Boyar brought in three boots. Big Jan caught a dead dog. On the next day the nets were wholly empty. The whole week there was no catch, and the grain barges didn’t come, and rain fell like a long fever.
Then Boyar took a punt upriver into the fog banks, and the next day the boat came back drifting. Boyar was lying on the deck like a king of old, not dead but sleeping—an unnatural sleep from which he could not be woken.
Talk in the market turned to muttering. Plain Kate saw Big Jan swat Taggle from his nest atop a coil of rope. The cat was kicked and cursed from every stall.
Kate herself kept to her work. The bow was nearly finished. The Wheat Maiden haunted her. The carved face was smooth and beautiful—but in its narrow sadness and quizzical brow, Kate saw her own reflection.
At night she locked herself in her drawer and lay awake in the hot darkness. Her thoughts chased themselves until Taggle came in through the little door she’d made him. He flopped on her face. Plain Kate cuddled him under her chin like a fiddle, and they both went to sleep.
And so it went, for a week. Then one night someone took an axe to her stall.
¶
Lightning. She thought she’d been hit by lightning. It was that loud.
And cold. Night air got dumped over her as if from a bucket. Something smashed into the blanket by her head. Taggle’s claws raked her throat as he bolted out of his hole.
She was awake now. There were daggers of wood everywhere. Her safe little drawer was a nest of splinters. And again something clapped past her ear. An axe. Kate screamed.
The axe yanked free and came again. Air and light and falling things hit her.
Plain Kate yanked the door lever. The drawer lurched and jammed.
Her stall was shattering. Smashing through a gap came that swinging axe.
She pounded her fists against the drawer above her. Something gave way to her hands. She shoved and scrambled and hit air.
Plain Kate lurched to her feet. The square was quiet, full of fog. Whoever had wielded the axe was gone. A few folk had clustered outside the inn door, drawn by the noise. Linay was sitting up on his white blanket, looking sleepy. Heads hung from windows. The town’s watchmen came pounding through the river arch. And everyone was looking at her. She didn’t feel anything. She didn’t even feel frightened. She had gone so far beyond frightened that it would take a while for fear to catch up with her.
The running watchmen stopped when they saw it was only her. The drinkers from the inn had begun to talk again, and wandered inside. Windows closed. Plain Kate stood alone. Her muscles were so tight that they made her tremble, the way wood trembled when bent almost to breaking.
Her father’s stall—her home—was a jagged, jumbled ruin. Tools and half-finished carvings were scattered across the wet cobbles. One pale deer, still whole, leapt toward the edge of a splintered piece of awning. She lifted it and looked at it for a while.Where shall I put it? she thought.I don’t have anywhere to put it. She took four steps away from the wreck, and set the deer gently on bare stones.
Taggle came back and tangled around her feet, bleating. She stooped, stroked him between his ears, then picked up an awl that had spun out from the shattered heap, a little way. She set the tool down beside the deer. She edged back toward the wreck. She moved one broken drawer. Things tumbled out of it. It made a lot of noise, but Plain Kate said nothing. No one came. She worked without a word, sorting carvings and tools from junk and straw.
After a while, Linay came over from his white blanket and worked beside her, and he too was silent.
Plain Kate knew that the axe had come because of the rumors Linay had twisted into life. Perhaps he had even sent the axe wielder—a nudge, a seemingly innocent word in the right ear. But she took his help because some of the things she had to move were heavy, and because his strange, washed-away face was hollowed as if someone had died. He pulled her parents’ marriage quilt from under the last of the rubble. She saw the axe holes in it, the way the fog moved through them like snakes.
¶
Plain Kate folded the quilt into a mat; she hammered some broken planks into a rough workbench. Day came. Summer thunder cleared the market square. Soaked and cold, Plain Kate worked alone to finish the bow, her hair dripping into her face, stinging her mismatched eyes.
When the bow at last was finished, it was as good as anything she’d ever made. It had no ornament, but its simple lines were beautiful, like one bird against the sky.
And now that it was finished, Kate had no more work to do.
She sat for a while, empty as the empty square, thinking. Then without a word she stood up. She picked up the bow like a sword and went off to find Linay.
The afternoon was damp and clammy. Plain Kate followed the faint sounds of the tambourine around the puddles and the horse droppings, through the river-ward gate of the town. Down by the docks she found Linay sitting on the roof of the hold of a small boat. It was the punt she’d seen him on the night the fish had swarmed: a small, neatly made little barge, painted grass-green. Linay was singing a sad song about river spirits, to entertain the men who were smearing pitch in the chinks. She walked toward him, ignoring the looks that beat on her like rain. Big Jan grabbed her arm. “You’re not welcome here, witch-child.”
Linay stopped singing and stood up.“Her business is with me.” Big Jan was broad like a wild ox, but Linay was skinny like a rabid wolf, and Jan backed down. Linay swept by and caught Kate up in his wake. She trailed him down the dock, then down the road toward the forest.
The rain had stopped. The light was storm-green and the trees were stirring restlessly. The smell of the river was heavy in the air.
Plain Kate held out the bow. Linay took it as if it were a rose, and bowed over it. He looked at her silently. She looked back.
At last Linay moved.“Your four silver.” He pulled coins out of her ear, like a merry juggler—but his eyes were piercing. “Does that finish our business?”
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I need food, things.”
“Hmmmm,” he said, sinuously. “Did you have in mind a trade?”
“For my shadow,” she said. “I want oilcloth. And a sleep roll, and a pack. A packet of fishhooks, a camp hatchet. Ten yards of rope.”
He laughed.“Do you think you can live on the road? In the woods?”
“I’ll get by.”
“You’ll get by, you’ll get by,” he sang. “I’d almost like to see you try.” He drew himself up. “Done.”
Faraway thunder clacked. It sounded like a latch closing.“Done,” she said.
Linay wiped the rain off his face.“The docks. Meet me beside my punt, at the third bell past midnight.” He turned back toward the town.
Plain Kate, empty-handed, went over to the ruins of her father’s stall. She thought about what she could carry and what she must leave. Behind her she heard Linay’s fiddle begin to play: Wild and powerful as a storm, it swept across the rainy twilight.