Plain Kate

NINETEEN THE NAMES OF THE DEAD

Kate walked through the streets of Lov with Taggle’s body in her arms. A thin shadow was growing at her heels. The light was murky, but Lenore shone like the moon, with Drina like a shy star at her side.

The streets were still empty, though here and there they found a window being opened, or a huddle of refugees looking about, like survivors of a storm. Voices began again, slowly filling the town like birdsong in the morning. And Kate hated them all—all the thousands and thousands. They were not worth it: They were nothing beside the little weight in her arms.

Lenore paused in the open space of the gate square, where the cobbles were still stained with blood.“It cannot be so easy,” she said. But the gate was open, and no one tried to stop them. They just went through.

The mud in front of the city was churned and hummocked with the half-abandoned camp. It looked as if there had been a battle. Lenore looked around.“I should not be alive,” she said. But no one came to kill them. They just walked on.

In the birch grove, the redvardo sat where they had left it, neat as a kettle in the afternoon sun. Kate was only half aware of Drina’s exclaiming and dismay: Cream was nowhere in sight. But the horse had not gone far. As they came around thevardo, they saw Cream’s backside and swishing tail. They went farther and saw Behjet sitting on the steps.

The Roamer man was trying to shave, pulling his skin taut over his jawbone and scraping at it with the edge of a knife. The blade trembled in his hand and cast little ripples of light toward them. Cream was nuzzling at him as if he were a foal.

If the rusalka is saved, Linay had said,then the sleepers might wake too. But he didn’t care about them, and Kate could not rouse herself to care either. Drina, though, shouted with a joy so hoarse there were no words in it. Lenore stopped. “Husband,” she breathed, and paled from linen to snow.

Drina took her mother’s elbow as if to guide her through blindness. “It’s not—” she whispered. But before she could explain to Lenore that this was not her husband but his twin, Behjet tottered to his feet. The knife fell and sank its point in the wet earth with a sound that made Kate wince. “Am I dead? Areyou my burned ones, come to take me off to hell?”

“No one is dead,” said Drina, but Lenore said “I do not know if I am dead,” and Kate said, “Why did it have to be you?”

“What?” Behjet was bewildered and shivering inside a skin that hung from him as if he were indeed a walking corpse.

“Linay is dead,” Kate said. “And those people in front of the gate, and the ones in the square. And Stivo and Ciri, and my father, and—” She could not speak Taggle’s name. “My—my heart is dead.” She picked up his knife and stood looking at it, the darkness of the mud on the blade.“Of everyone who could have lived, why did it have to be you?”

And she pushed past him, up into the golden quiet of thevardo.

Outside, Drina, Behjet, and Lenore murmured together like mourners standing about at a wake. Kate thought that they were telling one another pieces of their long, strange story. Then she thought of how the story ended, and she stopped caring.

She sat down on the bunk. It still smelled of Behjet’s long sickness. The blanket folds were stiff with sweat-grime. Taggle was dead. It should have wiped clean the world, yet here was washing to be done. Kate took a big breath, and put his body down.

His beautiful fur was matted with blood. He would hate that. She got out one of the horse brushes. She brushed until the bristles were thick as if with rust, and his fur was perfect. She liked the grain of it, how it followed the lines of his bones and muscles. It swirled in knots over his joints, and stood in a soft ridge along his breastbone, just beside the wound that had killed him. It was strange that his fur was still so soft, while his body was stiffening.

She sat beside him, numb, forever.

She had never been the sort for ghosts, though she had seen too much of them. But she would have cut off her carving hand to glimpse one now. It wasn’t fair. There should at least be a ghost.

But there was no ghost. Only Behjet, and Drina behind him, hovering at the curtain. She hadn’t seen them come in.

“Plain Kate,” the Roamer man said. His voice was soft as if he were gentling a horse. “I have prayed—Plain Kate—”

“Just Kate.”

“What?”

“Kate.” She was as plain as she had ever been. And over that she was burn scarred and half bald. But Taggle had thought she was beautiful.“My name is Katerina Svetlana. Kate.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And no one said anything for a while. The canvas arch around them glowed with sun.

Then Behjet said,“Your cat. Drina has told me—”

“He was more than a cat,” she said.

Another silence.“What should we do with…” said Drina.

Taggle’s body was what she didn’t say. Kate had been thinking about that. She had been thinking about nothing else. “That place where we met: the meadow by the river. He was happy there. We had sausages.” She looked up. “We can bury—”

But she couldn’t finish.

“I’ll harness Cream,” said Drina.

Inside thevardo, Kate took apart one of the trestle benches and put it together again as a box. She used Behjet’s shaving knife, though it sat like a stranger in her hand, though she knew she was ruining its edge and somewhere deep inside, her carver’s soul protested. Her knife—she had killed her friend with her knife. She had left her knife and maybe her heart there, lying in blood and fire.

But still she worked. Her hands as they cut the dovetails for the joints seemed strange to her: Darkness trailed them as they moved; their lower sides wore the darkness like a second skin. It was her shadow. Her shadow, returning.

She worked as Cream was harnessed, bits of tack rattling like muffled bells. She worked as Drina came and wrapped Taggle’s body in her favorite scarf, the red one with the white birds. She worked as thevardo rattled over the corduroy road. She worked as the branches scraped the canvas sides like fingernails. She worked as the light failed and thevardo shuddered to a stop.

She finished the box. It was strong and square, and would last a long time, even in the earth. And then she waited.

After too short a time the shovel stopped. But Kate couldn’t get up. She thought about Taggle’s name, and how the Roamers didn’t say the names of the dead. And she hadn’t said his, not yet. She was afraid to. It would make it real.

Lenore lifted the curtain and paused, a pale shape in white against the lavender evening.“If a woman,” she said softly, “might enter and speak.”

Kate shrugged.

Lenore came in, trailing light. Though she had asked to speak, she said nothing. After a moment she knelt in front of Kate, and bent her head to Taggle’s body. A gray ear stuck out between the red loops of cloth, guard hairs arching over the intricate, delicate interior. She stood heron-still a long moment before she said: “The grave is ready.”

“I know.”

“I wish,” Lenore said, touching the red wrappings, “I almost wish it were mine. What my brother did for me—and the memory of what I have done. They will not be easy to live with. And I feel so strange. Like a bowl that holds water on the outside; like a goblet with no stem…”

“What happens,” Kate asked, “after you die?”

“I don’t know.” Lenore traced the curve of Taggle’s ear. Under her long fingers it looked delicate and stiff as a cicada wing. “Death was a shut door. I beat against it—oh, so long, my skin split open. But it was blocked. I would like to think that the dead stay close.” Her voice had gone wandering off. “The dead stay close. At least for a little—” And like a wing, Taggle’s ear twitched.

“Fetch my daughter,” gasped Lenore.

Kate stumbled backward.“Drina!” she shouted. “Drina!”

“He was right,” Lenore whispered. “The dead should stay dead. And yet…”

Drina burst through the curtain.“Mother!” Then she froze and her face opened up as if an angel were standing in front of her.

Kate whipped around, and there was her cat. He was standing up on the bed, shaking his head and trying to paw the wrapping away from his face. The indignant howl was muffled:“Yearow!”

“Taggle!” Kate shouted. “Taggle!” She reached out but couldn’t touch him, she was afraid to try in case he melted into the air. Her hands hovered. Loop by loop, Taggle wormed his way free of the red wrappings, and then he was standing there on the bunk: greyhound sleek, golden eyed, perfect, alive.

“Well!” he said. “That was an adventure!”

“Oh,” said Kate. “Oh!” And she scooped him up and hugged him hard, feeling his soft fur and lanky strength. She squeezed him fiercely.

“Oof,” he said.

Drina whirled toward her mother, her face shattering.“What have you done?!”

“What I must do,” said Lenore. “What I could do: one small good thing, after so much darkness.” She unwrapped Drina’s turban slowly, tenderly, and then retied it as a girl’s headband, letting the extra length trail down Drina’s back like the hair she’d lost, like wings. “It is such a gift, to see you again.” She let her thumbs slide along Drina’s cheekbones. “But it is a gift I cannot keep.”

“No…” said Drina. And Kate, looking up startled, found that she could see Drina’s face through Lenore’s hands. “Don’t. Don’t go.”

“What my brother did, I cannot live with. He should have known that. And he should have known that a witch cannot give life, not perfectly, not forever.” Lenore looked at the cat. “Taggle.”

“What?” The cat shook his head so hard his ears made a noise like birds’ wings. “I’m not a murderous ghost, am I?”

“You’re a gift,” said the fading woman. “But not one without a cost. Kate, your shadow returns. As you gain it, so your friend will lose his voice.”

“Then I don’t want it! I don’t want my shadow! Taggle—tell her—”

“Bah,” said the cat, feigning a curled-tongue yawn. “Talking is complicated. What cat would want words?” But his golden eyes filled and shone with tears.

And Drina too was crying silently, though standing straight, looking her mother in the eye: Drina, brave as the sun.“Give us this moment,” said the ghost.

And so Kate took Taggle and they went out into the long soft light of the evening. She could smell the cat: warm and clean and strong. He was alive. Alive. And yet tears were running down her face. He reached up and blotted them away with one velvet paw.“Let us not waste our time in weeping. We must be about our business. We must find you a new knife.”

Kate swallowed three times before she could speak.“I know where there is one. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” said the cat, with a human nod. “Well. That gives us an evening free to cook things.”

A last evening. A good evening. How could it be a good evening? But it was. Behjet gathered up firewood and carried water and soon they had as homey a camp as could be managed, there by the unused grave. The river ran over smooth rocks and no fog came. Behjet caught a speckled trout and roasted it with wild dill and leeks. And Kate fried three kinds of spiced sausages, with onions and garlic and the last of the dried peppers.

She saved some for Drina, who came out of thevardo an hour late, alone. She paused there on the steps. It was nearly night. Stars swayed in the young birch trees. Fireflies blinked slowly over the river, wandering together in pairs.

“She’s gone,” said Taggle softly, to spare Drina the need of saying it.

Drina lit the lantern by thevardo door, and its light stroked her cheek as she nodded.“She is at peace.”

“I am sorry,” said Taggle, and Kate remembered when he had said it was not a thing for cats.

“There is something for you, Kate.” Drina came down the steps with the lantern in her hand. Kate saw that in her hand was a small braid of white hair. “She gave me something.”

“I’m done with magic,” said Kate.

“A gift,” said Drina, and laid her hand against the side of Kate’s face, where the burn scar was thick and twisted. “A song.” She bent her head, and she sang.

Kate knew the song. Linay had sung it to heal her burned hands, night after night on the haunted punt. And before that, once on a spring day in the marketplace of Samilae, Lenore had sung it for her father. Linay had sung it sad, full of minor falls. Lenore had sung it like a lullaby. Drina sang it gravely, slow and soft: a hymn.

Under Drina’s hands, Kate’s scars pulsed and stung. She tried to hold still. Across the fire, Taggle watched solemnly. After a long while, Drina dropped her hands. Kate lifted hers. Her fingertips mapped the new skin. It was tight and tender, but the slick, bubbling scar was gone. “Will you be a healer?” she asked.

“Maybe,” said Drina. And then, because hope will break the heart better than any sorrow, she started to cry. “It’s what my mother taught me.”

In the morning, they held what funeral they could, with nothing to bury but the charred fragment of Kate’s carving: an eye and forehead, bit of wing. “For Lenore,” said Kate. “And Linay.”

“We don’t say…” Behjet corrected her gently, but Drina interrupted, saying it softly: “For Lenore and Linay.”

And Taggle said what was the traditional blessing in that country:“May all the graves have names.”

“I will carve a marker for them,” said Kate. “But there is something I must do first. Linay stole me a knife once. I am going to go get it.”

Behjet frowned.“That city—it might still be dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” said Taggle stoutly. “She is fearless. And anyway, I am going with her.”

And so Kate and Taggle walked together, back toward Lov. They started early, their shadows stretched together, cat and human, down the long road behind them.“Your voice,” said Kate. “How…how long?”

“A—” Taggle stopped, head tilted. “I cannot make sense of time.”

“It’s not a matter for cats,” said Kate softly.

“No.”

“You will always be my friend,” she said.

His tail quirked and he growled fiercely,“I should think so.”

A last day. The country seemed as if a great curse had been lifted. White clouds drifted across the mirrored puddles on the road. Kate’s shadow grew stronger as the sun swung up the sky.

“Do you remember that horse of Behjet’s?” said Taggle. “The one who gave us such a jouncing?”

“Xeri,” said Kate.

“I clawed his ankle. And the camp dog, the brown one. I rode on his back for half a mile.”

“I remember.”

“And the—the—” he stuttered. “That bird, big—”

“The heron.”

“I could—”

“You could have killed him,” said Kate. “You could have taken him from above.”

“Ah,” said Taggle.

“You’re the king of the creatures,” said Kate. “You’re a panther, you’re a lord.”

They went in silence for a while. The road’s edges were embroidered with aster and wild carrot, glowing white and purple in the sun.

“Taggle?”

“Mmmmm…” he mewed.

“It’s nothing.”

“I’m here,” he said, thick-tongued. “I—”

“You will always be my friend,” she said.

Evening, the bridge to Lov. Ahead of them, Kate’s shadow was spread like a cape across a puddle. Taggle leapt the water in a silver arch, effortless, graceful. He turned back and quirked his whiskers: a cat’s beckoning.

“Taggle?”

“K-Katerina,” he stuttered. “Yessss…”My voice is still here, he meant. But it was a cat’s hiss in his answer.

“Let me carry you,” said Kate, and picked him up.

“Merow,” he said, and butted fondly at her ear.

They came round the city. Small boats bobbed in the pool outside the water gate. White storks paced among them. And there was the green barge. Kate hoisted Taggle onto her shoulder and waded out and climbed aboard.

So much had happened to her here: The tiny piece of decking seemed too small to contain it. But the redvardo was small too. And the lowest drawer of her father’s cabinet had been smaller still. Perhaps it was time to stop choosing small places.

Taggle poured himself out of her arms and hopped down into the hold.

She followed. That space too seemed smaller than it had, and more ordinary. The coiled ropes were looser, the wild herbs more stale. Lightning had lived there, but now it was gone.

The bunk was made up, and the box that had once held her shadow was resting in the middle of it. The stag on the box lid seemed almost alive in the swaying light. Beside it on the blanket was her white dress with its lace trimmings, the jar of salve that had healed her hands, the roll of hand tools, the knife she had refused to take. They were bundled together and tied with a red ribbon that had cost a kopek or two. Kate pictured Linay making up the bed and heading off to die. Had he been thinking of her? Had he wanted her to have the things that he’d given her, in the strange time when they had been almost friends?

She opened the box. It was no longer filled with the eerie, clotted darkness. It was just a box. There was a plain leather bag at the bottom. Remembering the weight, Kate drew open the purse strings. There was a scrap of paper, and—

The bag was full of thin, gleaming coins, mostly silver, but a few copper or—now that Kate looked—they were gold. It was a guild fee. A hundred times a guild fee. A thousand.

“Taggle,” she said. “Look!”

“Ca-ca-cat,” he stuttered. “K-Katerina. Cat.”

She knew it was the moment, and she turned to him. The cat looked up at her with the last trace of his broken heart, and then turned to look at the gold coins with simple gold-coin eyes. He said nothing. Forever after that, he said nothing.

“Taggle…” said Kate. Her voice broke. “T-Taggle…”

On the paper, in a hand so fierce it threatened to topple and break like a wave, Linay had written:

Kate. I hope you live.

Something flashed through her, surprising her with a sting of tears. She thought it was bewilderment, anger, fear—before she recognized it: grief.

“I did,” she told the paper softly. “We both did.” She picked up the cat, who whirred and purred and flowed up onto her shoulder. “And we’ll keep on living.”

And so they did, not always without trouble, but happily, and well, and for a long time thereafter.