Plain Kate was working her way toward the pool that was hidden from Linay’s boat by the largest willow. She inched along the bottom of the V made by the steep bank and the willow’s great furrowed trunk, balancing with both hands. The willow’s rough bark made her feel the fragile tightness of the new scars on her hands. Her hands felt as stiff as if gloved.
“I could kill the heron,” said Taggle. “If I wanted. I would lie in wait on one of the willow branches and take him from above.”
“Like a panther,” said Kate, who wasn’t really listening. Her hands. Her hands that held her carving knife. Her skill with that knife was her whole life, the only thing she had left in the world. Her hands felt so strange.
Taggle curled his tail. “Like a panther. Ah. A panther.” He sprang up on a branch and padded along by her ear.
“Taggle,” she began. She wanted to ask him what would happen to her if she couldn’t carve. What would happen—but she could not think of any words. And then she came clear of the willow, and found herself above the edge of a pool set like a jewel into the bank. The willow branched above and green fronds trailed like a curtain, all around.
Taggle stretched himself out on a branch over the pool. “I would wait,” he announced, “like this.”
Plain Kate stood looking down at the green, dappled space. Her skin was sticky and grimed as if she’d been wound up in a spiderweb for months. Her legs trembled with weakness. And her hands felt numb, bigger than they should have, and farther away.
“I will keep watch,” yawned the cat, and closed his eyes.
What will I do? she had wanted to ask him. What will I do if I cannot carve? But it was the wrong question. What will I do without my shadow? What will I do with no family and no people, no place to belong? What will I do with my life in the hands of this dangerous man? “Taggle,” she began.
But the cat was so intently keeping watch that he had fallen asleep. He lay on the branch with his dangling feet dream-twitching. Kate laughed. And laughed. And found she couldn’t stop laughing. It tore at her until she doubled up and her eyes streamed. And still she kept laughing, until she threw up with the horror of it.
The physical shock of the sickness calmed her. She washed. Exhausted, she slept. When she woke it was golden afternoon. Linay’s boat was out of sight behind the big willows, but she could hear the river patting its flat sides. She could go back there.
Or she could leave.
Anyone who saw her would take her for a demon. She could not go among people; they would kill her. She could not live on her own; she would die.
When you are carving a narrow point, like the tail of this fish, her father had said to her, big hands over her little ones, and the carving beneath them, this is a time of danger. The knife may slip. It may follow a grain and spoil the line. There may be a flaw deep in the wood that will snap your work in two. You will want to leave the tail thick and crude; that is safer. A master carver will be brave, and trust the wood. Things will find their shape. Kate, My Star. Lift your knife.
Plain Kate stood up. Between her and the road was a steep slope, almost a bluff, tangled with the bent roots of the willows and clogged with nettles. She tilted her chin up. “Taggle,” she said, “we’re leaving.”
?
When Kate finally reached the road she was scratched and netttle stung and shaking with exhaustion. It had only been a little climb, but her body was weak. She tried to hear her father’s voice: Be brave. Things will find their shape. Lift your knife.
She turned her back on the way Linay had been going, and followed the road upriver. The road went with the grain of the land, cutting between the river bluffs and the strip of farmland won from the forest: fields of wheat and millet, with the wooded hills beyond. It was a narrow road, quiet. Kate walked and Taggle ambled at her heels.
As she walked, the weather changed. Butter sunshine gave way to a light like watered milk, and then to a thick fog, wet as drizzle. The fog caught and twisted the sound of crows in the wheat, hoarse as a mob of voices.
A little way into the fog they found a tree stump abandoned in the road. It was oak, big as a shed, and still harnessed to a yoke that stood empty. Plain Kate touched one of the hames: ash wood, old but well-made, its inner curve smooth as a lady’s wrist. It was not the sort of thing people in a poor country left to lie in the middle of the road. Plain Kate edged around the stump—and then she saw something that made her stop. In among the biggest roots was a knot of wood, twice as big as her head. It was a burl.
Burls had twisting grains that made them hard to carve, but made them beautiful. Many a carver had made his masterpiece from just such a burl. Kate had dreamed of it—but had never been able to afford the wood. Burl wood was rare and expensive.
Plain Kate looked down at her hands, stiff and patched with scars, white and pink like the belly of an old fish. In an unknown country, with not so much as a kopek in her pocket, there were better things to carry than ten pounds of wood. And there were easier things to carve, when you weren’t sure if your hands would serve you. Indeed, anything she could have chosen would be easier to carve than an oak burl.
But she took it anyway.