“Some salve, first.” He released her and produced, from the billows of his zupan, a stoppered jar. He rubbed some of the chilling, oily stuff into her scars. The mint-sharp smell washed over her. Linay’s head was bent over her hands. “Lenore,” he said softly. “My sister’s name was Lenore. She was a healer. She taught me this. I will see you carve again.”
She could think of nothing to say. Linay stayed bent over her hands, singing softly. Kate remembered what Drina had said: that all magic depended on a gift, freely given, and that healers gave some of their own life for the health of those they healed. Linay rocked as he sang, as if he were praying or exhausted. He sang himself slowly into silence. He let go of her hands but did not lift his head. His voice was low. “What does your cat call you?”
“Katerina.”
“Katerina. I am sorry.” Even if he had not been a witch, bound to the truth by his own power, she would have been sure that he meant it.
But that night as the fog rolled around the punt, he again summoned the rusalka. He again sat and watched as Kate filled her hand—her hand that he had just worked to heal—with her own blood. And he let the rusalka nurse on her blood until Kate found herself sliding into grayness, trying to hold on to the memory that Linay was dangerous, that he did not love her, and that she must not forgive him.
?
Plain Kate slept deep into the next day. When she woke, the first things she saw were cat eyes. Taggle was sitting on her chest glaring as only cats can. “You let the thing come for you again,” he said. “If you die I am going to be furious with you.”
Her head felt muzzy. “Where were you?”
The cat abruptly decided to groom his shoulder. “He gave me fish,” came the fur-muffled voice. “I went to sleep.”
“He poisoned you?”
“I will not take food from him again,” Taggle intoned. “Please know that this is a great sacrifice. But clearly I must guard you, Katerina.” He looked at her sidelong. “You are thinking of giving it more blood.”
“I think…” she said, and stopped to think. The little cabin was stuffy and rocking; it made her drowsy. She lay watching the herbs and bundles above her slowly sway. “I think I have to,” she said. “He will give me my shadow back at Lov. I can’t live without my shadow.”
“I do not trust him.”
“He can’t lie.”
“So he says.” Taggle’s tail lashed. “Katerina, your shadow will do you no good if the thing kills you.”
“It won’t,” said Linay, and Kate jumped. He had slipped down the ladder without them noticing.
Taggle did not deign to flinch, but his ears flicked back. “It will. I have made many things bleed; I know blood. Katerina, you cannot feed the thing again. It will kill you.”
“Well,” said Linay. “There is a trick to it.”
“Faf!” Taggle spat. “You are full of tricks! It is late for tricks! You weaken her; you muddle her!”
Linay ignored this. “Come ashore. I’ll show you.”
Kate wanted only to sleep. The heat lulled; her head pounded. But after a while she got up and climbed the ladder. She found the punt pulled up at the river’s edge where some long-ago flood had left a tangled heap of dead trees. She had waited too long: Linay had gone off on one of his foraging missions and left them alone.
Sitting in the bleached and bony wood, with the sun streaming through her, Plain Kate sat and tried to carve. The knife that had once been like another hand to her now sat stiffly on top of the new scars. Her fingers had lost their sureness and strength. But still, she turned the burl wood she’d found in the road over and over under her knife, cutting away its weak-rotted places, looking for the shape in its heart. It was rough work, the only kind her hands could do.
The burl slowly took a shape like something with wings. She thought of two hands pressed wrist to wrist, with palms and fingers spread. Bound hands.
Taggle sat primly on a deadfall branch and glared at her until she gave up on carving and placated him by catching a fish. She cooked; they ate. Time passed quietly.
“When you were with the Roamers,” said Linay’s voice behind her, sudden and soft as a ghost, “did she come?”
Plain Kate refused to jump again. She nodded without looking at him. Yes, the rusalka had come. And the Roamers—the people who had been almost her family—had blamed Kate.
“Who?” said Linay.
Plain Kate didn’t see why she ought to answer. Let him wonder. But then he said: “Not Drina…?”
Drina. Her first friend, her—the word startled her as it came into her head—her sister. “No,” she said. “Not Drina. Wen. Stivo.”
“Ah,” he said, voice flat. And he sat down across from her and speared the fish’s head.
“Can they be saved?” Kate asked. “The sleepers—could I have saved them?”
Linay shrugged. “If the rusalka was roused from her half sleep, the sleepers might awaken too. I don’t know and I don’t much care.” He flipped up the gill flap with a thumbnail and picked out the morsel of meat behind it.
“We want to see this trick of yours,” said Taggle.