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.”