Plain Kate

At night the fog was thick and full of light, and sometimes voices.

I have business to conduct in the language of fur and claw.

Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. ‘It’s covered in BREAD,’ he huffed. ‘What fool has covered MEAT with BREAD?

They're gone. I let them chase me. I led them like a sunbeam and vanished like a shadow.

Often she dreamt she had two wings, and one was frightened, and one was happy.

And then because hope will break the heart better than any sorrow, she started to cry.

Her father sat her down and spoke to her with great seriousness. "You are not a witch, Katerina. There is magic in the world, and some of it is wholesome, and some of it is not, but it is a thing that is in the blood, and it is not in yours. "The foolish will always treat you badly, because they think you are not beautiful," he said, and she knew this was true. Plain Kate. She was a plain as a stick and thin as a stick and flat as a stick. Her nose was too long and her brows too strong. Her father kissed her twice, once above each brow. "We cannot help what fools think. But understand, it is your skill with a blade that draws this talk. If you want to give up your carving, you have my blessing." "I will never give it up," she answered.

I am not sure I can." "Become sure," said the cat, his eyes flashing green in the firelight. "Once you leap on a boar's back, you can't sheath your claws.

Well. I am not afraid. But to protect you, Katerina, I will be discreet." Plain Kate considered a cat's idea of discretion, and was frightened.

Perhaps it was time to stop choosing small places.

The night was white-blind with fog, and Kate staggered over every stone and stumbled in every puddle, but she pushed on as fast as she could.

Your shadow is bought and paid for, and your death will not remit that payment. You can go shadowless into the shadowless world, and your death will only be one last dark thing on my long dark road. It will hurt me but I do not care. It is all but over.

Plain Kate, Kate the Carver No one's friend and no one's daughter Little Kate might meet her fate Whittling sticks till it's too late

Taggle looked up at her, his amber eyes as deep as the loneliness Kate had felt before he became her friend. "The traditional thing," he said slowly, "involves the river and a sack.

Go fast, Plain Kate, and travel light Learn to walk the shadowy night Without a shadow, flee from light Become a shadow, truly

- the rusalka was kneeling beside Plain Kate on the deck. She was made of fog and shadow until Kate caught her eye, and then, all at once, she became human. She was young, mischievously sad, a fox in a story. Kate fell in love with her. And then she was gone.

They hurried when they could, and dozed when they had to, hiding in tangles of bloodtwig and heartsease at the edge of the road.

Oh bats, oh bats, oh snacks with wings– Come and hear how Taggle sings! Oh squirm, oh squeak, my wriggly bats– You'll make a gift for lady cats!

Kate faced the crowd. They were just eyes and teeth to her, just spit and voices. It was a moment, even, before they became people: a man with one blind eye, another whose neck was thick with lumps and weeping wounds of scrofula. The poorest of the market. At Kate's feet, Drina. Her scarf and shirt were torn open.

Taggle, meanwhile, made himself popular, killing rats and bringing a rabbit into camp every evening, preening in the praise - silently, thank god, though at night, he recounted choice bits to Kate: "Rye Baro says I am a princeling; he split the leg bone for me so that I could eat the marrow. They love me. And I'm sure they'll keep you, too." Mira, she thought, and treasured it each time she heard it, They must keep me. Family.

Plain Kate greased her boots and bandaged her feet, and soon she would walk like a Roamer born. She helped Drina with the water and the wood, and in the long, wet evenings she carved objarka burji. Plain Kate carved fast and learned slowly. She was bewildered most of the time, but Daj called her mira again, and when she asked Drina what it meant, the girl replied, "It means she likes you. It means your family." Family. It could have kept her walking for a hundred miles. And she did walk far.

Witch, fish, flinch, kiss – won't you let me grant your wish?

Behjet eased the horse forward again. "The harvest is failing. There will be no crop at all if this rain doesn't stop - not even hay." The rain. The rain she'd been so grateful for, the rain that concealed the warping of her shadow. It was going to kill people.

Foggy little oxbows Forest pools where no one goes Lost links of the river dreaming dreams

He was a dandy with on eear cocked, a gleam on his claw and a glint in his eye. He sauntered through the market square elegant and tattered, admired and cursed: a highwayman, a gentleman thief. His name was Taggle, for the three kittens had been Raggle, Taggle, and Bone.

No one likes them, because their ways are different,' Drina explained. 'Just like the Roamers - no one likes us either. So we have to like each other.

And suddenly, in the place of the woman-shape made of shadow, there was something else. Something huge, something ugly. Linay flung up both hands. The thing screamed like a hawk and opened to wings: one white as a death cap, one clotted in shadow. The wings came together and the whole pond shuddered. Something hit Kate's ear and shoulder and smashed to the deck by her feet. It was a swallow, dead. She could hear them falling all over the pond.

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