Wood Angel

Skara Role: Part 4

     In the smallest drawer of her father's stall, among thelace-fine carvings packed in straw, she found them: kittens.They were mouse-little, with their eyes still sealed closedand their ears tucked flat. There was no cat. It was almostdawn and frost furred everything. The market square wasas still as the inside of a bell after the ringing has stopped.The straw nest was getting cold.

     Plain Kate stood for a while and watched the kittensstagger about. Then she scooped them up and squeezedherself back into the drawer.

  And that was the beginning of her new life. 

     There were three kittens: a white cat, a black cat, anda gangly grey tom. Their mother never came back. Thenext morning Plain Kate traded the cowherd girl the mendingof a milk stool for a squirt of milk, and the promiseof more each morning. She watered the milk and let thekittens suck on the twisted end of a rag. She kept them inthe felt-lined pockets of her leather apron, under her coatduring the day, and beside her at night in the warm, closeddarkness of the drawer. Day by day, their dark eyes openedand their ears untucked and their voices grew louder.

     She was patient with them, and took care of them everymoment, and against all odds all three lived. The black catgrew wild and fearless and went to live on one of the polebarges that plied the shallow, twisting Narwe River. Thewhite cat grew crafty and fat, and went to live on mice andmilk with the cowherd girl. The grey tom grew long andnarrow, and stayed with Plain Kate. 

      He was a dandy with one ear cocked, a gleam on hisclaw and a glint in his eye. He sauntered through the marketsquare, elegant and tattered, admired and cursed: ahighwayman, a gentleman thief. His name was Taggle, forthe three kittens had been Raggle, Taggle and Bone.

     Plain Kate grew too: skinnier and stronger, but notmuch taller. The years were thin. But against all odds, andwith the cat by her side, she too lived.

     The guild man kept the shop, but Kate was the bettercarver. He took most of the work, because no one couldafford to defy the guilds for small matters. Kate made mostof the objarka, the carved charms that drew luck. Luck inthat place was a matter of life and death, and that madethe guilds worth defying.

     Plain Kate's own objarka was a cat curled up asleep. Shehad made it herself, from a burl of walnut that her fatherhad given her. Burl wood, with its tight whorls, was thehardest sort of wood to carve, but she had carved it. Slowlyand patiently she followed its flowing lines, looking for thewood's truth. When she was finished, the curling woodgrain suggested lanky strength at rest.

     'Kate, My Star,' her father had said, 'this could be amasterpiece.' He meant the piece an apprentice makeswhen the apprenticeship is finished, to gain admission tothe guild. The little objarka was not big enough for amasterpiece, but, her father said, it was good enough. 'Lookat it,' he said. 'It is telling you about yourself.'

But he would not tell her what it said.

     Plain Kate had given the cat objarka to her father, andhe had worn it always, around his neck on a leather thong.It was almost black now, shiny with the oil of his skin. Shewore it inside her own shirt, over her heart. But if it wastelling her something, she could not hear it.

     After a while she stopped listening and simply tried tolive. She made a hinged front for her drawer, so that shecould lock herself in. She put ragged hems in her father'sstriped smocks when her dresses wore out. She carved whenthere was light. When there was no light she fished, andcaught trout with her wooden dragonflies. Taggle broughther mice and rats, birds and bats. She learned to suck themeat from the smallest bone. She got by.

     The kinder folk of the market square gave her what theycould not sell: bruised apples, carrots with strange legs. Thecrueller gave her curses; they spat and whispered. She waslonely, though she didn't know it. Folk said she had a longshadow.

But every night Taggle came to wrap himself around heras she slept in the lowest drawer.

And so it went for cold days and hot, wet days anddusty, and long, hungry winters.

     Then one summer day, change and magic came lopingand waltzing into her life, wearing white, and in thatmoment nothing seemed dark.

...

END OF CHAPTER ONE, SKARA ROLE. 

BUT IT'S ONLY THE BEGINING....

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