1.1 - 1.3 Complete Chapter One (revised)
This comes right after the prologue.

The stranger was too tall and too thin, and had joints like a jumping jack strung too loosely, so that he seemed about to turn a flip or clatter into a pile of bones and string. He was pale of skin and eyes and hair, and his clothes were white and stained with travel. He spread his cloak on the dust and laid out an array of tin trinkets. They shone white in the hot sun. He put down small boxes, which he did not open. He sat down at the cloak edge with a tambourine on his knee. Plain Kate had never seen him before.

She was working just then on a bridal headdress for Nikolavena, the baker's daughter, carving birds the size of fingertips. As she carved, she listened. The stranger played the tambourine as she'd never heard it played, drawing from in not just bangs and jingles but music, lively as a quick stream, bright as bird song. When she looked up to stretch her neck she watched him. She saw people sidle up to him sometimes. He smiled and chattered up to them, eager as a baby bird. He sold a few trinkets. Once or twice she saw him open one of the boxes. Vervain the mayor's daughter snatched a look in it, then looked around to see who was watching. She didn't buy anything.

As evening gathered, Niki the baker came to check on the headdress He brought rolls that were too hard to sell. Plain Kate bit into one at once. It was hard as an uncooked potato. She chewed and chewed. "Easy on that," Niki said. "May be the last for a bit -- flour's low."

Plain Kate nodded and wrapped the half-eatten roll up with the others and tucked it away. Niki followed the bundle with his sad-dog eyes. "It's bad, bad. No grain and no news. Something's amiss on the river." He made the sign against witchcraft.

Plain Kate looked around the great square. She didn't see whatever it was Niki saw. The potato man was slinging unsold bags into a barrow. The goose woman was herding her flock towards one of the arched gates with a long stick. Two Roamer men were trying to lead the dray colt they hadn't sold, one stroking the horse's nose and murmering, the other grumpling and switching its rump. The strange musician was still sitting on his white blanket. She jerked her chin towards him. "Who's that one?" she asked. "What's he selling?"

"That one?" Niki snorted like a horse. "Useless frippery. Useless." The old baker hated everything that was useless, from lap dogs to wedding cakes. But Plain Kate was strong for her size and never complained, and Niki liked her, though of course he never said so. "You watch him, Plain Kate. That one might steal everything that's not nailed down, and some things that are only nailed loosely." Niki picked up the delicate pieces of carved wood in his big, burn-splashed hands.


***


Plain Kate listened to Niki and watched the stranger. He seemed to be selling little: a few toys and tin trinkets that Plain Kate could have made better in wood. Three days music put only three lonely coppers in his begging bowl. What he seemed to sell mostly was talk. He chattered bright as his tambourine, and he listened like an empty well. When Plain Kate came back from fishing through the thickening twilight he was still there: the only blanket still set in the market. It was in the deepest shadows that he seemed to do the best business.

On the forth day, Plain Kate looked up into a sudden quiet. The stranger's tambourine had become constant as the noise of wood and river: she only noticed it when it stopped. The stranger stood and stretched, flipped the corner of his cloak over his wares, and sauntered over to her. His eyes and hair were the shining white grey of new tin, but up close she saw he was a young man, almost too young, as if his face were a painting that had half washed away.

"Lovely lass," he said, leaning sharp elbows on the counter, "I hear you work wonders in wood."

Plain Kate had caught no fish for two days, and she was hungry. Still, she answered as she was required to: "There's a guild shop —"

He snorted, and managed to make it elegant. "Master Chuny? Boxwood for brains, dead twigs for fingers. No, no, my girl. I want someone with some feeling. You see," he widened sad eyes at her, "I've suffered a loss." And he drew from his back, where it was slung like a sword, a length of wood.

The thing was the size of a small branch, polished and curved. A snapped string curled around it. The back of the curve was splintery and broken. Plain Kate took the thing, feeling the arc of it, simple and powerful like a longbow or the prow of a ship. "What is it?"

"A courtier to the queen of all wooden things," said the stranger. He had taken something from his pack, big as a big book, and wrapped in blankets. He laid the bundle in the woodshavings between them and unwrapped the swaddling cloths. Polished wood gleamed up at her. She smelled beeswax and oil. "My fiddle. It's a bow for my fiddle." And he half sang: "A walker, a wanderer, a trader in tin — a gypsy with a violin. My name is Linay, and I grant wishes. What do you wish for, Plain Kate?"

Just then, Taggle sprang from nowhere to plunk down on the counter between them. He stuck his long nose into Linay's pack.

"Tag!" Plain Kate picked him up. Taggle squirmed, then relaxed into her arm and started to purr. Plain Kate eased him onto one shoulder and he slunk around her neck, where he draped bonelessly, like a fur collar with glittering eyes.

"Why," said Linay, "the king's ermine could not match that." He reached out to chuckle the cat's chin. Taggle bit him, idly. Linay pulled his hand back and smiled with many teeth. "Sweet-tempered beast."

Plain Kate ran a finger down the dark polish and into the pale splinters. "I think I could make one, but I haven't tried before. It will need work and time." She put down the broken bow. "What can you pay me?"

"Mmmm," he leaned close. "I could write a song about your eyes."

"Don't be stupid. Something I can eat."

"Do you think I have twenty pounds of potatoes in my pack? I travel light, lass. I have nothing but my music and my magic and a few thin coins."

"Magic?" she echoed.

He smiled slow as a fern uncurling, and sang: "What do you wish for, at night in your dark drawer — what do you wish for, Plain Kate?" And while he was singing he reached out and brushed the side of her face. His hands smelled of bitter herbs and something shot through her like ice on the neck.

"Now that's a wish," he said. "But I wouldn't. To raise the dead, it's a tricky thing. Goes awry most often."

Plain Kate jerked back. Taggle slid off her shoulders and landed on the counter with a bump. He shot Kate a huffy look, then sat down to clean himself. "I didn't wish for that."

"Of course you do, orphan girl. Everyone does and I should know. I've raised a dead man or two in my time, and how they come shambling, how they come hungry, how they come wrong as a bird in water —"

Plain Kate blurted: "Stop."

He smiled, and said softly, sing-song: "Whatever you want, whatever you wish -- skill, luck, beauty rich." He leaned in with an elaborately sly look, like an actor playing a villain. "Now, it's more than the work is worth, but we might trade."

"I won't marry you," she said. She had heard about musicians.

He laughed, merry but not kind. "Little stick, I don’t want to marry you."

"Well," Kate stuck out her square chin. "What, then?"

"Your shadow. If you give me your shadow, I'll grant any wish you like."

"But why do you want it?" Plain Kate lived in a market, and knew about market value.

"For the music. I weave shadows into the strings." He beat out weary steps, slow and sad as a lonely road. "With shadows in the strings, how the music moves and sings … With a shadow like yours, orphan girl — " he winked at her " — I could make the king cry."

"Potatoes," she said. "Or fishhooks. Fine wood, maybe. I'll have no deals with witches."

"Won't you now?" he said, smiling. "We'll see about that." He folded the felt around his fiddle. "I have no potatoes or fishhooks or oxcarts or sailcloth. Two silver."

"Five," she said.

"Three." He pulled a silver coin out of her ear. "Two more when the bow's done. You have a week."

Plain Kate put the coin in her pouch and pulled out her slate to sketch the bow. She felt his eyes on the part of her hair. But she didn't lift her head, and at last he turned away, whistling.

****

For the next three days Plain Kate sketched and carved in scrap wood, trying to learn how the bow worked. Even as she bent over the little birds of the headdress for Nicolovena she was thinking about how the bow bent with the grain of the wood.

When it got too dark to work, she went down to the docks to catch dinner. Taggle went ahead of her with his tail curled in a happy question mark. The day boats were just coming in, unloading the fish and nets and gear with great loops of talk and rope. The night boats where just going out, lighting the fires that shone down on the water. She fished as the stars came out, throwing her line into the darkening water. Taggle spent time catching the moths drawn to the fires of the night fishers. He leapt and twisted in the shadows.

Kate caught only a little bluegill in the first hour, but as the fishers came by with their wheelbarrows, things changed. Beneath her lure the river suddenly swarmed with fish. There were as thick as waves in a whirlpool. Taggle curled his claws into the end of the dock and leaned down until his nose almost touched the water. His yellow eyes were huge. He clicked his teeth with excitement.

The fishermen stopped to look. "Girly, would you look at that," said Big Hans, putting his barrow down. He loomed over her in the moonlight. "A body could stand on them."
Plain Kate shrugged: "A little body, maybe."

"Maybe," said Big Hans, and nudged Taggle's twitching rear end with his boot. The cat fell and twisted as he fell, sinking his claws deep into the dock and kicking at the water. Plain Kate pulled him up by the scruff and held him to her. He dripped and yowled and hissed at Big Hans. His back half looked like a drowned rat. Hans laughed. "Fierce beast you've got there, Girly. Don't you want to see if he can walk on fish?"

"Leave be, Hans," said the oldest fisher, Boyar. "What happens here, Plain Kate? How did you draw the fish?"

"I didn't! They've just ... come."

"Fish, then," said Boyar. "Don't turn your back on blessing." He eased Taggle out of her arms. Taggle bit him in the wrist and squirmed free, swiping at Hans's ankle as he bolted by. The old man watched as Kate cast the bare hook back into the swarm of fish. "You'll eat for a while," he said, "but it is an uncanny thing."

Big Hans was hopping at one foot, ankle seeping blood. "It's a witchy thing,"

"Ah, leave off, Hans," said Boyar. "Let's get the catch in." And he walked off and the fishermen followed, and the whispering of witchcraft went with them, like a fog coming off the river.

****

Plain Kate caught many fish, and traded the fixing of two cracked spars in Boyar's boat for a share of his space in the town's smokehouse. One fat trout she stuffed with wild dill and roasted on a hickory plank over the market square fire. She ate as much of the fish was she could was full for the first time in weeks. But still she felt uneasy.

She finished the wrens-and-roses headdress in the morning, and Niki came to collect it. There was still fish wrapped up in oilcloth on the work bench. "An uncanny thing," said Niki, poking the fish, shifting from foot to foot. "You should take care, Plain Kate. They say ...."

She rubbed her hands against her shoulders. "What do they say?"

"Take care, Kate," he said again.

In the heat of the afternoon as she worked on Linay's bow, Plain Kate felt that warning like a hand on her neck. She knew she lived mostly by the town's thin kindness. She could feel just how thin it was, between her and the whispers of the market square. A strange smell, sour and stale, seemed to come from the smokehouse. Linay's tambourine rattled like the too-bright sun to jangle in her head.

Taggle and came presented her with a half-dead bat. Plain Kate hit it with a hammer and hid it in a drawer. When she looked up half the square was looking at her. They looked down and she looked down. She pegged together the wood for the bow.

Taggle made a bleat that sounded like "want, want" and butted her hand with his bat-blooded muzzle.

"You can have some when I cook it."

The cat flopped down on top of her work.

"You're in the way," Kate said.

"Wrmmm," Taggle whirred and rolled to show his belly, pink under his white fur.

"Thanks for the bat, cat. But you're still in the way." She scratched him, then leaned her nose into his soft, warm fur. "Everyone's watching us, Tag," she whispered. "I--" She stopped as suddenly Taggle flipped to his feet and hissed.

Plain Kate looked up. Linay was lounging against the prop of her awning.

"I've heard your name in strange tales, Katie girl. They say you witched the fish." He sang: "Witch, Fish, Flinch, Kiss -- Won't you let me grant your wish?"

"No," she said.

"Hmmm," he smiled. "I wonder how much it will take to make you change your mind." And he sang:

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

Kate looked up. "Did you--" Linay's smile was long and narrow. "You drew the fish."

"Now what would I do with two dozen trout, lass? And what will you do --" Taggle had slunk around the upright, popped out, swarmed up Linay's shirt and clawed him in the ear. Linay shouted. Taggle jumped and dashed. Plain Kate laughed.

"Until tomorrow," Linay gave her an elegant bow, and sauntered off with a hand clamped to his ear.

***

When they opened the smoke house the next day, the fish were bones and ashes. They fell to dust at a touch. Only Plain Kate's trout were still plump, smoke-yellow and pink, perfect.

The master of the smokehouse summoned her, and she had to go stand before him with her strong hands curled into silent fists. He was a grand man, plump and ringed, though yellowed a bit with smoke and smelling of fish. "I have decided," he said, leaning back in his carved chair, "that your catch will be split among all the crews whose fish were in the batch. Since, after all, only luck has spared your fish alone."

Plain Kate stood for a moment and looked at the leaping fish carved on the arms of the chair. She thought it might be her father's work. "That's fair," she said. "But I didn't burn up the fish."

"As I say, lass," he said, frowning at her. "Only luck."

She could tell he didn't mean it. "It's not luck," she said, "it's magic. But it's not mine."

"The fish will be split," he said. "And that's enough from you, Kate Carver."

So she went back to work. She wanted to smash the bow, but it was very beautiful. It was quiet and strong. She kept her head down and kept working.

Linay snuck up on her again, though this time she was watching for him. "Fair maid of the wood," he said. "How goes the bow?"

Plain Kate shrugged.

He tapped her nose. "They call you witch-child already, Katie Girl.”

“If they do, it’s because of you.”

"If they do it’s because of you," he sang back to her.

What they see is because of me.
That may be, that may be.
I see what I say and I say what I see.

He smiled. "Do you know what happens to witches, Plain Kate? Have you seen the fires?"

She had. Five years ago. When the rain didn't fall and the heat didn't go, when the wheat barges didn't come, an old woman had died screaming. Plain Kate's father had picked her up and swept her away, though she was too big for it, and though the smell followed them. The next day the square was muted and scattered with ash.

The sourness from the smokehouse was suddenly stronger. Plain Kate tried a laugh. "Over a few fish?"

"Well," he Linay, with a bow. "There might be more."

"Go away. Or I'll set my cat on you."

Linay went away.

Through the long summer evening, through the fireflies and into darkness, Plain Kate watched him. By now she knew he sold a few trinkets during the day, and used his music to beg an odd copper. But at night all sorts came by: from the ragged charcol man to the wife of the lord justice, men and women, old and young. They came in ones and twos, shying from others, looking around. Linay sold them glass vials that gleamed in the moonlight, sold them herbs and feathers knotted in string.

Past midnight, when all the lanterns where covered, Plain Kate saw Vervain, the mayor's daughter, come rustling in dark silk and shining like a starling. Linay stood up for her, his paleness and his white clothes making him ghostly. Vervain's face, too, floated over her dark dress, beneath her piled dark hair. Linay dipped a finger in a jar, and drew something in glistening oil on her forehead and down her pale throat.

The watch called from somewhere near the river, and Vervain started, looking around. She saw Plain Kate watching. Vervain grew even paler and furious. She made a sign against evil, as if she thought Plain Kate was cursing her -- then she threw the sign as if she herself could throw a curse. Plain Kate ducked her head. Linay laughed softly, like an owl chuckling. Plain Kate pulled open the drawer that was her bed and her home, and lay down to think.



***

The next day there was no catch -- or no catch of fish. Father's nets brought up three boots. Big Hans caught a dead tree. And on the next day even less. Plain Kate saw Hans swat Taggle from his nest on top of a coil of rope. The cat was kicked and cursed from every market stall. The whole week there was no catch, and the grain barges didn't come. Boyar's ship went out night fishing and didn't come back.

Plain Kate kept to herself. No one brought her old rolls or odd carrots. She ate all her fish. She got hungry. Fog and rumour came off the river, and the town's air grew thick as thunder. Plain Kate kept her head bent over the bow. It was nearly finished.

At night in her dark drawer, Plain Kate lay awake, hot and chilled, her thoughts chasing themselves, until Taggle came and flopped on her face. Plain Kate cuddled him up under her chin like a fiddle, and they both went to sleep.

One night a huge smash woke her. Everythign was jumbled in her just-awake head; a crash, a jolt, a blast of open night air. Taggle was instantly awake, his claws pricking her throat as he bolted out his hole, panicked.

The crash came again, as if her stall was being struck by lighting. Plain Kate yanked the lever that opened the drawer from within. The drawer lurched, jammed. Another smash. A drawer dropped onto her legs. An axe head followed it, heavy and gleaming dull. Plain Kate shouted and threw her shoulder againt the jammed drawer front.

The axe yanked itself free. Taggle was back, giving horse cat screams, clawing the wood beside her head. Smash. Air and light and falling tools hit her. Taggle howled.

Smash. Kate jerked her head to one side as the axe clapped by her ear. She pushed up against the broken, splintering roof, and felt it give. She shoved and scrambled and hit air. She lurched up, bruised and scrapped and panting. Taggle squirmed out of a gap at her feet. She picked him up.

The square was full of fog. The axe weilder was gone. There was only a cluster of folk outside the inn door, mugs in hand, drawn by the noise. Linay sitting up on his white blanket. A couple in a shadowy archway. As the watch came pounding into the square the couple faded away -- she saw his huge hand, her shining skirt, and thought it was Hans and Vervain.

Everyone was watching her. Taggle's white fur was smudged and wet where she held him -- one of her hands was bleeding. Silently she stooped and pulled her spare shirt free and shook it clean. She wrapped it around her hand. It didn't hurt. She didn't feel anything.

The running watchmen had stopped when they saw it was only her. The drinkers from the inn began to talk again, and wandered inside. No one came to speak to her. She looked down. Her father's stall was a jagged, jumbled ruin. Tools and half-finished work were scattered in the rubble and across the wet cobbles. One pale deer, still whole, lept towards the edge of splintered piece of awning.

Taggle was tangling around her feet, bleating. She stooped, stroked him between his ears, and picked up an awl. She set on the bare cobbles, further away. She moved one broken drawer. Things tumbled out of it. It made a lot of noise, but Plain Kate said nothing, and no one came. She worked silently, sorting work and tools from junk and straw. After a while Linay came over from his white blanket and worked beside her, and he too was silent. He pulled her blanket from under the last of the rubble. She saw the axe holes in it, and the way the fog moved through them like snakes.


***

She folded her quilts into a mat; she hammered the rubble into a bench to work on. Summer thunder cleared the market square. Soaked and cold, Plain Kate worked alone to finish the bow, her hair dripping into her face.

When the bow at last was finished, it was as beautiful as anything she'd ever made. It had no ornaments, no decorations, but it was beautiful like one bird against the sky. She dried it on her shirttail and carried it into the inn where Linay -- and half the other merchants of the square -- were waiting out the storm.

Everyone except Linay fell silent as Plain Kate come in. Linay was sitting in one corner, like a patch of light in his pale clothes, singing a sad song about river spirits. Plain Kate ignored the looks that beat on her like rain. Big Hans grabbed her whole arm in one hand. "You're not welcome here."

Linay stopped singing and stood up. "Her business is with me." Even though Linay was spindly as driftwood, Hans let Plain Kate go. Linay swept by and caught her up in his wake. They went outside. The rain had stopped. The light was storm-green and the trees were stirring. The smell of the river and the summer forest was heavy in the air.

Plain Kate held out the bow without a word. Linay took it as if it were a sword, and bowed over it. He looked at her silently. She said nothing.

At last Linay grinned and pulled coins out of her ear, like a common jester. "Your two silver. Does that finish our business?"

"I am leaving," she said. "I need food, and things."

He said nothing, though his grey eyes shone.

"For my shadow," she said. She had no shadow; the light was like a mist around them.

"Not here," he said. He stepped around the corner, into the drizzle.

"I want oilcloth," she said, following him. "And a sleep roll, a pack. A packet of fishhooks, a camp hatchet. Ten yards of rope."

"Do you think you can live on the road?" he said. "In the woods? "

"I'll get by."

"You'll get by, you'll get by. I'd almost like to see you try." He smiled at her -- a
flash like sheet lightning. "Done."

"And you leave me alone."

"Done." Far away thunder clacked. It sounded like a latch closing.

"Done," she said.

Linay wiped his dripping hair off his face. "The beacon fire, on the docks. Meet me there at the third bell past midnight." He turned to go back into the inn. He looked back, tossing a grin to her.

Plain Kate walked back to the ruins of her stall. She thought about what she could carry and what she must leave. Behind her she heard a new music start: Linay's fiddle rang wild and powerful as the storm across the rainy town.

She took the silver coin and bought a bag from the tanner, who took her money but spat on his doorstep when she left. She packed the smallest of her tools in their felt pouches, she packed her one pan, she packed her two striped smocks and extra socks. She coiled up her fishing line and twine. She packed all she could and all she could carry, but she left much, because she though she was strong she was small.

***

At three bells she found Linay on the docks. He was sitting with his back against the stone tower of the beacon, shining like a moth, and eating a meatpie. He held another at he held out to Kate. She ignored it. He shrugged, licked the gravy from his dagger, and the pie the wet wood at her feet.

Taggle's nose started twitching.

Plain Kate sat down on the dock. Taggle started twisting in her hands like a snake -- a snake who wants meatpie. She clamped her hands around his middle. "Now what?"

"Blood," said Linay. Fire flared across his face. She drew back and he laughed. "Oh, mine, deary-o, don't worry." And he drew the dagger fearlessly across his palm. His white face didn't flicker, but Plain Kate winced for him a blood welled. Taggle made a strange little sound.

"What?" she started to ask -- but before she even got it out, he'd risen snake-smooth to his feet. His hand flashed, his wrist flicked. Blood flew and fell over Kate like a net. She leapt up shouting, and Taggle spilled from her arms and howled. "Enough!" barked Linay, and flung a silence at them. Kate felt as if the air had turned to glass. Her lungs were stiff as bellows. Taggle panted at her feet.

Linay stood up and stretched. He smiled at her, then reached as if he were going to twirl her into a dance. Thin hands plucked the net and glass and silence away from her shoulders. Plain Kate gasped. She felt heavier and lighter at once. She felt as if she had a fever. She felt as if he had emptied her bones. She coughed. Taggle shook his head, then started sniffing around the meatpie.

"Well," said Linay. "That's that."

"What--" said Kate.

"I have left your goods at the third big stone round the bend of the road."

"But--" said Kate.

"You can trust me. A mage never lies." He cocked his head and looked at her, as a bird looks at another bird. Even in the little yellow fire, his eyes were silver and strange. "I added matches and some odds and ends, a lovely coat of rabbit skin . It will be winter soon enough."

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

He lifted the new bow, tucked the fiddle under his chin, and played a tune that matched his song. It was so lovely and so sad that tears came to Plain Kate's eyes. She wondered what she had done. Linay lowered the fiddle. "Will you come with me, to the king's city?"

"No."

"No," he echoed. "But I will see you again, I think." He looked down at Taggle. "The pair of you."
He turned to go, still humming the sad tune, and tossing something like a scarf around his neck. Kate could only see it because it bent and thickened the light. The scarf was her shadow.

Taggle hissed at his back. Kate turned. "Musssssssicians," Taggle spat. "Do you know what fiddle strings are made of? Pah! I'm glad he's gone. Let's eat."