Gathering Blue (12 page)

She tiptoed forward and leaned beside Thomas. They could see that one of the doors was open. An indistinct murmur of voices came from within. One voice was Jamison's. The other was that of a child.

The child cried briefly.

Jamison spoke.

Then the child, surprisingly, began to sing.

Its clear, high voice soared. No words. Just the voice, almost instrumentlike in its clarity. It rose, leveled at a high note, and hovered there for a long moment.

Kira felt something tug at her clothing. She looked down and saw Matt beside her, wide-eyed, pulling at her skirt. She motioned to him to stay silent.

Then the singing broke off abruptly, and the child cried again.

They heard Jamison's voice. It was harsh now. Kira had never heard him speak in that way.

The door slammed shut, and the voices were muted.

Matt was still tugging at her, and Kira leaned down so that he could whisper what he had to say.

"It's me friend," he said urgently. "Well, not really me friend 'cause me and my mates don't like girl tykes none. But I knowed her. She lived in the Fen."

Thomas was listening too. "The one who was singing?" he asked.

Matt nodded enthusiastically. "Her name be Jo. She always be singing in the Fen. I didn't never hear her cry like that none."

"Shhh." Kira tried to quiet Matt but he had a difficult time whispering. "Let's go back," she suggested. "We can talk in my room."

Branch led now, happy to be retreating and enthusiastic about the possibility of more food back where breakfast had been. Stealthily they climbed the stairs and returned.

Safe in Kira's quarters, Matt perched on the bed with his bare feet dangling and told them about the girl who sang. "She be littler'n me," he said. He jumped briefly to the floor and held his own hand level with his shoulder. "She be about this high. And all the peoples in the Fen? They get so happy, hearing her sing." He climbed back onto the bed; Branch jumped up beside him and curled on Kira's pillow.

"But why is she here?" Kira asked, puzzled.

Matt gave an exaggerated shrug. "She be an orphan now. Her mum and pa, they died," he explained.

"Both of them? At the same time?" Kira and Thomas looked at each other. They both knew loss. But had it happened again? To another tyke?

Matt nodded importantly. He liked being the messenger, the bringer of information. "First her mum gets the sickness, and then when draggers take her mum to the Field? And her pa go to watch the spirit?"

Kira and Thomas nodded.

"Well," Matt said, making a dramatically sad face, "her pa be so sad at the Field, sitting there, that he taken a big pointy stick and stab hisself through the heart.

"That's what them all said, anyways," he added, seeing the shocked looks his story had produced.

"But he had a tyke! He had a little girl!" Kira said, finding it unbelievable that a father would do such a thing.

Matt shrugged again. He considered that. "Maybe he didn't like her none?" he suggested. Then after a moment he frowned and said, "But how could he not like her none when she sing so good?"

"And how did she get here?" Thomas asked. "What is she doing here?"

"I been told they give her away to someone who had a craving for more tykes," Matt said.

Kira nodded. "Orphans always go to someone else."

"Unless —" Thomas said slowly.

"Unless what?" Kira and Matt asked together. He pondered that. "Unless they sing," he said at last.

Jamison came to Kira's room, as he always did, later in the day. Outside, the rain still fell. Matt, undaunted, had gone off with his dog to find his mates, wherever they might be in such weather. Thomas had returned to his own quarters to work, and Kira too with extra lamps lighted by the tender, had settled to her task, stitching carefully throughout the afternoon. The interruption when Jamison knocked on her door was welcome. The tender brought tea and they sat companionably together in the room while the rain spattered against the windows.

As usual, he examined her work carefully. His face was the same creased, pleasant face she had known now for many weeks. His voice was courteous and friendly as together they scrutinized the folds of the outstretched robe.

Yet the memory of the harsh sound of his murmured speech in the room below prevented Kira from asking him about the singing child.

"Your work is very fine," Jamison told her. He leaned forward, looking carefully at the section she had just completed, where she had meticulously matched the subtle differences of several yellows and filled in a background area with tiny knotted stitches that formed a texture. "Better than your mother's, although hers was excellent," he added. "She taught you the stitches?"

Kira nodded. "Yes, most of them." She didn't tell him how others seemed simply to come to her untaught. It seemed boastful to speak of it.

"And Annabella the dyes," she added. "I'm using many of her threads still, but I'm beginning now to make my own when I'm at her cott."

"She knows all there is, the old woman," Jamison said. He looked at Kira's leg with apparent concern. "The walk is not too hard for you? One day we'll have the fire pit and the pots here for you. I'm thinking of preparing a place just below." He gestured toward the window, indicating an area between the building and the edge of the woods beyond.

"No. I'm strong. But —" She hesitated.

"Yes?"

"Sometimes I've been fearful on the path," Kira told him. "The forest is so close all around."

"There is nothing to be afraid of there."

"I do fear beasts," she confessed.

"As you should. But stay on the path always. The beasts will not come near the path." His voice was as reassuring as it had been the day of her trial.

"I heard growling once," Kira confided, shuddering a little at the memory of it.

"There is nothing to fear if you don't stray."

"Annabella said the same thing. She told me there was nothing to fear."

"She speaks with four-syllable wisdom."

"But, Jamison?" For some reason, Kira hesitated to tell him this. Perhaps she didn't want to question the old woman's knowledge. But now, feeling reassured by Jamison's interest and concern, she told him the startling thing that the old dyer had said with such certainty. "She said that there are no beasts."

He looked at Kira oddly. The expression on his face seemed a mixture of astonishment and anger. "No beasts? She said that?"

'"There be no beasts,'" Kira repeated. "She said it just that way, several times."

Jamison laid the section of robe he'd been examining back down on the table. "She's very old," he said firmly. "It's dangerous for her to speak that way. Her mind is beginning to wander."

Kira looked at him dubiously. For weeks now she had worked with the dyer. The lists of plants, the many characteristics of each, the details of the dyeing procedures, so much complex knowledge; all of it was clear and complete. Kira had seen no sign, no hint of a wandering mind.

Might the old woman know something that no one else — even someone with the status of Jamison — knew?

"Have you
seen
beasts?" Kira asked him hesitantly.

"Many, many times. The woods are filled with them," Jamison said. "Never stray past the village limits. Do
not
go beyond the path."

Kira looked at him. His expression was hard to discern, but his voice was firm and certain.

"Don't forget, Kira," he continued, "I saw your father taken by beasts. It was a hideous thing. Terrible."

Jamison sighed and patted her hand sympathetically. Then he turned to leave. "You are doing a fine job," he said again, appreciatively.

"Thank you," Kira murmured. She put her hand, still feeling his touch, into her pocket. Her special scrap of cloth lay folded there. She felt no comfort from it. As the door closed behind Jamison, she stroked the cloth, seeking its solace, but it seemed to withdraw from her touch, almost as if it were trying to warn her of something.

The rain still fell steadily. Through it, she thought for a moment that she could hear the child sob on the floor below.

The sun was shining in the morning but Kira woke groggy after a fitful sleep. Following an early breakfast she tied her sandals carefully, anticipating the walk to Annabella's. Maybe the clear, cooler air after the rain would wake her a bit and make her feel better. Her head ached.

Thomas's door was closed. He was probably still asleep. There were no sounds either from the floor below. Kira made her way out of doors, relishing the breeze that lingered after the storm and was pinescented from trees that were still glistening and wet. It blew her hair away from her face and the misery of her sleepless night began to subside.

Leaning on her stick, Kira made her way to the place where she ordinarily turned from the village and entered the woods on the path. It was quite near the weaving shed.

"Kira!" A woman's voice called to her from the shed, and she saw that it was Marlena, already at the loom so early.

Kira smiled, waved, and detoured to greet the woman.

"We miss you! Them tykes that clean up for us now are worthless. Horrid lazy! And one stole my lunch yesterday." Marlena scowled her outrage. Her feet slowed on the treadle and Kira knew that she was eager to chat and gossip.

"That be him now, that wicked tyke!"

A familiar wet nose touched Kira's ankle. She reached down to scratch Branch and saw Matt grinning at her from behind the corner of the weaving shed. "You there!" Marlena called angrily and he drew back to hide.

"Marlena," Kira asked, remembering that the weaving woman lived in the Fen, "did you ever know a girl tyke named Jo?"

"Jo?" The woman was still peering toward the shed corner, hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt and scold him. "You there!" she called again, but Matt was too sly and too clever to respond.

"Yes. She used to sing."

"Ah, the singing tyke! Yes, I knowed her. Not her name though. But her singing, we all knowed that! Like a bird, it was."

"What happened to her?"

Marlena shrugged. Her feet began to move slowly again on the treadle. "She be tooken off. They give her off to somebody, I guess. She be orphaned, I heared."

She leaned forward and whispered loudly, "Some said her receive the songs by magic. Nobody teached her. The songs, they just come."

Her feet paused. She gestured to Kira to come closer. Furtively, Marlena confided, "I heared that them songs was full of knowledges. She be only a small tyke, you know? But when she singed, she had knowledges of things that wasn't even happened yet!

"I never heared it myself, only heared tell of it."

Marlena laughed and her feet took up the rapid pace on the treadle that caused the rhythmic motion of the loom. Kira nodded goodbye to her and started toward the path.

Matt met her there, appearing from behind a tree where he'd been hiding. Kira glanced back but Marlena was busy at her loom and had forgotten them both.

"Are you coming with me this morning?" she asked Matt. "I thought you found it boring at the dyer's hut."

"You mustn't go today," Matt said solemnly. Then he glanced at his dog and began to laugh. "Looky! Old Branch, him trying to catch him a lizzie!"

Kira looked and laughed too. Branch had chased a small lizard to the base of a tree and was watching, frustrated, as it slithered up the trunk beyond his reach. He stood on his hind legs and his front ones churned in the air. The lizard looked back and a moist stiletto tongue darted in and out. Kira watched for a moment, chuckling, and then turned again to Matt.

"What do you mean, I mustn't go? I missed yesterday because of the rain. She's expecting me."

Matt looked solemn. "She not be expecting nobody. She be gone to the Field right when the sun be coming up. Draggers tooken her. I seen it."

"To the Field? What are you talking about, Matt? She couldn't possibly walk to the Field from her cott! It's too far! She's too old! And she wouldn't want to anyway."

Matt rolled his eyes. "I didn't say she be wanting to! I said they
tooken
her! She be dead!"

"
Dead?
Annabella? How can that be?" Kira was stunned. She had seen the old woman two days before. They had sipped tea together.

Matt took her question seriously. "It be like this," he replied. He flung himself to the ground, lay on his back with both arms outstretched, opened his eyes wide, and stared blankly upward. Branch, curious, nosed at his neck, but Matt held the pose.

Kira stared in dismay at his grotesque but accurate imitation of death. "Don't, Matt," she said at last. "Get up. Don't do that."

Matt sat up and took the dog into his lap. He tilted his head and looked at Kira curiously. "Probably they be giving you her stuff," he announced.

"You're certain it was Annabella?"

Matt nodded. "I seen her face when they tooken her to the Field." Briefly he made the death face again, with its blank eyes.

Kira bit her lip. She turned away from the path. Matt was correct, she should not go into the woods now. But she did not know where to go. She could wake Thomas, she supposed. But for what? Thomas had never met the old dyer.

Finally she turned and looked back at the large Council Edifice where she lived. The door through which she came and went was in the side wing. The large door in front was the one she had entered on the day of her trial so many weeks before. The Council of Guardians would probably not be meeting today in the big chamber where her trial had been. But Jamison must be someplace inside. She decided that she would look for him. He would know what had happened, would tell her what to do.

"No, Matt," she said when the tyke began to follow her.

His face fell. He had sensed an adventure. "Go wake Thomas," Kira told him. "Tell him what happened. Tell him that Annabella has died, and that I have gone to find Jamison."

"Jamison? Who's he?"

Kira was startled at Matt's ignorance. Jamison had become so much a part of her life that she had forgotten the tyke wouldn't know his name. "He's the guardian who first took me to my room," she explained. "Remember? A very tall man with dark hair? You were with us that day.