Wood Angel

The Fish, The Axe, The Bargain: Part Two

     The next day there was no catch—or no catch of fish. Old Boyar brought in three boots. Big Jan caught a dead dog. On the next day the nets were wholly empty. The whole week there was no catch, and the grain barges didn't come, and rain fell like a long fever.  

     Then Boyar took a punt upriver into the fog banks, and the next day the boat came back drifting. Boyar was lying on the deck like a king of old, not dead but sleeping—an unnatural sleep from which he could not be woken.

     Talk in the market turned to muttering. Plain Kate saw Big Jan swat Taggle from his nest atop a coil of rope. The cat was kicked and cursed from every stall.

     Kate herself kept to her work. The bow was nearly finished. The Wheat Maiden haunted her.  

     The carved face was smooth and beautiful—but in its narrow sadness and quizzical brow, Kate saw her own reflection.

      At night she locked herself in her drawer and lay awake in the hot darkness. Her thoughts chased themselves until Taggle came in through the little door she'd made him. He flopped on her face. Plain Kate cuddled him under her chin like a fiddle, and they both went to sleep.

     And so it went, for a week. Then one night someone took an axe to her stall.

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     Lightning. She thought she'd been hit by lightning. It was that loud.

     And cold. Night air got dumped over her as if from a bucket. Something smashed into the blanket by her head. Taggle's claws raked her throat as he bolted out of his hole.

     She was awake now. There were daggers of wood everywhere. Her safe little drawer was a nest of splinters. And again something clapped past her ear. An axe. Kate screamed. 

     The axe yanked free and came again. Air and light and falling things hit her. 

     Plain Kate yanked the door lever. The drawer lurched and jammed. 

     Her stall was shattering. Smashing through a gap came that swinging axe.

     She pounded her fists against the drawer above her. Something gave way to her hands. She shoved and scrambled and hit air. 

     Plain Kate lurched to her feet. The square was quiet, full of fog. Whoever had wielded the axe was gone. A few folk had clustered outside the inn door, drawn by the noise. Linay was sitting up on his white blanket, looking sleepy. Heads hung from windows. The town's watchmen came pounding through the river arch. And everyone was looking at her. She didn't feel anything. She didn't even feel frightened. She had gone so far beyond frightened that it would take a while for fear to catch up with her.

     The running watchmen stopped when they saw it was only her. The drinkers from the inn had begun to talk again, and wandered inside. Windows closed. Plain Kate stood alone. Her muscles were so tight that they made her tremble, the way wood trembled when bent almost to breaking. 

     Her father's stall—her home—was a jagged, jumbled ruin. Tools and half-finished carvings were scattered across the wet cobbles. One pale deer, still whole, leapt toward the edge of a splintered piece of awning. She lifted it and looked at it for a while. Where shall I put it? she thought. I don't have anywhere to put it. She took four steps away from the wreck, and set the deer gently on bare stones.

     Taggle came back and tangled around her feet, bleating. She stooped, stroked him between his ears, then picked up an awl that had spun out from the shattered heap, a little way. She set the tool down beside the deer. She edged back toward the wreck. She moved one broken drawer. Things tumbled out of it. It made a lot of noise, but Plain Kate said nothing. No one came. She worked without a word, sorting carvings and tools from junk and straw.