Plain Kate

So Plain Kate was plain as a stick, thin as a stick, and flat as a stick. She had hair the colour of river mud and eyes the colour of the river. Her nose was long and her brows were strong.

Plain Kate's father was a woodcarver and a cabinetmaker. He could make plain boxes and fancy carvings, pins for harps and combs for ladies, pegs for holes and seats for wagons. For Plain Kate he made pull-alongs and potato pancakes, jumping jacks and toast with jam. She loved him. He died of river fever when she was ten. As he lay feverish, he called her Katerina My Star, and glowed with love. Plain Kate never knew if it was her or her mother he saw.

So she was alone in the world, and folk said she had a long shadow.

Plain Kate's father gave her a little carving knife before most children might be given a fork. She could whittle before she could walk. Her square strong hands were rough and covered with new nicks and old nicks, white nicks and red. Plain Kate could carve a rose that folk would stop to smell. She could carve a dragonfly that trout would rise to strike.

And some said this was a witch's power.

When her father died, the Wood Guild sent another carver to take his shop. Plain Kate took her tools – they were her own tools, her father's gifts, and the Guild had no claim on them. She took her hammers and chisels and lathes and planes and cherries and saws. She took her leather apron and her boy's clothes and her one dress. She took her father's blankets that smelled like him. She took winter apples, a bag of oats, and a jar of oil. She took all she could and all she could carry, and she took them down to the market square, to her father's stall.

The stall was a great box cabinet. The top was a table, and the roof could be propped up into an awning. It was carved to show a royal hunt, and painted with colours so real it looked like a wood in mist– but it was solid work, and strong. Plain Kate put her father's blankets in the empty bottom drawer, and crawled in and snuggled down, and called that home.

Her first night in the trundle drawer was long and still. She lay in the darkness and listened. She heard many things: heavy boots shuffling by, a cat and dog yowling and fighting, a dog snuffing, the watch calling out the hours of the night. It got quieter and quieter. She heard the river singing to itself. She heard the wind answering. And finally, littler than any of these things, she heard the crying.

The small cry seemed to come from somewhere close. She thought for a minute it was a ghost in her ear, calling Katerina Star of My Heart. But she was not the sort for ghosts, so she lay listening and was not very afraid. She moved her head and decided the crying was coming from one of the drawers above.

So she got up and opened them.

In the smallest drawer, where they kept lace-fine carving packed in straw, she found them: kittens. There were three. They were small as mice, their eyes just opened and their ears still tucked flat against their heads. There was no cat. She thought of the snuffling dog.

It was almost dawn and there was frost on everything. The square was still as the inside of a bell after the ringing has stopped. The straw nest was getting cold. Plain Kate stood a while and watched the kittens stagger about. Then she picked them up – all three fit in one hand – and climbed back into her trundle bed.

And this was the beginning of her new life.

I don't know why I'm writing this. I'm really too busy to start anything new, and I'm supposed to be working on the grant to the Waterloo Arts Foundation. Or typing up the notes from my book tour, which are a mix of joy and disaster that I think would make a good article. And besides, Katerina Svetlana? I need to be writing Russian Fairy Tales? Otter will be irked and she's a bit dangerous.

But here it is anyway, the opening page of something tentatively called Plain Kate, Her Cat, and the King's Shadow.