Impatiently the tender gestured to his left. "Door at the end," he said.
Kira thanked him, closed his office door behind her, and went to the end of the long hall. The door there was not locked, and when she opened it she saw a familiar stairway. She had tiptoed down it with Thomas and Matt just yesterday during the storm. She knew the stairs would return her to the corridor above, where she would find her room and Thomas’s.
She stood motionless and listened. The tender had said that Jamison was probably somewhere in the wing, but she heard no sound.
On a whim, instead of taking the stairs to her room, Kira remained on the first floor. She went to the corner where she and Thomas had hidden the day before, the same corner they had peered around to see where the crying was coming from. In the silence and emptiness, she rounded the corner and approached the door that had been open the afternoon before.
She leaned next to it, her ear against the wood, and listened. But there was no sound of crying, none of singing.
After a moment, she tried the knob. But the door was locked. Finally, very softly, she knocked.
She heard a rustling sound inside, then the muffled sound of small footsteps on a bare floor.
She knocked softly again.
She heard a whimper.
Kira knelt by the door. It was difficult, with her crippled leg. But she lowered herself until her mouth was beside the large keyhole. Then she called softly, "Jo?"
"I’m being good," a frightened, desperate little voice replied. "I’m practicing."
"I know you are," Kira said through the keyhole. She could hear small, shuddering sobs.
"I’m your friend, Jo. My name is Kira."
"Please, I want me mum," the tyke pleaded. She sounded very young.
For some reason Kira thought of the enclosure that had been built on the site of her old cott. Now tykes were penned there, enclosed by thorn bushes. It seemed cruel. But at least they were not isolated. They had each other, and they were able to look out through the thick foliage and see the village life around them.
Why was this small tyke locked in a room all alone?
"I will come back," she called softly through the door.
"Will you bring me mum?" The little voice was close to the keyhole. Kira could almost feel the breath.
Matt had told her that the tyke’s parents were both dead. "I will come back," Kira said again. "Jo? Listen to me."
The tyke sniffled. In the distance, on the floor above, Kira heard a door open.
"I must go," Kira whispered firmly through the hole. "But listen, Jo: I will help you, I promise. Hush now. Don’t tell anyone I was here."
She rose quickly. Clutching her stick, she made her way back to the staircase. When she reached the second floor and rounded the corner, she saw Jamison standing in the open doorway to her room. He came forward, greeted her with sympathy, and told her the news of Annabella’s death.
Suddenly wary, Kira said nothing of the child below.
15
"Look! They’re setting up a dyeing-place for me."
It was midday. Kira pointed down to the area below the window, a small piece of land between the Edifice and the edge of the woods. Thomas came to the window and looked. Workers had raised a structure that Kira could see was to be a shed; under its roof, long poles from which to hang the wet yarns and threads to dry were already in place.
"It’s better than anything she ever had," Kira murmured, remembering Annabella wistfully. "I’m going to miss her," she added.
It had all happened so quickly. Annabella’s death, so sudden; and now, only a day later, the new dyeing-place was being made.
"What’s that?" Thomas pointed. To the side, the workers were digging a shallow pit. A support for hanging kettles was being pounded into place at the side.
"It’ll be for fire. You need a very hot fire always, for the boiling of the dyes.
"Oh, Thomas," Kira sighed, turning away from the window, "I’ll never remember how to do it all."
"Yes you will. I have it all written down, everything you told me. We’ll just repeat it and repeat it. Look! What’s that they’re bringing?"
She looked again and saw them stacking bundles of dried plants beside the new shed. "They must have brought all the ones Annabella had hanging from the beams in her cott. So at least I’ll have a place to start. I think I know the names, if they haven’t mixed them all together out of ignorance."
Then she chuckled, watching one of the workers set down a covered pot and turn his face away with a grimace of disgust. "It’s the mordant," Kira explained. "It smells terrible." She didn’t want to say the rude word to Thomas, but it was what Annabella had called her pisspot, and its contents were a surprisingly vital ingredient in the making of the dyes.
The workers had begun to arrive early that morning, bearing the kettles and plants and equipment, while Jamison was still in Kira’s room describing the events of the day before. A sudden death, he had explained, the way death often came to those of great age. She slept, Annabella had, napping on the rainy day, and didn’t wake. That was all. No mystery to it.
Perhaps she felt that she had completed her job by teaching Kira, Jamison pointed out solemnly. Sometimes, he told her, it was the way death came: a drifting-away when one’s tasks were accomplished. "And there’s no need to burn her cott," he added, "because there was no illness. So it will stay as it is. Someday you can live there, if you like, after you’ve finished your work here."
Kira nodded, accepting his words. The old woman’s spirit, she realized, would still be in her body. "She’ll need a watcher," Kira pointed out to Jamison. "Could I go and sit with her? I did for my mother."
But Jamison said no. Time was short. The Gathering was coming. Four days could not be lost. Kira must work on the robe; others would do the watching for the old dyer.
So Kira would mourn all alone.
After Jamison had gone she sat silently, remembering how solitary Annabella’s chosen life had been, how unconnected to the village. Only then did it occur to Kira to wonder, Who found her? How did they know to look?
"Thomas, come away from the window now. I need to tell you about something."
Reluctantly he came to where she was sitting at the table, though she could see from his face that he was still listening to the noise of the construction below. Boys, Kira thought. They were always interested in such things. If Matt were around, he’d be down there underfoot, getting in the way, wanting to help with the building.
"This morning —" she began. Then, sensing his inattention, "Thomas! Listen!"
He grinned, turned toward her, and listened.
"I went to the room below, the one where we heard the tyke crying."
"And singing," Thomas reminded her.
"Yes. And singing."
"Her name is Jo, according to Matt," Thomas said. "See? I’m paying attention. Why did you go down there?"
"I was looking for Jamison at first," Kira explained, "and I found myself on that floor. So I went to the door, thinking I might peek in and see if the tyke was all right. But it was locked!"
Thomas nodded. He looked unsurprised.
"But they’ve never locked my door, Thomas," she said.
"No, because you were already grown, already two syllables when you came here. But I was young; I was still Tom when I arrived," he said. "They locked my door."
"You were held captive?"
He frowned, remembering. "Not really. It was to keep me safe, I think. And to make me pay attention. I was young and I didn’t want to work all the time." He grinned. "I was a little like Matt, I think. Playful."