"Were they harsh with you?" Kira asked, remembering the sound of Jamison’s voice speaking to the little girl.
He thought. "Stern," he said finally.
"But, Thomas, the tyke below — Jo? She was crying. Sobbing. She wanted her mum, she said."
"Matt told us her mother died."
"She doesn’t seem to know that."
Thomas tried to recall his own circumstances. "I think they told me about my parents. But maybe not right away. It was a long time ago. I remember someone brought me here and showed me where everything was, and how it worked —"
"The bathroom and the hot water," Kira said, with a wry smile.
"Yes, that. And all the tools. I was already a Carver. I’d been carving for a long time —"
" —the way I’d already been doing the threadings. And the way the tyke, Jo —"
"Yes," Thomas said. "Matt said she was already a singer."
Kira, thinking, smoothed the folds of her skirt. "So each of us," she said slowly, "was already a — I don’t know what to call it."
"Artist?" Thomas suggested. "That’s a word. I’ve never heard anyone say it, but I’ve read it in some of the books. It means, well, someone who is able to make something beautiful. Would that be the word?"
"Yes, I guess it would. The tyke makes her singing, and it is beautiful."
"When she isn’t crying," Thomas pointed out.
"So we are each artists, and we were each orphaned, and they brought us each here. I wonder why. Also, Thomas, there’s something else. Something strange."
He was listening.
"This morning I talked to Marlena, a woman I know from the weaving shed. She lives in the Fen, and she remembered Jo, though she didn’t know her name. She remembered a singing tyke."
"Everyone in the Fen would know of such a tyke."
Kira nodded, agreeing. "She said — how did she put it?" She tried to remember Marlena’s description. "She said that the tyke seemed to have knowledges."
"Knowledges?"
"That was the word she used."
"What did she mean?"
"She said that the tyke seemed to have knowledge of things that hadn’t happened yet. That the people in the Fen thought it was magic. She sounded a little frightened when she talked of it. And, Thomas?"
"What?" he asked.
Kira hesitated. "It made me think of what happens sometimes with my cloth. This small one." Kira opened the box he had made for her and held out the fabric scrap, reminding him. "I told you how it seems to speak to me.
"And I remember that you told me that you have a piece of wood that seems to do the same —"
"Yes. From when I was just a tyke, just beginning to carve. The one on the shelf. I’ve shown it to you."
"Could it be the same thing?" Kira asked cautiously. "Could it be what Marlena called knowledges?"
Thomas looked at her, and at the cloth that lay motionless in her hand. He frowned. "But why?" he asked at last.
Kira didn’t know the answer. "Maybe it is something that artists have," she said, liking the sound of the word she had just learned. "A special kind of magic knowledge."
Thomas nodded and shrugged. "Well, it doesn’t matter much, does it? We each have a good life now. Better tools than we did before. Good food. Work to do."
"But the tyke below? She sobs and sobs. And they won’t let her out of the room." Kira remembered her promise. "Thomas, I told her I’d come back. And that I’d help her."
He looked dubious. "I don’t think the guardians would like that."
Kira again remembered the severity she had heard in Jamison’s voice. She remembered the slamming of the door. "No, I don’t think they would," she agreed. "But at night. I’ll creep down then, when they think we’re all asleep. Except —" Her face fell.
"Except what?"
"It’s locked. There’s no way I can get in."
"Yes you can," Thomas told her.
"How?"
"I have a key," he said.
It was true. Back in his room, he showed her. "It was a long time ago," he explained. "But here I was, locked in, with all these fine tools. So I carved a key. It really was quite easy. The lock on the door is a simple one.
"And," he added, fingering the intricately carved wooden key, "it fits all the doors. All the locks are the same. I know because I tried them. I used to go out at night and roam the hallways, opening doors. All the rooms were empty then."
Kira shook her head. "You were really mischievous, weren’t you?"
Thomas grinned. "I told you. Just like Matt."
"Tonight," Kira said, suddenly serious. "Will you come with me?"
Thomas nodded. "All right," he agreed. "Tonight."
16
Evening came. Kira, in Thomas’s room, looked down through the window at the squalor of the village and listened to its chaotic din as workers in the various sheds finished their last chores. Down the lane she could see how the butcher threw a container of water over the stone doorstep of his hut, a useless gesture toward cleaning away the clotted filth. Nearer, she watched the women leaving the weaving shed where she had worked as helper for so much of her childhood.
Kira wondered, smiling, whether Matt had been there during the workday that had just ended. Assigned to cleaning-up chores, he had probably been underfoot with his mates, making trouble and stealing food from the women’s lunches. From her place at the window, she couldn’t see any sign of him or of his dog. She hadn’t seen them all day.
She waited there with Thomas until long past dark, until the tenders had taken their food trays away. At last the entire building was still and the clamor from the village had subsided as well.
"Thomas," Kira suggested, "take your little piece of wood. The special one. I have my scrap with me."
"All right, but why?"
"I don’t know exactly. I feel that we should."
Thomas got the small carved piece from its high shelf, and put it into his pocket. In his other pocket was the wooden key.
Together they went down the dimly lit corridor to the stairs.
Ahead of her, Thomas whispered, "Shhhh."
"I’m sorry," Kira whispered back. "The stick makes a noise. But I can’t walk without it."
"Here, wait." They stopped beside one of the wall torches. Thomas ripped a length of cloth from the hem of his loose shirt. Deftly he tied it around the base of Kira’s walking stick. The cloth muted the noise of the wooden stick on the tiled floor.
The pair made their way quickly down the flight of stairs and to the door of the room where Jo slept. They paused there and listened. But there were no sounds. Kira’s hand, in her pocket, felt no warning from her scrap of cloth. She nodded to Thomas and silently he inserted the big key and turned it to open the door.
Kira held her breath because she feared that a tender might be sharing the room to guard the tyke at night. But the room, illuminated only by pale moonlight through the window, held only one small bed and one small fast-asleep girl.
"I’ll stay by the door to watch," Thomas murmured. "She knows you — or your voice, at least. You wake her."
Kira went to the bed and sat on its edge, propping her stick beside her. Gently she touched the small shoulder. "Jo," she said softly.
The little head, long hair tangled, turned restlessly. After a moment, the tyke opened her eyes with a startled, frightened look. "No, don’t!" she cried out, pushing Kira’s hand away.
"Shhhh," Kira whispered. "It’s me. Remember, we talked through the door? Don’t be afraid."
"I want me mum," the tyke wailed.