Jamison looked at her impatiently, as if he were suddenly aware what a burden she was going to be. Finally he sighed. “Bring the dog too,” he told the guard.
The three of them were led down a corridor. They were an odd trio, with Kira first, stumbling against her stick, dragging her leg with its broom sound: swish, swish; then Matt, silent for a change, his eyes wide, taking in the grandeur of the surroundings; and finally, toenails tip-tapping against the tiled floor, the bent-tailed dog, happily carrying a squirming beetle in his mouth.
Matt put the bundle of Kira’s belongings down on the floor just inside the doorway, but he wouldn’t step inside the room. He took in everything solemnly with his wide-eyed, observant gaze and made the decision himself.
“Me and Branch, we’ll wait out here,” he announced. “What this be called?” he asked, looking around the wide space where he stood.
“The corridor,” Jamison told him.
Matt nodded. “Me and Branch, we just be waiting here in this corridor then. Me and Branch, we don’t go in the room because of the wee buggies.”
Kira looked over quickly, but the beetle had been consumed now. Anyway, the beetle had not been wee. Matt himself had described it as mammoth.
“Wee buggies?” Jamison was the one who inquired, his brow furrowed.
“Branch got fleas,” Matt explained, looking at the floor.
Jamison shook his head. Kira saw his lips twitch in amusement. He led her into the room.
She was astonished. The cott where she had lived all of her life with her mother had been a simple dirt-floored hut. Their beds had been straw-filled pallets on raised wooden shelves. Handmade utensils had held their belongings and food; they had always eaten together at a wooden table that Kira’s father had made long before her birth. She mourned the table after the burning because of the memories it held for her mother. Katrina had described his strong hands smoothing the wood and rounding its corners so that the coming baby would not be endangered by sharp edges. All of it was ashes now: the smooth wood, the soft edges, the memory of his hands.
This room had several tables, skillfully made, carved and delicate. And the bed was wood, on legs, covered with lightly woven bed coverings. Kira had never seen such a bed and supposed the raised legs were to make one safe from beasts or bugs. Yet surely there were none here, in the Council Edifice; even Matt had sensed that and consigned his dog’s fleas to the corridor. There were windows, with glass, and through them she could see the tops of trees; the room faced the forest behind the building.
Jamison opened a door inside the room, and Kira saw a smaller room, windowless, lined with wide drawers.
“The Singer’s robe is kept here,” he told her. He opened one large drawer slightly and she saw the folded robe with its bright threaded colors. He closed it again and gestured toward the other, smaller drawers.
“Supplies,” he said. “Whatever you need.”
He moved back into the bedroom and opened a door on the other side. She caught a glimpse of what at first seemed flat stones; it was a floor of pale green tile. “There is water here,” he explained, “for washing and all your needs.”
Water? Inside a building?
Jamison went to the doorway and glanced out to where Matt and Branch waited. Matt was squatting on the floor and sucking on his stick of candy.
“If you want the boy to stay with you, you could wash him here. The dog too. There is a tub.”
Matt heard him and looked up toward Kira in dismay. “No. Me and Branch, we be going now,” he said. Then with an expression of concern, he asked, “You don’t be captive here, do you?”
“No, she’s not a captive,” Jamison reassured Matt. “Why would you think that?
“Your supper will be brought,” he told Kira. “You’re not alone here. The Carver lives down the hall, on the other side.” He gestured with his hand to a closed door.
“The Carver? Do you mean the boy named Thomas?” Kira was startled. “He lives here too?”
“Yes. You are welcome to visit his room. You must both work during the daylight hours, but you may take your meals with the Carver. Familiarize yourself with your quarters now, and your tools. Get some rest. Tomorrow I will go over your work assignment with you.
“I’ll lead the boy and the dog out now.”
She stood in the open doorway and watched them retreat down the long corridor, the man leading the way, Matt walking jauntily just behind him, and the dog at Matt’s heels. The boy looked back at her, waved slightly, and grinned with a questioning look. His face, smeared with the sticky candy, was alight with excitement. She knew that within minutes he would be telling his mates that he’d barely escaped being washed. His dog too, and all the fleas; a close call.
Quietly she closed the door and looked around.
Kira found it hard to sleep. So much was strange.
Only the moon was familiar. Tonight it was almost full, flooding her new living space with silvery light through the glass of her windows. On such a night back in her other life, in the windowless cott with her mother, she might have risen to enjoy the moonlight. On some moonlit nights she and her mother slipped outside and stood together in the breeze, slapping at mosquitoes and watching the clouds slide past the bright globe in the night sky.
Here, through a slightly opened window, night breeze and moonlight entered her room together. The moonlight slipped over the table in the corner and washed across the polished wooden floor. She saw her sandals paired beside the chair where she had sat to remove them. She saw her walking stick leaning in the corner, its shadow outlined on the wall.
She saw the shapes of the objects on the table, the things that Matt had brought, bundled, to her. She wondered how he had chosen. Perhaps it had been rushed, with the fire starting; perhaps he had simply grabbed what he could with his impetuous, generous small hands.
There was her threading frame. She thanked Matt in her mind. He had known what the frame meant to her.
Dried herbs in a small basket. Kira was glad to have those and hoped she could remember which was to be used for what. Not that the herbs had been of any value to her mother when the terrible sickness came; but for the small things, an ache in the shoulder, a bite that festered and swelled, the herbs were helpful then. And she was happy to have the basket. She remembered her mother weaving it from river grass.
Some chunky tubers. Kira smiled, picturing Matt grabbing food, probably nibbling while he was at it. She would not need those now. The meal brought to her on a tray in the evening had been hearty: thick bread and a soup made of meat and barley with greens throughout, and flavored strongly with herbs she savored but didn’t recognize. She had eaten it from a glazed earthen bowl, using a spoon carved from bone, and then wiped her mouth and hands with a folded fine-woven cloth.
No meal had ever been so elegant for Kira. Or so lonely.
In the little arrangement of things were folded pieces of her mother’s clothing: a thick shawl with a fringe at the edge, and a skirt, stained from the dyes her mother used, so that the simple, unadorned fabric seemed decorated with streaks of color. Sleepily thinking of her mother’s stained skirt, Kira imagined how she could use her threads to outline the bright streaks of color so that with skill—and time; it would take time—she could re-create it into a costume suitable for some celebration.