“They’ve given me wonderful tools,” Thomas told her.
Outside, the bell rang. Kira was disconcerted. Back in the cott, the sound of the bell meant that it was time to go to work. “Should I go back to my quarters?” she asked. “I was going to walk to the stream.”
Thomas shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want. There are no real rules. Only that you are required to do the work you were brought here for. They’ll check on your work every day.
“I’m going out now to visit my mother’s sister. She has a new tyke. A girl. Look! I’m taking a toy.” He reached into his pocket and showed Kira an intricately carved bird. It was hollow; he held it to his mouth and made it whistle. “I made it yesterday,” he explained. “It took time from my regular work, but not much. It was easy to do.
“I’ll be back for lunch,” he added, “because I have work to do this afternoon. Shall I bring my lunch tray to your quarters so that we can eat together?”
Kira agreed happily.
“And look,” he said, “here comes the tender who’ll pick up the morning trays. She’s very nice. You ask her—No, wait. I’ll ask her.”
While Kira watched curiously, Thomas approached the tender and spoke briefly to her. She nodded.
“You follow her back to your quarters, Kira,” Thomas said. “You don’t need to go to the stream. She’ll explain the bathroom to you. See you at lunch!” He put the little carved bird into his pocket, closed the door to his room, and headed down the corridor. Kira followed the tender back the way she had come.
Jamison came to her room shortly after lunch. Thomas had eaten and hurried away to his quarters to resume work. Kira had just gone into the small room lined with drawers and slid open the one containing the Singer’s robe. She had not yet unfolded it. She had never been permitted to touch it before and was in awe now and a little nervous. She was staring down at the lavishly decorated fabric, remembering her mother’s deft hands holding the bone needle, when she heard the knock on her door and then heard Jamison come in.
“Ah,” he said. “The robe.”
“I was thinking that I must soon begin my duties,” Kira told him, “but I’m almost afraid to start. This is so new to me.”
He lifted the robe from the drawer and carried it to the table by the window. There in the light the colors were even more magnificent and Kira felt even more inadequate.
“Are you comfortable here? You slept well? They brought your food? It was good?”
So many questions. Kira considered whether to tell him how restlessly she had slept and decided against it. She glanced at the bed to see if the bed coverings would reveal her tossing and noticed for the first time that someone, probably the tender who brought and took away the food, had smoothed everything so that there was no sign that the bed had been used at all.
“Yes,” she told Jamison. “Thank you. And I met Thomas the Carver. He ate his lunch with me. It was nice to have someone to talk to.
“And the tender explained things I needed to know,” she added. “I thought the hot water was for cooking. I never used hot water just for washing before.”
He wasn’t paying attention to her embarrassed explanation about the bathroom. He was looking carefully at the robe, sliding his hand across the fabric. “Your mother made minor repairs each year. But now it must all be restored. This is your job.”
Kira nodded. “I understand,” she said, though she didn’t, not really.
“This is the entire story of our world. We must keep it intact. More than intact.” She saw that his hand had moved and was stroking the wide unadorned section of fabric, the section of the cloth that fell across the Singer’s shoulders. “The future will be told here,” he said. “Our world depends upon the telling.
“Your supplies? They are adequate? There is much to be done here.”
Supplies? Kira remembered that she had brought a basket of her own threads. Looking now at the magnificent robe, she knew that her sparse collection, a few leftover colored threads that her mother had allowed her to use for her own, was not adequate at all. Even if she had the skill—and she was not at all certain that she did—she could never restore the robe with what she had brought. Then she remembered the drawers that she had not yet opened.
“I haven’t looked yet,” she confessed. She went to the shallow drawers that he had pointed out to her yesterday. They were filled with rolled white threads in many different widths and textures. There were needles of all sizes and cutting tools laid neatly in a row.
Kira’s heart sank. She had hoped that perhaps the threads would already be dyed. Glancing back at the robe on the table, at its wide array of hues, she felt overwhelmed. If only her mother’s threads had been saved! But they were gone, all burned.
She bit her lip and looked nervously at Jamison. “They’re not colored,” she murmured.
“You said your mother had been teaching you to dye,” he reminded her.
Kira nodded. She had implied that, but it had not been completely true. Her mother had planned to teach her. “I still have much to learn,” she confessed. “I learn quickly,” she added, hoping that it didn’t sound vain.
Jamison looked at her with a slight frown. “I will send you to Annabella,” he told her. “She is far in the woods, but the path is safe, and she can finish the teaching that your mother started.
“The Ruin Song is not until autumn-start,” he pointed out. “That’s still several months away. The Singer won’t need the robe until then. You’ll have plenty of time.”
Kira nodded uncertainly. Jamison had been her defender. Now it seemed he was her adviser. Kira was grateful for his help. Still, she sensed an edge, an urgency, to his voice that had not been there before.
When he left her room, after pointing out a cord on the wall that she could pull if she needed anything, Kira looked again at the robe displayed on the table. So many colors! So many shades of each color! Despite his reassurance, autumn-start was not that far away.
Today, Kira decided, she would examine the robe and plan. Tomorrow, first thing, she would find Annabella and plead for help.
Eight
Matt wanted to come.
“You be needing me and Branch for protectors,” he said. “Them woods is full of fierce creatures.”
Kira laughed. “Protectors? You?”
“Me and Branchie, us is tough,” Matt said. He flexed what passed for muscles in his scrawny arms. “I only look wee.”
“Jamison said it was safe as long as we stay on the path,” Kira reminded the boy. Secretly, she thought it would be fun to have both of them, boy and dog, for company.
“But suppose you was to get lost,” Matt said. “Me and Branch can find our way out of anywheres. You be needing us for certain iffen you get lost.”
“But I’ll be gone all day. You’ll get hungry.”
Triumphantly Matt pulled a thick wad of bread from the voluminous pocket of his baggy shorts. “Filched this crustie from the baker,” he announced with pride.
So the boy won, to Kira’s delight, and she had company for the journey into the forest.