Gathering Blue - Lois Lowry [42]
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