Gathering Blue

Kira thinks about what to do, now that she knows the women of the village want her gone. She decides to return to her mother’s cott and begin to rebuild it, in the hope that seeing her at work will convince the women to let her stay.

Kira walks through her village to her cott. She notices Katrina's brother with his young son, Dan. Together, they’re pulling weeds, which have grown while he was away watching his dead wife and infant in the Field. Mar, his young daughter, plays in the dirt. Kira’s mother’s brother angrily slaps Dan for not holding a pole straight. As Kira walks by, none of them acknowledge her.

As Kira approaches her mother’s cott, she realizes that she’s very hungry. Nothing remains of the cott except black ashes and a small garden. She’s surprised to see a woman picking carrots from the garden, and yells at the woman to stop. The women laughs and walks away—Kira, with her deformed leg, is too slow to pursue her.

Kira eats what remains of her garden—some dirty tubers. After her father died, Kira and Katrina were forced to survive almost entirely without meat. Instead, they ate fish from the nearby river and vegetables from their garden. Kira sees a pile of wood near her cott, and as she picks up a sapling, Vandara emerges from a nearby clearing where she’s been watching Kira. Kira doesn’t know if Vandara has a “hubby” or children, but she knows that Vandara is respected, or feared, in the village. She’s tall and strong, with a long scar that she’s said to have gotten from a fight with a forest “beast.” Children say that the fearsome animal attacked her while she was trying to steal an infant from another mother.

Vandara tells Kira that she’s lost her space; it belongs to the women now. Kira insists that the space is still her property. She reminds Vandara that it belonged to her father and her mother before her. Other women come out of their nearby cotts and tell Kira that they need the space to build a pen for tykes. Vandara tells Kira that she’s worthless because of her lame leg, and that she should have stayed in the Field with her dead mother. Kira notices that some of the women are carrying rocks. If even one of them throws a rock at her, the others will follow suit.

Terrified of being pelted with rocks, Kira thinks about her mother and father’s spirits, which live on in her. She stands up straight and looks the surrounding women in their eyes. Most of them don’t look back at her. Kira reminds them of the rules: in a village conflict that might involve death, the parties must go to the Council of Guardians. If they do not, and someone dies, then the person who causes death must also die. When the women hear this, they quickly drop their rocks. Eventually, even Vandara drops hers. She tells Kira that tomorrow she will take her to the Council of Elders, who will no doubt cast Kira out of the village. She reminds everyone that she has survived her fight with wild beasts because of her strength, and then tells Kira that she’ll soon be sent among the wild beasts, too. The women nod and return to their cotts, leaving Kira alone by her ruined cott.

Kira doesn’t know if the Council of Guardians will let her live in the village or not. In the meantime, though, she decides to continue rebuilding her mother’s cott. She will go to Matthew, a carpenter and old friend of her mothers, and offer him her weaving in exchange for wood beams. She will also ask him for smaller pieces of wood, which she’ll use to build a threading frame. Kira has always been good with her hands, but in recent years, she’s become a creative, skillful weaver. She’s eager to continue with her weaving, assuming that she’s allowed to stay in the village.