Long Night Dance

Chapter 1 it was a crazy place to have built a house, on the western cliffs where the wind was incessant, but Ab Drem had gotten the land cheaply in trade. Upslope approved of wind: it blew the nonsense out of you. Ab Drem had been seeking to recover the approval of Upslope for more than twenty years, ever since the scandal about his wife, and it was a point in his favor that he lived in an abominably windy house. And that he kept it so clean--although of course it was his daughter, Katyesha, who kept it clean.It was Kat who saw to all of Cliff Tooth House, since like most Upslope Leaguemen, Ab Drem was often away from home, dealing up and down the trade routes in brandy and tobacco, molasses and cinnamon and gold. Kat swept his hearth and made his porridge, mended the elbows of his good jacket and polished his boots. She milked the cow for her older brother, Dai. She coaxed a stunted garden from the windswept earth of the cliff top. She fetched rainwater from the cistern with a yoke, and baked brown bread; she went to market. She scrubbed. But all that was what one would expect from a daughter or a wife.Kat was small and brown-armed, with a grim golden face freckled like a speckled egg. Her hair was curly and furiously, ragingly red, but it was cut short. Auntie Jerash cut it and made her hide it under a clean gray linen kerchief, because it was like her mother's hair.This afternoon Kat tied the kerchief reluctantly; she was to meet Auntie Jerash at the crossroads and go Downshore to market. Now that she was fifteen she did the household marketing by herself, but this was the week of the Long Night dance that marked the beginning of winter, and the native harbor town seethed with carnival. It would not be decent for an Upslope girl to be seen there alone. Upslope did not celebrate Long Night.Catching up her basket, Kat latched the door behind her and tied her cloak as she ran. The wind from the cliff that was called Horn Loft blew her along the crossroads like a leaf. She glanced back uneasily into the teeth of it.She did not want to go to market with Auntie Jerash. But if she stayed home she would have to wrestle with herself about going down to the seals' beach at the foot of the cliff. For two days she had thought of nothing else.It called her, but she would not listen anymore. Respectable people from Upslope did not go to the beach. They never went near the sea. Why, from that black water who knew what might rise? There were stories....Because of her mother, Kat had to be very careful to be respectable. Putting the wind at her back, she ran toward the crossroads. But she could not run faster than her thoughts. In her mind she saw the gray measureless horizon, the long gray waves."Cover your head!" said Auntie Jerash.Kat snatched at her kerchief with a gasp; the wind had blown it half away. Dreaming, she had come to the main road, and Auntie Jerash stood waiting in her stiff gray linen, very cross."Yes, ma'am." As Kat tucked her red curls out of sight she bundled that memory of beach, with its windy singing, back down into the darkest cupboard of her heart."You are late," said Auntie Jerash. "A good housekeeper is never late." In her voluminous hooded cloak she turned and surged out among the traffic.With looks of pitying scorn, her six pale daughters trotted after her. They were obedient in public, vindictive in private: they hissed and pinched, like geese. When Kat's mother died, her aunt had taken her in out of duty, for someone must teach her to be a wife. Among her cousins Kat had learned to pinch, to kick ankles under the table, and to smile graciously. There was no need for her to learn to cipher or to read. When she could manage a kitchen by herself, she had been sent back to her father; he had dismissed his housekeeper with real relief, for it had been an expense.Kat hurried to catch up with the line of immaculate, drab hoods, whispering savageJames, Betsy is the author of 'Long Night Dance', published 2005 under ISBN 9780689850714 and ISBN 0689850719.