Free Night Gate by Isobelle Carmody Page B

ear.”
    “You weren’t angry at me?”
    “I love you,” Billy said simply.
    Rage opened her mouth to tell him that she loved him, too, but Elle interrupted to warn them that she could smell someone coming along the road behind them. They hurriedly decided that Billy would stay on the road with Rage while the rest of them got out of sight behind some bushes a little back from the road.
    Before long, a gray donkey appeared. It was harnessed to a small open carriage bearing several very little girls in spotless white tunics and stockings and three women in long, colorful tubelike dresses. The women carried elaborately painted parasols to shade them from the sun. At first Rage thought the women were all deathly pale, but when they came closer, she could see that their faces were painted white, like those of Japanese ceremonial dancers. Their dresses even looked a bit like kimonos. The children had been laughing and chattering gaily, but they fell silent when they noticed Rage and Billy.
    “Wild things!” piped one.
    “Stop,” shouted another, and the donkey obeyed. “Ahoy there. Are you wild things?”
    “I’m just a girl like you,” Rage said.
    “You are almost a woman, yet you are like us, for you wear no bands,” the girl chirped, lifting both of her bare arms up for Rage’s inspection.
    “Why don’t you come in the cart with us?” one of the other girls invited.
    “Impossible!” the eldest of the women said sternly. She waved an arm in an imperious gesture, and Rage noticed that she was wearing heavy metal bracelets like the ones worn by the baker’s sister, Rue. Being banded must mean having to wear such bracelets, which seemed to mark the wearers as loyal keeper subjects.
    “Why shouldn’t she come with us?” another of the children asked defiantly.
    “Perhaps she does not go to be banded,” hissed the plumpest of the women. “Perhaps she is a witch woman.”
    The children stared at Rage solemnly.
    “Don’t frighten them with foolish talk, Ramis,” the older woman said in a no-nonsense voice. “Witch women do not venture from Wildwood. This girl is clearly from one of the outer villages and is traveling with her escort to Fork to be banded. They often come in somewhat older. It was so with you, was it not, Ania?” she asked the youngest of the women.
    Ania nodded meekly, but when she spoke, it was to the children. “Even if the girl is a wild thing, you have nothing to fear. You will see many wild things in the city.”
    Rage heard this with puzzlement. Hadn’t the baker said that wild things were not supposed to enter keeper territory? To her delight, one of the children voiced this very question.
    “The High Keeper has given wild things leave to enter Fork,” the plump woman said piously.
    “But why? They’re so strange,” the girl complained.
    “I do not know why, but they do no harm with their strangeness,” Ania said. The other two women stared at her askance. She shrugged. “Well, it is not as if they can draw magic from the earth without a witch woman’s help, and witch women are forbidden to cross the river.”
    “They cannot be permitted to drain the other side of the river of magic as well,” said the older woman icily.
    Rage blinked, wondering if she had heard correctly. The woman seemed to be saying that there was still magic on the other side of the river, although it had almost died on this side. Was it possible that magic could be in one part of a land and not another? Did it form in the ground like gold or silver? And how could the witch women have used it all up?
    “I think wild things should be stopped from coming over the river,” said the plump woman. “It is so depressing to see them drifting about looking sick and starved.”
    “More depressing for them to be starving, don’t you think?” Ania asked.
    “The wild things are only dreams the witch folk brought into being. We should rather pity them than fear them,” said the little girl who had invited