Free Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear Page B

smacked into the ticking. We’d dragged all the mattresses out and restuffed them in September. Somebody had filled this one with hay and not straw. Softer, but wasteful. Still, I figured she’d earned it. I wondered if I could find her a featherbed somewhere to go over the ticking.
    I realized I was staring again and her face was steadily flushing. Mine must of flamed red—even redder, being paler to start—and I covered it by holding my hand out to help her up. She didn’t take it.
    Instead, with an expression of some surprise, she settled sideways across the cot, her arms spread wide and her feet still dangling off the side. Her neck was bent at an awkward angle, her head against the wall—the cot was that narrow. She gazed up at me and I—well, I’m ashamed to say I just gawked at her.
    “This is comfortable.” Her voice was as surprised as her expression. “Well, bugger me!” Then she clapped a hand across her mouth and giggled.
    “You won’t find none in Madame Damnable’s house as doesn’t know that word,” I said. “Though Miss Bethel may pretend she don’t.”
    I knowed she was giddy with exhaustion and I knowed I should swing her around so her head was on the pillow and her feet were on the bed, but I didn’t want to leave her just yet. “May I sit?”
    “Sit,” she said. She tried to drag herself upright and made it to her elbows. I took the opportunity to stuff the pillow under her head before she collapsed again. Now it hurt my neck less to look at her.
    There was no chair, so I sat on the bed. “What would make it better?” I asked again.
    “Colors,” she said. “Fabric. Some brightness. Paint.” Her face crumpled. “I think I missed Diwali already. I don’t even know.”
    I wanted to ask if Diwali was a person, but it made me feel ignorant and stupid, so I held my tongue. I know better now; Diwali is Priya’s people’s festival of lights. It celebrates the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness.
    I reached out automatically and took her hand. She squeezed my fingers hard enough to hurt me. I didn’t care.
    “At least I have new clothes,” she said—or kind of mumbled. Every blink she took was longer than the last one. “Well. New to me.”
    I was thinking about the sewing machines downstairs and about my rag rug. And about what it would take to make another and maybe a patchwork hanging or curtains or a duvet out of scraps. Not too much, I thought. And most of it, save thread, I could get out of the ragbags.
    “Wait right here,” I said. “Leave the lamp,” she muttered.
    Before I left, I poked and prodded and coaxed Priya until she was lying the right way along the bed at least. I couldn’t get her under the covers, but I pulled off her carpet slippers and I sort of folded the quilt up around her. Then I ran down the hall to my room and dragged the braided rug out from under my table and two legs of the bed. I had to lift the bed to do it, and once the rug was up I realized I hadn’t been doing too good a job of sweeping under it. I could see the pattern of the braids in the dust on the floor.
    That could wait, though. I shook the great heavy, awkward thing out and bundled it up in my arms. I had to back out the door and then sort of edge sideways into Priya’s room. She didn’t say anything as I turned to her—
    She was sound asleep on her side, mouth open and eyes closed, knees drawn up as if she were thinking of kicking out at somebody. I snorted at myself.
    Well, the rug would just have to be a surprise for when she woke up.
    I spread it out on the floor—she never stirred—and I made sure the brighter, prettier side was on the top. It glowed softly in the lamplight, all greens and golds and ruby brocade and the sapphire-blue of Effie’s old threadbare silk gown. We went through a lot of party dresses, did Madame’s girls. And about twice as many petticoats.
    “There,” I said when it was done. I pulled the covers back up around Priya, left the