(Alternative title: On Why You Shouldn't Try to Cover a Five Year Span in One Go)
She has a few weeks of relative peace before things fall apart again, a few weeks of sleeping in alleys and getting laughed out of common rooms when she announced that she wanted to be a sellsword. She likes to tell herself that it’s because of her size, all legs and arms and hardly any torso, when she knows that it’s the still-developing chest she hasn’t bothered to bind yet. And she knows that, with her hair chopped off as messy as it is, she could easily be mistaken for a young boy, if she’d just bind her chest. But she doesn’t want to be another thirteen year old boy making a living by taking odd jobs; she wants to be a girl.
She eats well the first few days she’s there. The hardest part is ducking her family, avoiding the aunt and uncle and cousins she has. When the pity and the conversations in the inn run out, though, and the patrons stop buying her free meals, she gets particularly good at following the barmaids into the kitchen when they aren’t looking and snatching a loaf of bread or dried meat. It’s one such night when a hand snatches her wrist and yanks her unceremoniously out of her hiding spot, sending her sprawling onto the kitchen floor. She doesn’t get a moment to recover; the woman grabs her again and pulls her to her feet, roughly shoving Cat out of the back door and into the yard.
“Lemme go, I didn’t do anythin’! M’jus’ hungry!” She shouts, twisting and thrashing against the hold.
The woman slings her to the ground again. “My daughter leaves home for a week, and I find her stealing! I defended you to your father, kept him from coming here to find you, and when I come to make sure you are alright, this is what I see!”
Cat turns slowly on the ground, rubbing her spine. She blinks up at the woman standing over her, hardly recognizing her mother; gray and blonde hair pulled up into a tight bun, wearing riding clothes as opposed to her dresses, and a knife slung around her hips. “Mother?”
She drops to her knees to hug Cat, a few patrons glaring as they have to step around the pair. “Are you alright? Your father and I were worried sick. ...Once he stopped being angry, of course. I told him you’d be home in a week.”
“M’not comin’ back. He’s gonna make me get married, an’ I like it here.” Cat pushes away from her mother, standing up.
“You were stealing for food. You should be glad that I was the one who caught you.” Mina caught her daughter by the arm again, wiping off the dirt from her face. “You’re a mess, you know.”
“I know. An’ I’m not doin’ anythin’ bad, I just--”
“You’re just hungry. ‘And I’m not doing anything bad’,” She corrects, emphasizing each letter that Cat had left out. “Don’t drop your letters. Men will harm a girl from Bree, but the more you sound like a soldier’s squire, the less amusement they’ll find. And no, you won’t have to be a boy forever. Only until you’ve put your knife in the first pair of wandering hands you find. They’ll leave you be, then; talk loud and talk big about what they’d do if they catch you, but only around others. A girl who can cost a man a few fingers or his whole hand can cost a man far more.”
Catilyn blinks in surprise, floundering for words. “You’re no’--not making me come home?” Each word comes out slow and halting, clearly requiring a great deal of thought to make them sound proper.
“I won’t make you do anything you don’t want, of course. I’d ask that you come home, but…” Mina sighs at the look on Cat’s face, She came by the stubbornness honestly. Mina hardly ever changes her mind, and Cat’s father falls into a rage whenever things go against him for too long. “No, I didn’t think you would. Well, come on, then. Let me at least buy you a meal.”
‘A meal’ turns into a room at the inn and a lesson on sounding properly educated that Cat really couldn’t have cared less about. And then after they’re done, Cat goes to the rented room and her mother goes back to Archet. They live like that, until Cat turns fifteen; nearly two years of weekly trips from her mother, always with food and coin for the week to come, and at least one night spent sleeping indoors instead of in a hastily thrown together tent in the Beggar’s Alley.
Until one day it’s Richard who comes to visit her. Richard, who has borne her secret even after Jon told her mother where she’d gone.
“Your mother had an accident,” He says, before she can even ask the question. He refuses to meet her eyes, instead looking intently into the hay piles in the stable outside the inn. “Fell off her horse when she took it out for a ride.”
Cat’s glad for a moment that he isn’t looking at her. She’s never had a very expressive face, but the news is shocking enough that she knows it has to show. “Bullshit. She was the best rider in town.”
“Even the best have accidents.” He doesn’t seem to believe the words himself, however, mumbling something incomprehensible about brigands in the Chetwood and on the roads before shoving a coinpurse roughly into her hands. “She sent me t’give you this. Said tha’ with her leg the way it is, sh’might no’ be able t’come see you anytime soon. ...Y’doin’ alright? Me an’ Jon an’ the others’ve been worried. Miss Mina’s been tellin’ everyone you’re fine, jus’ doin’ your own thing, but…”
She nods; she can understand the feeling. Her mother brought weekly reports of how all her old friends were doing, who was getting married and who was joining the town guard and who had charged a wild boar and would limp for the rest of their life for it...so she puts on a fake smile. “Come inside with me for a bit, get a drink. I’ll tell you all about it.”
And she does. They sit and laugh in the common room well into the evening, and she tells him about life--not necessarily her life, but she’s also gotten good at sitting behind (or in) empty barrels, sleeping in storerooms, staying just out of sight...good enough that she can tell him about a life. She’s not sure he believes it; Jon was the leader of their little group, better with a bow than any of them, but Richard had always been the brains. She’s never seen him lose his temper or threaten to run away when the world doesn’t bow to him. And she’s never been a particularly good liar. She’s gotten better, over the past two years, telling story after story of where she’s from or who her parents were or even who she is, but that’s only ever been to strangers. Richard’s known her since her birth.
“Sounds like you’re doin’ pretty good for yourself.” He takes a sip of his drink, green eyes narrowing at her over the rim of the cup. She looks away, and he knows he’s caught her in the lie. Her cheekbones were never that sharp before and she was never any good at managing money. “Was thinkin’ of movin’ up here m’self, sometime. Gotta be an empty house someone’s willin’ t’ let me have.”
Cat drops her act; Richard is home and safety. “I know a couple’a places nobody’s been in for a while. Can’t say tha’ they’re empty, but nobody’d notice if y’jus’ moved in. People comin’ and goin’ all the time here. ...Why, none of th’ girls in Archet want your smart-assed babies?”
“There she is.” He grins, lifting his cup almost in a toast towards her. “Knew Cat was in there somewhere. Y’can do a lot, but y’can’t change who y’are. An’ no, that’s not it. Figured there’d be more jobs for me up here. Boys down at the lumber camp’re nice ’nough, but you know I couldn’t do that. Figured I could get a job as a clerk somewhere.”
Cat frowns, brows knitting together over her eyes as she thinks. She’s never looked for clerk jobs. Reading and writing were never of particular interest; while she can do both, the skills have long since fallen out of practice, and were never very finely honed in the first place. And numbers were never her thing.
He clears his throat in her delayed silence, a slight flush rising to his cheeks. “An’, uh, I guess you don’t know, then.”
“Don’t know--oh.” Her eyes grow wide as realization dawns. She can’t quite figure out what she feels; something between anger and excitement. Anger that one of the girls had gotten married instead of taking up her independence, and...excitement for Richard. He’d never been particularly good with girls or with children, or commitment, and the more she thought of it, the more and more out of character it became.
“Yeah, it...was kinda surprisin’ t’me, too. Beth Miller. Didn’t mean for it t’happen, but m’not jus’ lettin’ her go on her own, so I think I’m gonna bring her up here, or...or maybe...I dunno. I’ll figure it out,” He finally sighs, downing the rest of his drink. He stands and offers out his arm to her. “C’mon, then. Let me walk you back t’wherever you’re stayin’.”
She shakes her head and waves him off. He doesn’t need to know that she doesn’t have a place to stay permanently, or that her usual residence was tucked in a corner of the inn or in the ruins at the edge of town. “M’gonna stay here a bit longer. I’ll see y’soon. Tell Beth I wish her luck, if she’s gonna have to deal with two of you.”
He rolls his eyes and waves as he leaves, making no promise to come and visit her again, or to tell her how her mother’s doing. It’s the last time she sees him.
It’s another month or so before the money runs out and a few watchmen start keeping their eyes on her hands. Food gets harder to come by; coins, even worse. She’s got a dress or two that she didn’t tear up, and she’s seen what some of the other girls in the Alley do for money and a place to sleep. It’s crossed her mind a few times. Never anything permanent, not so long as stealing was an option. Then one of the watchers pulls her aside and warns her that it’s awfully hard to wield a sword with one hand. That ends her career as a thief. She goes hungry for a few days. But then, one night as she tries to sleep in the cold stone of the Alley, one of the other girls starts screaming. She doesn’t know who it is. But she knows what’s happening. It’s not uncommon; a noble’s son or a merchant’s son or anyone, really, with an air of entitlement, comes through town with more freedom than they deserve. They see an alley of homeless women with few, if any, people to care for what happens to them. They do what they think is logical.
Cat listens to the woman cry well into the night, long after the shadowy figure (always shadowy; he’ll be gone by morning) has run past Cat’s hiding spot. She draws herself up under the blankets as he passes. She sleeps with her sword beside her, but there would hardly be enough room to draw it if he came towards her. He runs straight past her. He doesn’t even look.
She doesn’t sleep that night. She gets up eventually, in the early hours of the morning, and finds the crying girl (she’s hardly more than a girl, and it’s a realization that makes Cat’s stomach sink like a stone), and lies down beside of her, keeping her company until one of the older women can come to get her. Cat doesn’t see her again.
She goes through her bag until she finds the red dress. Her mother bought it for her from one of the tailors in Bree, although she hadn’t realized what a striking color it was until they got it home and she looked at all the other girls’ dresses. Then it had taken up residence in the farthest corner of Cat’s closet, until someone had grabbed it (either Rich or Jon, she wasn’t sure) and thrown it into her bag on a lark. It still fits well enough, as she turns to look at her reflection in one of the puddles of water, and it really does make her look much prettier, choppy hair aside. She goes next, of course, to one of the women who has done this before. It’s a whole group of them, and they take her in readily enough, It’s not the job she dreamed of having as a child. It’s nowhere close to the life she wanted. For the first time in her life, though, she feels like she has complete control over her body and her fate.
She takes a spot at the corner of the inn. The Watch doesn’t pay her much mind anymore; she’s not hurting anyone, and at first glance, it looks like she’s waiting for someone, if it hadn’t been for the red of her dress. When the weather turns cold, she moves inside, leaning in the doorway or against the pillars in the common room, trading smiles and batting eyes. She learns her trade and her draw quick enough; a stupid little girl with an incurable stammer and constantly downcast gaze. It’s a role, of course, but no one seems to care.
The man catches her eye one night, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, for the simple reason that a hobbit trails at his heels. She lifts her eyes from the floor for long enough to watch him try to sell pipeweed to the patrons; he’s from Rohan, that much is clear enough, with blonde hair and a matching beard and the bluest eyes she’s seen. He’s come from battle, or perhaps he was a soldier, still wearing his hauberk and weapons, although that doesn’t explain why he’s trying to be a merchant. Trying, but failing. She almost feels sorry for him.
But then he turns towards her, and she has to look away, counting steps until he’s right in front of her. She still doesn’t look higher than his shoes, not even when he speaks.
“Hello, miss! My, uh, my name’s Anelore. Could I interest you in some fine pipeweed?”
