payment page
Summary
Chapters 3-5
Chapter 3
At dawn, a messenger summons Kira to the Council Edifice, where she is to meet with the Council of Guardians. The Edifice is one of a few buildings left standing from before the Ruin that ended civilization many generations ago, as described by the Singer’s Ruin Song. On her way, Kira remembers her mother telling her that her pain makes her strong. She takes pride in the attention she has paid to her appearance for the day’s events. The chief guardian, a white-haired man with a four-syllable name, instructs Vandara to speak first. Vandara lists numerous grievances, including that Kira shouldn’t have been kept at birth because she was fatherless and disabled, doesn’t contribute to the village, and her grandfather is no longer alive to protect her. Less serious accusations include that Kira eats too much and distracts the tykes with stories and games. Because of Kira’s young age, she is allowed to ask the Council to appoint a defender, or she can opt to speak in her own defense. Kira fidgets and touches a scrap of embroidered cloth that had been in her pocket as she sat with her dying mother. It used to give her a sense of certainty, but now it just feels warm in her hands. She asks for a defender, and a man named Jamison is appointed.
Chapter 4
Jamison repeats Vandara’s accusations and cites exceptions that undermine her claims. When Jamison gets to the accusation that Kira is fatherless, he speaks highly of Christopher and reveals that he was in Christopher’s hunting party when he was taken by beasts. Jamison points out Kira’s work in the weaving shed. When the trial breaks for lunch, Matt tells Kira he will help her rebuild her cott if she’s allowed to remain in the village. Then he remarks that Vandara once killed her own child by feeding him oleander, though it was determined to be an accident. The bell at the top of the Edifice rings twice to mark the change in time, and Kira returns for the rest of the trial. While Jamison repeats Vandara’s remaining accusations, Kira daydreams, recalling her mother’s skill. For many years, Katrina made small repairs to the Singer’s colorful robe that was embroidered with scenes from the Ruin Song. However, she could never make the color blue, despite her garden full of plants used for dyeing. The scrap in Kira’s pocket seems to fill with warmth and comfort, a warning and reassurance of her fate.
Chapter 5
When the trial resumes, Jamison presents the Singer’s robe and Kira excitedly notices a spot on the shoulder that her mother repaired. Jamison compliments Katrina’s work on the robe, but adds that the guardians are aware that Kira is even more skilled. He then says Annabella, who taught Katrina how to dye, can teach Kira as well. When Vandara complains, the chief guardian announces that the Council has reached its decision: Kira is to be given the role of repairing, restoring, and finally completing the unfinished robe. Vandara leaves, furious, despite winning Kira’s land. The chief guardian dismisses Kira to collect her belongings.
Outside, Matt greets Kira, and she remembers when he saved his dog, Branch, from a life-threatening injury. When Kira tells Matt that the trial ruled in her favor, Matt reveals that he had saved some items from Kira’s cott before it was burned. They agree to meet when the bell rings four. Kira visits the weaving shed and learns that one of the weavers, Camilla, fell and broke her arm and will probably be sent to the Field of Leaving to die now that she is no longer useful. A weaver offers Camilla’s loom to Kira, but she declines. Before returning to the Edifice, she wants to bid farewell to the plot of land where she lived with her mother.
Analysis
Kira’s trial introduces societal dynamics that stretch beyond the limits of her personal experience and into the wider world of Gathering Blue, particularly around the issue of knowledge. Even before the trial begins, Kira is confronted by what she doesn’t know, from the names of the twelve guardians on the Council to when it is appropriate for her to bow. The Council’s records raise the topic of reading, something Kira has always wanted to do. Because women aren’t allowed to learn how to read, the books serve as a tangible dividing line between Kira’s ignorance and the Council’s knowledge. The matter of knowledge, and in particular of who gets to control it, is central to Gathering Blue. The trial, during which Kira interacts with people significantly more knowledgeable than she is, emphasizes the extent to which knowledge, in Kira’s world, is quite literally power.
The Council Edifice itself in which the trial occurs is uniquely well-positioned both to expand the scale of Gathering Blue’s world and to underscore how little most people in the village really know about that world. As an ancient structure that has been standing since before the Ruin, the Edifice is a piece of concrete evidence of a past civilization. Kira and the other villagers only know as much about the Ruin as they can learn from annual performances of the Ruin Song, and the Edifice’s solid presence helps convince them that the Song is true, whatever it says. In a turn of dramatic irony, though, it becomes clear just how little Kira actually knows about the Edifice itself. She observes its windows of colored glass and the cross-shaped “Worship-object” on its great hall’s stage, and she measures time according to the ringing of the bell on the top of the building. It is clear from each of these details that what Kira is describing is a church. However, because Kira doesn’t know what a church is, access to that knowledge is asymmetrically limited to the reader. Even something as concrete as the Edifice isn’t immune to changes of meaning, depending on the knowledge of who perceives it.
Just as Kira turns the village rules against Vandara in Chapter 2, Vandara and Jamison’s respective recitations of accusations against Kira show again how malleable rules can be, depending on who wields them. While Vandara is accusing Kira of a litany of offenses, Jamison writes each accusation down word for word, but even though he later reads out the same words Vandara spoke just moments earlier, he conveys an entirely different meaning. While Vandara spits her accusations maliciously, Jamison reads them so dispassionately that by the end of the trial, they seem like silly complaints. Jamison’s primary rebuttal to many of Vandara’s points, the vague but powerful claim that there are exceptions to the rules, also emphasizes the mutability of the law. Because Jamison cites a printed set of amendments to support his argument, Kira and Vandara have no choice but to trust that he is telling the truth and allow that trust in Jamison’s knowledge to control the courses of their lives.
It isn’t until after the trial is over that Kira recalls how Matt rescued his dog, Branch, a story that reveals her friendship with him to be more profound and important than it may at first appear. Matt, a child who lives in a less desirable part of the village, is Kira’s only friend before she enters the Edifice. He is also one of the only other villagers who does not appear to place a high value on usefulness or physical strength, as his treatment of Branch clearly demonstrates. Kira never indicates whether she became friends with Matt before or after she watched him secretly nurse Branch back to health, but she undoubtedly trusts him because she sees that he is the kind of person who cares for others. Branch may have a permanently bent tail and no material value to society, but he remains Matt’s loyal companion and a reminder to Kira that she, too, has immeasurable value.
Matt’s rescue of Branch serves as a stark contrast to the story of Camilla, the weaver with the broken arm. Camilla’s story comes mere pages after Branch’s, and further reinforces Matt’s compassion and openness, especially in comparison with prevailing attitudes within the community. Despite being an adult with five children and a husband, the village has determined that Camilla is no longer of any use because her broken arm means she can no longer weave or care for her children as she did before. The message the village sends—that humans have no inherent value beyond their ability to work—is violent and uncompromising, especially when told to Kira, who is disabled herself. Kira’s friendship with Matt, and the Council’s decision about her fate, give her access to other perspectives that can fortify her against the casual devaluation of her own life.
