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Summary
Chapters 6-8
Chapter 6
When the bell strikes four, Kira meets Matt on the Council Edifice steps, and they decide to go in together so Matt can carry Kira’s belongings for her. Jamison leads them to Kira’s new quarters, which contain a large, well-furnished bedroom, a smaller workroom, and a bathroom that Kira assumes is for cooking. The Singer’s robe is kept in a drawer in the workroom. Kira marvels at the luxurious furniture and indoor water access, which are like nothing she’s ever seen. Jamison informs Kira that Thomas the Carver lives down the hall from her. As Kira struggles to fall asleep in unfamiliar surroundings, she reflects on the objects in the room that belong to her: her sandals, her walking stick, and the collection of items Matt saved from her cott. She is especially grateful that he managed to rescue her threading frame and the shiny stone pendant that her mother had worn. Kira falls asleep touching the scrap of embroidered cloth that comforted her during the trial.
Chapter 7
Kira begins the first day in her new home with a lavish breakfast of a boiled egg and warm cereal. She still doesn’t understand how the bathroom works, so she sets out to go wash in the stream, but on the way she meets Thomas the Carver in the corridor. Like Kira, Thomas is an orphan, but he has lived in the Edifice since he was a tyke. He tells Kira the story of how the Guardians heard about his carving skill at an early age, and how his parents were both struck by lightning and killed shortly after. He has been working on woodcarving in the Edifice ever since. Before he leaves, Thomas asks one of the “tenders,” the people who act as housekeepers or servants to the Edifice’s residents, to explain the bathroom to Kira so that she doesn’t have to wash in the stream. Jamison visits Kira’s room after lunch and tells Kira that in addition to repairing the Singer’s robe for this year’s Ruin Song, it will be her job to fill in the blank space on the robe with stories of the future. He decides to send Kira to Annabella to complete her education in dyeing, and Kira determines she will go early the following day.
Chapter 8
Matt and Branch join Kira on the hourlong trek through the forest to where Annabella lives. Along the way, Kira and Matt talk about their families. Matt doesn’t have a father, which he says is common in the Fen. Kira shows him the pendant he saved from her cott and tells him it was a gift from her father to her mother, but Matt doesn’t know what a gift is. The long walk is painful for Kira because of her leg, but they soon arrive at their destination. Annabella, a stooped and white-haired old lady, lives in a tiny hut with a flourishing flower garden nearby and threads of different colors hanging out to dry between the trees. She offers to give Kira some of her dyed threads to get started repairing the Singer’s robe, then launches right into teaching Kira which plants can be used to create which shades of dye. Kira learns the basics of dyeing various shades of red, yellow, green, and brown, then finally asks Annabella if she can make blue. Annabella says it can be made from woad, but that she doesn’t have any and was never able to make it. She points in the direction of the woods, where she says there are others who have blue.
Analysis
The interconnectedness between humans and inanimate objects takes on a central role as Kira becomes accustomed to life in the Council Edifice. She clings to the collection of objects from her past that Matt retrieved for her, and she reflects on objects that are no longer with her to help make sense of her new surroundings. Before there is any direct description of her new quarters, Kira expresses her shock at its luxuriousness and contrasts it against her memory of the cott where she lived with her mother. Kira remembers the meager furnishings of her childhood, including the wooden table her father made before she was born, now gone after the cott’s burning. The table unlocks another, deeper layer of memories, those that Katrina had recounted to Kira. Kira grieves Katrina’s memories, which helped her connect to her past and her family, much as seeing the table in her new room does. In this way, Kira demonstrates her understanding of how humans shape objects, not only by literally smoothing their edges as her father did, but also by experiencing life alongside and in relationship to them.
Katrina’s pendant, which Matt recovered from the cott, serves as a counterpoint to the woven scrap of cloth that Kira touches for comfort and guidance, underscoring the singular relationship between an artist and their art. If memory shapes objects and gives them meaning, as Kira believes it does, then Katrina’s pendant is much more meaningful than the woven cloth. The pendant has been a constant part of Kira’s life since her infancy. It was originally a gift from Christopher, and Katrina treasured it while she was alive, instilling in it a sentimental value far greater than its material usefulness. However, despite the plethora of rich memories the pendant inspires in Kira, it holds none of the life that her scrap of cloth seems to possess. Kira had embroidered the scrap of cloth very recently, so memory is not what brings the scrap to life. Instead, Kira associates the scrap with the sudden surge of inspiration that had sparked her hands to create it seemingly of their own accord. The scrap is not necessarily more important to Kira than the pendant, but she has a more active relationship with it because it is a piece of art that she created herself.
Chapter 7 finally introduces Thomas the Carver, who slides quickly into the role of Kira’s friend and foil. Thomas and Kira have numerous similarities, and it seems that more are revealed the longer they interact. Not only are they both unusually skilled at a specific craft, but they are also both orphans, and were both given new roles in the Council Edifice shortly after their parents died. Unlike Kira, however, Thomas has been living in the Edifice since he was a tyke, so he navigates with practiced ease the way of life that Kira finds confusing. Because Thomas lives across the hall from Kira, she is able to learn the ropes of her new life from someone whose status corresponds with her own, rather than from Jamison alone. She is also able to see Thomas’s situation more objectively than she sees her own, questioning inconsistences in what Thomas has been told in ways she has not yet done for herself. For example, while she ultimately believes Thomas when he tells her that both of his parents died from being struck by lightning at the same time, she notes to herself that she has never heard of a person being struck by lightning since people don’t go outside during thunderstorms. Because Thomas’s circumstances so clearly mirror Kira’s own, her ability to question his beliefs opens the door, if only slightly, to questioning her own.
