“It’s because she clearly doesn’t cope well under pressure,” Sir Fishbits remarked, turning his head upwards to direct his statement at their surroundings, “if a certain forest had any good sense, they’d have chosen a cat to do this job. We aren’t nearly so dramatic.”

Give her time. This must be a lot.

“I don’t know what you probably just wrote, but it’s probably some sappy nonsense about patience, isn’t it?” The cat directed his question at Book.

Rachel was laying on the bed gripping at her chest, counting her breaths one by one. All too much. It was all too much.

“You really do need to calm down. It isn’t very becoming of a witch,” Sir Fishbits informed her, leaping down from his perch at the windowsill. “Why don’t you have a bath? That always used to sort her out when she was out of sorts.”

Gertrudis. He was talking about the witch who’d disappeared and somehow dropped all of her problems for Rachel to deal with. Wait, bath? She sat up abruptly, wincing at the pain in her side from the sudden motion.

“I can take a bath?” She demanded.

Sir Fishbits stared up at her from the floor, having crossed towards the front of the fireplace to sit down. His tail curled around his front paws, “you aren’t the sort who doesn’t like cleaning yourself, are you? I can’t abide a nasty swamp witch.”

“I’m not a witch!” She snapped back, “how am I supposed to take a bath? Where’s the bathroom?” Rachel pressed on, reminding herself he was a cat. Even when they couldn’t speak, cats were rude.

Look at the door and think of what you want. It will always be there when you turn the handle.

Book helpfully explained, and it just so happened that Rachel’s eyes skimmed over it just in time to see the words. She’d have to make a mental note to pay attention to the thing as often as possible, just to be sure it didn’t end up writing to no one. She hated the idea that the thing had probably said so much in however long it lived, and in all likelihood the words went unread until it gave up.

“Really?” She asked, reaching towards the book, “it can’t be that easy.”

“What isn’t? Running water and soap over yourself? I can promise you, it’s barbaric, but the only way your kind seems to smell less foul,” Sir Fishbits contributed his own thought without acknowledging the book had probably written something too.

Rachel frowned at the cat, “the book said I can just look at that door and think of the room I need, or whatever. Is that true?”

“In a fashion,” Sir Fishbits agreed, “nine times out of ten.”

What happened the tenth time, she wondered? Probably best to ask later if she wanted to calm down. She had a funny feeling this was going to have to be a daily mantra for her until she found a way to go home.

Plucking at her cotton gown, Rachel eased her legs over the side of the bed and focused on just standing. Everything was going to have to be a step at a time. Figuratively and literally. She took her time standing up. The pain radiating from the side of her chest to her waist wasn’t especially pleasant, but over the last hour or so she’d grown to tolerate it. She was terrified at what she’d find underneath the bandages once she unwrapped them, but she needed to see it.

“So is there a catch?” She asked the cat, giving the book an apologetic look. She wasn’t going to bring it to the bathroom with her. The last thing she needed in her life was a peeping spellbook.

“All magic has a catch,” Sir Fishbits told her with a disinterested yawn. His teeth gleamed in the firelight.

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“Do I have to ask you every time I need you to be more specific?” She asked, taking a few steps across the room. Rachel so desperately wanted to grab the talking cat and punish him with a bath of his own or an overly-firm belly rub. She resolved to do so once she was fully healed.

Sir Fishbits flopped back onto the ground, rolling to one side and then the other, as if he were scratching at an itch. “It’s entertaining to watch you learn,” he informed her, grunting just a little as he worked on the itch.

Scowling at the closed door that only moments ago had birthed a cauldron, an army of vegetables, and a sentient book, Rachel settled on one solitary thought. She smelled like fish. Bathing was worth a 10% chance of the terrible unknown.

She clapped her hands together, rubbing them and focusing hard on the door as she wobbled across the room. “Alright, door, be a bathroom,” she told it a little too firmly.

“You don’t have to say it,” the cat told her, mildly amused. “You aren’t having a conversation.”

Be a bathroom, be a bathroom, be a bathroom. She repeated the mantra in her head, terrified of what she was going to find once she reached the door and grabbed the handle. It was surprisingly warm. Slowly, cautiously, Rachel turned the handle.

“Be a bathroom,” she whispered, ignoring the annoyed glance of Sir Fishbits.

Rachel wrenched the door open and threw herself into the room with a squeal, eyes shut tight. She stood there a good minute waiting for something terrible to happen, hoping against hope she was in fact inside a bathroom.

Scents of orange peels and fresh soap wafted about her, calming Rachel’s nerves. She cracked one eye open, not knowing whether to expect a bathroom or a very clean citrus monster. What she saw washed away her anxieties as swiftly as tidal waves crashing into sand.

The room itself was larger than the cottage on the other side of the door, which she reached back to gently close. A faint warm mist hung in the air about her, and she could hear a rush of water pouring into a large claw-footed bathtub several feet away.

It had at least eight spouts, all of them simultaneously running. Each spout poured a different colored liquid, and the water inside the tub was frothing with the biggest and fluffiest looking bubbles she’d ever seen. Even though the water continued to run, it didn’t seem like even a drop spilled over the edge onto the floor.

The tiles beneath her feet were warm; and their design depicted a large mosaic of a roasted chicken. It somewhat fit and didn’t fit into the otherwise elegant atmosphere of the bathroom.

The walls were lined with mirrors, and a vast counter encircled the room with several different sinks of varying sizes and shapes. Some sinks rose above the counter, some were recessed deep inside like empty whirlpools. At the very end of the counter, which drew up to the right side of the closed door, a neatly-folded pile of clothes lay in wait. Beside them was the coziest robe she’d ever seen, and beside that was a stack of towels.

“Magic,” she said aloud, shaking her head in wonder. What, she wondered, was the catch to this room? Certainly not the roast chicken mosaic on the floor. She should be so lucky.

She undressed as quickly as she could manage, which wasn’t easy. Her chest and torso ached as she pulled the gown over her head, which Rachel still marveled at. How the cat and that horseman guy he’d mentioned even knew her size was beyond her. Maybe the horseman was a tailor.

The bandage around her wound tighter than ever, and when she drew her hands to the very edge of it, she was almost afraid to look at what was beneath. Maybe she was missing a gigantic chunk of her body, and the bandage had some sort of magical spell on it to keep the rest of her from catching on to the fact that she was a shambling corpse without a kidney and pancreas.

“Here goes nothing,” she whispered to herself, slowly beginning the process. Sir Fishbits would help her with a fresh bandage later, surely. Or at the very least, that book could give her some advice on how to do it on her own.

Each layer she unwound was a relief, the pressure that much less intense. Even the pain seemed to be fading, she thought, though she didn’t rush the process. Layer by layer, second by second, the wrappings began to thin out.

What sort of fish could have bit her so badly, she wondered? How many fish had teeth like that? The cat had mentioned a giant trout, but Rachel couldn’t recall how many teeth a trout honestly had. That being the least of her worries, right now, she pushed on with her quest to see the damage done.

The orange scented mist in the bathroom kissed her skin, brushing at it almost immediately when the final layer of the bandages came off. She dropped them abruptly, staring down in wonder at her torso and leading up to the side of her chest. It was red, yes, and there was certainly a pattern to the redness. Sort of like a half moon. Yet, the skin wasn’t puckered, and there were no other ghastly marks to indicate an injury.

The mist receded, and as it did, the redness slowly began to fade away, brushed away almost. The last of her aches and pains faded as well.

Had the bathroom actually healed her? Now she really did wonder what the catch was. A grin broke onto Rachel’s face, and for the first time since she woke up she actually felt excited. She could spend a few days here. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

Or so she thought. Then the mirror began talking.

“Not bad,” a voice echoed from the glass around her, hollow and just a little amused, “about time we got some fresh blood in here.”