The next day we're going to go to the orphanage. When Marrianne says this, I give her a questioning look, and she tells me it's the place where children without parents live. That doesn't explain much though. I don't know what it means if I don't know what the children there are missing. I've been wanting to ask what parents are for so long now, I really need to get my voice back already. When I try, I'm just starting to be able to make rough croaking sounds. Just a couple more days and I should be able to speak again.
But first, Marrianne needs to go to work. So in the morning, Marrianne brings me with her. She says she works with horses. Those large, four legged animals I've seen around town pulling carts? I've never really gotten too close to one before. They make me kind of nervous. I know that there are supposed to be all sorts of animals, but besides the few birds I've seen up in the sky, horses are the only ones I can think of seeing before.
We walk up into the western section of town right near the West Gate we went through yesterday, then make a right turn. There's a pretty big building there with a big opening in the front, right near the gate. I didn't notice it yesterday when we were going to the forest, but this is a pretty distinctive building. As we get closer, I pick up on a strong, unpleasant smell. I recognize it from when we went to Mom's house, but it's way stronger now. Maybe my nose wasn't working as well because of my fever?
"Mmmmm," I rumble unpleasantly. This smell, it reminds me of chamber pot waste. I hardly notice that smell because it's always in the streets, but this is so much stronger, it starts to dredge up really awful memories. It even makes my eyes sting a little.
"Sorry, horses have a really strong smell, you get used to it eventually," Marrianne pats me on the head and we keep walking. We head into the building through a small door around the side of the building from the big open area.
"Hi Marrianne, how are you today?"
"I'm doing quite well, how are you feeling today, Minarike?" That's a strange name. Not that I can talk... but mine isn't even a real name. As I enter behind Marrianne, I see a different woman. She's... different is the only way I can think to describe her. I stand up on my toes to try and see over the counter and get a better look. Her skin is a few shades darker than everyone else, and she has her hair all... folded in on itself or something, as it trails down to her shoulders. Well, I think I've seen people with their hair like that before, but only a few. Her hair is darker than even Marrianne's but also has a kind of weird, shiny blue color to it. I've never seen anyone like this before. I stare in amazement.
"Perfectly well. Hmm, now, look at this little cutie," she says when she sees me. She bows very slightly. While staring, I mimic the gesture automatically.
"This one here is Wunay. Now that she's gotten over her fever, I'm taking her around with me today." After she explains, Marrianne takes some things from a small shelf by the wall. I continue to stare in wonder as she starts doing things with her hair I've never seen before. She takes all her hair, twists it around a bunch of times, then pushes a wooden stick through it. She winds her hair around the stick, then twists it somehow, and it stays. Then she takes some cloth and wraps it around the base a few times before tying it off. All of a sudden, her long hair is all held tight up near her head. She finishes with a second piece of cloth that she wraps around her whole head and ties off so it covers all of her hair.
When she turns back to see me gaping at the sudden transformation, she giggles. "Here, let's do your hair too." She lifts me up, setting me down on the counter. Suddenly, her face twitches with a tiny nervous look for some reason. "May I?" she asks toward the other woman.
"That's fine." Somehow understanding the question, Mani... Mika... Minara.. What was it? Her name is so long it's hard to remember. I decide to call her Mina. Mina goes over to a cabinet and pulls out some more hair stuff like Marrianne just used. I look around from my higher position. From here, I can see that there's all sorts of stuff scattered across a second counter that wraps around the spot where Mina is standing, with a chair just behind her. I guess she sits there while she does... work stuff? She hands the hair tying things to Marrianne, who dips her head a little, a bit like how Mina bowed before.
"Thank you very much."
"How odd. I've never seen such white hair before," Mina comments.
"You have never seen it, not even in Shonamakase?" Shona, Shona what? Mina shakes her head, trailing her hands through my hair. However, her fingers immediately get caught on the mess of knots all throughout my hair. "Could use some work though, it would seem. I feel like it would be much brighter if it was properly cared for."
"Yes, she has been in bed for the last two weeks, so I was thinking of taking her down to the river to get her washed up," Marrianne agrees. My hair is a good deal darker from the sweat and grime that has accumulated since I washed it that night. It kind of looks gray instead of white now. Mina nods a few times.
Once they finish speaking, I feel Marrianne pulling my hair this way and that. It feels like she's twisting and tying it the same way she did hers. My hair normally goes all the way down to my knees, so it's really surprising to have it all pulled up near my head. Comparing it to the people around the city, it's really long. I wonder why mine is so much longer? All of the other rail units had long hair like me. The male units had it somewhat shorter, but still longer than the women in the city. Do rail units have longer hair than people do? I never considered that possibility before...
By the time I've considered all of this, Marrianne has finished tying my hair up and covering my head with a cloth like hers. "Come now, I have to do some work today," Marrianne says, then sets me back on the ground.
As we walk out the door, she turns back. "I'll be getting to work now, miss," she bows her head as she backs out of the room and closes the door behind her.
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Marrianne lets out a small breath, looking like she has released just a bit of tension while we walk around toward the big open area. I still don't understand exactly, what is 'work'? It seems like a thing that people do, but I'm not sure what it entails, or why they do it...
I follow her over through the big opening in the building. From where we enter, I look to the right. It looks like a miniature version of the gates in the walls. It runs straight through the length of the building, and has a number of doors on either side. But the doors aren't solid. They seem to be made of a few pieces of connected metal, with a somewhat complicated looking latch on one side. As I look from side to side, it seems that most of the little areas are empty. At the far end, I see another person doing something. It looks like a tall man, who is shoveling something out of an empty little room.
"These are the stalls, each one can hold one horse," Marrianne explains. She begins walking down the middle. A quick count tells me there are about thirty stalls, though it's a bit difficult to count the ones on the far end. As we walk through, I see that there are a few horses in here. "These gates keep the horses in." When we pass by, they start making a bunch of noise and moving around in their stalls, which just makes me even more wary of them.
"The horses are really skittish today it seems," Marrianne comments. After she walks the length of the stable and back, Marrianne grabs a shovel and a barrel from a closet near where we walked in, before all of the stalls. She drags the barrel to the middle of the stable and opens the gate to an empty stall. With quick motions, she begins to shovel out the stall into the barrel. When the smell hits me, I realize what it is. Horse waste? So they just go where they are standing in their stalls? Then people need to shovel it out?
It takes me a while to wrap my head around this. Actually, we dump our chamber pot into the street, where men shovel it up the same way Marrianne does for the horses in these stalls. I guess this is used to make crops grow too then.
One by one, she shovels out the stalls, moving back toward the end we came in, away from the other person here. It seems to take a little while. Whenever she reaches a stall that is occupied by a horse, she wraps some sort of straps around the horse and ties them on. Then she opens the latch and leads the horse over to a metal pole, where she ties off the straps so the horse won't move too far. Each time she does this, she tells me to stand back at the entrance, because the horses seem on edge today. Apparently they can be unpredictable if they get startled by something. "A scared horse is a dangerous horse," she says with a serious face. I stand by the entrance patiently, glad to stay far away from the horses.
Two bells have chimed by the time she finishes 'mucking' the stall as she calls it. "Now that I've cleaned out the stalls, I have to fill them with more straw and hay," she explains. I follow her around to the back of the building, where there are large stacks of pokey stuff. It looks a lot like straw, but more dense, I think. So this is hay?
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She picks one up and carries it back around the building. She returns to the back once more, grabbing another stack, this one looking like the straw I'm familiar with. First she spreads straw on the floor of each stall, like she does on her floor at home. Once she finishes with that, she scoops out any hay remaining in a big tray in each stall, before filling it with new hay. She dumps the old hay in the barrel with the horse waste. With all of that finished, she returns the remains of the stacks of hay and straw to the back of the stable.
Watching her do so much, it's kind of amazing. So this is what work is... It seems like she does all of it automatically, like she has all her attention on her work. It's only once in a while that her attention turns back to me, to explain something that she's doing. It all takes a very long time, one bell ringing after another. It looks like we'll be skipping lunch today. The sun crosses the middle of the sky as she brings the horses out of their stalls one at a time and runs a thing she calls a brush all along their short fur. I stand back and watch from a distance.
The sun is just beginning to dip toward the buildings. Standing back in the stable, she is looking around. I'm wondering what task she needs to do next, when I hear a bell ring. It's not like the usual bells, but much closer and kind of high pitched. "Coming!" Marrianne calls, while beginning to walk quickly to the entrance. I follow on her heels, looking up I see a man riding a horse. I take a couple quick steps back when I see it. But then a sound draws my attention upward. There's a round metal thing there, hanging from the entrance. It's still ringing a little. So that's what a bell looks like.
Marrianne talks with the man for a bit. It seems that he just arrived in the city and wants to leave his horse here until tomorrow, when he will be leaving. He hands her something, and she gives him a small wooden block. It looks like it might be colored, but I can't really tell before he tucks it into his clothing. Then she takes the reins, and the man climbs down from the horse. As soon as Marrianne begins to turn with the horse, it comes around the little corner of the entrance and its eyes lock onto me, standing way too close.
The horse lets out a loud, high pitched whining sound, suddenly going up on its hind legs. I jolt at the sudden shock while my senses accelerate. Even with the combat reflexes they trained us in, I just manage to shift backward slightly as its front legs come up. It's barely enough that it scrapes across my forehead, catching and flinging away the cloth on my head as it grazes past. It stands on its hind legs for a moment, during which I see Marrianne just starting to call out toward me. A scared horse is a dangerous horse.
Then the feet begin coming back down directly toward me. Thankfully, combat maneuvering was the only thing I was really capable of. Not that it ever helped against rail units who could also move at the same speed. Just as I practiced, my feet slide, right foot forward and left foot back, automatically while I sway sideways, moving my head out of the path of its hoofs as they fall back to the floor. The crash is loud enough that I can tell it would crack my head open if it hit me. My breath catches in my throat at the thought. Back on all fours, the horse lurches forward. I continue my spinning motion, letting my legs slide away so those big, heavy feet won't crush me. The angle of the maneuver doesn't get my head out of the way entirely. It's chest will rub past my head just a bit, but that isn't as dangerous. That seems to be why I reflexively dodged like this.
As it dashes past, its chest barely touches me as expected. However, it doesn't just slide past. Its chest feels like a large rock crashing against my head. From the unexpected force, I roll my shoulder back so it doesn't snap my neck, letting the force disperse down through my body. I'm sent spinning away by a weight many times heavier than I expected. From my earlier stance, I manage to keep on my feet as I slide, spinning in circles repeatedly. Until my feet catch on something. I automatically try to kick down to get over it and maintain my balance, but it's too sudden and my feet are pulled out from under me. I feel my back and side scrape slightly over the edge of something wooden as I fall, but then come down surprisingly softly. It feels like my whole side is scraped from the wood I hit, and my brain feels all rattled around from the horse hitting me, but my back and the back of my head head seem to land softly by comparison. "Wunay!" I finally hear Marrianne scream, before suddenly I start sinking. Wait, whatever I landed in, it's not solid. I flail, but don't have anything to grab onto.
Marrianne grabs me and pulls me out. It's only then that the smell hits me and I realize I must have landed in the barrel of horse waste. Ugh. I hold my head, gagging and trying to push back the horrible memories triggered by the smell of waste on my body. I don't want to throw up again. The man comes running over a moment later. "I'm so sorry, she's never done that before! Are you alright?"
They are both looking me up and down frantically. I turn my head back, seeing the other man at the far end of the stable working to calm the horse. I know she said horses could be dangerous, but I nearly died again, didn't I? It takes a few moments to sink in. Then I look back to the concerned adults. I give them a smile, trying to let them know I'm fine. I don't want to worry Marrianne any more than I already have.
"Oh, it's a miracle," Marrianne sighs. She looks so relieved, it makes me feel bad for worrying her so much. "Look at you, you're all covered in horse poo, we need to get you washed off."
After the man apologizes over and over, he leaves. They get the horse into a stable without further trouble, and Marrianne brings us back around to the side door again. When we walk inside, she starts apologizing to Mina because the hair ties all got covered in horse waste. When she explains what happened, Mina says she's glad I didn't get hurt.
"I'm really very sorry," Marrianne apologizes again.
"You don't have to worry about it so much. Just go get her washed off."
"I'll be sure to do that." With that, Mina gives her something.
"Here's your pay for today," she says while handing it over. Pay? Like buying and selling? So that's what work is, Marrianne did all of that in exchange for money she can use to buy things!
As I realize that, we quickly leave again.
Once we're back in the street, Marrianne looks up at the sky. "I know I said that, but it's already getting dark..." She thinks for a moment, then suddenly grabs her head, "Aaah, I was supposed to take you by the orphanage today too!" She looks at me, then the sky a few times.
Finally, she lets out a long sigh. "I guess there's no helping it." We walk over to a well, where another woman lends her a bucket to draw some water after seeing me. Then, she dumps the well water on a rag, and uses it to wipe the worst of the waste off of my face and hair. She splashes some more water on me to get some off of my clothes. I still look and feel dirty all over, but at least now I don't have whole clumps of waste clinging to my body. Though I am wet now.
We walk a little ways, up near the north wall. It looks like we're still going to go past the orphanage like we were supposed to. "I'll take you out to get washed up tomorrow, so if you could please bear with it?" She looks really worried as she asks, but I nod easily. After washing the worst off, the smell isn't really dragging up painful memories as much as before. If she wants me to wait, I'll wait.
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Up near the North Gate, we reach a surprisingly large building. It is a wooden construction like most. At three floors tall, it's not separated into individual floors, but just one big three story building for one family to use. It's so much bigger than all the tiny, narrow buildings packed in on either side of it, the place really stands out.
Marrianne knocks on the door, and it opens a short time later. A surprisingly old man stands very tall before us. His nose wrinkles, from the terrible smell coming off of me I'm sure. "Can I help you?" he asks pointedly.
"Well, I was wondering if there have been any orphans that went missing lately. I found this lost child and there were no reports of a child like this going missing, so I came to check here as well."
The man looks down at me with an unpleasant face. "We haven't lost any children," he says simply.
"Then thank you for your time," Marrianne says. He quickly closes the door in our faces. "Well that was quick," she comments, looking surprised. So we walk away. After we walk for a bit, Marrianne lets out a long sigh. She looks relieved for some reason. But then her brow furrows with worry again. I don't really know what she's thinking about. Why is she both relieved and worried?
We make it back to Marrianne's house just before sundown. I'm so dirty, I don't really want to lie in the bed and get the blankets dirty too. While I'm unsure of what to do, Marrianne comes over and changes me out of my dirty clothing into a set of clean clothes. When she does, she sees the large scrapes across my entire side. "Oh honey..." I try to wave my hands and shake my head to let her know its ok. It really doesn't hurt that bad at all compared to everything else I've been through. It will heal quickly anyway.
Once she finishes changing me, she gestures to the bed once more. "Don't worry, I have to bring everything to wash tomorrow anyway," she explains. Then she gets to work on dinner while I lie down. We skipped lunch today because she was working, so I'm really tired and hungry. When Francis comes back, we eat like usual. In the two weeks I've been here, I've gotten used to this. I still snap to attention when I hear the whistles every day, but it only lasts a moment before I return to whatever I'm doing in my own life.
Over dinner, Marrianne tells Francis about what happened today, and how the orphanage hasn't lost any children either. It looks like she has something else to say, but she stops herself and doesn't say it. What is it that she doesn't want to talk about in front of me?
After we finish dinner, I lie down to go to sleep. I wave off Marrianne, trying to show that I'll be fine. I don't want to get her all dirty. She is reluctant, but eventually nods and goes to her own bed. Honestly, I'm not sure how well I can hold the nightmares off without her. But I'm determined to do what I can for her sake.
As it turns out, I'm not well prepared at all. Without her warmth close at my side, I'm jolted awake in terror ten times throughout the night, with shrieking, stomping horses featuring in many of the terrors. The sparse sleep leaves me somewhat drowsy the next day, but I'll manage.