23 – 4
The bathroom air tastes warm and wet, a welcome change after so long spent breathing cold, dry winter. I pull it deep with long, slow breaths, my eyes closed and body cradled by the water. Calming breaths, these were: meant to slow the rush of feelings that had followed me into the bath; that had been my company while I scrubbed myself raw with soap and flannel; and that only now, minutes later, were beginning to calm.
Edith had sold me the bath token. She'd looked me in the face with her steel-gray eyes and recognition didn't so much as spark within them. In a world where I hadn't realized, where the leaden weight of revelation didn't sit so heavily upon me, I might've said something. I might've smiled, might've laughed, but I was – I am – overwhelmed. I had dipped my head and mumbled thanks before retreating here, to clean myself and think.
The flannel lay draped over the lip of the bath, dripping ever-shrinking drops onto the slick-soaked floor. I'm thinking. I'm thinking I used all the soap, that the sweat and grime that once clung to me now films the water's surface. I'm thinking that my hair is a sodden spill of honeyed gold down my neck and shoulders. It needs cutting.
I'm thinking that I don't want to think about it, not anymore. I'm thinking I've thought enough for one day, for a dozen days, and that Harlan was right: I should fill my belly with hot food and sleep on a soft bed; and I will, as soon as the water cools. Until then, I'll float. I'll fill my ears with the dripping flannel and the distant taproom sounds and I won't think a thing, not one, not at all.
Breathe in deep, let it out slow.
Do it again. Do it again.
Float, don't think.
It's nice, a good and pleasant thing brought to far too swift an end with a knocking at the bathroom door. Go away, I want to shout, leave me alone! Don't you know I'm doing nothing in here?!
Instead I flounder: get dirty bath-water up my nose and succumb to a fit of hacking to get it out. I'm still in the midst of it when a voice, recognizable as Edith even muffled by door and distance, calls, “Are ye – is everythin' alright?”
“Yes, it's –” I cough, spit snot and bath-water, eyes stinging, “it's fine!”
There's a moment, a heavy and hesitant pause, where I begin to believe she's left. The flannel drips in ever-shrinking drops. Disturbed bath-water, filmed with sweat and grime, settles. Then, “Zira? Is it – are ye – I thought I might've – but if yer not her, then...”
Should I lie? Say no, I'm sorry, you're mistaken? I want to. I very badly want to. If I don't, she'll want to know what happened. She'll want to know how the friend she bade farewell to became this stranger she reminds her of. She'll ask, and I'll tell her, and it'll start over again: more wringing of a flannel already long dried.
How could you, she'll shout.
Because I wanted to, I'll cry back.
Then revulsion, then disgust, and then Agnes will appear, drawn by her granddaughter's distress. She'll want to know, and one or both of us will tell her, and I will not now or ever have the will to endure all of that. So I will lie, and it is on my lips when I hear her say my name, say, “Zira?” with such a frail and fragile hope that I can't – I simply cannot – bring myself to dash.
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“It's me,” I answer. The door cracks open and Edith is peeking in, that same hope in her steel-gray eyes, now soft and lamp-light warm. Her mouth parts, and I brace myself for it to begin. Breathe in deep, let it out slow.
“I thought ye were dead,” Her voice wavers, trembles, “the both of ye, we heard that ye'd been killed, an' so when I saw ye I didn't dare let m'self think it was...but then I – had – t'know...” She sniffles. “Where's Clarke? Is she – is she?”
I shake my head. “She's fine. She's in Amberdusk.” Then, “Wait, you – heard – ? What did you hear?”
Edith steps into the room, closing the door behind her, and what follows is in exact and precise opposite to what I had expected: I didn't say a word, and Edith tells my story to me.
- - -
Word of the bramble-beast's first attack on us came from a trapper, traveling south on the lake-shore road to trade a ten-count of fine fox pelts to the smith so he could have his knife and hatchet sharpened. They found the wrecked cart – its description matching Harlan's – and the corpse of the brave and beautiful horse that outran the bramble-beast for so long. That was the first time Edith thought we'd died.
Then came a caravan of farmers from Amberdusk, selling surplus and bringing the story of the family Thorngage to an audience of late-night drinkers in the common room of the Rest Luxuriant. They told the disbelieving listeners about Adelaide, pale and swaying with blood on her clothes and smoke on her skin. They told about Milo, the once-soldier, with battle in his eyes and his sword nowhere to be found. They told of Lavinia, who bore young with grace what most adults would crumble beneath.
They told of the strangers who came with them out of the woods: a magi with ice at the hollow of her throat and hair like spilled black ink; and a Royah girl with burns on her hands and a cracked, bleeding scab running the length of her back.
It hurt to hear talk of Juliana, brought by a traveling scribe doing letter-work for those who could or would not themselves. It brought an ache to hear of the good Knight Captain, sailing south to the Port with those girls, never to return.
A fishing ship brought tidings of how she crushed Vance and his cronies, how she personally escorted the Royah girl they abducted back to her family, and how Edith had thought it was me until that last part. Over barrels of salt fish and eel they muttered darkly about the crush at the gate, and how the Knight Captain had almost killed herself saving as many as she could from the carnage.
A family, fleeing north to kin at Amberdusk, had finished the tale – the tale as they knew it, at least. How Merigold Thresh had bravely, selflessly stepped into the chaos following the crush and the Mayor's murder, leading the Port through a troubled time made worse by the Knight Captain trying to break through the curfew and dying of injuries re-awoken in the attempt. They talked about the girls with her, both drowned in the attempt, speaking pitiably of the magi led astray and scornfully of the Royah who led her.
That was the second time Edith thought we'd died.
Then nothing. Days and weeks of it. She mourned us, did Edith, and wept again in recounting her grief. The Windrunners emerged, crawling forth from shadows and slime, and grief joined with fear.
A smith, battered half-dead and all over bruised, brought his livelihood, his dog, and the story of someone striking down the Windrunners in Amberdusk one by one. In his tale, I was a vengeful shadow, haunting them as they haunted others. They died of fear of me, he'd claimed, scratching his faithful hound's ears, the last of them caught on the road, fleeing for his life.
It made me smile to hear of Alban the smith, who had lied for me to no gain of his own, doing well. He plies his trade in Valdenwood now, having purchased one of the rebuilt structures on the north end of town for his own. The local children love his dog, and his dog loves the treats they smuggle him.
Of Sockeye Bend, there is no word. There hasn't been. There won't be. I tell her as much, but not why.
Then Merigold died, shot down in an alley, the crossbow used to kill her left lying in the snow-slush by her corpse. It wasn't one person who brought the news, but many; each with their own grievance from life under her rule.
Days more of nothing; until today, until a stranger with her friend's eyes and her friend's hair bought a bath token with too much money. She'd thought she was seeing similarities where there were none; her grief had a history of doing that to her. The longer she thought of it, the more the stranger came to resemble me. She was thinner and paler than Zira, but that could be explained by what she – what I – had gone through.
Edith wanted, needed, to know; so she'd mustered her courage, knocked, and asked. She hadn't wanted to believe me when I said yes. Part of her thought she was dreaming; this, too, her grief had a history of doing to her. I didn't know how to convince her I was real. I took her hand. She held it tight.
The bathroom air tastes warm and wet, a welcome change from the cold, dry winter outside. The flannel drips ever-shrinking drops onto the slick-soaked floor. I used all the soap. I should say something. The tale she told sounds heroic, almost, when it was anything but. It was fear and misery, hunger and anger, heartbreak and hatred. I should say something, but that would involve explaining myself, and I don't want to.
“I'm glad yer not dead,” Edith says quietly. She's turned her back while I dress, fiddling with the fingers of the hand I held. She doesn't know, so she can't mean it, but it's nice to hear anyway.