by Sharon Shinn
Was it possible that she would have to go a day or two, maybe more, without bathing herself, even in a medium that promised to be as unfriendly as a small riverbed?
And what about washing her hair?
“You don’t have to change your clothes, of course,” Tirza said, misreading her silence. “If I’m careful and don’t spill anything, I can sometimes wear the same dress for a week, though I do like to have on clean underthings. And since I hate washing clothes, I try very hard not to spill things!”
“No, I—I guess I hadn’t thought much about clothes and how to keep them clean—while I traveled,” Miriam said. “I think I have six changes of clothes with me. And I was just wondering if I’d really be able to wash them out every day.”
“Probably not, so wash what you can when you can,” Anna said. “But hurry, now. We’re going to be on the move in another hour or two.”
So Miriam ducked back into the tent and pawed through her duffel bag till she found the sturdiest cotton gown in her wardrobe. It was a dark blue that rarely showed dirt; it might last her a day or two, if she didn’t sweat or stain it. The outfit she had worn yesterday, a pale green skirt and blouse that she had always loved, was covered with mud and grass stains and soot from last night’s fire. Clearly, every time she wore the light-colored fabric, it would require washing.
She could see she was going to have to make clothing choices much more carefully from now on.
When she emerged from the tent, Tirza handed her a cake of soap. “To wash with,” she said, when Miriam looked uncertain.
“My clothes or my body?”
Tirza grinned. “Everything.”
She trudged away from camp, following the curve of the creek, until she got to a place that looked both deep and private. Still, she felt a little conspicuous—and not a little cold—as she pulled off every item of clothing and stood at the edge of the water. If she waded in one foot at a time, she would never do this. She took a deep breath and plunged in, dropping to her knees as soon as she hit the center of the water.
Sweet Jovah wailing his twice-benighted prayers, but it was cold in the water. Miriam had never bathed so fast in her life, scrubbing the raw bar of soap along her flesh, ducking her blond hair under the water and hastily lathering it up. Quick rinse, duck, feel the mild current of the stream tug at the roots of her hair, and then rise to her feet and go running back to the bank. Damnation and isolation, she had forgotten to bring a towel. Shivering furiously, she dried herself on the less dirty bits of her green skirt and pulled on the clean blue dress as fast as she could. A little warmer, and a lot grimmer, she knelt at the stream’s edge and washed out yesterday’s clothing. She would never wear this skirt and blouse again. She would never wear anything that had to be washed. She would wear this blue dress for the rest of her life.
She was a little happier once the chores were done, however, and she’d wrung out the clothes so they wouldn’t drip on her too much as she plodded back. There was a certain exhilaration at being clean again—or maybe the euphoria was induced by the dip in the cold river, and the quick escape. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair and hoped someone would be able to lend her a comb.
“Good, you’re back,” Anna greeted her. “Help me pour the rest of this porridge into some pots so we can bring it with us.”
“But I haven’t eaten yet,” Miriam said.
“Well, you can eat while you work. And where did Dathan and Amram go? Eleazar needs someone to help him pull down the tent.”
Miriam quickly crammed some sugared bread into her mouth while she distributed leftover porridge into clay pots. The pots were cleverly constructed, with wide bowls and narrow necks, and lids that fit snugly once you turned them a certain way. She imagined they traveled well. Well—they would have to. Sometimes, Susannah had told her, the Edori traveled for weeks without staying more than one night at any campsite.
Miriam was beginning to think the Edori lifestyle was a touch more demanding than she had at first envisioned.
“Miriam, where’s that soap?” Tirza asked. “I’ll pack it away.”
Miriam turned from her stance over the packing pots. “The soap? Oh—I’m afraid I left it down at the river. I’m sorry.”
“Then you’ll just have to go back and get it,” Tirza said impatiently. “Soap’s hard to come by, you know, and I don’t know how soon we’ll be somewhere we can buy more.”
Miriam put down the cauldron. “I’m sorry—I didn’t think—”
“Finish the porridge first, then go for the soap,” Anna commanded. “We don’t want anything to spoil.”
Feeling embarrassed, stupid, and wasteful, Miriam returned to her first task. The pot slipped in her hands a little, and some of the cereal poured down the crockery and onto the ground. Miriam looked up guiltily and saw that Anna had noticed, but the Edori woman did no more than compress her lips and glance away. Miriam tried to be very careful after that.
Finally, the cauldron was empty and the crocks were full. “As long as you’re going back downstream, Miriam,” Tirza said, “why don’t you take the big pot with you? You can wash it out. Don’t use the soap,” she added. “Just rinse it very well.”
“All right,” Miriam said.
The cauldron was an awkward item to carry a quarter of a mile; it kept bumping against her knees when she lugged it by its handle, and it was a little too big and round for her to hold against her chest, though she tried it for a few strides. Once it’s clean, she thought with a burst of morose humor, I can turn it upside down and carry it on my head.
It was also an awkward item to clean, and the whole front of her dress got splashed with cold water before she managed to get it rinsed to the standards she thought Anna would expect. Her fingers were icy, and she paused a moment to blow on them, and then tuck them under her armpits for a little warmth. When they had regained their feeling, she picked up the cauldron and headed back.
She’d gone a hundred paces before she remembered the soap.
“Cruel Jovah whispering curses,” she muttered under her breath, making up maledictions as she retraced her steps. “Damnation, isolation, cremation, and despair. I hope to never see another bar of soap again as long as I live.”
Finally, finally, wet, cold but victorious, she returned to the camp. To find it a camp no longer—every tent down and rolled, every horse loaded with packs and bundles. A few women fussed around wheeled long-handled carts. Miriam realized that they planned to push these in front of them for the entire journey.
She wondered if she would have to carry her duffel bags for however long they traveled today. Then, to her relief, she saw Eleazar tightening straps on a small, sturdy black pony, who was loaded with her own luggage as well as some of the paraphernalia of the tent.
“How far will we be going today?” Miriam asked Tirza.
The Edori woman shrugged. “Who knows? Sometimes we only get five miles away, or ten, and we have a reason to stop. Sometimes we travel twenty miles or more. When the weather is good and no one is sick, we might go thirty miles, but that’s a long day. With Bartholomew so recently sick, and the weather starting to cool, I imagine we will go no more than fifteen miles. But we’ll see.”
“And where are we going?” Miriam said.
Tirza laughed. “Jovah kiss you, child, I have no idea!”
Miriam rather enjoyed the journey for the first couple of hours. Her shoes were good and sturdy, she was not carrying those damned duffel bags, and Dathan walked beside her, pointing out sights.
“Now, if you’re thirsty, you can pick off a few of these leaves and chew them up, and it’s as good as eating an apple,” he said, twisting off a branch of a low, blue-green shrub and handing it to her. “There’s a funny taste at first, but you get used to it. And you’ll find your thirst disappears like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Cautiously, Miriam slipped a single leaf into her mouth and ground it up. It was a little minty, a little peppery, a little something-she-cou
ld-not-identify, but the chewed leaf made a satisfying juice blob inside her mouth. Once she swallowed, she realized he was right. She’d been a little thirsty; now she felt refreshed.
“I’ve never even heard of such a thing before,” she said. “What’s it called?”
“Marrowroot. It’s harder to find in Bethel,” he said.
“What do you do in Bethel, then, when you can’t find water?”
“Look for tosswort, but it tastes even nastier,” he said with a smile. “What you really look for is water.”
He showed her rabbit tracks and wolf spoor, explained why she wouldn’t want to sit on a sun-warmed rock once the weather started cooling off (snakes sought the lingering heat), and named the various birds they saw flying overhead. When her hair grew hot on the back of her neck, he paused beside her for three minutes, braiding it for her and tying it with a leather strip. He asked her about life in the angel hold, said he’d never been to Velora, wanted to know what it felt like to be carried in an angel’s arms and flown across the continent.
He never mentioned Susannah’s name. Neither did Miriam.
When they paused for lunch, Miriam sank to the ground without even pulling out a pallet to protect her blue dress from dust. Tirza brought her some cold bread and meat, checked to make sure her canteen was full, and asked after her feet.
“I think they’re fine,” Miriam said. “I can’t really feel them.”
“I’ll give you some salve tonight,” Tirza promised.
The rest was short, and then they were all on the move again. The second half of the afternoon was not nearly as pleasant. Dathan wandered off to hunt or otherwise amuse himself. Miriam found herself trailing behind Anna and Claudia, who talked of people she didn’t know and babies she didn’t care about. Plus her feet really were beginning to hurt. There was a place on her heel that was feeling raw and rubbed, and another on the back of her ankle that she was afraid to look at. Her canteen was low, and the marrowroot leaves were not having quite the same efficacy this late in the day. She had eaten plenty of food at lunch, but she had expended so much energy just by plodding along that she was hungry again. And no one else in the caravan looked like he was on the verge of calling a halt.
Well, Miriam would not be the one to slow everybody down. She had never been the one to call it quits. She would walk on with the Edori if they didn’t stop from now till Breven.
In fact, Bartholomew signaled for a rest about an hour later. Looking around, Miriam could see no reason for stopping at this particular point. They were on open ground, no river or stand of trees or windbreak of any kind nearby. But the air was cooling off as the sun slid toward an early departure and, Miriam gathered from the comments the others let fall, there was no particularly good camping ground ahead of them for another five or ten miles.
“Best not to wear everyone out,” Claudia said comfortably. “Just stop for the night to sleep, and move on tomorrow.”
Which meant, Miriam learned next, that none of the tents would be set up for the night, only one central fire would be built in order to conserve firewood, and the only water available was in the containers they’d carried with them.
She thought, I could have lived this well by myself if I’d just wandered out of Velora and started walking toward southern Bethel with my arms empty.
Still, there was plenty to do to get the clan ready for the night, as she also discovered very quickly. Amram and the other children scrounged up kindling from scrubby little bushes, while some of the men built a fire with logs dragged behind them all the way from Luminaux. Anna and Claudia and a couple of the other older women were debating what to cook in a few big pots that would feed the whole camp. Dathan and Eleazar, who had been gone for much of the afternoon, came strolling in, their hands full of treasures picked up on the road.
When she looked more closely, Miriam saw that these treasures were really dead animals. A couple of rabbits, something that looked like a squirrel, and three birds of some sort, their spread wings hanging from their limp bodies and bouncing with every step the Edori took.
Miriam looked away and for a moment she felt faint.
A few moments later, Tirza called her name. Miriam forced herself to walk over to the cook-fire, where Dathan was kneeling on the ground and Anna was giving him instructions. “Can you skin a rabbit?” Tirza asked. “Or maybe pluck a bird?”
Miriam thought she would gag. She kept her eyes turned carefully away from the sight of the corpses piled untidily beside the fire. “Skin a—no, I’ve never—and I’ve never plucked the feathers off anything,” she said in an unsteady voice.
Tirza looked disappointed but unsurprised. “I can show you, but it’ll take you a while to get the hang of it,” she said.
Miriam’s voice took on a note of panic. “I can’t touch those things!” she exclaimed. “I can’t—they’re all bloody—and they’re dead.”
“Well, you’d probably rather have them dead if you’re going to eat them,” Tirza said.
“I can’t eat them!”
Now Tirza’s expression was a little quizzical. “You ate rabbit stew the other night and did not seem to mind at all,” she said. “How do you think you get meat for your table at the angel holds? Someone kills it for you. You just don’t happen to see the slaughter. But here we have to do all our own tasks, both the rewarding and the not so pleasant. If we want to eat, that is. If we want to survive.”
Miriam stared at her, wondering if Tirza had just told her that she would not be fed if she didn’t do her share of camp chores. She wanted to shriek and run away, stomping down the dusty Jordana miles toward someplace more civilized, more sane, but she could not even do that. She could not leave this campfire. She had no idea where she was, where the nearest city was; she had no idea how to get anywhere or do anything except follow these people. She was trapped more surely, and more terrifyingly, than she had ever been when she had been forbidden to leave the Eyrie.
“I can’t touch them,” she whispered.
For an awful second, she waited for Tirza to say, “Fine, then you won’t eat tonight,” but the Edori woman merely nodded. “Well, can you peel the potatoes then?” Tirza asked. “And chop up the carrots? We’re going to make three big pots to feed everyone, so we’ll need a lot of vegetables.”
Miriam nodded. “I can do that,” she said in a small voice. “Where’s a knife?”
She spent the next hour or so scraping and chopping, her hands a little clumsy but her mind completely focused. All around her, other hands were at work, kneading dough, mixing up spices, boning the carcasses and dicing meat. A few steps away from the fire, more activity was going on, as men mended harnesses and young girls sewed blouses. Even the children were busy, digging holes for the water tent and pulling out pallets for everyone to sleep on around the fire. Someone started singing an unfamiliar song in a language that Miriam didn’t know, and a few other voices joined in, but idly, adding a melody line here, a harmony note there as if the workers were too busy to pause long enough to sing a song the whole way through.
Miriam herself was too exhausted to sing, even if she’d known the music.
It was full dark, and they had been at the campsite for nearly two hours, before dinner was finally ready. By this time, Miriam was so hungry that she was beginning to rethink her position; she might have snatched up a raw chunk of rabbit flesh and gulped it down, gooey bloody mess that it was, if every single bit of meat hadn’t already been dumped into one of the cook pots. She almost could not wait her turn to ladle food onto her plate, and then she didn’t want to take another few seconds to find a place to sit around the fire before she started eating. She dropped into the first available spot, between Amram and a teenage girl from one of the other tents, and started cramming food into her mouth. Oh, this was so good. She wasn’t even sure what it was—grouse, she thought, because it didn’t taste like rabbit and she didn’t know what squirrel tasted like but she didn’t think this was it—but it was excellent. She
spooned up the stew as fast as she could, and then wiped her bowl with a crust of fresh bread. Beyond delicious. Food so good you would not be embarrassed to feed it to Jovah.
She stood up to refill her plate.
She had three helpings before she was satisfied, and then for a few moments, she felt a little sick to her stomach. That would be perfect, to get a stomach disorder out here in the middle of nowhere, with no private place to relieve herself and no ready supply of water with which to clean herself up. But no; the momentary twinges passed, and she felt just fine again. She even thought she could eat a little more if there was food left over and it would go to waste otherwise.
However, she felt too full and content even to stand up and check the contents of the cook pots.
Doubtless, everyone else felt much the same, because no one moved for a while except to shift position or lay aside a plate. No one was really talking much, either, though Bartholomew and Eleazar were murmuring about something in voices too quiet to be overheard. Tomorrow’s route, Miriam guessed. A course that she devoutly hoped would take them somewhere near water.
Someone began humming, a soft little lullaby, and a few other voices took up the wordless tune. Pretty soon the whole camp was singing, a swell of voices coming from around the fire, so indistinct and beautiful that for a moment Miriam entertained the fancy that the fire itself was lifting up a ragged, brilliant cry. Then someone rose to his feet—a young man named Thaddeus, Miriam thought—and began singing a real song, using real words. Everyone else fell silent to listen, though Miriam could not understand the language. Still she listened, head tilted to one side, as the liquid tenor notes rolled from his mouth. The music made her sad, made her think of bitter hours and days of mourning—made her remember her mother, who had been so quiet and so furtive and who had sometimes come into her room at night to kiss Miriam in secret.
“What’s the song about?” she whispered to the girl sitting next to her, pushing the words hard past a constriction in her throat.
“It’s a grieving song. His baby died a year ago. Right about this time of year.”
