Confident, Adria returned to the bedchamber and removed her pack, slowly emptying its contents onto a small table. She carried a few mementos beyond the purely pragmatic. A single arrow, carefully wrapped to separate it from the others in her quiver. A long thread of silver unwound from a wreath of vines she had once worn in ceremony.
Adria did not wait for the maid to attend her. She removed her clothing herself, even as the girl entered and carefully tipped the contents of the cauldron into the tub. Steam arose and filled the room with the scent of roses, salt, and Ieruscan oil.
Adria had not had a hot bath in so long that her skin thrilled merely at the hint of steam. She removed and draped her borrowed over-cloak, her fur jacket, her leather leggings, and finally her under linens across her dressing table, hopefully to gain some benefit from the better odors of the bath.
The girl remained deferential, even shy, and retreated behind the screen and into the other room with the cauldron as Adria stepped over the lip of the bath and lowered herself with a sigh, glancing once aside to be certain her blade lay within easy reach. Only then did she see a bathing gown laid out for her on her dressing table.
See how wild I have become? Adria smiled as she lowered herself slowly into the steaming tub, wincing as the water found the most tender and sore parts of her body. Bathing without the benefit of Aeman modesty.
She had eventually mostly managed to ignore the bruises and raw places she had been awarded for her overlong horseback ride. Now, a good portion of her lower half voiced its postponed objections strenuously, and her muscles in general agreed.
She had gained some ability to forestall the effects of physical and emotional pain, a necessary skill for a Runner, but the eventual repercussions often seemed the worse for it. As she settled into the bath, she closed her eyes in concentration and attended her muscles, relaxing them one at a time.
Half-consciously, Adria unbound her hair and, starting near the ends, slowly teased out each braid with her fingers. The warm oil on the surface of the water helped somewhat, and she leaned back fully to let all but her face enfold within. Her hair wandered out upon the surface of the water, drank its fill until swollen, and slowly drowned.
Luxury… Adria smiled. Her hair had been a symbol of her difference among the Aesidhe. Though even Aesidhe men mostly wore theirs long, Adria’s had not lent itself to the subterfuge needed of a Hunter, and especially a Runner. Still, she had never regretted it, and there had never been any insistence or even suggestion for her to cut it.
One small braid she had not unbound, the one which lay at the center of the others, with its irregular pattern of white and red story beads. It was a pattern unique to any Aesidhe, worn looped into braided hair or on a necklace or bracelet of twine, whose white beads represented great acts of charity or love, and whose red ones marked the blood of violence or sacrifice.
Although it was not meant a measure of one’s own value, Adria nevertheless regretted that her beads had not remained in balance, the moments of white overcome by those in red, by arrows and blades, by scars she had earned and those she had given.
Adria took a long breath, folding her legs into a cross, and let her face fall beneath the surface. She opened her eyes after a moment, to watch the firelight and its shadows play upon the ceiling above the water, then closed them again to careful memory.
Adria had the habit of always counting her heartbeat underwater. She wanted to know just how long she could remain submerged without breath, but also if her heartbeat slowed or quickened. During her education from the Sisterhood, she had once read that as a person approached death their heart began to slow. So Adria tested this many times, but always without much success, for she always grew dizzy at the end, and couldn’t be certain how much her judgment of time might have changed.
Perhaps there should be a theory about dizziness, Adria thought as her head swam along with the water. Maybe the world around us blurs and spins, just as we are about to die. Maybe our breath is what keeps it solid.
But she had never heard of such a theory. She had never even heard of anyone dying by holding her breath, though she had once or twice made such a threat herself as a very young child.
And besides, she thought. I could not write such a theory now, for the Aesidhe have nothing at all to write with, or upon. The only exceptions she knew were the occasional scratches in the dirt with a fire stick — illustration from Runner scouts of the placement of camps and the forces of Tiniya, the Aeman Others Adria herself had so recently left for the wilderness.
Her head breached the surface of the water, and the laughter of children filled her ears again. They loved the summer water, the rippling brook, the careful edges of slower moving rivers, the wide lakes filled with fish of every size.
They even loved the leeches they sometimes found on their own bodies, which they then carried to a Mechushegi, a Holy One, to use for healing. The Sister physicians use these as well, Adria knew, though it did not make the prospect of harvesting them any less repugnant to her.
The water was cold, even in summer, but the Aesidhe never seemed to mind. They bore this extremity as well as they bore the heat of sun — or so it seemed to Adria, who had only begun to enjoy the cool waters after her skin had reddened and burned a second, then a third time.
Her burns soon stopped peeling anyway, and the most exposed parts of her had begun to freckle or sometimes darken to a richer shade, though still unlike the red-brown hue of the Aesidhe.
“They are almost the color of iron dust,” her uncle Preinon had remarked once. “A people of fire and sun. You, pretty Princess Idonea, are a child of the snow and ice, a scion of pale Northern winters.”
“One would think I should stand the cold more.”
He laughed, “Oftentimes it only means you favor the warmth of linen, leathers, and furs the more, and castle walls which break the bracing winds. You will grow accustomed, as I have, and your skin will take on a bit of iron and sun. This I promise you.”
Still, when Adria was alone enough to bathe completely, without any covering, she could see the stark lines where her usual bareness ended and her private bareness began.
And unfortunately, privacy was not a great tradition among the Aesidhe. The Aesidhe children, and even the young adults of her own age were the same, felt strangely little need to conceal themselves while in the water. They played, girls and boys together, as if they were fully clothed. They splashed, submerged one another, pretended to fight, and even tickled... all as if the barest parts of their bodies were not fully exposed.
Adria did what she could to avoid them, going early to the water, or late. When it could not be avoided, she hid in the shade of a tree, even colder without the benefit of sun, and she watched them from a distance in their various states of bareness, in wonder and embarrassment.
At home, she had always bathed in her bathing gown, as was customary, and nearly always attended by a maid. She had only the dimmest glimmer of a memory of a time before, when she and Hafgrim, little more than babes, had shared a bath together, at the age before propriety had separated their rooms and their rituals, and clothed them against all but servant and Sister eyes.
Though there seemed to be much truth in the balance of bodily humours which most alchemical physicians practiced by, the Sisterhood included, the notion that someone could simply wash herself sick had always seemed ludicrous to Adria, and she now seemed to have the proof.
The Aesidhe, she could see, were generally far more healthy than the Aeman she had known in Windberth, and they bathed whenever they had the chance, though Adria had yet to see how this practice might continue in winter.
Most of them seemed as aware of her differences as she. They were shy and distantly watchful at first, not simply because she was from outside, but because she differed so much from them physically. She stood rather too tall for an Aesidhe girl of fourteen summers, a bit too thin, and
with a shape far more girl than woman — and, of course, she was certainly a good deal paler.
Rather than being qualities that created suspicion among the others, however, her novelty among them was unnervingly a cause for attention. Even when she first walked into the Shema Ihaloa Táya camp among Preinon and the Runners three exhausting days after meeting them in the wild, Aesidhe children had immediately surrounded her, and Adria had instinctively searched for small coins to offer them, as had often been expected of her during Holy festivals.
Of course, she had no coins by then, and the children had merely sought to examine her clothing, her face, her hands and her hair. They looked straight into her eyes with open mouths, and then laughed, nervously or in wonder. It was clear they were making questions, of her and of each other, but it was nonsense to her, and she was much relieved when her uncle waved them all off with a few words and a smile.
“Most have never seen an Aeman at all, and those few who have…” Preinon explained. “Well, it was not a young woman.”
Adria soon learned that the Aesidhe had many myths which glorified certain animals with little or no color, and that she sometimes embodied this to them. They had a particular adoration for doves, and for the small white spiders that inhabited the corners of their small branch-and-hide dwellings, and their stories were filled with pale animals who taught lessons to the People.
Most significant among these told of the White Wolf Woman, whom Adria seemed to resemble, at least on the surface. As Adria understood it, the woman was sometimes a human, sometimes a wolf, and had cast a spell of love on a Hunter who had chased her. Preinon had explained this to her, in a shortened form, after one of the young men of the tribe had made a joke about her one night by the fire, a joke whose meaning relied upon the legend.
Embarrassed, Adria had gone right to her bed after that, and dreaded her bathing even more afterward. She resolved to wear her under-linens as a bathing gown from then on, knowing even a transformation into an animal would not give her privacy. She smiled uncomfortably to herself amidst her furs, and fell asleep dreaming of becoming a wolf.
One warm afternoon, as Adria washed herself in the Wabekshocheya-moyi River beneath the shade of a willow tree, the modesty of her linens was put to the test. As usual, while she washed half clothed beneath the water, she glanced around her often to be sure that no one was getting too near her, careful that her eyes did not linger overlong upon anyone.
Unfortunately, she had neglected the one direction which mattered, and a young man leaped into the water from the tree limbs above her, plunging into the river before her with a great splash. He was about her age, and had tried to speak with her once or twice before, so she had thought he meant to be friends. But now, startled and ashamed, Adria shrieked at him, trying somehow to cover herself with her hands, and then splashed haphazardly away, furious.
He could not have understood her words, she later realized, but the tone of their delivery seemed to have the desired effect. Adria was left alone while she bathed.
And still, she looked for ways to be more a part of the Shema Ihaloa Táya. Her education and life at Windberth proved a great disservice in very many ways, but Adria could not easily think how to change herself, her history.
Her clothing began to change, Twyla’s togs supplemented by gifts from Preinon and others, and she felt a little more at ease among them. And Adria would have delayed her baths more significantly, as many among the Aeman peasantry and even the nobility did, were it not for the fact that she could no longer have a fresh set of clothing whenever she liked.
Adria nonetheless recognized that she was still comparatively spoiled among them. Few among the Shema Ihaloa Táya tribe had even a second full change of clothing. They merely washed it after they washed their bodies. Those who had extra, she had seen, had made it themselves, and were responsible for its care and its transport whenever the tribe should move.
Only the smallest children and the most infirm were cared for in any fashion vaguely resembling what Adria had known in the citadel — and this was, of course, because they could not care for themselves, and were prone to have soiled clothing more than most.
Adria’s hair suffered even worse than her clothing from the relatively infrequent attention. She liked to keep it unbound, but without the daily attention of Twyla or another maid-in-waiting, it had begun tangling at an alarming rate. The Shema Ihaloa Táya seemed to have no such problems, for those who kept it long gave no complaint, and she rarely saw them struggling to pass a hand or a comb through its length.
They live with the sun and wind constantly, and I suffer from it. The Wolf Woman must have cut her hair, or maybe she had been the only Aesidhe to have a lady-in-waiting.
But Adria felt a little irreverent at such a thought and shook her head wildly, as if trying to threaten her hair into compliance. One of the young women happened to be passing to the shore just then, still soaked from her own bathing, and made a sound of playful reproach at Adria’s furiously futile attempts at taming her hair. She called to a pair of girls nearby, and made a hand sign which Adria realized must represent a hair comb.
There was really no good way for Adria to object. As they gathered around her, one of the three girls urged Adria to kneel in the riverbed, and another put some kind of oil in her hair. Ever so slowly, they worked their way through every knot. As Adria relaxed to their care, memories stirred.
Only Twyla had attended Adria’s hair before, and Twyla’s mother, Kaye, before her. Adria felt a pressure inside, a sudden surge of sickness in her stomach, at the memory of the girl who had served her, but even more had been her closest friend, apart from perhaps Hafgrim.
She closed her eyes, concentrating on the presence of those around her, on the feelings of their fingers and their combs in her hair, and the feeling of loss subsided as she let the memory slowly drift away.
The three spoke softly to one another, and even seemed to give her words of appreciation, though she couldn’t really understand them. After her hair was in order, they wound and unwound it into several different types of braids, holding the ends up to show her each variation, and pointing to her watery reflection.
They numbered each type on their fingers, so that in the end she could choose her preference. She chose the one which seemed their favorite instead, and she thanked them with a word and its matching hand sign — one of the few she had learned, and was using more and more often.
They each hugged her, a motion which Adria had at first taken as childish, but turned out to be such a regular form of greeting among them all, children and adults alike, that she was growing accustomed.
This is their acceptance of me, Adria thought. No… my acceptance of them. Or at least its beginnings.
As time went on, and when time permitted, the hair combing became something of a small ceremony. Even when left to her own devices, Adria learned to braid her own hair in several of the styles, and this kept it in much better condition, even when circumstances prevented oil or even washing.
Adria did not realize until later, when her capacity for the language grew, that this had been more of a ceremony than she had known, for the young woman who had first combed and twisted the braids into her hair was also the first among the Aesidhe to name her.
“They call you Likshochuhalene,” Preinon explained with a smile. “It means ‘Gold pales in sunlight.’”
“It is quite a mouthful,” she frowned. “How embarrassed must I be when I cannot remember even my own name?”
“It is a child’s name, for you are still considered such among us.” Preinon smiled. “Fortunately, we have shortened versions of the name for friendly use, which you have likely heard as well.”
Adria nodded as she understood. “They also call me Lilene.” Adria was thankful she could pronounce it with her still-Aeman tongue, though it was certainly a name that would sound strange to her former people.
Preinon nodded. “Just so.”
It would be the first of three names she would earn — none simply by virtue of birth, but by who she became to the People.
It was because of this first naming, and for this name which marked her as unique, that she decided she would never cut her hair, despite its strangeness among them. Though her skin adjusted somewhat in time, her hair yet glowed in the sun, and paled the more with each summer. In autumn fields, it might have blended with wheat or tall grass. In the folds of the forest, it had no season, and drew the eye surely. It showed white against summer trees, and burned gold against winter snow.
Adria had found the People early in the spring, and these first weeks among them deceived her with their relative calm. The only quarry sought by the Runners and the Hunters of the Shema Ihaloa Táya tribe they had camped the winter with, were the animals that filled out their diet of wild root vegetables, nuts, and winter berries.
But as summer came, the Runners became more active, and separated themselves more from the tribe, and distant scouts began to return with news. Adria grew anxious and, still mostly isolated in her language, had to rely upon her uncle for news from the outside.
The People and the Bees
Unlike with the Sisterhood, there wasn’t really much in the way of formal language instruction with the Aesidhe. Even though she made every attempt to learn the Aesidhe language quickly, her progress was slower than she liked, without the help of books to study. She was learning to follow some simple instructions, as a child might, but mainly because it was typical for an Aesidhe to speak with hands as well as mouth, and the combination gave her a bit more to follow.
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 24
