Page 50 of Avelina

“We can teach. We can resist. We can fight. If we could figure out how to come and go across the bridge, we could use that as a launching point. People will reject us at first out of fear, but they will be convinced once they see what you have seen.”

“And what I’ve seen,” said Ward, appearing out of the dark. Aaron had heard and probably seen him coming, but I hadn’t. He still didn’t trust Ward but would make an effort at civility for my benefit.

“There’s nothing to see up there as far as I can tell,” Ward said. “I don’t smell a residue either. Whatever the reason your family is missing, it isn’t because they were killed. At least not in this house.”

Aaron relaxed, but I knew that he would have to see for himself to be sure.

“Thanks, Ward,” I said. “Aaron, any chance for me to get cleaned up before we sleep?” I looked down at myself. I was covered in mud and blood again.

“Follow me,” Aaron said. “I’ll show you.”

Aaron lit the oil lamp, then showed me where the bath was. Fortunately, the house had a tiny bathroom on the second floor with archaic but usable plumbing. A footed metal bathtub sat beneath a spigot coming from the ceiling. The tub drained down to a holding tank near a vegetable garden on the side of the house.

The room was barely big enough to fit the tub, and there was no sink or toilet, only a small tiled area in the corner with a grated hole. An empty bucket sat in the tiled area. Aaron explained that the hole was for urine and that you were supposed to fill the bucket with water to help drain it out to the back of the house where the outhouse was located.

I felt very sorry for Farrah. This was not a very female-friendly system. I imagined myself squatting over that hole, stepping on the urine that had splashed from the men. Yikes. Maybe we could bring the young couple back with us. If we found them, that is.

Aaron gave me a dress of Farrah’s to wear, heated up my water, then left me to it. The soap smelled like jarring weed, which made for the most relaxing bath I’ve ever had, but I also worried that my previous use of jarring weed had contributed to my unintentional astral projection. I didn’t want to repeat that experience, nor did I wish to pass out and drown.

I finished washing myself and my clothes, then dried off with what could only loosely be called a towel. It was slightly bigger than a washcloth, thin, and smelled like vinegar. Farrah’s dress had clearly been ripped through time out of the Victorian era, navy blue with long sleeves, a high neck, and buttons all the way up the front. It was far too big, scratchy, and completely incongruent with the strange Greek tunic the men wore. It was stupid and I hated it, but I agreed to wear it until my regular clothes finished drying.

While I gallantly risked my life in a hot bath, Aaron carried the dragon corpse to some kind of hut outside the house, butchered it, and created a meal using the meat from that animal, a few jarred and pickled items that he found in the house, and a purple root vegetable from the garden that tasted like spicy parsnips. Maybe it was just that we were all ravenous, but he surprised me again with his ability to create a meal out of thin air.

His remarkable culinary skills made me think of my mother. Was she somewhere crying, worrying about me? I had to get back. I had to, but I also needed to help these people. Plus, they were the key to helping me. The bridge was the answer. If I could only learn how to make one, I could go back to Earth, talk to my parents, and bring back what I needed to support a revolution.

Revolution, I thought. How do you start a revolution? I laughed to myself. I should have studied for that stupid history test.

After we ate, I insisted on cleaning the dishes and sent Aaron to the bath. He used the same bathwater I had. Ward refused the bath, saying that he didn’t need it when he was a dog, so why would he need it now? It made me realize that I probably could have done a little better job taking care of him. Poor Ward would be sleeping alone tonight anyway, so what did it matter?

I would never tell Aaron, but I would miss my co-sleeping arrangement with Rogue. It had been such a staple of my nighttime routine that if Aaron hadn’t been there, I might have continued it with Ward. It was probably better not to think about that in case Aaron plucked the thought from my brain.

The attic was accessible by a ladder from a closet in Jorin’s room. The closet door hid behind the false back of a wardrobe, and the wardrobe itself was in the back of another closet. The ladder folded up into the attic through a trapdoor.

Aaron carefully brought the oil lamp up the ladder, then stood at the top to help me. I didn’t need it, but I let him help me anyway. Once we were up through the trapdoor, I saw that it had a lock on it. Ward wouldn’t come up the ladder and insisted on sleeping on the floor of the closet, so Aaron tossed a bedroll down to him, then closed—and locked—the trapdoor. I didn’t blame Ward. I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room with a brand-new couple either—if that’s what we were.

The attic was chilly, but not uncomfortable. It had no obvious windows that could be seen from the outside, but there were small viewing panels in the middle of each wall that could be lifted by a latch to peek outside. Aaron peeked out each of the panels while I searched for a place to hang my wet clothes.

Dimly lit by the oil lamp, the well-used space had a vaulted ceiling that sloped low enough on the sides that even I had to crouch near the walls where the trapdoor opened. In one corner of the room, there were two shelves overflowing with books, positioned on either side of a reading chair. I recognized them as the banned books from Aaron’s memory.

A wooden counter and a chest much like the one from Aaron’s cottage occupied another corner of the attic. I draped my wet clothes over the counter, then continued snooping. The bed, an oardoo-feather mattress on a low platform, was big enough for two very tall people. A little half-sized door that looked like it should lead Alice straight to Wonderland was on the opposite wall, rising to the low end of the vaulted ceiling.

At the peak of the ceiling, a piece of art even more magnificent than the two moons of Monash twisted seamlessly into a dome. A pattern of colorful veneer depicted four jarring weed trees rising from the bottom of the dome to join in a gorgeous violet canopy. Perched on one of those trees, gazing down from near the top of the dome, was a crimson dragon. Bathed in shadows, it looked so real that I did a double take and my heart jumped into my throat before my brain recognized that it was a part of the ceiling. A round window framed by a circle of white marble was set into the dome at the apex.

An oculus, I thought. I’d learned the word during my visit to the Pantheon in Rome a few years ago. I stared in awe.

“My grandfather’s work,” Aaron said, closing the last viewing panel. “He was a master craftsman in the Woodworkers Guild. He built this house.”

“What is this room, Aaron?” I asked.

Aaron glanced around, debating. “It’s the guest room,” he said. I gave him the look, and he smirked. “It’s a place to hide people,” he said. “Mainly me. And books. Especially these books.” He pointed a thumb at the bookshelves.

“I see,” I said. In other words, it was his bedroom. “Wouldn’t someone be able to see this fancy dome from the outside?”

“Once upon a time, yes. But now it’s camouflaged by the rain collection cistern and a false roof, and there’s another attic we could take them to if they asked to see why the roof is so high, but that’s not generally what the magister is searching for.”

“Who are these magisters you keep talking about?”

“They work for the Ministry. They’re responsible for civil enforcement of Ministry law and have a leadership position in the military legion of each province. Magister Axel has been assigned to Southern Gale for the last twenty years, and he is relentless. That’s why I stay away most of the time. If he caught me here, he’d have grounds to destroy my uncle.”

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