Page 15 of Wingless Crow: Part 1

After the other three women started the fire in the fireplace, Brebie shooed them from the room, then turned her back to me.

“Now take your clothes off,” she ordered.

I tiptoed to the tub, trying to leave as few muddy footprints on the pristine white rug as possible. Steam was rising from the bath. It smelled like summer flowers. The warmth of the water lured me. Bathing wasn’t eating. Surely, there was no danger in getting clean and warming up a bit.

I stepped closer, peeling off my damp sweater. Making sure Brebie’s back was still turned, I quickly got rid of the rest of my clothes and stepped into the tub. It was short but deep. Sitting on the bottom, I had to bend my legs, but the warm water covered my body up to the top of my breasts.

Leaning back, I exhaled and let my muscles relax in the soothing caress of the water. Pink and lavender petals floated on the surface, obscuring my submerged body from view.

“You can turn around now,” I said to Brebie. “But you really can leave. Like I said, I’m fully capable of washing myself.”

“That’s what you think,” she snapped, jumping into action.

Opening the trunk by the wall, she produced a wicker basket filled with jars, bottles, and vials. She then pulled the glass table closer to the tub and started taking the items out of the basket and arranging them on the table.

“A lot goes into washing a lady’s hair,” she murmured, lovingly lining up the bottles in some unknown to me order.

“But I told you, I’m not a lady.”

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look like one.” She gave me an assessing look. “Who knows, maybe one day you’ll even learn to speak and act as a lady, too?”

She finished with the bottles and grabbed the sad pile of my discarded clothes off the floor.

“Are you going to get them washed?” I asked quickly as she moved toward the fireplace.

I needed them. I had to return home wearing my own clothes. They belonged to my world, just like I did.

Brebie looked at the pile in her hands with clear distaste. “Dirty or clean, these clothes are dreadfully ugly. Wearing them is not going to help you impress the king.”

“I don’t care about impressing anyone.” I gripped the edge of the bath.

But she was too quick. With one swift swing, she tossed my dress, my sweater, my bra, and my underwear into the fire.

“No!” I jerked forward, making the water splash out of the tub.

“Stay still.” Brebie pressed a hand on my shoulder. With strength unexpected from a slender woman like her, she settled me back into the tub. “Look at the mess you’ve made.” She pointed an accusing finger at the wet rug under the tub. “And we haven’t even started washing you yet.”

“I need my clothes,” I almost sobbed, watching the flames engulfing the last pieces of what I used to be. The smoldering rags were the only things that connected me to the past I no longer remembered.

“You’ll have lots of new clothes, honey. Trust me, you didn’t need those rags,” Brebie soothed.

Tears prickled behind my eyelids, but I couldn’t break down in front of this woman. With my forearm placed on the edge of the tub, I buried my mouth in the crook of my elbow, silently watching my clothes burn.

“I’ll get out of here,”I promised to myself.“One way or another, I’ll get back home. I’ll just need to remember where my home is.”

Brebie gathered my hair from behind.

“Your hair could be longer, but at least it’s nice and thick.” She took some silvery pink paste out of a jar on the table, then lathered it into my hair. “And you most certainly should care about impressing King Tiane, sweetie. The more the king likes you, the better your life here will be. Now stop sulking.” She rinsed my hair, only to put some clear gel that smelled like almonds on it next. “Look at what you already have.” She gestured around the room. “You’ll be warm and comfortable here. You have your own dressing room, like every lady I know. It’ll be filled with beautiful dresses and the nicest shoes you’ve ever seen. Court life can be tricky. But if you have the king’s protection, you’ll be safe…”

I stopped listening to her describing the “wonderful” life I’d have as the king’s kept woman, and instead tried to remember the road the High General and I had taken to the palace.

The road wasn’t that wide, more like a path, but from what I recalled, it was clearly visible between the hills and valleys. It hadn’t taken us that long to get to the palace from the point where he’d met Trez and me. We’d traveled on horseback but, I imagined it’d be possible to cover it on foot in a reasonable time. We hadn’t ridden that fast.

There would then be the trek through the forest that Trez and I had made. But I’d done that while limping in one shoe, tired, dazed, and confused. Surely, it wouldn’t take me that long to walk it rested and properly dressed. If I followed the same road all the way, it’d lead me to the cloudy river with the bridge over it.

A chill of trepidation rushed down my back when I recalled how Trez and I had been hanging off the riverbank. The river filled with clouds had no bottom. If I jumped into it, I’d fall to my death.

But Trez went back somehow, didn’t he? Unfortunately, I didn’t remember much from his conversation with the High General about that. Drunk oncamyte, I couldn’t focus properly and a lot of what they had said didn’t make sense.

---