Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
He sighs as if I exhaust him and says nothing else.
I glance down at the body again, hands on my hips. “Okay, well, we’re here. Let’s make the best of a bad situation. We’ll lock the doors and hope no one comes to visit today. In the meantime, we might as well clean up, see what supplies we can take from here, and figure out where to go next.”
I pick up the bowl of fish stew and help myself to another round, because I’m going to need my strength.
After I finish barring the door and eating, I’m so drained and heavy with food that I curl up on the fisherman’s bed and take a nap despite my misgivings. I sleep until dusk, eat the last of the disgusting fish stew, and go picking through the dead man’s pantry. He doesn’t have much. There are a couple jars of something suspicious, some dried fish, and a bag of what looks like a thick flour or cornmeal. There’s a bit of questionable looking butter and a few eggs atop the table, so I get to work frying up corn cakes to take with us tomorrow. It sounds easier than it is, because I have to find matches to make a fire in the hearth, and that takes far too long.
Once all the cakes are cooked up (and I’ve eaten my share), I sneak behind the house in the darkness and find a water well. It takes me a few tries to figure out how to haul the bucket up, but I manage to get several bucketfuls warming in a large pot by the fire. I’m going to have a warm bath of some kind, I decide, and wash my clothes.
I look over at Kalos, who hasn’t moved from his spot on his bucket-stool. Dingle has wandered away, chewing on a blanket in the corner, but Kalos hasn’t done anything. He sits there and picks at his fingernails, a bored expression on his face.
He’s Apathy, I remind myself. He’s not going to be the soul of helpfulness.
Even so, I don’t like that he just…sits there. It feels wrong. Not because I’m doing all the work, but because there’s something rather sad about his situation. “I’m warming water,” I tell him brightly.
“Good for you.” His tone is bored.
“We’re both going to wash up, and I’m going to study the map again. Much as I’d love to sleep in a bed again tonight, I think it’s best if we head out under the cover of darkness before someone comes looking for our friend.” I wiggle a finger at the blanket-covered dead man.
“Mm.”
I find a small tub—very small, so our fisherman must not have been a big bathing fan—and fill it with hot water and a bucket of the cold water and leave it close to the hearth. There’s a clothesline crossing the interior of the tiny cottage and I hang a blanket over it to add a semblance of privacy. I’d managed to find a gnarly, grayish cake of soap, but it lathers when I give it a test rub, and I quickly undress and get to work scrubbing my body.
Nothing feels better than getting clean. God, nothing. I quickly give myself a once-over to get the worst of the grime off, and rinse in a cold bucket of water. Then I squeeze into the tub, folding myself into a pretzel just to get as much of the water covering me as possible. Some of it slops onto the warped floorboards, but I don’t care. Bathing feels so good. I didn’t realize how much I was beat down by all the mud I was carrying around. I feel like a new person.
Once I’ve scrubbed every inch of myself twice, I climb out of the tub, wrap myself in one of the old blankets, and get to work on my hair. Bent over the water, I wet and scrub, wet and scrub. By the time I’m done, my hair feels like a knotted tangle, but a clean one. The tub water is a questionable brown, reminding me just how gross I was. I wrap my only clean piece of clothing—a dress—around my wet hair and make a turban. “You’re going to have to dump the water and get fresh for your bath,” I call out from my side of the blanket. “But you’ll feel so much better when you’re done, trust me.”
There’s silence on the other end of the curtain.
I peek over.
Kalos gazes at me, muddy and pale, a look of distaste on his face. “You expect me to draw my own bath?”
“Yeah?”
“And to dump your water?”
“Well, you definitely don’t want to use it. It’s pretty gross.” I glance over at it again to make sure I’m not wrong, and Dingle has his nose in it. “No, Dingle! Not for drinking!”