A Girl Named Calamity by Danielle Lori
CHAPTER NINE
POINTLESS SCRUBBING
“Who are you?” Weston asked me for the second time. He watched me vigilantly after the breeze left. I didn’t know whether he had heard what it said. Although I hoped he hadn’t, I felt as though he wouldn’t have missed something like that. I couldn’t explain my situation to him. He was a conundrum. A complete mystery to me, and I couldn’t trust him.
“I don’t know whether you have forgotten, but my name is Calamity. Ca-lam-ity. You probably forgot it because you’ve never used—”
“Shut up,” he barked.
Anger heated my skin, and I walked away from him before I said something stupid. I didn’t make it two steps before he grabbed my arm and spun me around.
“Tell me what you are.” He said it in that authoritative way, which made me want to tell him my whole life story, and that made my blood boil.
“Tell me what you are!” I retorted, thinking about his nonexistent hum.
His closeness had me on edge. It was disconcerting to see how much larger he was than me, and how pathetic it made my demand. His tanned hand was wrapped around my ivory skin, his brand on display. Was the red ring red because of all the blood he had spilled? Disgust swept over me, and I tried to shrug his hand off my arm. My heart pounded, and I stopped fighting when his other hand wrapped around my throat. A nervous sweat covered my skin.
He pinned me with a hard gaze. “You have deluded yourself if you think you can demand anything of me. Have you forgotten my profession? Do you think I started because I love to humor spoiled little girls?”
I swallowed hard against his palm as I imagined him breaking my neck in one snap. At least it would be less painful than being eaten by the Red Forest creatures. He made a frustrated noise and pushed me away by my throat. “Get on your horse.”
I stared at him with wide eyes while I tried to decide whether I should run or not.
“Try it.” His smile was predatory, and it gave me the shivers. I dragged my feet over to Gallant. And told myself I was only doing it because I wouldn’t be able to get to Undaley alone.
Not because he scared me.
Not at all.
I would just have to try and keep my mouth from taking over again. Keyword: try.
It might help boost the possibility that I would survive this trip. The random thought of my grandmother meeting my escort had me laughing more out of fear and uncertainty than actual amusement. Weston looked at me as if I were a strange breed of woman that he’d never seen before.
It wouldn’t be surprising news to me.
I was hesitant to enter any city that would have a welcoming like this one did, but as we walked under the arch and I looked around, the thought left me with the breeze. How could this be only days away from Alger? It felt as though I were in an entirely different world.
The brown houses seemed to be carved into the dirt hills and stretched on for miles. The men only wore white pants and the women only short white skirts, while a white cloth covered their breasts. I understood why they wore what they did because the heat would have been unbearable in anything else. The women were smooth skinned and beautiful, all of them, just as beautiful as the city.
It was primitive, with no stone castle, but the way the sun shined on the flowing stream that ran through the city was breath-taking. Women carried baskets of laundry on their heads, and children chased each other, before tackling each other in the dirt. We walked down a dirt street in the city, and I imagined I was in an ant colony. A tiny person in a series of trenches. A bird flew by, and I cupped my hand to see it against the sun. If only I could see myself from its view.
“We’ll stay here tonight,” Weston said as we stopped at an inn. It was probably only midday, so I was surprised we were stopping, but I didn’t complain. After camping outside the night before, it would be nice to sleep under a roof tonight. Weston paid for two rooms and then left without a word, to do whatever he did.
I climbed the stairs to my room and ran my hand against the cool dirt walls. I sighed in pleasure when I saw the bed. I couldn’t decide between crawling in it or taking a bath first. After deliberation, I decided on a bath.
The innkeeper gave me directions to the women’s bathhouse, and I walked down the dirt streets until I made it to a building I imagined was the one. They all looked similar enough that I was afraid I’d be walking into someone’s house, but the sounds of soft water noises and women talking assured me I was at the right place.
Some women were in the baths, and some were lying on their backs while others poured something on their legs. They all turned to stare at me when I walked in, looking me over meticulously.
“I’m just here for a bath,” I said, a little uncomfortable under the intensity of their stares. They were the naked ones, and yet I felt the most exposed in their moments of silence and perusal.
One dark-haired woman shook her head and tsked. “You do not plan to go to the festival like that, do you?” She asked it as if it would be a form of sacrilege. Sacrilege to my grandmother was falling asleep in the chapel. Apparently to Sylvian women, it was dressing like a dirty man. I hadn’t figured out my own definition yet.
“I don’t know anything about a festival,” I said, still standing in the doorway.
A different woman smiled. “Oh, you have visited at the perfect time then!” She clapped her hands. The sound of dangling chains came from behind me, and I turned to see a slave girl enter the room. Shackles came down from a metal ring around her neck and attached to an iron cuff on each wrist. She brought in a pot of whatever the women were pouring on their legs.
Alger didn’t have slavery, but I knew it existed. Whatever king ruled this city must have allowed it and, considering his welcoming committee, he must not have been a very good king. Every region of Alyria was governed by one of the seven kings, and thankfully Alger had a kind one.
“Come! Don’t be shy!” one woman said. I began to undress and left the cloth over my cuffs while I looked around to see whether anyone noticed the oddity. If they did, they didn’t show it. I sighed when I entered the baths. It was the perfect temperature, a cool contrast against the hot air.
An older woman handed me a bar of soap with a suspicious smile, and I hesitated for a moment before I accepted it. I ran the soap down my arm, and when the smell hit my nose, I almost dropped it.
What the hell?
It smelled rotten as if it was made of dead animals and bile. I couldn’t help but grimace while the lady watched me with a toothy smile. A suspicious toothy smile.
Was this some kind of jest they played on visitors? Or was it a custom of theirs? I didn’t know, but as the lady nudged my hand in an encouraging gesture, I realized there was no way for me to refuse. I didn’t want to end up on one of the empty rocks out there. Or for them to notice their missing prisoners while I was here.
My stomach rebelled as I scrubbed my body with it and vowed I would wash it off if I had to come in here while everyone was at the festival. While I pointlessly washed my body with rotten soap, I realized that the women were pulling the hair off their legs . . . and everywhere else on their bodies. Sylvia was a strange city. As far as I knew, only prostitutes did it in Alger. So, my mother . . . I supposed.
When one of the women insisted I have it done, I cringed at the idea. But now I felt like the hairy farm girl from Alger as I looked over their smooth skin. My hair was blond everywhere, so it wasn’t as if it was that noticeable, but the women sure looked at it as though it was. I had a nervous pit in my stomach about losing more hair, but this was an adventure, and I wanted to try new things. Be someone else. So I agreed.
They tsked while they looked me over and then tortured me. It wasn’t terribly uncomfortable when they ripped the hair off my legs; that came next when they ripped the hair off between my legs. I was cursing myself for agreeing to do this while I watched the old lady who gave me the soap disappear out of the bathhouse. It didn’t take an alchemist to realize she was up to no good. I sniffed my arm, and low and behold it had a slight smell of rotting corpses.
Wonderful.
When the torture was over, I was completely hairless besides the hair on my head. A woman rubbed some balm on my smooth skin, and I hoped it would cover up the stench of the soap. I was about to put my dirty clothes back on when a woman offered me their standard white clothes.
It felt like the further I got on this trip, the littler my clothes got as well. I was going to accept them, but I paused just enough so I could tell my grandmother I thought really hard about it. And I did . . . sort of.
I didn’t want to wear my dirty clothes, and I was sure I would blend in better wearing their ensemble than a pair of shortened pants.
“You should come to the festival with me!” the woman said excitedly while I accepted the clothes and slipped them on. I didn’t know whether I should be out in the city, but I really wanted to see the festival.
“Okay.” I smiled. I was here for the rest of the day; I might as well enjoy it. I walked back to the inn with the feeling that men were going to start propositioning me for carnal acts. Never had I worn such little clothes, and it felt as if my grandmother was going to pop out around the corner and scold me. But nobody paid me any mind; the women buzzed by with their baskets of laundry and the children squealed as they ran by me.
The woman had said she would come by the inn later, and I decided to take a nap before. The bed was so soft against my newly smooth skin that I was out within minutes of lying down.
I woke to the clank of chains. A slave girl was setting down a tray of food on the table next to the bed, and I thanked her before she left. The sun was beginning to set when I heard a soft knock on the door. The woman from the baths came in as though this had been her room her entire life.
“I realized I never told you my name before. You can call me Rosa,” she said.
“Calamity,” I replied, waiting for confusion to cloud her face, but she only smiled as she seemed to be thinking for a moment.
“I shall call you Amity, okay?”
I smiled and nodded. Some of the neighborhood girls had called me that, while others called me Cal. Calamity was a mouthful, so I hadn’t complained.
“Amity, do you have a lover?”
I almost choked on my food, not expecting the personal question. It was appropriate to talk openly about lovers here? Or to even have them?
“No,” I said, but it came out like a question.
“Is that a definite no?” she asked.
I nodded, and she let a long piece of leather drop out of her closed fist. “When a woman attends a Sylvian festival, she must show whether she is available. A taken woman will wear a piece of leather on her ring finger that ties around her wrist. A woman who is . . . accessible wears the leather around her upper arm.”
“Why the upper arm?” I asked while she began to tie it around mine.
“Because it’s easy to grab hold of,” she stated.
I blinked. “What?”
“It’s tied leaving a loop so that it would be easy for a man to grab it . . . and pull you in.” She smiled.
I frowned. “I don’t want men pulling me in.”
“Relax, Amity. They won’t unless you want them to.”
“You really shouldn’t tie that on my arm because I’m not available.”
“You are taken then?” she asked while she continued to tie the leather in an interesting way. She smelled like lemons and patchouli, herbs my grandmother used often.
“Well no . . . but I’m not available right now.”
“You are either taken or available; there is no in between.”
I sighed and let her finish. I didn’t need the attention of men right now, especially them pulling me in, whatever that was supposed to mean. No man would have wanted to follow me across the country and get involved with my problems.
A smile tugged at my lips as I realized one already was. I hadn’t seen Weston since he took off after he had gotten us rooms. A part of me was worried that he was just going to leave me somewhere. The other part didn’t think he was the type of man to run off. If I was wrong and he did strand me somewhere, then I would have made it work. I might have been a total mess in the mountains, but I wasn’t a total weakling.
I could handle myself.
I liked to think.
