Angelica (36 page)

She picked up her suitcases and moved forward.

She traveled perhaps another two miles before she saw the first silhouettes of tents against the hazy sky. She was so relieved that all her muscles loosened and she had to sit down a moment, shucking off the bags as she sank to the rocky ground. Yes, there was the meandering little streambed she remembered seeing the last time she had walked this way; this was all looking familiar. She could afford to take another swallow from her canteen. She was near water. She was near friends.

It was past noon by the time she struggled into the Edori camp, hot, thirsty, dirty, and suddenly questioning what in
the god's name she had done. Would these people even remember her? Would they truly welcome her? What would she say to them? What would they hear no matter what she said?

“Miriam!” a voice called, and she dropped her bags and whirled around to face the speaker. It was Anna, she thought, Keren's older sister, the spare unsmiling one. “It
is
you. I thought I recognized your bright hair. Have you walked all this way from Luminaux?”

Her voice called Tirza from her tent and turned a few others from their cookfires. “Miriam,” Tirza said in a voice of surprise. “Don't you look thirsty. Come sit down and have a drink of juice.”

Miriam felt absurdly grateful, and exhausted and silly enough to want to cry. “It was farther than I thought,” she said, sinking down to a mat in front of the welcome fire. “And I just finished up the last of my water.”

“You can have water, too, if you like, but I think the juice will be better,” said Tirza, pouring a red liquid into a chipped mug. “
Did
you walk all the way from Luminaux with your bundles in your hand?”

“They didn't seem so heavy before,” Miriam said, gulping down the juice.

“All your belongings weigh twice as much at the end of the trip as they do at the beginning,” Anna said with a severe smile. “Though there's only half of what you remember bringing inside each of your bags.”

Tirza's gaze went to the duffel bags dropped unceremoniously at the edge of the fire. “All your belongings?” she repeated in a soft voice.

Miriam nodded, and her eyes went from one woman to the other. “I thought—Susannah wanted me to live with Frida in the city but I thought—I don't want to do that. I want to live with the Edori. Travel with you. I don't ever want to live in a city or a hold or—or anywhere ever again.”

Tirza looked over at Anna, no expression to be read on either dark face. “Does Susannah know what you've decided?” Anna asked.

Miriam shook her head. “No. But I told Frida, who will tell her if she asks.”

“There is so much empty space in the tent now that Keren has gone to visit the angels,” Tirza said.

“Then I can stay?” Miriam asked eagerly.

Tirza looked surprised. “Of course you can. We'll be happy to have you. No Lohora ever turned away a guest or a traveler in need.”

“I'll go tell Eleazar,” Anna said, and moved off to thread a path through the clustered tents.

“I really can stay?” Miriam asked again.

Tirza smiled. “The Lohoras are happy to have you.”

That night, eating dinner with the Edori around the campfire, warm, well-fed, and drowsy, Miriam was as happy as she remembered being at any point in her life. Neither Anna nor Tirza was much of one for fussing, but they had made her feel welcome and special, giving her extra helpings of food and water, introducing her to all the Lohoras she had not met the other day. Dathan had settled beside her and told her funny stories, flirting with her a little but in the way that Miriam understood. This was how she herself flirted with all attractive men, just because it felt good to smile and tilt her head and say things that could be interpreted two different ways. She was not surprised Susannah had been in love with him. She was surprised Susannah had been willing to leave him for Gaaron.

Of course, she would never forgive Susannah if she left Gaaron to return to this Dathan.

She might never forgive Susannah anyway.

She found it strange to sleep in the crowded tent, wedged between Anna and Amram and acutely conscious of the sounds of breathing all around her. There was a rock under her hip, but she was afraid to move and dislodge it, sure she'd wake up someone else. But she couldn't fall asleep. She wriggled to one side, hoping to edge away from its sharpest point. It remained firmly pressed against her flesh. Well, what did she care? She'd wake up in the morning with a little rock-sized bruise on her skin, but that was a small price to pay for having found sanctuary. She closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.

She had to use the water tent.

She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. No, no, no, she would not get up in the middle of the night, pick her way through the coiled tangle of sleeping bodies, creep through the quiet camp, and try to locate the water tent (which, she had to say, she did not like even half so well as Frida's tiny water room)—all without waking up the whole camp. She would concentrate on falling asleep. She would forget about physical discomforts. She would let her mind dissolve and her thoughts turn to smoke and dreaming.

She really, really, had to find that water tent.

Pushing herself to a sitting position, she drew back her covers and came to a crouching stand. A slow process to cross the tent, putting her feet down by blankets and bodies, trying not to step on the spread masses of black hair that were hard to see in the darkness. She made it to the tent flap without mishap and stepped out into the chilly dark. It was getting cold down in the southern provinces; what would winter be like?

What would winter be like traveling in the open air and sleeping inside the rather thin walls of a tent? That had not previously occurred to her.

Shivering, she hurried through the shadowed camp to the tent set farthest from the central fires. Some small shape started and hopped away as Miriam drew closer and she had to strangle a scream. She had not thought about any dangers that might be lurking. Could there be wolves or other predators prowling just outside the camp, waiting for strays to step beyond the border of safety? She had to hope she would be quick enough to elude them.

She stepped inside the water tent, which was little more than a few shallow holes dug in the ground and a collection of jugs and bottles. Her business concluded, she hurried back to her own tent and glided inside. No one stirred, although, to her own ears, her breathing was loud and labored. She found her own pallet, remembered to move the rock, and lay down again at last.

And she smiled up at the small hole in the top of the tent, affording a tantalizing glimpse of the starry panorama overhead. It was true. She'd never been happier in her life.

In the morning, she found reason to reassess that.

She was wakened far earlier than she would have chosen by the noises of camp life going on around her—voices calling, wood being snapped in two for the fire, spoons clanking against cook pots. There were other sounds, too, that she could not identify, but somehow bigger sounds, as if important enterprises were under way. She turned her head fretfully on her flat pallet, feeling her bones ache from the unaccustomed rest on hard ground. Feeling dust in her hair and the grime of yesterday's long walk gritty against her skin.

How exactly was she going to bathe?

She stood up slowly and stepped out into the gray day, noting that the sun was losing its struggle against a low cloud cover. Tirza and Anna were arguing over the cook pot in a good-natured way, and whatever they were cooking smelled wonderful.

“Look, it's the sleepy one,” Tirza greeted her with a smile. “How are you feeling this morning? You looked so tired last night.”

“I feel a little stiff,” Miriam admitted.

“That'll wear off after you've been walking a while,” Anna said.

Miriam glanced at first one woman, then the other. “Am I to be walking somewhere?”

Tirza nodded over at the main body of the camp, where even now men and boys were circling the tents, unstringing wires and catching the big canvas coverings as they crumbled to the ground. “Bartholomew's so much better, and we've been here so long, that we just all decided today was the day to move on. Strike camp before noon, see how far we get before nightfall.”

“Oh! Well—what can I do to help?”

“Anything you like. No shortage of tasks,” Anna said.

“Very well. But first—I should like to get clean. But I don't know—I'm not sure—”

Tirza pointed at the little streambed that wound so close to their camp that it must have been the reason they chose to settle here. “About a quarter mile down, the creek deepens enough for you to go in to your waist, and it's far enough away, and late enough, that you ought to have a little privacy.
I understand you allali girls are touchy about that,” she added with a grin.

Miriam wasn't sure how to define “allali,” but if it meant someone who didn't bathe out in the open in Bethel rivers, that was certainly her. “Won't the water be cold?” she said in a small voice.

“Not as cold as it'll be in a few weeks,” Anna said unsympathetically. “There are some who don't bathe all winter long, but I can't abide that. Once a week or I can't live with myself.”

“Aren't there—can't you—I mean, you could bring water back to the camp and heat it up, maybe—”

The Edori women looked at her as if she was an apparition from a dream. “It just takes a few minutes to bathe in the river,” Tirza said. “Why, to haul water and heat it would take hours. It's trouble enough just to fetch the water for cooking.”

“Well—I suppose—” Miriam said, thinking she wouldn't mind if it took her all day, if it meant she could be clean and comfortable. “Anyway, I guess today I'll just go clean up as best I can—”

“You might wash out the clothes you've got on now, if you plan to put on fresh ones,” Anna suggested. “Hang them up to dry when we make camp tonight, though it still might take a day or two before they're not damp anymore.”

Miriam stared at her, confronted with a new thought. Back at the Eyrie, she just dropped her clothes off at the laundry room, and they were returned to her, cleaned and pressed. She knew how to rinse out a blouse or an undergarment, of course, but she'd never actually washed her own clothes. Or thought to do it every day.

Or maybe not every day, if they didn't camp by water every night.

But if they didn't camp by water every night. . . how would she get clean every morning?

Was it possible that she would have to go a day or two, maybe more, without bathing herself, even in a medium that promised to be as unfriendly as a small riverbed?

And what about washing her hair?

“You don't have to change your clothes, of course,” Tirza
said, misreading her silence. “If I'm careful and don't spill anything, I can sometimes wear the same dress for a week, though I do like to have on clean underthings. And since I
hate
washing clothes, I try very hard not to spill things!”

“No, I—I guess I hadn't thought much about clothes and how to keep them clean—while I traveled,” Miriam said. “I think I have six changes of clothes with me. And I was just wondering if I'd really be able to wash them out every day.”

“Probably not, so wash what you can when you can,” Anna said. “But hurry, now. We're going to be on the move in another hour or two.”

So Miriam ducked back into the tent and pawed through her duffel bag till she found the sturdiest cotton gown in her wardrobe. It was a dark blue that rarely showed dirt; it might last her a day or two, if she didn't sweat or stain it. The outfit she had worn yesterday, a pale green skirt and blouse that she had always loved, was covered with mud and grass stains and soot from last night's fire. Clearly, every time she wore the light-colored fabric, it would require washing.

She could see she was going to have to make clothing choices much more carefully from now on.

When she emerged from the tent, Tirza handed her a cake of soap. “To wash with,” she said, when Miriam looked uncertain.

“My clothes or my body?”

Tirza grinned. “Everything.”

She trudged away from camp, following the curve of the creek, until she got to a place that looked both deep and private. Still, she felt a little conspicuous—and not a little cold—as she pulled off every item of clothing and stood at the edge of the water. If she waded in one foot at a time, she would never do this. She took a deep breath and plunged in, dropping to her knees as soon as she hit the center of the water.

Sweet Jovah wailing his twice-benighted prayers, but it was
cold
in the water. Miriam had never bathed so fast in her life, scrubbing the raw bar of soap along her flesh, ducking her blond hair under the water and hastily lathering it up. Quick rinse, duck, feel the mild current of the stream tug at the roots of her hair, and then rise to her feet and go running
back to the bank. Damnation and isolation, she had forgotten to bring a
towel
. Shivering furiously, she dried herself on the less dirty bits of her green skirt and pulled on the clean blue dress as fast as she could. A little warmer, and a lot grimmer, she knelt at the stream's edge and washed out yesterday's clothing. She would never wear this skirt and blouse again. She would never wear
anything
that had to be washed. She would wear this blue dress for the rest of her life.