I followed her into the women’s washroom and past the group soakers, nodding to the women I recognized. Mrs. Beezle and Mrs. Haney were currently enthralled in the town gossip. I caught a snippet of Bardic needing to cut down on his drinking, and Mrs. Namal needing to tend to her husband so his eye didn’t wander. The top layer of their bathwater was black from cinder soot.
When Naomie stepped into one of the private soaker rooms, cordoned off by a thatch wall, I set my clean clothes down on the stool beside the small one-person soaker tub. Cinder soot and dirt was okay for a group soaker, but blood and hunting guts were not permitted.
Naomie was at least sixty winters old, her fingers gnarled from the winter bone disease. Her silver hair was always tied into a tight bun on top of her head. She spun the tap and the water gushed from the faucet, filling the tub as steam rose up to the ceiling. Naomie was one of the few people with running water in the village. Her shop was directly situated over a natural hot spring. Her great-great grandfather had been a metal worker, so he’d welded the pipes and built everything so that the water would be pulled up from the ground. Her family had owned this bathhouse for as long as anyone could remember.
“I’ve had to raise my prices,” Naomie said, looking at me with a bit of pity. “This war the Nightfall queen has started at the border is affecting my ability to get the soap stones and perfume oils from the elves in Archmere.”
I nodded. “How much?”
“Two jade coins or an acceptable barter,” she said.
Two jade coins? It used to be one. I’d heard a little about the Nightfall queen causing trouble with shipments coming into Embergate but hadn’t thought much about it. That evil woman was always starting wars.
I nodded. “I can give you the jade coins, or I just brought down a full-grown male cougarin. You can see my mom after closing to pick the best cut.”
Her eyes lit up. “I’ll take the meat instead, thanks kindly,” she said, and I nodded as she slipped out of the room.
Cougarin was gamey but delicious, with very little fat or gristle on it. Elkin was the only more desirable meat around, so I knew I could barter some good stuff with this kill. Maybe I’d get mother a nice new dress for the changing of the seasons festival in fall.
Stripping off my clothes, I let them drop into a dusty blood-crusted pile at my feet and then I stepped into the water.
A groan of pure joy and relief left me, and some of the ladies outside the thin thatch wall snickered. I didn’t care. It was too good. As I slid deeper into the water, I felt a few parts of my back sting. At one point in the hunt I’d tumbled and hit my back on a rock. There must be a scratch or two there.
The water continued to rush out of the tap as I daydreamed about having running hot water in our hut. I would take a soak every single night. I’d wash the clothes in hot water, and the dishes, and just for fun I’d stick my face in hot water in the mornings to revive myself.
I sighed in contentment.
“Coming in,” Naomie announced before she stepped into the small enclosure.
I didn’t bother to cover myself. Naomie had seen me naked hundreds of times. I’d been coming here since I was a babe with my mother. Besides, she didn’t look; she was a professional. She poured a stream of oil into the rushing water and the strong scent of sandalwood hit my nose.
Another sigh.
Cinder Mountain was known for its sandalwood grove trees, so the oil was plentiful here and the scent always reminded me of home.
A soap stone plopped into the water and slid under my back but I ignored it. I’d soap later, I just wanted to soak. Every muscle in my body was screaming out for joy right now.
“Got any cuts?” she asked.
Naomie tended to the men after they came in from a hunt, so she knew what the body sustained after such a trip.
I nodded and sat up, showing her my back.
She whistled low. “The bigger one looks infected. I’ll get the neem oil and add it to the bath. The cougarin meat is still a good trade.”
Neem was expensive, so it was kind of her not to charge extra or ask for more meat.
She disappeared and shuffled back in with the neem, pouring it into the bathwater as well. She then reached in and grabbed the soap stone as I sat up and hunched forward. She ran it along my back in the parts I couldn’t reach and I hissed when she lightly grazed it over the cut. Must have been bigger than I thought. I’d been so excited to kill my first cougarin that I’d lost all sense of pain and just wanted to make it back home.
After getting my back tortured by the old woman, she dropped the soap stone into the tub again and left.