Chapter 10: The Hot Springs

The only water Angeau trusted was the river below the mill, because the cows drank upstream of it and everyone knew where they stood. Any other water in the valley, the town said, would give a person a cough, a rash or a wolf, in no particular order.

Crispin had a speech ready for the springs. He had been revising it for four days, and it had a great many sentences in it, and not one of them began with the true thing. A bank of cloud was already coming up the valley from the west to interrupt it.

Six suppers were done and the seventh was owed, and I had started to dread the end of the bet more than any bowl of it. My cuts had closed to seams. The one on my forearm itched, and Noëlle slapped my hand every time I scratched it, so I scratched it more, which is not my best quality.

She asked that morning, cross-legged on the fur with a stick of kindling and her little knife, without looking up from either. “We’ve done the lair and the tree. Where’s the third place?”

I put my spoon down. “Which... third place?”

“Crispin. There is always a third place.”

My tail looped itself around my ankle. “Hot springs,” I said. “Half a day in, the opposite way from the yarrow.”

“And what did Fenris do there?”

“He took her there. Between the days in the chains.” I looked at the fire. “To wash, I think. It’s warm. I have always hoped it was just to wash.” My ears went back. “There’s a carving on one of the stones. I’ve never looked at it properly. I walked past.”

She did not laugh. She whittled one long curl off the kindling and looked at me over it. “Is that the way the goblins went?”

“No... the other way. It might rain, though.”

“Then we should go now.”

We watched for goblins the whole way. I stopped at every noise in the undergrowth with my ears up, and Noëlle shut her eyes at each stop and breathed in through her nose, and each time she shook her head. I had never had anyone to check with before, and I liked it more than I should have, with goblins about. Nothing came. The cloud closed over the canopy somewhere in the afternoon, and by the time the trees thinned the light under them was so low that I saw the springs before I smelled them, a silver glow lying between the trunks.

The pool was round and about as wide as the den, ringed with smooth black stones, and steam came off the water in slow curls. It smelled of warm wet rock and of the wild jasmine that grows on the far bank. The glow came from underneath the water itself. It is a very pretty place, and I have always held that against it. I had last seen it years ago, alone, and I had left at first light.

Noëlle went to the edge with her hands already out. She knelt at the stone with the carving, where the water lapped almost to the lip of it, and went over the worn surface with her fingertips the way she goes over a wound, before she looks. I stood behind her and examined the jasmine.

“Two people,” she said, to the stone. “Here, the tall one has a hand on the shoulder of the smaller one, and the shoulder has a mark on it. You can barely see it. And these lines are water, see, they go up to the waist. And here... they’re holding on to each other, under the water.” She leaned in until her nose was nearly on it. “That’s the bite at the tree, and this is where they made it official. It’s a claiming ground.”

I had never once stopped at that stone, and she had read it in the time it took me to examine one jasmine. She sat back on her heels and worked out the rest. She was blushing, and the color climbed from her neck to the roots of her hair.

“Crispin,” she said. “You said he took her here to wash.”

“I did say that.”

“I think he took her here to get married.”

My tail slapped the stone behind me, once, and I trapped it under my boot. “I... didn’t know that,” I said. “I swear. I’ve only ever... looked at the water.”

“I believe you.” She got up, brushing off her knees. Her face was still pink, and she was not going to be talked out of anything. “I want to get in.”

“It’s... that’s what it’s for. You just said.”

“I know. I read it to you.” She put her hands on her hips. “Just the water. After that, I’ll let you know. Do you want to?”

I wanted to so badly that my ears came up before I had finished deciding. “Are you sure? Because if you’re... only doing it for the, the story...”

“I am doing it because it’s a hot spring and I’m filthy and I would like to see you in it.” She counted on her fingers. “I’m changing one thing, too. She was brought here. I walked here on my own feet, and I’m getting in first.”

“That’s... I’d have said that was two things.”

“Hush.”

We undressed with our backs to each other, or I did. I took off my shirt, which was mostly holes, and folded it on a stone for something to do.

“Are you folding?” said Noëlle.

“...Yes.”

“It’s a shirt with three seams left. It’s not going anywhere.” I heard her boots come off, one and then the other, and the button of the shorts, and I looked very hard at a tree. “Your back is lovely, by the way. I’m looking.”

“You’re supposed to be facing the other way.”

“I am facing the other way. I’m looking over my shoulder, it’s completely different.”

I turned around to see where she had put her boots. The boots were in the middle of the path. I knew exactly where the boots were. She was bent over, tucking the little string of her thong in under the cloak with the rest of her clothes on the black rock, with the long line of her back and the two dimples above it, and she straightened up and stepped into the pool without looking at me. I had my hands over my face a second late.

“Crispin, you’re allowed.”

“I’m... allowed to what?”

“Look. I’d like it if you did.” She was in to the waist. The water was clear and lit from below, so it hid nothing, and she turned and let me see all of her, her breasts and her hips. I did not look at the tree. I would like to say I did.

I took my boots and jeans off with my back turned, pushed the jeans under the edge of her cloak, and went in over the stones so fast that I yelped.

The springs were hot, and they did more than hot water should. My skin woke up wherever the water touched it, down to the backs of my own hands, and when Noëlle waded over and her shoulder came against my arm, my whole arm knew it. My tail had been tucked against my leg. It floated up behind me and lay out on the surface, wagging slowly through the steam, and I could do nothing to bring it down.

“Oh,” said Noëlle, looking at it. “It’s right there.”

“It does that. In water. It’s... buoyant.”

“It’s very honest.” She touched the tip of it with one finger, and I made a noise I will not repeat, and she snatched the finger back. “Was that bad?”

“No.”

“Good bad?”

“Good...” I said, into my hand. “Do it again if you... want.”

She did. I leaned on the rock and shook, and she laughed so hard she had to hold on to my arm, and I laughed too, helplessly, with my face as hot as the water. When she stopped laughing she turned my forearm over in the glow and ran her thumb down the pink seam of the cut.

“No heat in it. It’s closing well.”

“You’re checking my cut.”

“And holding your arm. I can do both.” She leaned back against the stones beside me with her shoulder against mine and her eyes shut, and she breathed out. “Crispin, this is the nicest thing that has ever happened to me.”

I started waiting for it to go wrong, out of habit, and I did not have to wait long. A crack of thunder came down the valley, much closer than thunder has a right to be, and the rain arrived on top of it. It hissed on the water. Noëlle opened one eye.

“Run,” she said.

We got out streaming and into our clothes in about three seconds, wet through, and she threw the cloak over her head. I took her wrist and ran with my shirt in my teeth and our boots in my other hand.

The shelter was a few steps from the water, against the side of a big boulder, a lean-to of branches I had built years ago, the one night weather caught me out there. The roof was low and one body wide, for one person lying on his side, and I had been very proud of it. I held the branches back for Noëlle, who crawled in all the way to the rock, and I crawled in after her.

There was not enough room. I put my front against her back because there was nowhere else to put it, and the cloak went over both of us. The rain drummed on the branches. My hair was dripping on her neck. My tail had not waited for permission and was already around her waist, twice, and had pulled her in tighter. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s not... I’m not doing that.”

“I know you’re not.” She wriggled a little to see how tightly it held. “It’s warm. Leave it.”

I left it. My face burned in the dark, and the cloak over us smelled of resin and beeswax, the same as the salve on my forearm, the same as it always had. My ears pressed back against my head and I shivered, and I told her it was the cold.

“Can I tell you something,” said Noëlle, after a long time of rain, “and you don’t try to help?”

“I... don’t know how to fix things.”

“Perfect.” She took a breath. “In Angeau everyone loves me. I mean it. I’d get up in the night for any of them. And not one of them has ever asked how I am. They ask about the knee. They ask how much to give the baby. I’m a cupboard, Crispin. They open me when they bleed and shut me when they’re done.” She said it fast, and both my ears came around to her and stayed there. “Bertrand’s mother has a spare room for my herbs. My herbs. Mother sat at that table with her good gloves on while they all agreed I was devoted to my Nana. And I lay in your den and listened to the fire and I thought, I’m not going back. I don’t know what I’m going to do instead.”

I had a hundred wrong things to say, and the worst of them was that I was glad, so I asked what I wanted to know. “What’s it like? Being the... cupboard.”

She went still against my chest. “Nobody’s asked me that.”

“I’d like to know.”

“It’s tiring.” Her voice shook and she let it. “It’s so tiring. And then I got to your den and nobody needed anything, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands.” She laughed, wetly. “So I lost a bet and made you supper.”

I put my chin on the top of her head, which was a thing I had not decided to do, and she turned a little and settled against me. My tail tightened.

We lay there with the rain running off the branches, and I had reached the second sentence of my speech, in my head, when she spoke.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and you can say no.” She was very careful about her voice, and so I knew what it was. “You wouldn’t talk about the moon, and I let it go. I’ve been very patient. I made you six suppers.”

I had rehearsed it for four days, and none of it came out.

“Crispin.”

“I’m a werewolf,” I said.

“I did get that far,” said Noëlle.

“No, I mean... properly.” I looked at the dark where the roof was. “Once a month. Around the full moon there’s a... window, a few nights. The part of me that’s careful goes away. So I go deep into the woods and I make certain there’s nobody. I’ve never hurt anyone.” My tail had tightened and I made it loosen. “And there are the wardens. The Reckoning Order. You know what they do... to people like me. They register you, and they dose you every month to blunt it, and when they decide you’re too much... they put you down. They’d come for me, if they knew. I’ve never been registered. So I stay where they don’t come.”

She did not flinch. I know, because her whole back was against my front, and nothing in it moved except her breathing. A long time went by. When she spoke her voice was low and had none of the quickness in it.

“Does it hurt?”

I did not understand the question. Nobody had ever asked it. “...Yes,” I said. “All of it. All night.”

“Every month?”

“Since I was a kid.”

“Okay.” She turned her head. I couldn’t see her face, but her breath was on my jaw. “I’m so sorry you did that by yourself. I’m glad you told me.”

The end of my tail thumped against her hip, once, before I had thought of anything to say. “Are you... not scared?”

“I told you in the den, I was never scared of you.” Her hand found mine on the cloak and held on. “Are the wardens near?”

“South of here,” I said. “They go slowly.”

Every word of that was true, and I am telling you what I left out, because someone should know it. The wardens were closer than they had been in years. The moon was nearer than I had let her work out. I had counted the nights on the walk out, and I counted again in the water with her hand on my arm, and there were fewer than I liked. She did not ask, and I did not offer, and I decided it was because she had had enough for one night. I was a coward. I had one night of her not being afraid, and I was not going to spend it.

“Okay,” she said again, and her voice was already blurring. “You’ll tell me more tomorrow.”

“...I will.”

She said something else that was not a word. Her hand loosened and then held again. Her breathing slowed, in and out against my chest, and the weight of her settled on my arm until I could not feel the arm, and I did not move it.

The rain slackened toward morning. I stayed awake. Somebody ought to listen for goblins, I told myself. I kept my tail exactly where it was.