Chapter 12

12

- Anter’az -

“Oh?” Alba asks. “What is it?”

I dig up a glowing ember from the ashes of the fire and start a new one. “You’ll see.”

The hollow outside is red with the light from the setting sun. I’m pleasantly tired after spending all day in the jungle, but we found rare venom and interesting plants.

In the back of my head I can hear old Healer Fabur’iz: ‘Most plants are useless, but it only takes one good find to make a new cure.’ Of course he was mostly concerned with plants and only dabbled in venoms on occasion. With me, it’s the other way around. Plants have their uses, but venoms are much more potent when they work. And maybe one day I’ll find the venom that kills all of the baktria that Alba talked about. It may mean trying the only venom that Fabur’iz specifically warned me about. ‘It’s tempting,’ he said in his old, creaky voice. ‘But even trying to get that terrible venom could easily kill you. It almost got old Derep’ox, and he was being as careful as any man could.’

‘But you’ve tried it? It worked?’ I remember eagerly asking, not caring about safety in my younger days.

‘It worked,’ Fabur’iz sighed. ‘Some day I will show you how. But I pray you will never have to use it.’

I shudder at the thought. Fabur’iz always uses his medsin on himself first, just like me.

“How do you like your meat grilled?” I ask as I put the first slices on the fire. I didn’t do any hunting today after all, but tomorrow I’ll leave Alba here and go out on my own.

“Just the way you make it,” Alba chirps, busy with sorting the things we picked today. “It tastes good. What you think this can be used for?”

I glance over. “Does it smell?”

Alba sniffs the strand of grass she’s picked. “Smells like grass. But there’s more, too.”

“Nice?”

She drops the strand and rubs her hands together to get the debris off. “No.”

I drizzle some spices on both slices and peel some of the roots I brought from the village. I can’t remember ever having been this happy before. Sometimes when I was here alone, I would dream of this day, sitting in my secret fortress with the little son I would have one day, just him and me, cooking and enjoying a sunset like this. Never in my life would I have dreamed that I could sit here with a woman . Much less with Alba, the one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since she first waved her little spear in my face.

“This is nice,” she says and peels the outer layer off an unripe berry of some kind. “It smells like junipr . Very fresh.”

“For use on hair?” I ask, mostly to keep her talking because I like the bright sound of her voice.

“Maybe not for hair,” she decides. “Maybe for other things. Maybe as spice for food. Or for a drink! Maybe it’s a way to put flavor on frit. Or maybe in water that boil to make it taste good. On Earth, we call it ‘tea’. Except that needs special leaf. Tea leaf.” She picks up a leaf, rips it in half, and smells it. “No, this not a tea leaf. Maybe no tea leaf on all of Xren! Very scandal. Everyone angry, wanting their tea but none is there. Maybe someone pour all tea into big water. Into ocean! Then there would be war. Maybe. Hmm. I say ‘maybe’ a lot, don’t I. Perhaps, I mean. Perhaps there will be war because no tea…”

I smile at her random fantasies. I think it means that she feels safe and comfortable here with me. And it must be a good way to practice her speech, although it is getting better.

Curse that I have to return her in seven days! I would love to keep her here for a long time. Forever. Just Alba and I, in our own world here. I’d hunt for her and keep her safe, maybe train her in using the sword. She could stay safe in this hollow, make her hair things and help me with the venoms and the herbs. She would chat like she does now, mostly to herself. We’d be happy, I think.

Maybe that’s what we’ll do. After all, nobody knows she’s here. Nobody knows where we are at all. I could simply not return with her. We could just stay here. Alba and I. Alone and forever.

“... but we could try— oh!” Alba turns her head to look at me, then yelps.

“What?!” I ask, spinning around but seeing no danger.

“You!” she exclaims. “Looking at me like want to eat me for dinner!”

“Oh. Sorry.” I turn the slices of meat over.

“It’s all right,” Alba coos. “It’s just those eyes… they as sharp as your sword.”

“Mostly blunt, then.” I put the roots on the fire. “It needs sharpening.”

“Your eyes not need sharpening. Not ever. I was saying, can we try to find a big leaf, like for my hat?” She shows with her hand what she means.

“Of course we can try,” I reply as I take the meat off the fire. “We can also make one.”

“I tried to make one,” she says. “But still sap came in, made my hair sticky.”

“Sometimes when you make a hat like that, you can put some sap on the outside first. To make it sap-tight.”

Alba turns back to her leaf-sorting. “We tried that, but the sap gets hot and melts. Runs into hair and make us say bad words.”

“Maybe you don’t need a hat,” I suggest. “I never used one.”

“And look at your hair now!” she chuckles. “All long and impossible.”

“Maybe it’s you who are impossible.”

“No, it’s you.”

I scratch my chin. “I think maybe it is.”

“Ha ha, you said ‘maybe’. Sometimes you can try to say ‘perhaps’ instead. It means same thing. We have that on Earth, too. Two words mean exactly that.”

“ Maybe dinner is ready,” I tell her and hand her a green leaf with meat and cooked roots. “But only perhaps.”

We eat while the sun sets. I go down to the hollow and fill my big pot with water, then make the fire bigger and put it on the flames.

“Boiling water for tea?” Alba asks, chewing happily.

“Yes,” I confirm. “Because then there will be war, you said. Pour all the tea into the ocean. Sounds like fun.”

“That would be bad waste,” she says primly. “Let’s drink it instead.”

“ Drink tea?!” I ask as if shocked. “The tribes would cast us both out if they knew.”

“But I won’t tell them. Oh, I know why you heat water now! You want to wash your hands.”

“Well… yes and no. You’ll see.”

“Being mysterious,” she chirps. “I like it.”

When the water boils, I lift the pot with a stick through two holes in its rim and carry it into the cave and down. Returning with the empty pot, I fill it up with water again and place it on the fire.

“That will be a lot of tea,” Alba says, worried. “I was only joking about that.”

“What?!” I ask, pretending outrage. “You were not being serious? No, don’t worry. You’ll see.” I sit down beside her, reach over, and tickle her ribs.

She yelps and half-heartedly slaps my hand away. “You stop that, mistr . Or I tell the vral, he very angry and yell at you.”

I laugh at her random idea. “It would be worth it just to see him do that.”

I carry two more pots of hot water down into the lower levels of the cave, where Alba still hasn’t been.

Finally I light two torches and place them down there, too.

Excitement spreads in me as I go to get her. “Alba, let’s go and inspect the deeper caves.”

She looks up at me, clearly unsure about what I have in mind. “Will there be venom?”

“I… venom? I suppose we can bring some if you want.”

“No!” she exclaims. “No more venom today, please.”

“Ah. Then there will be no venom. Unless we’re lucky. Come on.” I take her hand and lead her down the irregular caves that I explored the first time I found this place. Everything is smooth and polished by water that must have been running here for a long time. There’s a constant, distant roar from the underground waterfall that I think runs far under us. The sound of a clucking stream comes from further inside the cave, but we’re not going that far.

The light from the two torches flickers on the walls as we approach.

When we get there, I can tell the exact moment Alba sees what it is, because she stops and gasps. “Is that…”

“All yours,” I tell her. “Maybe too hot, but there’s cold water just beyond.”

“A bathtub!” she enthuses. “It’s perfect!”

It’s a place in the cave where a big boulder has been spun by running water for a thousand years and slowly drilled a round hole straight down in the rock. The boulder is no longer there, and the hole is so shallow that the rim only reaches me to mid-thigh when I stand in it. Now I’ve filled the hole with water, about half of it hot water from the pot.

“Good,” I reply, feeling jubilant at her reaction. “Check if it’s too hot.”

She goes close and puts a toe in. “Maybe just little too hot for me. But we can wait for it to cool down.”

“No,” I tell her and grab the pot. “We don’t need that.” Getting water from the little stream further down in the cave, I pour it into the hole while Alba takes all her clothes off.

She tries it again. “That should do it. Hold my hand?”

I steady her as she gets in. The water reaches her to the waist.

“Bathtubs are made for two,” she tells me. “I don’t want to be alone here.”

I was hoping she’d invite me in. I shed my loincloth and jump in with her, then sit down on the bottom so my head is above the water. It’s warm, but surprisingly pleasant.

“Can I sit on you?” Alba asks and steadies herself on my shoulder. “That’s what bathtubs are for— oh. It’s hard again. Excuse me, Anter’az’s huge… spear. I just want to sit on you.”

She doesn’t actually sit on my now painfully hard manhood, but it’s squeezed between us when she straddles me.

“I remembered your talk about the bafub,” I tell her as we adjust our positions to be as comfortable as possible. “And I suddenly thought, I have something similar. It’s not made from iron sheets, but it is a hole you can sit it. It never crossed my mind to fill it with water until now.”

“Thank you for this,” she says in a brittle voice as she leans in and puts her head on my neck. “I really need it. I would dream of something like this when I living in the dark tunnels. But I knew it wouldn’t happen. You being so nice to me, Anter’az…”

I sense that no words are necessary, so I put one arm around her and stroke her hair with the other while her little shoulders shake and she makes some pitiful noises that echo in the cave that’s all ours, where we’re perfectly safe and alone.

But it doesn’t feel as if she’s sad about what’s happening now. I think it’s just that she can finally relax fully. And maybe there were some things in her life that just lost power over her.

I’ve never been more at peace, either. Oh, Holy Ancestors, make this last forever…