“An ekele,” he corrected. “Almost everyone has an ekele; Hawkbrothers prefer to roost.” He grinned. “The exceptions are the hertasi, who’d rather burrow, the kyree, who like caves, the k’Leshya Kaled’a’in like Nightwind, who like homes built into the sides of cliffs, and me.”
She was relieved to discover she wasn’t going to have to climb one of those twisting staircases. With the way her legs felt, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to make the trip!
“And here we are,” he announced just then, gesturing grandly at a tall mound of leaves - a mound with windows glowing warmly beneath the leaves, that is. He opened an otherwise invisible door, and they stepped into one of the oddest, and yet most inviting houses Keisha had ever seen.
There wasn’t a single straight line in it, though, and that was a bit disconcerting. “One of the hertasi designed this place,” he said, as he led her through the first room (which was so neat and clean she could hardly believe it belonged to a male), a second (obviously a bedroom, and a bit more cluttered), and into the third. There was a single oil lamp turned low, hanging from a wall-sconce; he turned it up, and busied himself with a metal spout in the wall.
The whole room was tiled in white, pale blue, and pale green ceramic; even the ceiling (what there was of it) was tiled. Most of the ceiling was actually a window! And around the four sides of this window were boxes with vines growing in them.
Sunken into the floor was a tile-lined bath tub; Darian had just turned a spigot and put a plug in a hole in the bottom of it, and water poured in. Clear, clean, and very chilly-looking, the spray made her shiver.
Darian watched as the water filled the tub, and turned the spigot again when it was within a thumb-length of the rim. But then, before Keisha could ask him how the water was supposed to be heated, he held his hand out over it.
Something was happening, something she felt, rather than saw, until she closed her eyes and did that little trick with vision. Then she saw light-energy moving from Darian to the water, but what did that mean?
Wait, it was getting warmer in this little room, and more humid! A moment later, she knew where the heat was coming from, for the water in the tub had started to steam.
“Try that with your hand and tell me if it’s hot enough,” Darian said, just as she blinked, and lost the Oversight. She knelt at the side of the tub and gingerly put her hand in.
A little more and it would have been too hot. “Definitely,” she told him. He grinned.
“I like it a lot hotter, but I’m used to the Hawkbrother pools. Now just wait a moment, and I’ll bring you something to wear when you get out.”
He ducked into the bedroom, and came back with a loose, gauzy shirt and breeches of the same materials. “You can keep these, they’re too small for me now.” He opened a wicker-work chest next to the tub. “Clean, dry towels are in here.” He turned and pointed to a series of stone boxes at the side of the tub. “Gourd sponges are in there, a scrub brush, and soap; there’s a couple of different scents, so you’ve got a choice. I’ll be back in a while.”
He didn’t wait for her reply; he just left, and she heard the outer door close after him. She peeked out, just to make sure that he’d really gone, but the little house was absolutely empty except for herself.
Well, there was no point in letting the water cool! She stripped to the skin and eased gingerly down into the hot tub, which was long enough for her to stretch completely out and deep enough that the water came up to her chin. Immediately, the heat eased the sore muscles of her legs, and she sighed and relaxed against the sloped, tiled back of the tub.
If anyone had told me about what this place was like, I would never have believed them. Would she be too spoiled by this Vale to want to go home again?
I could put some comforts together with help. A bathing room of her own, for instance, wouldn’t be too difficult to add to the cottage. The potter could make the tiles. If I built an oven underneath the tub, instead of sinking the tub into the floor, I could heat my own water. A rainwater cistern on the roof would give me water for the tub, or I could tap into the irrigation system. Or I could pump it from the well at the sink and carry it. The cistern would be the least work. That would be a good way to warm someone up who was badly chilled, too. A reasonable excuse for me to ask for help building it. She grinned to herself. No, she probably wouldn’t be so spoiled she wouldn’t want to go back, not as long as she could figure out ways to reproduce the aspects of this place that she liked!
When she’d soaked long enough that she thought she’d be able to move again without moaning, she finished her bath with rosemary soap, and allowed the water to drain. Darian’s old clothing, lightly scented with juniper, was a bit big on her, but it was so good to put on clean clothes that it didn’t matter. She rolled up the waistband and arms, so she didn’t look too much like a child playing dress-up.
She decided to wait for him in the outermost room, and bundled up her old clothes and took them with her. When he arrived, he looked pleased to find her there. “Your room is ready in the guest lodge, and the hertasi are bringing you something to eat there, in the morning. That will be easier for you than trying to find our dining hall right off. You can leave your clothes here, if you’d like,” he added. “The hertasi will clean them and bring them back to you by morning.”
“I could get to enjoy having hertasi doing everything,” she sighed, as she laid her clothing to one side.
“It’s a good trade for them, and for us,” he agreed, as she followed him out onto the dimly lit trail. “They get safety, protection, and share our food and supplies, and we get their service. Out there they wouldn’t have a chance; cold slows them down, they’d make prime prey for the slave trade, and they’d wear their little lives away trying to grow enough food to stay alive. In here, they don’t have to worry about any of that. We even have a festival twice a year to thank them, where we take care of them and give them gifts.” He grinned. “They are very tolerant of our cooking, but twice a year is all they can stand.”
“How are you getting food and supplies?” she asked curiously.
“Trade and hunting,” he replied promptly. “There are some things we grow for ourselves, but staples we trade for; it makes more sense for us to grow very exotic and rare things than to try to cultivate acres of wheat. We’ve already set up a pact with Lord Breon, for instance; he’s quite pleased to be getting some of our goods in trade for flour and so forth. And here is the guest lodge.”
They had just gone around a twist in the trail, and there, beneath the shade of an enormous tree that supported an ekele around its trunk, was a building similar to Darian’s little home, with rounded walls and a tiled roof.
The main difference seemed to be that this place was not screened by a growth of vines, and that it looked to be bigger than Darian’s. Young vines at the base of the walls promised that soon this building would be camouflaged, too. “There are six rooms here for now, though you’re the only guest,” Darian told her. “We went ahead and put you in the first one.” He opened the door as he spoke, and ushered her into a kind of common room, lit by another oil lamp, with several doorways radiating from it. The nearest was open, with a light inside. “There will be more lights around here when Lord Breon gets our lamp oil to us. Nightwind or Firesong will send someone for you in the morning.”