Page 70 of Embrace the Serpent

Bathing became an obsession. We made our way as before. Wherever there was an inn or resthouse, Rane would order a bath, and I’d scrub myself raw.

It was at the last inn, when I came down freshly scrubbed, my hair drying into a poofy mess, that I saw the map. It was painted on the wall. My eyes caught on a name that was faded, like someone had halfheartedly scrubbed at it—Marehold. I mapped it out with my fingers. We were not two days’ ride from it.

“We’re close,” Rane said from behind me. I shivered. He wasn’t talking about Marehold.

“Have I got it all off?”

He held a hand out, paused for permission, and when I nodded, drew a lock of my hair into his hands. He encircled my wrist and raised it. His breath puffed against my skin and goose bumps rose in its wake. “Almost.”

“We can’t enter until it’s all gone.”

He studied me. “There’s a waterfall, not far from the crossing. We’ll stop there.”

We moved quickly. Rane had a purse with a seemingly unending supply of coin, and he bought me a new bag. I washed all my tools before transferring them over. Grimney ran away when I told himto bathe, and Rane had to grab him and bribe him with seashells.

Rane held Grimney under one arm. “We’ll have to ride.”

“You mean horses?”

“It’ll be fine,” he said as he left for the stables.

He came back leading two horses. A gray shaggy one and a sleek dark one. The gray one was mine. It gave me a distrusting look out of the corner of its eye. “It hates me.”

“She’s a lovely old mare, slow and reliable,” Rane said. “In fact, she’s a grandma.”

“Grandmas can hate people too,” I said.

He looked to the sky. “Just get on her.”

He helped me up, his hands gripping my waist. The ghost of his touch lingered. But luckily, I was soon distracted by the terror of being high off the ground, at the whims of an unknowable beast.

My rear slid around on the saddle, and then when the horse began to move, I gripped tight with my thighs, but each step sent my bones bouncing.

Rane took the reins, looping them around his wrist. My horse looked at him and then back at me, as if judging me for having him lead us.

“I can’t be what you want me to be,” I whispered to it.

“Sorry?” Rane said.

“Not you,” I said. And then, realizing how that sounded, I added, “I was talking to the horse.”

“...And what was she saying?”

He was laughing.

Grimney, seated before him, was grinning up at him adoringly.

“What happens after I finish the work?” I asked.

“Whatever you want. You’ll have your new identity. A shop. Riches.”

I was silent.

“What do you want to happen?” he asked.

I shot him a glance. “The Serpent King said some of the divine peoples live outside his kingdom. Like the water horses.”

“Some do.”