Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

on the floor of the small room and lifted his leg to cautiously step over the edge of the tub.
    The water steamed around his leg, but didn’t burn. In fact, it felt. . .good.
    “There, now you know you won’t die of it. All the way in.”
    Since the alternative was to stand, naked, in a room that wasn’t as warm as it had seemed when he was clothed, the boy got all the way in.
    “Now sit down, Jerzy.”
    Sit? He looked down dubiously at the water, then back at Detta.
    “Sit!”
    He sat. There was a low bench in the tub he hadn’t noticed before, just long enough to rest his buttocks on. It was surprisingly smooth, as though hundreds of backsides had been seated there before and worn the wood down. Water came up to his ribs, and he felt a pleasant warmth soak into him.
    Then something rough and prickly hit him on the back, where the overseer’s whip had landed, and he yelped as much in shock as pain.
    “Hush, boy. Those marks need to be cleaned else they’ll fester, with the layers of dirt you’ve been rolling in, and I don’t trust you to do it yourself.”
    Detta had a scrub brush in one hand, a bar of something white in the other, and was working his skin as though it were the inside of the crushing vat the day after Harvest.
    “You’ll take my skin off!” he protested, even as she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him forward to get a better angle.
    “Then you’ll grow a new layer, and it will be a sight cleaner than this one,” she retorted. “Hold still, and we’ll be done sooner than not.”
    But no sooner had she finished with his back than she started on his front, making him raise his arms and lift his legs so she could make sure pits and feet were clean. The boy submitted, knowing by now that he had no choice.
    “Right, then. Almost done.”
    He lifted his head at that, barely daring to hope, and a bucket of more steaming water was dumped over his face, getting in his mouth and eyes and making him splutter.
    “Once more, and be thankful your hair’s short, else we’d have to wash it, and cut it, too.”
    Warned, he closed his eyes and shut his mouth, and the second bucket of water cascaded off his face and down into the tub without further insult.
    “There you are. All done. Up and into the towel, then.”
    He stood up, and Detta wrapped him in a length of cloth. Some vestige of memory moved within him, and he stepped out of the tub on his own, rubbing down his skin until he was dry.
    A glance back at the tub stopped him mid-rub. The water that had been steaming clear when he got in was now the color of the river’s side pools after a bad storm, reddish-brown and murky.
    “Told you you were filthy, my boy,” Detta said, seeing where his gaze had gone. “All that, off your skin. Want to see what you look like now?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but took hold of his bare shoulder and directed him across the chamber. “There you go.”
    Something glittered on the wall, like still water in winter, and the boy stared into it.
    A boy stared back.
    “Haven’t seen yourself in a while, have you, my boy?” For the first time, Detta’s voice was gentle. “That’s you, yes. That’s Jerzy.”
    “Jerzy.”
    The name was easier to say now. The name belonged to the dark-eyed, pale-skinned figure he saw in the mirror: naked, scarred ribs and protruding ears and dark red strands sticking wetly to his skull.
    “It used to be brighter,” he said.
    “What?”
    “My hair. It used to be. . .brighter.” It was a memory, a scarce scrap of one: himself, much younger, a shining cap of curls on his head that a much larger hand tousled with affection. . .red, like a fox’s summer pelt. Fox-fur. His sleep-house nickname made sense now.
    “You get older, it darkens,” Detta said. “Likely, you make it to adult, it will be dark like a paarten’s pelt, and attract women the same way, all wanting to pet it.” She stepped back and examined him critically. “You’re older than I thought. Fourteen?