entered behind her. “This is Enid. She will see that you have food. Enid, take care of them.”
“Yes. I will,” the girl said. She bowed almost slavishly to Teanor, who paid her no attention at all. Sarah quickly noted the way the girl’s eyes followed the youth as he left them.
“I’m Sarah, and this is Abbey, Enid,” she said as soon as Teanor was gone.
Enid bowed. “I will help you with anything I can.” Her eyes were still creeping around to the door.
“You like the young man, don’t you?” Sarah asked with a smile.
Enid flushed but shook her head. “No. What can I bring you?”
“Well, I’d like a bath,” Abbey said. “Is there any way we could do that? We both brought soap and a change of fresh clothing.”
“Oh yes. Come this way. My own home is this one next door.”
The two girls followed Enid, and as they moved along the platforms, crossing two more bridges, Sarah questioned her. “Are your parents here, Enid?”
“They are. My mother is Ione. My father is Celevorn.”
Sarah was shocked. “You’re the daughter of the
king?”
“Oh yes.”
“But that makes you a princess!” Abbey said.
“No. I’m merely a servant.”
Sarah could not understand this, and she shot aquestioning glance at Abbey, who also appeared shocked. “Then you are the sister of Prince Jere.”
“He is my half brother. We do not have the same mothers.”
“But I don’t understand,” Abbey said. “Why don’t you live in the palace?”
Enid gave her a questioning look. “Females do not live in the palace. Only men.”
“What about the women?”
“We live elsewhere. We serve the men,” Enid said quietly.
Something is wrong about this
, Sarah thought. She said nothing more at the time, but she determined to look into the matter later.
The bathhouse proved to be quite simple. It was clever, actually. Rainwater was caught in large containers mounted at the tops of the trees. The water ran down hollow joints of bamboo into a large tank overhead.
“If you get under that, you can release the water by pulling that vine,” Enid told them. Then she waited while they lathered and washed their hair. “That smells so good,” she said. “What is it?”
“This?” Sarah said with surprise. “Soap.” She handed the bar out to Enid, who sniffed it eagerly.
“It smells so good,” she repeated.
“We have some extra, if you’d like some, Enid,” Sarah said in a kindly fashion.
“Oh, I would! I’d love it!”
They dried off as best they could with the rough cloths that Enid had furnished. They were not thick towels, but they had to serve.
The sun was shining, so they dried their hair while sitting on the bathhouse platform and talking to Enid.
“Enid, do women hold any position of importance here in Cloud Land?”
“Women? Oh no! The men are the important ones. We females only serve them.”
Abbey gaped at her and started to speak, but Sarah, knowing Abbey’s rather abrupt ways, said quickly, “Back where we lived, women were considered as important as men in most places.”
Now Enid gaped at the two girls. “I cannot believe it. Females are not on the same level as men.”
“Whoever told you that?” Abbey snapped. She forgot about drying her long blonde hair for the moment. “Of course they’re as good as men!”
Enid looked distressed. “Please do not talk like that! No good can come of it.”
Sarah tried to understand the social structure in Cloud Land. It appeared to her that men had all the rights and privileges, and women had none. They were little more than slaves in the Cloud People’s culture.
When Enid excused herself for a moment, Sarah said, “This is awful, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I never heard of such a thing.”
“I think it was common in certain places back in OldWorld. In some Eastern countries there were harems, and in parts of Africa the women weren’t respected….”
“But that was something we read about in a book,” Abbey said sharply. “This
Mark Twain, W. Bill Czolgosz