The weather was taking a turn. The trees had regained some of their fullness and the grass gleamed a bright green in the morning sun. When the wind blew, it wasn't bitterly cold anymore but a refreshing breeze. And I had finally gathered up the courage to ask Rylan if I could bathe in the river.
I flexed my back muscles, Knox had said that my back was healing quickly much to his surprise, and it barely hurt anymore unless I twisted my body the wrong way. They had started scabbing over in places, but I still avoided looking at them in the mirror.
Rylan seemed reluctant about taking me and he led me far down the riverbank until I couldn't see the camp through the trees anymore. We stopped at a small pond the river emptied into. "It should be private here."
I inched closer to the pond. It was wide here and the other side of the bank looked so far away. The water seemed calm, but I couldn't see the bottom from here. I gulped. The last time I had been in a body of water so large, I had been small and I had barely put a toe in before I ran back squealing to shore. "Is it very deep here?"
"It's pretty shallow until you get to about the middle of the pond." Rylan shrugged, handing me a towel. It was the roughest piece of fabric I had ever held and there were a few small holes in it. I nervously glanced back at the pond. I steeled my nerves, pushing my childish worries from my thoughts. As long as I stayed in the shallow part, I would be fine.
"I'll make sure nobody comes." Rylan walked a few paces away, his back turned as he leaned up against a tree.
I walked to the edge of the pond where the grass gave way for mud and broken rocks. I slipped off my boots -I had left my knife under the pillow- and let the cool water run between my toes. The sun hadn't yet warmed and there was a chilly breeze that blew off the water. I took a calming breath as I untied my trousers and tunic, setting them safely on the bank. I quickly submerged myself in the water, keeping one eye turned towards the trees, but Rylan's back stayed turned.
The water was cold and goosebumps erupted all over my body, but it was a welcoming cold as I could feel all the dirt and grime washing itself away. As my body got used to the temperature, I wadded further until the water lapped at my shoulders and my hair flared out around me. I set to undoing the tangles in my hair, hoping the water would help ease them, but they stayed firmly knotted. I glanced behind me again. Rylan was still leaning against the tree.
Just as I was working the dirt from beneath my fingernails, something slithered against my bare calf. I cried out, kicking my legs around in the water. I stared into the depths but I couldn't see much past my shoulders. "Something just touched me!"
"It's probably just a pondfish." Rylan called over his shoulder.
"A what-"
I lost my footing in the water, slipping on a slimy rock when I turned around, and my head plunged beneath the water. I let out a yelp under the water and it bubbled to the top. I tried to stand back up but my feet kept slipping on the mossy stone. My arms thrashed wildly around me as I struggled to find anything to grab hold of. I sucked in a mouthful of water. Then I teetered off a drop off and I couldn't touch the bottom anymore.
Panic set in. My arms flailed wildly as I tried to claw my way to the surface. I seemed to float in the same spot no matter how hard I thrashed. My eyes were wide open but I couldn't see anything but murky pond water around me and nothing to grab hold of. Fantastic. I was going to drown, naked, in the middle of the pond.
After about the third gulp of water and just as I had made peace with death -I'd lived through enough already I thought- a strong pair of arms wrapped under my armpits and around my chest. They pulled me upward and we broke through the surface of the water. Rylan dragged us to the edge of the pond as I gasped for air, spitting up pond water. Once my toes finally brushed against the bottom of the pond, I realized that Rylan's arms were still around me. I pushed away from him, making sure to stay below the water so he couldn't see anything.
"You can't swim?" He had the gall to sound annoyed.
"You didn't tell me there was a drop off."
"I didn't know I had to. I thought you could swim." Rylan shook the water from his hair and I realized that he had jumped in fully clothed. His wet shirt clung to his body and rivets of water ran down his chest and now I was staring. I tore my eyes away. Thankfully, he didn't notice.
"Er," I cleared my throat. "If you wouldn't mind, I need to get dressed."
Rylan looked down at my bare shoulders poking above the water and his dark brows furrowed. "Don't drown again." He waded to the edge of the pond and called out to me, "If I hear so much as a splash, I'm dragging you out with or without clothes."
_____
"Do you have a comb?"
Knox was waiting for us back in Rylan's cabin. He had scolded us when we both walked, Rylan still dripping wet. He had worked quietly while he cleaned the wounds on my back, muttering under his breath about infections and leeches. I didn't want to know about the leeches. Rylan sat at the opposite end of the table, dressed in dry clothes now and sifting through papers.
"A comb? No, I don't think so." Rylan answered, not looking up.
Knox swiped a cloth soaked in alcohol across my back. I hissed as it soaked into some of the deeper cuts. Rylan glanced up at the two of us, a sour expression twisting his face. My fingers fidgeted with the ends of my hair. I had tried everything to work out the knots and some of them had come loose but without a comb, I wasn't sure that I could get all of them. I hated to imagine what it looked like in the back. I groaned, leaning forward. My mop of hair fell around my face. Knox made a disgruntled noise behind me and scooted his chair closer.
"What are you even reading anyway?"
Rylan folded the corner of the paper he was holding so he could look at me. "Captain stuff."
"And what about that?" I gestured towards the pile next to him.
"Also captain stuff." The corner of his paper flipped back up and he went back to reading. I squinted at the scrawled words on the back of the page but I wasn't close enough to read it. I rolled my eyes.
I twisted in my chair, covering my mouth with one hand and whispered to Knox, "Is he always so surly?"
"Usually." Knox replied, leaning forward. "He gets it from his father."
"I can still hear both of you." Rylan griped over the sound of paper rustling.
"He's more rustled than those papers." I whispered more quietly, but still not quietly enough because Rylan groaned. Knox let out a soft chuckle.
Knox held up a small jar of bright yellow paste and when he smeared the contents across my back, the overwhelming ginger odor almost made me gag. It quickly dried to a dull orange color and smelled faintly of citrus. He said it would keep any bacteria from the pond water from infecting the welts that hadn't fully healed yet. Knox packed his supplies in the bag slung across his shoulders. When he left, he instructed me to keep my back from getting wet for a few days. That reminded me of something Rylan had mentioned early.
"What's a pondfish?" I thought back to the wriggling thing that had brushed against my leg. The same thing that had almost caused me to drown.
Rylan finally set the papers aside with a dramatic, exasperated sigh. He looked at me as he replied with a sly smile. "It's a fish that lives in the pond."
I gaped at him, my mouth hanging open. "That's all?" Rylan's smile widened. "What a creative bunch you all are."
I might be in the largest camp of idiots in all of Rezantri and maybe even Verdana. For them to simply name a fish pondfish? Just because it lived in a pond? Surely there were plenty of other things living there. Maybe a pondturtle? A laugh burbled out of me before I could stop it and the more I thought about it the harder I laughed. Rylan looked at me like I was crazy and maybe I had finally descended into madness. It was well warranted.
"Tell me." I gasped, forcing myself to stop laughing long enough to be serious. "Have you ever found a pondfrog?"
The blank look on Rylan's face sent me into another fit of laughter. I caught Rylan mouth turned up at the corners, his shoulders shaking. I jabbed a finger at him. "Here I was thinking you didn't know how to laugh." My sides ached and my cheeks were sore by the time my laughter had finally died out.
"Gah," I groaned in frustration. My fingers got caught in a knot when I ran a hand through it, trying to brush it out of my face. I held a long strand in front of my eyes, staring at it with as much hatred you could have for a strand of hair. Another idea came to mind.
"What about scissors?"