Chapter Sixteen #4
I felt the movement of air as he went to fetch the other pitcher, and then I smelled it—strong and herbaceous, acrid enough to catch at the back of my throat.
“Stay still,” he said when I struggled to get comfortable, “or I’ll get it on your ears.”
Was it my imagination, or did his voice sound … different? A little thready. A little less certain. Less smug than usual, certainly.
The dye felt different from the water, moving thick and slow as honey; stinging a little where it touched my scalp.
“Turn over again,” he said. And when I hesitated, he added, “So I can dye the front.”
I was loath to look at him, so on the pretense of preventing the dye from getting in my eyes, I kept them closed.
He held the rope of saturated Hair in his fist as I twisted round, and, unusually, I felt it lie limp as a trusting cat for him.
I felt him lift it a little and arrange it into the basin again as I settled into my new position, and he was close enough for me to feel the slight disturbance in the air as he moved.
Beneath the overpowering fragrance of the dye, I caught a hint of his now-familiar scent—something expensive and complex, with that edge of rosemary. It felt like we were doing something indecent. Which was ridiculous, obviously.
My position was more awkward now, and I wriggled until I was lying fully on my back on the chair, propped up on my elbows, knees bent.
My skirts had tangled around my shins somewhat, and my head was thrown back now over the basin to expose the length of my throat, making me feel rather like a spring hare dangled in the hunter’s hand.
I’d had a reprieve from my embarrassment as he waited for me to change my position, but now I felt his hands in the Hair again.
He threaded his fingers through it, coaxing it away from my face so that he could work on the dyeing.
Something cold against my temple made me gasp—a damp cloth, I realized, to swab away any staining.
He must have seen me flinch against it, because he paused.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, and my voice came out in an appalling squeak.
He kept running his hands through my Hair, close against the scalp, and I forced myself to breathe evenly.
They were just hands. It was just Hair—even if it was my magical Hair.
If I felt tingling all through my body, well, then, that was my own inexplicable response to someone else handling it, and to the oddity of Patrick acting almost as a lady’s maid.
Then I felt him adjust his position again and felt the press of his leg on my left side joined by another at my right.
To reach deep into the roots without bending over me from a standing posture, he had straddled me on the chair, with a leg on either side of my hips.
He was seemingly being very careful not to touch me more than necessary, but the light pressure of his knees on either side were enough to speed my breathing again.
It felt dangerous, in some way I couldn’t define to myself.
I thought I heard him swallow—a small, convulsive sound.
For the first time, he was clumsy. I felt the dye splash my face, warm and smarting, and my eyes flew open despite myself.
His face was right above mine; so close that I tried to jerk back, and he looked as startled at this as I did.
For a second, we stared at each other. His color-shifting eyes seemed darker, the pupils huge and black and swimming in the brown-green creek-water irises.
I had never seen him look this unguarded, this unmasked.
And then, quick as a shutter closing, the smirk was back.
“My apologies,” he said, wiping at the dye on my cheek with the damp cloth.
I tried to say it was all right, but my mouth was dry. All at once I was aware again of how uncomfortable I was: how tense my muscles were; how hard the chair was against my back; how tight and tangled my skirts were about my legs.
“Almost done,” he said, raising the ewer of dye again. I kept my eyes open, because closing them now seemed like it would have a meaning I did not intend, and I stared at the ceiling as he colored the final strands.
When he had finished, he stood, and the air felt cold where he had been. I watched as he picked up some towels from where they had hung over the back of a chair and tossed them to me.
“Wrap up your Hair,” he said. “It will take a while for the dye to set.”
I sat up slowly, bones creaking.
“Wait,” he said, and peeled off the old, stained gloves. “Wear these, or your hands will be black.”
I leaned forward to twist my hair into a long rope, then wrapped it in the towel, and made a turban of it upon my head. While I did this, he stared into the fire, his lips pressed tightly together.
“I will sleep in the chair by the fire tonight,” he said. “It will be comfortable enough.”
I nodded. We sat in silence for a time, until Patrick indicated that it was time to unwrap the Hair and take a look.
It tumbled down about my shoulders, dark and unfamiliar, already nearly dry.
It felt strange now—sluggish. Like something that happened to be attached to my head, rather than something with a life of its own.
Perhaps this was how ordinary hair felt all the time.
It reminded me of how it had felt when I had first woken in the Tower, my arms pinned behind me by the intruder, and it made me feel oddly powerless and vulnerable now.
“It feels heavy,” I said. “And … dead.”
“The dye should … calm it down,” said Patrick. “Not subdue it entirely, but make it less obvious that your Hair is magical. And the color, of course, will help us stay concealed.”
I looked in the little mirror. Against the black Hair, my skin looked even paler than usual, and my eyes as clean and transparent as sea glass. The Hair didn’t look bad, exactly—just dead. Still long, still shining, but inert. I felt self-conscious.
“What do you think?” I asked, turning to Patrick and speaking with an attempt at playfulness. His eyes flickered to me briefly, then away.
“It looks fine. The red is all covered.”
It was foolish to feel rebuffed, but I did. What had I wanted him to say? That it suited me, when it clearly didn’t?
I got ready for bed—which consisted of simply taking off my shoes, as I had no nightdress.
Patrick did not undress either, to my relief—merely kicked off his boots and unlaced his padded doublet to reveal the linen shirt beneath.
It hung open a little at the neck, showing his collarbone and a smooth plane of skin below, dotted with sparse black hairs.
But why was I noticing these details? Why was I looking?
I turned away and thumped my pillow under the pretext of fluffing it, but really I was just venting my frustration.
I heard the creak of the armchair as Patrick settled in; his sigh. The fire still spat and crackled a little, giving the room enough of a glow to make out the shapes of the furniture and Baldbeak’s silhouette against the window, but aside from that, there was no sound.
Despite the large, downy bed and the smoldering fire, I could not get comfortable.
I tried to make my breathing even, to feign sleep, hoping that Patrick would fall asleep also …
But then I started thinking that it sounded unnaturally even and tried to make it faster, and then wondered if I had forgotten how to breathe like a normal person at all.
I sat up and thumped the pillow again and tried to settle down, but every shift in position made the mattress creak.
I settled for lying uncomfortably still and barely breathing at all.
I despaired of finding sleep—and then it was morning, and light was pouring in through the open window.