Sullha #3
"My poor baby." She patted his slim shoulder. "You're exhausted."
"I'm not a baby," he said. "And I'm really not tired."
"And I really don't believe you."
He sighed theatrically again and let her lead him into the bathroom.
The big communal space was empty at this hour.
The young children had been bathed before dinner, and the women who showered in the evenings had already finished and gone to their rooms. The tile floor was still damp in places, and the air was warm and steamy from the day's use, with the faint, clean smell of the soap they were provided with.
She filled a tub with warm water, tested it against her wrist, and helped Tomek out of his clothes. He stood on the tile, small and tired, and she lifted him into the tub.
He sat down in the warm water with a sound of pleasure that was almost a smack of the lips but not quite. He liked baths once he was actually in them. The resistance was always to the idea of the bath rather than the bath itself.
She knelt beside the tub and began to wash his hair.
The fog returned in the quiet of the bathroom, with the only sounds being the soft splash of water against tile and her son's steady breathing. Tomek leaned into her hands as she gently scrubbed his scalp, and his eyes closed.
The ache in her chest returned.
Yaaf.
She thought about him being out there now and realized how selfish she'd been, thinking only of the conflict raging inside of her. He'd been through a lot today.
Yaaf and his friends had killed three leaders of the Brotherhood earlier. Three bad people who could have made life on the island even worse than it was if they had wrested power from Lord Losham.
Yaaf and the others had done it for the good of everyone, and even though he'd told her that they didn't feel any remorse or guilt about it, she didn't believe for a moment that they had killed those males without feeling a thing.
What were they doing now?
She wondered if her words to him, that he would always be her friend, were ringing in their collective mind the way they were ringing in hers. She wondered if any of them understood what those words had meant to her.
Sullha rinsed Tomek's hair and reached for the bar of soap.
The escape was what mattered now. That was the thing she could hold on to.
Yaaf and the seven others and whatever they were to her and to themselves would have to wait until later, until they were off the island and there was time and space to think about anything other than survival.
For now, she would focus on the list. Asira was confirmed, Vinnah had been crossed out, and Sullha had an entire list of names to vet, as well as others to consider.
Saphira was kind to children and could be trusted, but she was needed in the enclosure because they didn't have enough teachers as it was.
Perhaps Feyla and Mahra, who worked with her in the garden?
And Burda.
Burda was old. Older than most of the women in the enclosure, certainly older than Sullha's mother.
Would she even want to leave?
Sullha wasn't sure she would.
Freedom was a frightening prospect.
Sullha would face it because the alternative was unbearable, and because she had Tomek, who deserved to have choices, and she would face anything for him. But she was nineteen, her body strong, and her mind still malleable. She could adjust to a new world.
Burda was over sixty, maybe even more, and she'd known nothing other than the enclosure. To take her out of everything familiar and place her somewhere she'd never seen, surrounded by strangers, might not be a kindness.
And yet, Burda was a rebel at heart, so the age might not be as big of an obstacle as Sullha thought. She deserved to know that there was a choice, and she could decide if she wanted to make that choice or not.
Sullha's mother was a thornier subject.
She wasn't a rebel. Her mother had given up a long time ago, before Sullha had been old enough to understand what giving up looked like.
She was performing the minimum maintenance required to keep her body going and nothing more.
She had never loved Sullha, or had never been able to, which amounted to the same thing.
But she was her mother, and the thought of leaving her behind on the island felt wrong.
Sullha did not have to decide tonight, but she didn't have much time either.
A week to ten days, that was all she had, and there were many women who still needed to be vetted. She might not have enough time to do that safely.
Tomek's head was lolling against her hand.
She rinsed the last of the soap from his body, lifted him out of the tub, and wrapped him in the towel that she had set on the bench beside her. He was almost asleep already. She carried him back to their room and dressed him in his night clothes without his eyes opening more than twice.
After tucking him into the narrow bed they shared, she lay down beside him. His breathing slowed almost immediately into the deep rhythm of sleep.
Sullha lay awake.
The ache in her chest was still there, settled somewhere behind her sternum, neither growing nor receding.
She closed her eyes and pictured Yaaf the way she had first seen him at the playground, the big soldier with the dead expression that had cracked just enough to let her see her old friend underneath.
She pictured him crouching beside her in the garden.
She pictured him on the bench, his whole body going still when she'd told him she would always be his friend.