You’re too old for this, I thought. “Let me look,” I said.
I bent down and lifted the bed skirt. And there it was. A dusty, flowery chamber pot.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
What is it?
“You pee in it.”
Nori’s nose wrinkled.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Let’s see! I want to see!
I heaved the pot out from under the bed, and we both jumped back. The entire bowl was a dusty network of tunneled cobwebs, so thick we couldn’t see the bottom.
“Hell no,” I muttered, pushing the thing away from us with my foot into the corner of the room.
I ran to my side of the bed and found another just like it. Also covered in cobweb tunnels, only mine had torn, revealing the husk of a giant house spider, long dead.
“Bloody hell.”
My chamber pot joined Nori’s far, far away from us.
I can’t sleep if there are spiders in the bed.
“They’re gone. Just climb in and sleep, okay? It was a long walk.”
I don’t remember.
Of course she bloody didn’t. She had been sleeping without a care in the world for most of it. I, on the other hand, had felt her full weight, and my body was screaming for rest. Added now to my burning feet: a throbbing toe.
“Go to bed,” I muttered, climbing in beside her.
Before I even fell asleep, she was drooling on my chest.
I snapped awake.
I needed to pee.
Damn. I really needed to pee.
Nori had rolled over to her side of the bed. Dead to the world. She would sleep through a tsunami if allowed to.
I squeezed my legs together and shoved my hand in between.
Nonononoooooo—
I was too comfy to get out of bed. The air on my face was an arctic blast, and the idea of pulling my duvet back was cringe-worthy. But my bladder constricted, threatening me, and I didn’t dare call its bluff.
I left the bedroom on the balls of my feet, leaving the light off for Nori’s comfort, but as soon as I was in the hall, my body greeting a glacial wall of frosty air, I felt up and down the walls for a light switch. Nothing.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger.”
It was freezing. Even the floor felt like rough ice under my toes.
I knew that the bathroom was at the end of the hall, but there was no toilet in that room. I had no idea if there even was a toilet here. To say the idea of having to go squat outside was both ridiculous and unappealing at this point was an understatement.
I felt the darkness with my hand; it was as thick as blood pudding. Managing to get to the staircase and down without breaking my neck, I wandered blindly, taking slow and tentative steps, more convinced now than ever that I would just have to go in the middle of the floor in some random part of the house. All around me, the manor creaked and expanded, groaned and sighed.
“You and me both,” I muttered.
And then a lantern appeared, and Cath’s face behind it.
“Oh, Silla! What are you doing up at a time like this?”
“I… I needed to go to the bathroom. Couldn’t find it.”
Cath laughed. “Oh, dear, you poor girl! I didn’t even think—come, let me show you.”
And she chuckled the whole way there. We went into the kitchen, to a room off to the side. A tiny room, the size of a wash-closet, with a sink outside on the left-hand wall, oval shaped and more like a small fountain than a faucet.
“Here you go,” Cath said, smiling. She left me with the lantern and closed the door.
The room was big enough for the toilet and nothing else. The wallpaper gave me chills: a repeated pattern of a boy drawing water out of a well in a sunny pasture. He was like a cherub with a lamb in his arms—and he looked like he was going to glance up at me and grin at any moment.
I was on the toilet, midstream, when I felt movement in the bowl. At first, I ignored it, but then I felt smoothness, tickling between my legs. I jolted with fright and looked down.
And screamed.
Scales, shining under the lamp, two territorial eyes—cold-blooded and cunning—and a forked tongue, darting out from between my legs.
I screamed and screamed, launching myself off the toilet and slipping in my own urine, which was still coming, and scuttling back on my butt like a terrified spider.
The snake just sat there on the rim of the bowl, its head resting. Tongue tasting the air. Eyes watching me. It looked bored.
“What is it?” Cath cried, pulling the door open onto the scene. “Oh, my goodness!” She breathed heavily for a moment, and then smiled. “Look at that! My mother used to tell stories about snakes in the toilets in this place. I never believed her.” She laughed and took up the lantern. “Maybe we could keep him, huh? Name him Henry—or Peek-a-Boo!” She chortled some more. “We could let him live in this toilet, and have him as a party joke for guests.” Her laugh was intense—hawhawhawhaw!—while I lay in pee and stared at the thing and then at her.
“Oh, Silla—are you all right?”
I nodded, unable to speak, for the adrenaline draining from my body.