The Satari throw their heads back and laugh, and their joy rings through the misty woods. I stare at Golmarr, and he winks at me. Then he brushes a quick kiss on my forehead.
As the sun sets and the forest turns from green to an eerie, misty gray, I spot a caravan of brightly painted wagons positioned to form a giant ring around an area not quite so densely wooded as the rest of the forest. As we approach the wagon ring, Golmarr stumbles and nearly drops me, so I swing down from his arms. He leans forward, resting his hands on his knees. His whole body is shaking with exhaustion.
“We’re almost there,” I say, and lift his arm over my shoulders to take some of his weight. Edemond takes his other arm, and we pass between two wagons and enter the Black Blades’ camp.
The air is filled with the smell of onions, meat, and smoke, and nothing has ever smelled better. Children are running about the camp, waving long, colorful ribbons tied to sticks, or they are play-sword-fighting by the light of the cook fires. Men and women are gathered around the fires, turning spits with whole boar attached, and stirring pans filled with browning onions. I stare at the pigs’ crisping skin and want to gag. They look just like Golmarr did after he’d been cooked by the fire dragon.
“Are you well, lass?” Edemond asks.
“Well enough,” I lie. “I’m…just surprised that your men cook.” I peer across Golmarr to Edemond.
He raises one thick, arched eyebrow. “In Satar, the men cooked the food. It is a tradition we brought from our former stone city to the forest. Do the men in Carttown cook?” I shake my head, but I honestly have no idea. “Melisande,” he calls, and waves his hand. A tall, striking woman dressed in a bright orange skirt and a pale green shirt steps away from a cook fire and walks over to us. Two giant loop earrings hang from her earlobes, and her dark hair is twisted into a bun over each ear. Her pale blue eyes take in the sight of Golmarr and me, and her steps slow.
“Who did you bring home with you this time, husband?” she asks Edemond. She purses her lips when her gaze finds my skirt.
“Two lovers who were wandering the forest and in need of food,” Edemond says with a chuckle. “They want to be married tonight.”
“You trust them?” she asks, eyeing Golmarr’s sword.
“Enough to bring them to our camp.”
Melisande nods and cups her hands around her mouth. “Mama, we need you!” she calls. A hunched, smiling woman starts walking toward us. Her hair is like white gossamer that is braided over her ears.
“Mama, my husband found a couple of ragamuffins wandering the woods.” She glances at me sidelong. “He offered to marry them at our feast tonight. Can you help the lass get cleaned up a bit for the ceremony while I get the stone lanterns?”
The woman’s wrinkled cheeks crease with a wide smile, and she clasps her hands to her chest. “Young lovers!” she says. “A wedding! I will take care of her.” She takes my hand in hers and leads me through the smoky clearing toward a small wagon. As we pass a cook fire, she calls for another woman to help us, asking her to fetch a lamp.
The wagon is dark inside compared to the firelit clearing. It smells like tea leaves and spices, and the wooden floor groans and creaks beneath our feet. After a moment, another woman enters carrying an oil lamp, and light fills the small wagon. Dried herbs and plants hang from the wagon’s walls. There is a single, intricately carved stone chair in one corner of the wagon, and a very small bed beside it.
“Sit here, child,” the old woman says, tapping the chair. She dips a cloth in a basin of water and hands it to me. “For your hands and face,” she explains. I scrub my skin, and when the cloth comes away, it is filthy. She rinses it and hands it to me again, and I wash a second time.
Next, she takes a brush to my hair and starts humming as she quickly, but painfully, brushes the tangles from it. When that is done, she gathers the hair around my forehead and above my ears and pulls it back, braiding it behind my head so most of my hair still falls long and thick to my waist. “A traditional Satari wedding braid,” she says. “You have nice, thick hair.”
The woman who brought the lamp steps in front of me and wrinkles her nose. “Take that shirt off so we can dress you in something a little bit…less smoky,” she says. My cold, weak fingers fiddle with the buttons on my shirt. When it is off and I am wearing only my stained camisole, the woman says, “Lift your arms.” I do, and a soft, pale yellow dress is pulled over my arms and head. It has very short sleeves, so my shoulders are mostly bare, and it is too short, reaching just below the middle of my shins. “Slip that ruined skirt off,” the woman says, and I let my skirt and petticoats fall around my ankles.