Inside, the warmth enveloped us as a stout man with moppy brown hair greeted us. I discovered he was Bran, the Inn Keeper. I watched him exchange pleasantries with Joss with a few slaps on the back. Bran gave a toothy smile to Darren and nodded his head politely to me in greeting. The Inn Keeper’s features were bland and almost instantly forgettable, but his alert expression and hazel eyes belied a wise benefactor.

Bran led us upstairs to two rooms at the end of the hall that were adjoined by a door if unlocked from each side. The room was clean, with a fire in the fireplace already burning, warming the small room. There must have been someone watching us arrive to have been able to get the fire going already.

A blue, hand-woven rug covered the wooden floor and light white curtains over the shuttered windows added a touch of femininity to the room. A single wooden chair, a table, wash stand with a pitcher of water, towel and soap were all the contents of the room. My gaze drifted to the bed pushed against the wall, the soft clean mattress with a blue flowered quilt beckoned to me. A knock at the hallway door kept me from diving toward the bed.

It was Joss. “Bran’s wife Mara will have food ready for us as soon as you’re settled in.”

I looked at the bed longingly and then back to Joss. My sigh of remorse was interrupted by my growling stomach. “Okay, I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. They don’t serve horse here, do they?” I joked. Joss grinned out of the side of his mouth, his dimple showing.

We went downstairs to a simple spread of more bread, this time homemade with honey drizzled on top, beef stew with vegetables and shepherd’s pie. I dove into the pie with a vengeance, eating, I believe, what attained to be about as much as a horse.

Darren kept giving me worried glances, but I ignored them and reached for more food. I ate a full loaf of the honey bread and finished with a pint of spiced cider, before Darren’s jovial mood turned somber.

“Thalia, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How did you escape?”

Before I could answer Darren, a loud crash erupted from the kitchen, followed by a squeal of delight.

“JOSS! JOSS is here? Why didn’t someone tell me sooner?” Out ran a very beautiful girl with a sea of golden blonde tresses. She ran right to Joss and almost knocked him over out of his chair with her exuberant hug. Her green-gold eyes sparkled with happiness and she had the comeliest spattering of freckles across her nose. She was curvy in all of the places I wasn’t, and it made me all the more aware of my thin, half-starved state.

“I didn’t know you were coming this way. I would have been here earlier, diligently awaiting your arrival. Why didn’t you tell me?” she pouted. “I wouldn’t have been out running errands for Mama.”

“Hush, Vienna,” Bran berated his daughter. “Don’t bother them while they’re eating. Let them finish. In fact,” he glared at her, “go get them more spiced cider.”

She flew from her chair in excitement and returned shortly with more cider. She fluttered around Joss like a bee searching for nectar. I couldn’t blame her, from what I’ve been told, most humans react this way around the Denai. They are subconsciously drawn to the beautiful race and tended to fawn over them.

“The Dancing Swine has a fantastic singer performing tonight. I hear that one song will bring you to tears with joy. Will you escort me? Father won’t let me go hear him unless someone comes with me. And he trusts you.” She looked at him with such a pleading, angelic face that it actually made my stomach drop with displeasure; no one could resist someone so beautiful.

Was I jealous? I wasn’t sure because just then I realized my stomach wasn’t reacting to the jealousy but to the loads of meat and food I just ate. I glanced at Joss and paled, threw my hand up to my mouth and dashed for the door.

I barely made it to the side of the inn before losing all of my dinner. Tears slid down my face in embarrassment. I started to hiccup and cry at the same time so I pressed my forehead against the cool wood of the inn. I didn’t want to go back inside. I didn’t want Joss to see me like this or the beautiful Vienna. They would pity me, I knew it.

Darren came out to get me a few minutes later. He handed me a tankard filled with liquid. I sniffed at it warily not wanting to have any more spiced cider.

“It’s just water,” he reassured me.

I rinsed out my mouth and spat while Darren disappeared around the side of the inn. He came back shortly with a bag of wood chips. He spread it over my embarrassing display of overeating and then returned the sack.

“Come on. Let’s go in.”

“I don’t want to.” I sounded childish even to my own ears.

“Don’t worry, they’re gone.”

Not really sure if he was referring to Joss and Vienna, or Bran and his wife, either way I didn’t want to face anyone. I scurried in and raced up the stairs to my room at the end of the hall. I looked at the clean bed in despair, not wanting to crawl into it wearing my dirty clothes, but I was too embarrassed to ask for a tub or borrow clothes from Joss.

I was debating what to wash first with my small bowl of water when a knock came at my door. I opened it to see a small boy about ten or twelve who resembled Bran, rolling a small wooden tub into my room. He left only to return a few minutes later with buckets of water from the well. Bran’s wife Mara, a plump blonde woman with a kind smile, followed with kettles of hot water to add to the cold water to make it warm. She seemed quiet and reserved, not outgoing at all like her daughter. She brought with her a clean pair of slightly worn boys brown pants, socks, black boots and a white top. They must have belonged to the boy who brought the tub.

“Darren said not to give you skirts because you had more riding to do.” Mara spoke before handing me a folded handkerchief. I unwrapped the handkerchief to find a wood comb, a simple blue ribbon and a bar of sweet smelling soap.

I started to cry at the simple gesture and I grabbed Mara in a desperate hug and released all of the hurt and anguish that I held deep inside. Her yellow shift turned a deeper amber color as my tears soaked her shoulder. She gave me a strong, reassuring hug that only a mother knows how to give.

“There, there, dearie,” she rubbed my back. “Having to travel with men all of the time must be hard. Now, I know that Joss and Darren are good wholesome people, but if they mistreat you or hurt your feelings you come and get Mara now, you hear? I’ll knock some sense into them.” She looked at me with a determined gaze and I saw some of the spitfire she had from her youth flow into her face. She was definitely Vienna’s mother.

I wouldn’t consider my time floating in a river unconscious to count toward a real bath because I was still filthy. Mara stayed and waged a personal war against the layers of dirt caked on me. She scrubbed me raw and every red spot that I saw on my skin was a reminder that I would soon be clean from the taint of the prison.

She left and came back shortly with a jar of foul smelling liquid. Working it through my hair, Mara casually commented that it would kill any bugs living in it. Lice! I had lice! The itchiness that plagued us in the cells became nothing more than a slight annoyance compared to the beatings and torture we received regularly.

The burning sensation on my scalp gave me relief that there was no way anything could still be alive. My nose and eyes started to burn and I began to question Mara’s sanity of using it on a person’s body and I told her so. After calling her son, Danny, they carted water up and started the bath process all over again. But this time she let me soak the soreness out of my muscles.