Of Soot And Cinders

XVII

A|N: To Scandinavian!
That's the answer to the joke in the last chapter of you didn't catch it.

SOOT

I lugged the bucket behind me, using all my muscle strength to stay righted on the muddy ground. The mud was up to my ankles in most areas, though I'd found pits where it went deeper. I was sure by now that my feet and ankles were torn to shreds, skin scrapped away by hidden rocks, and holes in the webbing of my toes and soles of my feet where I'd impaled them on jagged sticks.
The flooding had displaced most of the castle grounds. There were still large areas where water pooled and sodden clumps of grass that had been torn up. Any trees that had fallen had been the first to be moved, piled by the castle wall to be chopped for kindling later.

Most of the castle staff had been called to help clean the grounds. The kitchen staff was free—of course—but the stable boys and smiths had been the first snatched by the palace guard to help clean.
I was sure that Florence and Nightingale would come after me later to release their anger at the situation. I had seen them trudging through the mud like everyone else.
And somehow a few dryads and pixies at the palace for the celebrations were helping as well. I had paused once in the cover of the trees to watch the dryads pull water from the mud, leaving dry paths of packed dirt, and watched the pixies move heavy boulders with their magic.

My foot slipped, the movement causing my stomach to bottom out before I caught my footing, pulling my attention back to my job.
Because the stable boys had all been called to clean up I had been given their job of watering the horses. At first I hadn't minded terribly. It wasn't like I was ever around the beasts and I enjoyed hobbling past each of their stalls and admiring them—with a barrier between us of course—and because no one had been in the stables I had even been able to use the pump that was generally used for the horses without getting scolded...
For an hour or so...
But three of the older stable boys had returned to take a break, get some food and water from their quarters which were attached to the stables. They caught me with a bucket half full of water and using all my weight to push the pump down.

I went back to using the stream after they poured the half full bucket of water on me and shoved my bucket so hard into my chest that I fell back in the mud.

I was on the last trough now. My only instructions for the day had been to give all the horses water. Maybe the lightest load I'd ever been tasked with handling.

As I lifted the bucket high enough to pour into the last horses drinking bucket I thought back to this morning.

I'd woken up in my bed surprisingly enough. I was shivering and naked under the one blanket I had, and my feet had been chained to the bed posts. It was strange though, not waking up on whatever floors I had been in the middle of scrubbing, with little dirt on my small frame.
Apparently someone had found me half sunk in the mud in the early morning after the rain had stopped and dragged me to the slave quarters. I'd been cleaned by several buckets of water poured over my unconscious form before being chained up.

Nothing else had been said to me, but I knew that nobody was going to bring up what Florence had done, by all means he had the right to throw me to the floods.

I began slipping and sliding back to the slave quarters.

I'd had a funny dream though, before waking up. In my dream I saw a monster. He was as tall as twenty of me and his eyes glowed umber like the harvest moon. And there was no rain in my dream, just me and the beast under the endless sky. He curled his massive body around me and the growling in his chest healed all the wounds on my body.