‘A bit of a rub would be marvellous, thanks. And before I sleep.’
‘I’ll be back with some food.’
Tenna thought of the bathing room in her parents’ station and grinned. Nothing to compare with this, though she’d always thought her station was lucky to have a tub so long you could lie out flat in it: even the tallest runners could. But you had to keep the fire going under the tank all the time to be sure there was enough for when a bath was needed. Not like this – the water already hot and you only needing to step into the tub. The herbs scented the steamy water, making it feel softer against her skin. She lay back again.
She was nearly asleep when Penda returned with a tray containing klah, fresh-baked bread, a little pot of, appropriately enough, stickleberry preserve and a bowl of porridge.
`Messages’ve already been handed over to them they was sent to so you can sleep good, knowing the run’s well ended.’
Tenna consumed her meal, down to the last scrap. Penda was making quite a mixture with the massage oils and the runner inhaled the scent of them. Then Tenna climbed on the table, letting her body go limp while Penda used a tweezer on the slivers still caught in her flesh. Penda counted as she deposited the wicked hairs. Nine, all told. She applied more medication and the last of the itching and discomfort vanished. Tenna sighed. Then Penda soothed tired muscles and tendons. Her touch was sure but gentle. She did announce there were more punctures on the backs of Tenna’s arms and legs and proceeded to go at them with the tweezers to remove the slivers. That done, her motions became more soothing and Tenna relaxed again.
‘There y’are. Just go along to the third door down on your left, Tenna,’ Penda said softly when she had finished.
Tenna roused enough from the delightful, massage-induced stupor and wrapped the big towel tightly around her chest. Like most runner females, she didn’t have much of a bust, but that was an advantage.
‘Don’t forget these,’ Penda said, shoving the laces of her running shoes at her. ‘Clothes’ll be clean and dry when you wake.’
‘Thanks, Penda,’ Tenna said sincerely, astonished that she’d been drowsy enough to forget her precious shoes.
She padded down the hall in the thick anklets that Penda had slipped on her feet and pushed in the third door. Light from the corridor showed her where the bed was straight across the narrow space, against the wall. Closing the door, she made her way to it in the dark. Dropping the towel, she leaned down to feel for the edge of the quilt she’d seen folded on the foot of the bed. She pulled it over her as she stretched out. Sighed once and fell asleep.
Good-natured laughter and movement down the hall roused her. Someone had half-opened the glowbasket so she saw her own clothes, clean, dry and neatly folded on the stool where she’d dropped her running shoes. She realized she hadn’t even taken off the anklets before she got into bed. She wriggled her toes in them. No tenderness there. Her hands were stiff but cool so Penda’d gotten out all the slivers. The skin of her left arm and leg was stiff though and she threw back the quilt and tried to see the injuries. She couldn’t but there was a little too much heat in the skin on the back of her left arm and her right leg for her liking. Five sort of sore spots she couldn’t really check at all other than identifying them as `sore’. And, when she checked her legs, two bad red bumps on her thigh, one in the left calf and two on the fleshy part of her right leg by the shin bone. She had suffered more hurt than she’d realized. And stickle slivers could work their way through your flesh and into your blood. One got to your heart and you could die from it. She groaned and rose. Shook out her legs, testing the feel of her muscles, and, thanks to Penda’s massage, they didn’t ache. She dressed and then carefully folded the quilt, placing it just as she’d found it on the bed.