CHAPTER 61: 61: THE STRANGER RETURNS III

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Fizz brightened. "Let’s bathe together. We can make bubbles. I can find flowers to make the bark smell go away. It will be a master spirit bonding time."

"Wet clothes will do," John said.

Gael grunted. "As you like. Just do not chase off the buyers."

John turned back to the ledger, but the water’s thin shine tugged at the edge of his sight. He will meet the merchants tomorrow.

A few hours later...

Night laid a quiet hand over the forge and the village beyond it. The last apprentices had gone home, the bellows were silent, and the coals in the heart of the forge glowed like sleepy eyes half open. John sat on the bench by the small office window with his back straight and his hands loosely folded. He could see a slice of the street through the glass, a shuttered door, a stray cat marching like a soldier with important business, and the pale thread of smoke that floated from a neighbor’s chimney. The room smelled of iron and ash and the faint sweetness of cut oak. It had a good smell. It did not cling to him like swamp or rot. It did not pull old memories to the surface. He wished his mind were as tidy as Gael’s neatly stacked tongs on the wall.

He should have slept. He had merchants to meet in the morning, figures to finalize, and a dozen small decisions that would shift the next month of work. Instead, his thoughts paced in circles. They did not circle around money, or magic, or even the Spitter that Gael’s team had put together. They circled around water and the way his chest reacted to it, as if his ribs remembered a language his mind did not want to hear.

After that day he had avoided bathing. He never said it out loud because it sounded foolish when stripped of context. A young man refusing to sit in a warm tub like a child who feared a harmless spider. Yet there was nothing harmless about the way his lungs reacted when the water lifted past his ribs. He had tried to fight it many times over the years. He had stood beside barrels and ponds and told himself he was stronger now. He had gripped the sides and counted to ten like a soldier bracing for pain. He had lowered himself inch by inch, only to feel the same cold hand close around his breath, to hear the same buzzing roar that was not really sound but the echo of a hand at his collar and laughter above the surface. Every attempt ended the same way. His heart kicked. His breath locked. His body decided without him that air had become a rare and expensive thing.

So he did what a practical man does when strength refuses to bend a problem. The incident became a childhood trauma for him. He worked around it. He kept a stack of clothes in his pack and another in any place he called home in the past five years. He warmed a pot and soaked the clothes. He wiped his arms and neck and chest in slow circles, changed the cloth, and did it again. He poured a little water through his hair and combed it, leaning forward so nothing slid down his face. He scrubbed his hands and feet like a careful surgeon. It was not luxury, and no priestess would call it a ritual of renewal, but it kept him clean enough for work and travel. It let him breathe.

He thought of the times he had nearly pushed through it. One night on the road when he had found a clear spring and the moon had made the water look like a sheet of polished steel. He had told himself that strength was his friend now, that he bent metal and heat to his will every day. He knelt, reached out, and touched the surface. The cold walked up his arm with polite feet and then, without warning, sprinted for his throat. He had stood and stepped back with a curse. The frogs had watched him without judgment. He had cleaned with clothes and slept with his back against a tree, angry at a fear that did not care about logic.

It’s a childhood trauma.

He rubbed his thumb against the edge of the bench and tried to steady the shape of his breathing. In, count. Out, count. A trick from an old drillmaster who had believed any problem could be bullied into order by numbers. The breathing helped. It always helped. He set his jaw and decided that this night would pass without argument between body and memory. He would wipe down and sleep. He would be ready for the morning and the neat words merchants liked to use when they pretended that coins were sunshine and not stones.

Suddenly, a soft curl of steam slipped into the room like a curious cat. It tapped his nose and drifted toward the ceiling. He frowned and looked toward the open doorway.

Fizz hovered there with the triumphant air of a general unveiling a siege engine. Behind him sat a deep wooden tub that had not been in that corner an hour ago. It was the kind the smiths used when they had to rinse grit from wounds, broad and low and deep enough to hold a man without complaining. Fresh water brimmed inside it. Steam rose in lazy ribbons. The surface trembled as if the heat were a quiet song.

Fizz beamed. His fur puffed in the moisture so that he resembled a small thundercloud that had decided to become a house pet. He threw his tiny arms wide.

"Behold. A bath worthy of a Circle One mage and his magnificently overworked partner. I have acquired the water. I have heated the water. I have spoken to the water about its new job and it agreed to be kind. Please clap."

John gave him a level look. "Fizz."