Cheery afternoon sunlight filled the washroom as Fia dunked dresses into the sudsy water of the wash, the dry fabric keeping pockets of air which needed to be poked down into the murky depths of the tub. She hummed an old lullaby and stirred everything with the laundry stick, then stuck her hand in and gave it a swirl. Drying her hand, she retrieved a boiler pot from the stove and poured in more hot water to her satisfaction.

“Well I must say,” Larna observed from over her washboard, “you’re the most useful apprentice I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you!” Fia laughed, glad that her unglamorous, “useful skills” were appreciated by the cook.

Larna’s strong forearms bunched as she twisted a blue shirt into a knot, the water rushing out of it. Then with a flick of her wrist the shirt straightened with a snap, now merely damp and ready for the line.

“Certainly better than the last one.” The curve of her top lip showed contempt. “That dwarf.”

Calima came in with an armful of sheets.

“Yes!” She laughed. “Sintor. I haven’t thought about him in a long time!”

“The longer the better,” Larna muttered.

“A dwarf?” Fia’s eyes were bright. She sensed there was a good story here. “The Olayins had a dwarf apprentice?”

“And such a mean one, too,” Larna said. “I’ve never seen anyone so just plain nasty inside.” She fished up another shirt. “He was short, even for a dwarf, and maybe that made him meaner, but there’s no excuse for that behavior. He was thirty-five years old! I know dwarves mature late, but that is ridiculous!”

She pounded the shirt. “He was always picking on Calima and me. Oh, he was all fine and proper whenever grownups were around…but whenever they weren’t, he was making mischief, the kind that we couldn’t retaliate against. We were only…” She paused and thought back. “I was six and she was seven, though I was taller. Always have been taller,” she mused.

Calima laughed and left again.

“Like what?” Fia persisted.

“Well, one time I remember distinctly.” She loaded her wash water with fresh laundry. “Calima and I were building a miniature house. My father and her father cut out the tiny wooden pieces and we were to put them together to make a replica of Olayin house.”

She scrubbed a tunic against itself in the sudsy water. Fia waited.

“I wasn’t too good at that sort of thing,” Larna went on, “always had a little less patience than Calima. But I loved that little house, and worked hard on it… I was so proud of each little rafter and windowsill. Sintor would come by and make fun of it… and us. Just taunting. Every cruel thing he could think of… and he had a pretty good imagination! We tried to ignore him, but he got under our skin.”

“What happened?”

“Well, we finished it. I was so proud. Our fathers praised our craftsmanship, and it was a pretty thing… all gleaming golden pine and white poplar. It was perfect.” She swished a tunic in and out of the water.

“After our fathers were out of earshot Sintor came around and started jeering. I had had enough. I stood up as tall as I could and crossed my arms…” Larna’s back straightened and her chin came out, and Fia could see the defiant six-year-old looking imperious. “And I said: ‘We are of the House of Olayin, and what house are you from? I’ve never heard of any. Besides, I’d be very careful of what I said to people who were taller than you!’”

Fia’s eyebrow went up. A strong insult to anyone of family, especially, she had heard, a dwarf. “What’d he do?”

“Well, he got all purple in the face and I thought he was going to choke. Then he rushed at our little house and smashed it with his fists. He threw it onto the floor and stomped on it until there was nothing but splinters.” The cook stopped and leaned her hands on the edge of the tub, her eyes still regretting the beautiful little house, her one artistic achievement.

“What did you do?” the girl asked breathlessly.

“Nothing.” Larna came back from the past. “I did nothing. Calima shrieked and then screamed, with floods of tears. But I just stood there, so mad, so angry, that it throttled me. I couldn’t move. He finished his tantrum and dashed up the stairs, my eyes burning holes in his back.” She let out a long breath. “I hated him more than anything or anyone ever in my whole life.”

Fia turned back to her tub, submerging the dresses and then wringing them out, the water rushing in and out, carrying away the dirt.

“Here’s the last, then,” Calima said cheerfully, dumping more sheets on the table.

“What did your fathers do after that, Larna?” Fia asked.

“There wasn’t much you could do, not to him. He was so sour, he wouldn’t mind anybody. Calima’s grandfather spoke to him severely, but it was just like speaking to a stone. Soon he went away and we never saw him again.” She thumped the tangled cloth in her hand. “And never-ever would be too soon!”

“He was a strange one, for certain,” Calima mused. “I was never quite sure why he came.”

“Wouldn’t it be to learn the trade?” Fia inquired.

Calima looked up from her sorting. “Well, that’s what you would think, but… but it didn’t seem like he did. Of course,” she looked at her friend, “we were only little girls then, but I remember Father said that Sintor never applied himself to the lessons. Strange.”  She pursed her lips and wrinkled her brow at the tangled sheets. She shrugged. “Always pouring over the library…”

Larna harrumphed and stiffened her lips. “And scribbling on his precious notes.”

“Notes?”

“Yes. Who knows what they were about.” she shrugged. “Written in weird symbols they were, dwarvish, I imagine.”

“Larna!” Calima looked up. “How would you know? Sintor guarded those notes closer than life itself.”

Larna lifted her eyebrows and gave her nothing.

“Really, Larna.” Calima stepped away from the sheets, tipped her head to one side and leveled her blue eyes like lances at her old friend. “You’re not telling me something.”

Larna shrugged as if in nonchalance, but Fia could see that there was a long-ago laugh building up inside the old cook. Fia quickly put the boiler pot back on the stove and hurried back to her post, watching for the reveal.

“La-ar-na.” Calima drew out the name as she must have done when the two were children.

“Oh, fine!” said the cook. “I saw one.”

Calima’s silvery brows shot up and her eyes didn’t give an inch. “How?”

Larna’s lips were twitching into a secretive smirk. “I took it.”

Fia caught the gleam in Larna’s eyes. She was not a one to be crossed lightly.

“When?” Calima demanded, shocked after all these years. “How?”

“When he broke our little house… I decided I had to get back at him. Well, no one else would!” She snorted. “There was only one thing that he loved as much as we loved that house, and that was his notes.”

“But how did you do it?”

“He wasn’t looking all the time! I slipped in when he was out and I saw one lying on his table. I knew it was my chance, and grabbed it.”

“But weren’t you terrified of him? I was!”

“Of course I was! But bullies can’t get away with stuff like that just because of the fear they give everybody else. Oh, I knew that if he found out he would find a way to make me pay so dearly that my life wouldn’t be worth living! So I made sure nobody knew I took it and that nobody, ever, would find it… not even accidentally.” She reached into the wash water and pulled up another tunic. With a deft twist she sent the water gushing out of it, and Fia wondered if she liked to pretend it was the dwarf’s neck.

“And you never told me?” Calima asked, astonished at this secret her friend had guarded.

“Well, we were terrified of him, like you said. And I knew how easy it was for a thing like that to get out, so I never even whispered it to the trees. As soon as I had it out of that room my knees started to shake and I was certain I’d be found out. I wanted to run and put it back, but I knew I’d not get another chance at it, and besides, I’d gotten clean away with it, but there was no telling who might see me putting it back. If nobody but me knew, nobody but me could ever tell, and I told myself I never would. And I didn’t.” She plunged the tunic in again.

“Where?” Fia asked. “Where do you hide something so that no one will ever find it?”

Larna leaned closer. “I folded it up and stuck it in behind a joist joint in the back of the barn mow. Nobody ever found it.”

“So, it’s still there?”

Larna pulled the tunic out to the water and set to work on it.

“No,” she said. “I left it there so determinedly that even I forgot about it after a few years. I must have been sixteen when I was searching for a hen’s secret nest up there. Then I remembered it and checked. Sure enough, there it was… and since Sintor was long gone, I pulled it out and put it in my pocket. It rode around in there for a while, and then I put it away.”

“And you still didn’t tell me?” Calima said.

“Oh, Calima,” Larna replied. “You were busy thinking of a certain young cousin-lad I could mention; whenever you weren’t in serious study with your father. And there wasn’t much time for fooling around anymore. Besides, it was something just I had known about for so long, it seemed best to keep it that way.”

“Well, I never!” Calima exclaimed. She shook out a sheet and shook her head. “I never heard of such a thing.”

“See, there you go being disapproving!” Larna pounced. “At my age I can stand it, but there was a time I was more susceptible to your opinions, Calima Olayin.”

“Do you still have it, Larna?” Fia asked.

She looked up. “Yes. I suppose I do.”

“Could I see it sometime? Real dwarvish…” The girl’s eyes sparkled.

“You can read dwarvish, Fia?” Calima asked.

“No.” She shook her head with a rueful smile. “But Raylor has talked about it; he studied it a little at one time. I’d like to look at it, if I might.”

“Of course, Fia.” Larna nodded approvingly. Part of her recognized the ring of excitement in Fia’s tone, and was mollified that the sharing of her long-held secret had been met with enthusiasm by at least one member of her audience. “I can find it for you later.”

“Well, I must say, Fia,” Calima calmly observed, “with you here, it sure is more exciting doing the laundry!”

Later that evening Larna handed Fia a piece of folded parchment. Fia’s eyes scanned the dwarvish runes as she unfolded it, but they were as mysterious to her as if they had been a secret language of the trees.

“I don’t recognize these,” she said, looking up. “The ones Raylor showed me were very different.”

“Hm…” Larna peered at them, too. “Can’t make any sense out of them myself either.”

“There are dwarves in Gemtown, Larna,” Andro offered from his place by the fire. He was repairing a chair leg and now tried it for steadiness. “Why don’t you ask one of them?”

Larna looked at him contemplatively. “Well, I never was going to show it to anybody… before. But…” She thought about it. Now that the subject had come up she did wonder what the secretive note had to say.

“Might we, Larna?” Fia asked. The hint of excitement in her voice swayed the cook.

“I don’t see why not,” Larna decided. “Next time Andro goes down, you and I, Fia, will go with him.”

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