Book One – Chapter 18

By the time he scrambled to pick up the slider and jam it back into its slot, the water was everywhere. It ran from the barrel through the mess of feathers and bandages, all the way to the door, where it began seeping through the gap beneath. Yu threw every available towel against the door and onto the floor. That at least stopped the worst of it. Essentially, he had buried his entire disaster under a mound of wet cloth.

Yu wiped his face with his wing. For a moment, he listened.

He had missed the rest of the conversation, though from what he heard now, Bubs must have refused the reading again. They did not talk now. From the sound of it, the shaman was walking around and doing more potion stuff for the human.

Yu looked down, as if that would make him hear them better, or even see them move, through the floor. All he saw was his mess. He had thought it could not get worse, after how he left the room when done with the burns, but here he was again. To make it somewhat better, Yu had this thought of draining the barrel. That way, if someone else wanted to use it later, it would not spill right over again. But there did not seem to be any other mechanism or pipe to let the water out. Unlike the toilet, which drained directly, the barrel offered no obvious release. Maybe you had to empty it by hand? Surely not. Surely no one would scoop out this whole thing ladle by ladle.

Well, maybe they normally did not have to. Because normally, people did not shove their dirty, burnt and bloodied wings into it.

Maybe there was a stopper at the very bottom? Yu leaned over the barrel, squinting past the rippling reflection of his own face to see the base. It was hard to tell whether the faint irregularities down there were just discolorations and uneven stonework or some kind of hidden cover that could be lifted or slid aside.

As Yu searched, the Yu in the water watched him just as intently. He looked very disturbed —

Why?

Yu stopped. He looked up, at the wall in front of him.

Why was he doing this?

What the fuck was he doing right now?