Chapter 17: A Matter of Physiology

Today, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I could move under my own power. It was a strange, forgotten sensation. Counting my time in my previous life, ever since I had contracted that monstrous illness, I had been confined to a hospital bed, eventually becoming completely immobile. By that measure, I hadn't properly walked in over two months. My legs, it seemed, had forgotten their purpose. My first steps were clumsy and tentative, like a newborn foal's, and I stumbled so much that Jared, watching with worried eyes, kept reaching out to steady me.

I shuffled to the entrance of the alcove and stood on the edge of the stone platform, staring down into the abyss of the canal. The water was a murky, opaque brown, its surface coated with a suspicious, iridescent film of oil that swirled with the sluggish current. A strange, metallic, and deeply foul stench rose from it, an assault on the senses. This wasn't a river; it was an open sewer, the city's churning guts. The memory of that water passing my lips last night, the water he had just thrown a corpse into, sent a wave of violent nausea through me. Could there truly be some curative property in this filth? My modern mind screamed in denial. It was impossible.

And then, as if my situation weren't humiliating enough, a new, and far more pressing, biological urgency made itself known. Last night, I had forced myself to drink half a pot of hot water. Parula’s frail, small body, I was discovering with dawning horror, did not have a large capacity. To put it plainly, and to my utter mortification, I needed to relieve myself. And the most critical, terrifying issue was that I was now in the body of a girl. How, in the name of all that was holy, was that even supposed to work? I understood the basic mechanics, of course. You squat, and nature takes its course, much like for a boy, only… different. But where, in this subterranean hellscape, was one supposed to find a privy?

“Jared,” I whispered, my cheeks burning with a shame so intense it was almost as bad as the fever. “I… I need the privy.” It was humiliating to have to ask someone else about such a private, basic human function.

 “Oh? Well, go on then,” he said with a casual shrug, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

“But… where is the privy?” I pressed, my voice tight with desperation.

 “A public one?” he said, looking genuinely confused by the question. “I don’t usually bother with ‘em. Besides, we’re new to this factory district. Just find a quiet spot and piss in the canal, can’t you?”

I knew he would say something like that. What else could I expect from an orphan of the slums, a boy raised in filth and desperation? Of course he would simply find a tree or a dark corner. The foul stench I remembered from MacDuff’s territory was thick with the ammonia tang of stale urine. And the thought of adding to the filth of the very same canal I had drunk from last night… Ugh! The revulsion was overwhelming. To drink from it one night and piss in it the next? This was the ecology of hell itself. Who knew what that pot of water had contained? It could have been a vile alchemical brew of every foul substance imaginable. I couldn’t think about it anymore. I had drunk it, and I was still alive. I just had to make a silent, solemn vow to myself: I would never, ever drink that river water again, not if I was dying of thirst.

And as for just "finding a spot"... I couldn't do it. It wasn’t because I was now a girl, a fact I was still struggling to process. It was because I was, until a few days ago, a modern person from a civilized world. Relieving oneself in public was an uncivilized act, a line I simply couldn't cross. Jared was initially nonchalant, but as I stood there, staring at him with what I hoped were wide, pleading, tear-filled eyes, my silence a form of stubborn, desperate protest, he finally seemed to understand. With an exasperated sigh, he went to ask one of the neighbours, a woman stirring a pot over a smoking fire.

“I asked around,” he said upon returning. “There’s a latrine the factory workers built, for common use. Up past the third conduit. You want to go there?” 

“Yes!” I nodded eagerly, a wave of relief washing over me. Then, a thought struck me, a cold spike of fear, and I grabbed his sleeve. “Come with me!” I didn’t know where the latrine was, so of course I needed him to lead the way. But more than that, his presence would ward off trouble, the unwanted stares and advances of the other denizens of this dark place. Under the pressure of my clinging fingers and my most pathetic, doe-eyed expression, he reluctantly agreed. On my first full day in this new skin, I had discovered my first pathetic, wretched piece of magic: the art of the pleading gaze, the power of feigned helplessness, and the dark skill of wrapping a boy around my little finger. The speed of human adaptation, I thought with a flicker of self-loathing, was truly remarkable. What strange, manipulative things I was learning in my quest for simple dignity.

And so, my first true step in actively exploring this alien world, my grand adventure into this new life, began where all great epics do: with a trip to the latrine.