Chapter 18: The Hot Spring

The cellar door was behind the pantry, and Meiyin had walked past it a dozen times without seeing it.

Bai Ling pushed on a panel of old wood.

It swung inward on a flight of stone steps, and warm air rose out of the dark, smelling of minerals and wet stone.

"Down," Bai Ling said.

Meiyin followed her.

Both of them wore the thick cotton robes from the bathroom, and Bai Ling carried a candle in a brass holder.

At the bottom the steps opened into a low vaulted room cut from pale rock.

In the middle lay a pool, perhaps four meters across, steaming softly.

The water was clear and green-gold, and it gave off a faint glow.

Along the wall stood a bench, a row of unlit stone lamps, and a rack of carved wooden bowls.

Meiyin stopped on the last step.

"This was under the house the whole time?"

"The Su family built over it.

Wanyin's grandfather told her it cured aching joints."

"Did it?"

"It cured mine, once."

Bai Ling set the candle on the bench and turned.

Her face looked younger in the steam, and shy.

"I came here in the first year, before I sealed myself.

I sat in this water and I thought: when she comes back, I will bring her here.

Then you came, and I did not think of that at all."

"What did you think?"

"That I would like to see you with your hair wet."

Meiyin laughed.

Bai Ling stepped close, and untied Meiyin's belt with careful fingers, and the robe fell open.

The warm air touched Meiyin's bare skin.

Bai Ling put her cold hand flat on Meiyin's sternum, as she had on the first night, in the mirror room.

It was not cold now.

It was warm, and slightly damp, and it did not move.

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