Chapter 329: Bad Water
Ashlynn and Heila were led by an obviously excited Aledia to a simple changing room where they were provided with baskets to hold their clothing and simple cotton robes to change into. When it came to their hats, however, even though both women were only wearing their most practical hedge hats, Aledia seemed to grow particularly agitated.
"I promise you," she said as she reverently placed the hats high on a shelf. "No one will dare to touch dese, not so much as de point of a claw will come close to dem," she said. "We don’t have problems with thieving, but if you want, I can hide them away somewhere wit’ a lock, yeah?"
"They’re just hats," Ashlynn said lightly, afraid that her stature was putting too much pressure on the young woman. "It’s good that no one will touch them on the shelf. We don’t need more than that."
"It’s kind of you to say it dat way," Aledia said with a wide, toothy grin before she led the pair of witches outside. "Today, we will refresh and renew your body from de tips of your toes to de top of your head. We start wit’ some good heat to loosen your body and expel all de bad water our bodies hold on to," she said, leading the way to a small wooden shed sitting next to a crackling fire.
"Bad water?" Heila asked, puzzled by the term. "What do you mean by the bad water our bodies hold on to?" Since becoming the Willow Witch, she had become particularly sensitive to the properties of water, whether it was fresh and pure, or stagnant or murky, she could tell without looking as long as the body of water was close enough. But she had yet to feel that there was ’bad water’ within her own body.
"All de hard tings’ in life, dey leave traces in de water of our bodies, yeah?" Aledia said as though it were common sense. "De sweat when our heart shakes wit’ worry, de tears when our loved ones leave us, all dese tings’ and more build up de bad water in our bodies. We get rid of some of it when we sweat, when we cry and all de other times, but always, some’s left behind. It builds up wit’in us, makes the body heavy and de mind slow."
"Sit in here," she said, gesturing to the wooden benches that lined the walls of the wooden shed. "I’ll bring you a basket of hot rocks here soon, and cold, clean water to drink too. You need to keep drinking de cool, good water to sweat out all de bad water in your bodies. If you don’t replace de bad water wit de good, you’ll fall faint, so don’t hold back and drink deep."
To Ashlynn, it sounded strange to attribute the accumulation of stress to a build up of ’bad water’ within the body, but she set aside her discomfort at the idea and decided that it wouldn’t hurt to take the Ancient Clan at their word when they said that this would help.
It was also the exact opposite of what the Church had taught, that a person should bottle up the accumulations of hurts and fears as the pain they carried within their hearts was proof of their struggle over the years of their life.