“Take this soap and give your clothes a scrub in that stream over there,” Nina instructed the children. “Then I’ll give each of you three small coppers, plus another two if you get them good and clean. Next, I want you to wash yourselves. Take care to get the roots of your hair. You’ll have fleas and lice. I’ll give you another five small coppers for that—so if you do all of it, you’ll get one big copper.”
The children all set off excitedly for the river. The water was shallow, not even reaching their knees at its deepest point, and the younger ones immediately began splashing and playing. Panther had to coax them with reminders of the big copper coins waiting for them before they finally got to work washing their clothes, then do it again when they returned to playing as soon as they were done. By the time they finished washing themselves, their clothes were mostly dry. Ragged as they were, once the children were dressed, they were barely recognizable.
They set off back to the shack, singing “Big copper coins! Big copper coins!” to their own peculiar rhythm.
“Big copper coins! Big...?”
The singing died away as the children stared, dumbstruck.
Their shack was built from scrap wood—just walls, a floor, and a thatched roof. That was what should have been in front of them. But something had happened to it.
“Wh-What’s that house doin’ here?”
The house used large trees from the forest as posts, with a floor suspended around thirty centimeters above the ground and a door in the entrance. The walls were made from tightly fitted wooden slats that would keep out drafts. There was even a proper roof.
What was more, there were two such buildings. The old scrap wood had been used in the construction, so they couldn’t exactly be called new, but they were both sparkling clean.
“Phew,” Tien sighed, wiping sweat from her brow. “This is easy if you have the wood.”
“N-No it ain’t!” Panther said before he could help himself.
“Yes, it is. Chi simply followed Nina’s instructions.”
At this, Panther remembered that Tien had effortlessly thrown a grown man. But that wasn’t the same as building a house.
“Nina told Chi how to do all of it,” Tien finished.
Just then, Nina emerged from the house.
“Ah, Panther! Welcome home!”
“B-Blimey! It’s a house! A house!” exclaimed one of the boys.
“Two houses!” a girl corrected him. “And this one’s mine!”
“This one’s mine!”
“Big copper coins!”
Whooping and cheering, the children all rushed toward the doors.
“Wipe the mud off your feet before you go in,” Nina called out to them.
Panther still couldn’t quite wrap his head around all this.
“Um, wait up, miss. Aren’t you a maid? Them that work in fancy mansions...?”
“That’s right,” Nina said.
“So how come you know how to build a house?”
“Any maid could do this!”
Panther cocked his head.
Was that true? Was this really normal for a maid?
His head tilted farther and farther to the side, but he didn’t get any closer to an answer.
“Anyway, I see you all washed yourselves properly. You’ve done an excellent job.”
“It’s nuthin’, really...” he muttered.
Nina giggled softly, then said, “I’ve cooked some food, so why don’t we all eat together?”
Panther’s eyes went wide as his nose picked up the aroma wafting out from the house—and it wasn’t just the smoke from the fire. His stomach growled.
“I smell grub!” shouted a boy as he came barrelling out of the house. The other children poured out after him. There was no holding them back now.
They all tucked into a meal of soup and bread in the new houses using new bowls and plates—of course, these, too, had been procured by Nina. The soup was a simple affair of simmered vegetables and a little meat, but for the children, it was a feast. They devoured bowl after bowl, then, bellies bulging, they all fell asleep in a heap.
Nina and Tien had made two houses so that there’d be one for the boys and one for the girls, yet here they were, all in the same spot. This was how they made it through life, Nina realized. By always sticking together. She couldn’t help but smile.
As she was washing the dishes, Panther came up to her.
“Hey, miss...” he said. “What’re you doin’ all this for? I heard there’s bad folk who round up kids to sell ’em off. Is...that what you’re gonna do?”
“Of course not,” Nina said, turning around to look at him. Panther didn’t notice the look of distress that flashed across her face.
He must have spent his whole life always having to distrust any kindness offered by strangers. Here in the south, they might not starve or freeze, but that was the best they could hope for. They’d never been cared for, never loved, never shown unconditional kindness by any grown-ups before. They’d kept themselves alive without any outside help.
“Are they all asleep?” Nina said.
“Yeah. Been ages since I saw ’em sleepin’ all peaceful like that.”
“Panther, since you seem to be the leader around here, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Th-There is...?” he said, his hackles rising at the sudden shift in Nina’s tone.
“First of all, you should know that I’m no more than a visitor here to see the sights of Côte Sud.”
“Huh? Really? You mean you don’t work for some bigwig in town?”
“No. And before long, I’ll leave to go to a different town.”
Panther’s expression hardened. “So all the food, the houses—this is just ’cause you felt sorry for us?!”
“That’s not it.”
“It is too! I thought you were different from the other grown-ups!”
“Like I said, that’s not it.”
Panther turned away from her angrily, but Nina went over and took his hand.
“We threw these houses up very quickly,” she said.
Panther turned back to meet her eyes, vaguely aware as he did so that these houses weren’t the sort of thing you just “threw up.”
“That means that at some point, they’ll need repairs. We used wood and a lot of rope, and that will decay quickly in this humid climate.”
“So then we’ll have to go back to how things were?”
“That’s right.”
Misery filled Panther’s eyes. They’d lose the new houses they’d only just gotten. They’d lose Nina, who gave them delicious meals and copper coins.
“So what I want to do,” Nina went on, squeezing his hand tighter, “is to find a better way for all of you to live before that happens.”
“Huh...?”
“I want to teach you how you can make money and earn a proper living for yourselves. Will you let me do that?”
It was admirable how well the children had managed on their own, but as soon as one of them suffered a serious injury, or fell ill, there’d be nothing they could do. Nina wanted to make them safe and secure. Perhaps it was an arrogant wish, but it came from a place of real care. She wanted to show them how much she cared for them, and she hoped they would trust her.