"Yes, Master," she said. I liked it, too. It reveals, well, the roundness of her belly and, low at the hips, the beginning of subtle love curves.
"Do you understand the meaning of the tuck closing on the skirt?" I asked.
"Master?" she asked.
I then, rudely, tore away the garment, spinning her, stumbling, from me. She gasped, brutally and suddenly stripped. She looked at me, frightened, again naked before her master.
"Do you now understand?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I threw her the garment again.
Hastily she put it on again, not neglecting to thrust it well down on her hips, that the slave belly would be well revealed.
"Excellent, Slave," I said.
"Thank you, Master," she said.
I then reached into a sack, near the fire. I drew forth from it a handful of strings of beads. I threw her a necklace of red and black beads, which I thought was nice.
"Master," she asked, pointing, "may I also have that string of beads."
Tende and Alice each had two strings of beads. I saw no reason why the blond-haired barbarian might not be similarly ornamented.
I handed her the second string of beads and put the others back in the sack. She had already put the first string, that of red and black beads, about her throat. She looped them twice and still they fell between her lovely breasts, one loop longer than the other. The second string of beads was blue and yellow. Both strings were of small, simple wooden beads, suitable for slave girls. "Master," she asked, holding out to me the blue and yellow beads, "would you not, please, put this string upon me?"
"Very well," I said, standing behind her, looping them twice, one loop smaller than the other, about her throat. Each loop, as with the red and black beads, fell between her sweet breasts.
"Why did you want this string?" I asked.
"Are blue and yellow not the colors of the slavers?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. Blue and yellow are often used for the tenting of slave pavilions, and in the decor of auction houses. The wagons of slavers often have blue and yellow canvas. Sometimes they bind their girls with blue and yellow ropes. Sometimes their girls wear yellow-enameled collars, and yellow-enameled wrist rings and ankle rings, with chains with blue links. In his best, a slaver will usually wear blue and yellow robes, or robes in which these colors are prominent He will, normally, in his day-to-day business, wear at least chevrons, or slashes, of blue and yellow on his lower left sleeve.
"Are blue and yellow beads then," she asked, "not appropriate for me, for I am a slave?"
"They are very nice," I said, "but any simple, cheap beads, say, of wood or glass, will do as well for a slave."
"I see, Master," she said. "But may I keep them?"
"Until I, or any free man," I said, "sees fit to take them from you." I held her by the upper arms, from behind. "You do not own them," I said. "You only wear them, and on the sufferance of free men."
"Yes, Master," she said. "I own nothing. It is, rather, I who am owned."
"Yes," I said. I turned her about, to face me. "You are beginning to feel and understand your slavery, aren't you?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said. "Tonight you taught me much. For the first time in my life, tonight, I moved totally as a woman. I do not think I could go back, Master, to moving as a man."
I held her, tightly, and looked sternly into her eyes. "You are not a man," I told her. "You are a woman. That is what you are. Try to understand that. You are a woman, not a man."
"Yes, Master," she sobbed.
"It is thus permissible for you, truly, to move as a woman, and to feel and think and behave like a woman."
"I am a slave," she said, "and yet, strangely, I am beginning to feel so free."
"You are breaking through the constrictions of a pathological conditioning program," I told her.
I looked at her.
She trembled.
"Go to the slave post," I said. "Sit there, with your back to the post, your hands crossed behind your back."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I took a piece of improvised binding fiber, a narrow strip of leather some five feet long, and crouched down behind her.
"You freed me of many inhibitions tonight, Master," she said. "Was that your intention?"
"Perhaps," I said.
"I am grateful," she said.
"Oh!" she winced, as I knotted her hands behind her back.
"I am a woman," she said. "I want to be a woman, truly."
"Have no fear," I said. "You will be."
She looked at me.
"Gorean men," I said, "do not accept the conceit and pretense of pseudo-masculinity in female slaves."
"They would enforce my womanhood upon me?" she asked.
"You are a slave," I said. "You will be given no choice but to manifest your total womanhood to your master, in all its full vulnerability and beauty."
"But then I would have to obey, and please them," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Surely they would show me some compromise," she said.
"The Gorean man," I said, "does not compromise with a female slave. If necessary, you will learn your womanhood under the whip."
"But what if, even then," she asked, "I am not sufficiently pleasing?"
"You will then perhaps be fed to sleen," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I fastened the free end of the binding fiber to the slave post, and stood up.
"I am a secured slave," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"There was one thing I did not tell you about my dream."
"What was that?" I asked.
"It is something that you will not understand," she said, "for you are a man."
"What is that?" I asked.
"It was when I must needs please my master well, and as a slave," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I wanted to please him," she whispered.
"Of course," I said. "You were desperate to please him, for you knew that if you were not pleasing to him, you would be cruelly and horribly destroyed."
"But I wanted to please him, too, for another reason," she said.
"What was that?" I asked.
"You will not understand," she said. "A man could never understand."
"What?" I asked.
"I wanted to please him," she said, "-because he was my master." She looked at me. "A girl can want to please her master," she said, "because he is her master."
I did not speak.
"Can you understand that?" she asked.
I shrugged.
"Do you think that we would make you such superb slaves if we did not want to he your slaves?"
"Perhaps not," I said.
"A girl desires to please her master," she said. "Can you understand that, Master?"
"I think so," I said.
"I desire to please you," she whispered.
"I see," I said.
"Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Why did you not rape me tonight, Master?" she asked. "Am I not pleasing to you?"
"Later, perhaps," I said.
"You're training me, aren't you. Master?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
33
What We Saw From The Height Of The Falls; Tende Dances; We Enter Again Upon The River; I Anticipate The Surrender Of The Blond-Haired Barbarian
We thrust the canoe upward, Kisu and I at the stern, Ayari and the girls hauling on ropes at the forequarter. It tipped up and then settled downward, and we thrust and hauled it, laden, to the level.
The sound of the falls, to our left, plunging some four hundred feet to the waters below, was deafening.
It is difficult to convey the splendor of the Ua's scenery to those who have not seen it. There is the mightiness of the river, like a great road, twisting and turning, occasionally broken with green islands, sometimes sluggish, sometimes shattered by rapids and cataracts, sometimes interrupted by flooding cascades of water, sometimes a few feet in height and sometimes towering upwards hundreds of feet, and then there is the jungle, its immensity and wildlife, and the vast sky above it.