I lay in the blanket, clutching it about me. I was cold, sullen. I could no longer cry. The men, my masters, were asleep. I lay huddled, my knees drawn up.
I did not know what time it was. The moons were still in the sky.
I crawled to my knees, holding the blanket about me. I looked about the still camp.
My body ached.
I moved the blanket, looking down, shifting it that my leg be exposed. I examined my thigh. I looked at the brand which I bore on my body. It was a flower, lovely and delicate. Yet I could not pluck it. I could not remove it. It was imprinted in my flesh. It had been placed there, burned into my thigh, by a hot iron, as I had screamed under the metal's searing print. I regarded it, that graceful floral badge of bondage. It was now a part of my body. I had no doubt that I was more beautiful, branded, than I had been before. The brand, I could see, considerably enhanced my beauty. It is one of the attractive features of a slave girl. But, more beautiful though I might be on its account, it marked me incontrovertibly as a slave. I wished to escape. I looked at the thorn brush. Yet I wore a brand. Could there be a true escape, on a world such as this, for a branded girl? Would that mark not continue to say, to anyone, and all, softly, persistently, each instant, each moment, every hour of the day and night, when anyone might care to glance upon it, "Here is a slave"? Could there be an escape, on a world such as this, for a girl who wore such a mark? If it should be so much as glimpsed, would not such a girl be instantly placed in chain and a collar? Perhaps I might steal clothing, but the brand would still be on my body, marking me. Suppose men, suspicious, would turn me over to free women, that my body might be, without compromise to my dignity lest I be free, examined by them. When they discovered the mark, worn by a girl masquerading as one of their own lofty station, a woman free, would they not in fury, with whips, drive me stripped, begging for mercy, weeping, to the waiting shackles of the men? What escape, what freedom, could there be for a girl who wore a brand? I looked at the brand. Well and deeply it marked me as what I now had no doubt I was, what tonight I had been well taught I was, what I, in truth, incontrovertibly, now was, a slave girl.
The Earth girl, a slave on a barbarian planet, clutched the blanket about her.
I looked up. On the cliff above me, I could see, crouching, the guard. He was not watching me.
I looked at the cliffs, at the thorn brush.
I sat on the ground, the blanket about me. I knew I was a slave girl, legally, irrefutably; the brand told me that; but I wondered on a deeper question, one beyond legalities and institutions; I wondered if I were truly, in my heart, a female slave. This question troubled me deeply. I had, since my branding, experienced profoundly ambiguous feelings on this matter. It was as though I were trying to understand myself, my deepest emotions and needs. At times I had been on the brink of surrendering myself to myself, acknowledging to my horrified conscious mind forbidden truths, long-denied realities, speaking of a venerable, long-suppressed, antique nature, one antedating huts of straw and limestone caves. I did not know what dispositions slept latent in my genetic structures, dispositions inapt and out of place in the artificial world within the strictures of which I had been conditioned. A nature, like the growth of a tree, the shape of a bush, may be clipped and thwarted. The seed poisoned does not grow; the flower immersed in acid does not bloom. I wondered what might be the nature of men, and what might be the nature of women. I know of no test in these matters, unless it be honesty, and what leads to joy.
Perhaps I would not have considered these matters save that I was unable to drive from my mind the recollection of an event which had occurred late in the sordid abuse to which I had been so brutally subjected. I had been thrown to my master's men. One after another had raped and beaten me, and thrown me to the next. I was handed about as an object. Fierce was the discipline to which they subjected me. Though I wept for mercy, and cried out, none gave ear; no consideration nor lenience was shown to the piteous slave girl in their power. Then, strangely, late in this abuse, the event occurred, which even now troubled me. I lay on my back, weeping, my head bound in the blanket, thrashing and squirming, struck, held, unable to withdraw from, helpless to withstand the plunging discipline of the brute to whom I had been last thrown, and it had occurred. I suddenly felt an indescribable sensation. First, it seemed to me, incredibly, that this was fitting, what was being done to me; I had been proud and vain before men; what did I, truly, expect men, such men, men on a world such as this, to do about that? As his force struck me, I felt, strangely, "Be disciplined, Woman." I was half choked in the hood. Then, to my amazement, I welcomed the abuse I felt. There was, beyond its sense of fittingness, seeing that I, a woman, had displeased strong males, and must thus be punished, a sense of profound complementarity; the abuse, if he chose, was simply his to give, and mine to bear; he was a man, I was a woman; he was dominant; I was not; it was his to rule, mine to submit. I experienced then, degraded and abused though I was, with a flood of elation, primitive organic, animal, primate complementarity, the complementarity of man and woman, the complementarity beyond mythology and rhetoric, the complementarity of he who takes and she who is taken, of he who has, and owns, and of she whom he has, whom he owns, and makes his. With a cry of joy and misery then, from the depths of the hood, rearing from the dirt as I could, I clutched him; I felt my body locked to his; then I felt my body, as though of its own will, suddenly, spasmodically, grasp him; I could not begin to control the reflexes which he had triggered in me; they jolted and exploded in my body; I clutched him, helplessly; I was his.
Men laughed. "Kajira," said one.
Then I was thrown to another, I sat in the silent camp, wrapped in the thin blanket, thinking. "Kajira," had said one of the men.
I was angry. I could not forgive myself for having yielded to one of the men. I tried to tell myself it had not happened. It could not have happened. Thus, it had not happened. Yet I knew, in truth, it had happened. I had yielded to one of the men. In his arms, I, who was, or had been, Judy Thornton, had yielded to one of the men. An abused slave girl had wept and bucked in the arms of a master. It had been I. How ashamed I was! I asked myself what could it mean? Could the feelings which had overwhelmed me be denied? Could the sensate truth, the splendor of biological submission, so different from the truth of a man, which is that of domination, in whose glory I had been wrapped, be denied? I resolved that I must not permit myself the weakness which would make a mockery of my personhood. I must not again yield to a male. I thought of Elicia Nevins. How she would have laughed had she seen Judy Thornton, her lovely rival, on her back in the dirt, a branded slave girl, squirming in the throes of submission to a male, so shamefully helpless in his arms, uncontrollably, not the mistress of herself, yielding to his manhood.
I knew then I must escape. It would be difficult, for I was branded.
I looked up at the guard. He was not watching. I crept to the cliff wall. I examined it in the moonlight. At no point could I crawl more than a yard up its surface. I scratched my fingernails on the granite.
I turned to the wall of thorn brush. I feared it. It was high and thick.
The guard was not watching. The camp was not his concern. His concern was elsewhere, with possible approaches to the camp, the fields beyond the valleys.
I cried out with misery. I screamed, frightened. The brush sank beneath me. It would not support my weight. My right leg was deep in it, my right arm. I turned my head to the side, keeping my eyes closed. I felt the thorns. They seemed to tear at me. I was half immersed in the brush. I was caught. I dared not move. I began to weep and scream.