I lay down in the cage, curling up.
I saw the slave who had borne the torch, and who had locked me in sirik, putting out the two wall lamps. This left only the tiny lamp on the table, recently lit, where the monster read. I could see the glint of the lamplight on the bars of the kennels, and on some chains hanging on the wall. On the wall, too, I saw, briefly, for I quickly looked away, hanging on its peg, the whip. How placid it seemed, how quiet now. Yet its very sight filled me with fear. I was subject to it. The brunette removed fur from a chest and spread them near the table. From the same chest she removed a coil of chain, and put it carefully, presumably not to disturb the monster, by a ring, toward the foot of the furs. She then lay down upon the furs, toward their bottom. High status had she amongst us, certainly! She was the only one amongst us, for example-of me, and the women in the kennels, and those at the wall-who had clothing. And she was at the foot of his furs, not that I envied her that privilege! It was not as though he were one of those powerful, handsome brutes, as many I had seen here, before whom a slave might faint with weakness and desire.
He moved the scroll a little, rolling shut what he had read, unrolling, opening, a new vista of ideas.
The slave at the foot of his furs, I thought, might be asleep.
I rose to my hands and knees in the cage. He chain from my collar dangled to my wrists, and went thence to my ankles. There were so many things I wanted to know. I did not know under what city I might be, I did not even know the name of the world on which I found myself. I did not even know my own name. I wanted to call out to the brute at the table. But I did not dare to do so.
Then I lay down again.
I glanced toward the wall. One of the women there, sneeringly, with her blanket about her, formed words toward me. I could dimly make them out in the tiny light. “Pierced-ear girl!” she had said. I looked away. I knew I might have to fear her, or the others. They might not only treat me badly, as I might expect, being a barbarian, a new girl, and such. But they might trick me in such ways that I might be beaten.
I moved a little in the cage. There was a tiny clink of chain.
I saw the beast put down the scroll and push the lamp a little to one side. He did not extinguish it. He turned about on the bench, and sat there, for a time, regarding the brunette. The light, as he had placed, it, fell softly upon her. I think she was asleep. He then slid from the bench and, bent over, the great body on those tiny legs, went to the ring and chain. He attached the chain to the ring, with a click. The brunette stirred again, and uttered a tiny moan, and a little, inarticulate cry, still asleep. But then, with its clear, firm, definite click, the ankle ring was upon her, fastening her to the ring. I do not think she awakened during this. But, I suspect, too, in some way, on some level, she was aware that she was chained. Is not even a free woman aware of such a thing, on some level, when, as she sleeps, she is chained to her own bed? Does this enter into her dream? Does she dream it so, fearfully? Surely its very possibility is to be rejected from consciousness with all the force of rationality! Surely it was only a dream! How amusing! But she awakens and finds herself chained. As the woman was sleeping the chain was first set to the ring and thence to her body, that the tether will be in place as soon as the restraint snaps about her ankle. Had she been awake, the procedure would presumably have been reversed. When the woman is awake the usual procedure is to put the first bond on her body, so that she will know it on her, that she is bound or shackled, and then too attach it, she now aware that she is subject to your will in this matter, to whatever one pleases.
The brute then returned to his reading, putting the lamp where it had been before, as though nothing had happened.
But the brunette was now chained!
I lay on my back in the sirik. I could feel the chain from my collar, running over my body, to the wrists. Then it continued, over my belly, and against the interior of my right thigh, until it flowed to my ankles. I moaned and turned to my side.
I tried to come to grips with my chains, and the bars, and my reality. How could I begin to understand what had been done with me? How could I begin to understand what I had become, what I now was? How could I being to cope with this turn in my life?
I lay on the small, square iron floor of a confinement.
Here was a becaged slave. Could she be I?
Here was a slave, behind bars, in this tiny prison, naked and chained. Surely she could not be I!
She wore a slave collar, and was branded. Surely she could not be I!
But it was I!
I sobbed, afraid. I must do as I was told. I most obey. I must fear the whip.
Then, trembling, frightened, I recalled the use to which the monster had put me.
Oh, he had well had his will with me!
I recalled the feelings, uneasily. Even now they made me squirm.
My ears were pierced.
I reddened in the darkness, heated and sweating. How I had yielded to him, as such a slave!
He had made me his!
I had been conquered and enraptured, destroyed and renewed, rent in fragments and made whole, freed and enslaved, broken and created.
And in the end, overwhelmed, struggling to comprehend, I had found myself more a slave than ever. The strongest chains, you see, are not those of iron, nor the strongest bonds those of steel. How frail are such things compared to the chains of desire, the bonds of need! Even now, as fulfilled as I had been, I could sense a growing restlessness in my body. To be sure, it can be dangerous to be too importunate. One can be whipped for it. But what men can do to a woman, had surely, in me, been at least begun. How natural it is, once one understands these things, to fall to one’s knees, begging plaintively.