What a strange dream!
It seemed the basket flew!
Sometimes it seemed I heard the smiting of air, as though in the beating of giant wings. At other times I heard great birdlike cries, from above and ahead, or to one side of the other. And then I would lose consciousness again.
I decided that I must awaken, and in my own bed, on my own world.
The light seemed to bright, through my closed eyelids. I must, foolishly, have forgotten to draw the shade last night.
I was on my stomach. I pressed down with my finger tips, to feel the sheets and, beneath them, the familiar mattress.
But it seemed that something hard was beneath me, not the mattress, but a surface less yielding, more severe.
I kept my eyes closed. There was light. It was rather painful. How foolish I was! I had forgotten to draw the shade last night.
But the light did not seem to be coming from the proper direction. It should be coming more from behind me, to my left, where, as I was lying, or thought myself to be my left, where, as I was lying, or thought myself to be lying, my window would be. But it was not. It was coming rather from before me, and my left. I must have somehow, in my sleep, twisted about. I felt disoriented.
Everything did not seem to be the same. Many things seemed different.
I then, as I became more certain, but not altogether certain, that I was awakening, or awakened, became quite afraid.
I was not yet ready to open my eyes.
I remembered one thing quite clearly from my dream. I had been branded. It had been put on me. I had worn, almost from the first, a light, gleaming, about-a-half-inch-high, close-fitting steel collar. It locked in the back.
Not opening my eyes, frightened, I moved my fingers upward, little by little, toward my throat. Then, with my finger tips, I touched my throat. It was bare!
Again I felt my throat.
No band was there.
I did not wear such a circlet. I was in no neck ring, or such device. My throat was bare. No closed curve of steel, locked, inflexible, enclasped it.
I was not collared.
It would be hard then to describe my emotions.
Should they not have been of elation, of joy, of relief? Perhaps. But instead, perhaps oddly, as I lay there, somehow half between waking and sleep, I perceived a sudden poignance, as of irreparable loss.
As of isolation. As of loneliness. I felt a wave, cold and cruel, of misery, rising within me, a forlorn, agonizing cry of alienation, of anguish. It seemed that I had suddenly become meaningless, or nothing. But then, in an instant, how pleased I tried to be, as I should be, of course. I attempted, instantly, to govern my emotion, to marshal them, and break them, and align them in accordance with the dictates to which I had been subjected all my lift.
Yes, how relived I was!
How wonderful was everything now!
It had been, you see, a dream!
There was nothing to worry about.
It was over now.
I might, now, even open my eyes.
But the surface on which I lay did not seem soft, nor did the material beneath my finger tips seem to have the texture of cotton sheets. The light, too, was wrong. I must have twisted about in my sleep. Something seemed wrong.
Memories of the dream recurred, the movements, the metal wagon, the chains, the hood, the basket, the wind though its course, sturdy fibers.
My head, it seemed for the first time in days, seemed clear. I now experienced, it seemed for the first time in days, a consciousness I recognized as familiar, as my own, neither confused nor disordered. I did not have a headache. I did not know how long I had slept. It might have been a long while.
But the surface seemed wrong, the direction of the light seemed wrong.
Somehow I must be disoriented.
I opened my eyes, and gasped, shaken. I began to tremble, uncontrollably.
I lay upon stone.
That was what was beneath my finger tips. There were no sheets. There was no mattress.
I lay upon stone!
I rose to all fours.
I seemed to be in a sort of cave, carved into the living rock of a mountain, or cliff.
I looked to the opening of where I was housed, for it was from thence that came the illumination.
There was no window there. Rather there was a large aperture. It was regular in form. It was like a portal. Surely it was not a natural opening. It was in shape something between a semicircle and an inverted “U.” it was flat at the bottom, rather squared at the sides and rounded at the top. It was some six or seven feet high and some seven or eight feet wide. It was barred. The bars were heavy, some two or three inches in thickness. They were reinforced laterally with heavy crosspieces, an inch or so high, every foot or so.
My consciousness, suddenly, was very vivid, very acute. I seemed to be in a tiny brown tunic. How had this come about? It was no more than a rag.
I would never have donned such a garment!
I would never have permitted myself to be seen so, so bared, so displayed, so exposed in such a scandalous garment!
It was frayed, and torn. It was terribly brief. It was terribly thin. It had no nether closure, and it was all I wore!
I was outraged!
I might have torn it from me, bit it was all I had.
Who had dared to put me in this garment?
Surely I had not don so!
A sense of acute embarrassment, and then of fury, over came me! What right had someone to do this, to take such liberties, to so barb me, in so little, so pathetically, and so revealingly, and publicly, to so dress me, to so demean, insult and shame me, so deliberately, so grievously!
How could such a thing have been dared?
Who did they think I was?
What did they think I was?
I realized, of course, too, suddenly, the thought almost making me giddy and frightened, that whoever had done so must have seen me bared, fully. Whoever it was must, I surmised, surely have been male. Surely it was the sort of garment that only a man would put a woman in, or perhaps observe a woman being put in, under his direction. I wondered if he had liked what he saw. I felt vulnerable. Had I been violated while unconscious?
Things began to flood back to me.
Certain things now became very real.
It occurred to me that I was no longer the sort of woman who could be “violated.” An animal could be put to use, but surely it could not be “violated.”
It could be done with me as others might please.
And suddenly, it tending to shock me, in my confusion, the thought rose up irresistibly within me that I should, more properly, not be distressed by the rag I wore, but rather I should rejoice that I had been granted this gift, in indulgence, the lenience, of even so minuscule a scrap of clothing! It served to give me at least a little cover. Was I entitled to any? No, I had not the least right to such, or to anything. Surely I should be heartfeltedly grateful for even so little! Surely it need not have been granted me. Had I not, in the pens, as it had seemed to me in my dreams, if dreams they were, often pleaded for so little as a threat of silk?