pole homeward.
'May I speak?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said.
'You wear on your left arm,' I said, 'a golden armlet. How is it that a girl of rence islands has such an armlet?'
'You may not speak,' she said, irritably.
I was silent.
'In there,' she said, indicating the small, round hole that gave access to her tiny rence hut.
I was surprised. I had expected her to bind me, as she had the night before, then tethering me to the oar pole thrust through the rence behind the hut. We had returned her rence craft to the shore of the rence island, fastening it there, along with the rence raft. I had carried the rence, in many trips, to a covered area, where it was stored.
'In there,' she repeated.
I fell to my hands and knees and, lowering my head, crawled through the small hole, the edges of the woven rence scratching at my shoulders.
She followed me into the hut. It was eight feet long and five feet wide. Its ceiling was continuous with its wall, and in its curve, stood not more than four feet from the rence surface of the island. The rence hut is commonly used for little else than sleeping. She struck together, over a copper bow, a bit of steel and flint, the sparks falling into some dried petals of the rence. a small flame was kindled into which she thrust a bit of rence stem, like a match. The bit of stem took the fire and with it she lit a tiny lamp, also sitting in a shallow copper bowl, which burned tharlarion oil. She set the lamp to one side. Her few belongings were in the tiny hut. There was a bundle of clothing and a small box for odds and ends. There were two throwing sticks near the wall, where her sleeping mat, of woven rence, was rolled. There was another bowl and a cup or two, and two or three gourds. Some utensils were in the bowl, a wooden stirring stick and a wooden ladle, both carved from rence root. The rence knife, with which I had cut rence, she had left in the packet in her rence craft. There were also, in one corner, some coils of marsh vine.
'Tomorrow is Festival,' she said.
She looked at me. I could see the side of her face and her hair, and the outline of the left side of her body in the light of the tiny lamp.
She put her hands behind the back of her head to untie the purple fillet of re-cloth.
We knelt facing one another, but inches apart.
'Touch me and you will die,' she said. She laughed.
She disengaged the fillet and shook her hair free. It fell about her shoulders. 'I am going to put you up at stake at festival,' she said. 'You will be a prize for girls — Pretty Slave.'
My fists clenched.
'Turn,' she said, sharply.
I did so, and she laughed.
'Cross your wrists,' she ordered.
I did so, and with one of the coils of marsh vine, she lashed my wrists together, tightly, with the strong hands of a rence girl.
'There, Pretty Slave,' she said. And there she said, 'Turn,' and I did so, and faced her.
'My,' she said, 'you are a pretty, pretty slave. It will be a lucky girl who wins you at festival.'
I said nothing.
'Is Pretty Slave hungry?' she asked, solicitously.
I would not respond.
She laughed and reached into the wallet at her side and drew forth two handsful of rence paste and thrust them in my mouth. She herself nibbled on a rence cake, watching me, and tehn on some dried fish wich she drew also from the wallet. Then she took a long draught of water from a yellow, curved gourd, and then, thrusting the neck of the gourd into my mouth, gave me a swallow, then drawing it away again and laughing, but then giving it to me again, that I might drink. When I had drunk, she put the plug, carved from gourd stem, back in the gourd, and replaced it in the corner.
'It is time for sleep,' she said. 'Pretty Slave must sleep, for tomorrow he will have many things to do. He will be very busy.'
She indicated that I should lie on my left side, facing her.
Then, with another coil of marsh vine, she tied my ankles together. She unrolled her sleeping mat.
She looked at me, and laughed.
Then, as I lay there, bound, she unlaced her tunic, opening it. Her beauty, and it was considerable, was now but ill concealed.
Again she looked on me, and, to may amazement, insolently, with a liquid motion, slipped the tunic off, over head.
She sat of the mat and regarded me.
She had undressed herself before me as casually as though I had been an animal. 'I see,' said she, 'that you must again be punished.'
Involuntarily, instinctively, I tried to withdraw but, bound, I could not. She struck me with savagery, four times.
Inwardly I screamed with agony.
Then, sitting on the mat, forgetting me, she turned to the repair of a small sack, woven of rence, which had hung in the corner of the hut. She used thin strips of rence, breaking them and biting them, weaving them in and out. She worked carefully, attentively.
I had been a warrior of Ko-ro-ba.
Then on an island of rence in the delta of the Vosk I had learned myself, that I was, in the core of myself, ignoble and craven, worthless and fearing, only coward.
I had been a warrior of Ko-ro-ba.
Now I was only a girl's slave.
'May I speak?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said, not looking up.
'Mistress has not honored me,' said I, 'even by telling me her name. May I not know the name of my mistress?'
'Telima,' she said, finishing the work in which she had been engaged. SHen hung the sack again in the corner, putting the scraps and strips of rence left over from her work at the foot of her sleeping mat. Then, kneeling on the mat, she bent to the small lamp in its copper bowl on the flooring of the hut. Before she blew it out she said, 'My name is Telima. The name of your mistress is Telima.' Then she blew it out.
We lay in the darkness for a long time.
Then I heard her roll over to me. I could sense her lying near me, on her elbows, looking down a me.
Her hair brushed me.
Then I cried out, involuntarily.
'I wil not hurt Pretty Slave,' she said.
'Please,' said I, 'do not speak so to me.'
'Be silent,' said she, 'Pretty Slave.'
Then she touched me again.
'Ah,' said she, 'it seems a slave finds his mistress beautiful.'
'Yes,' I said.
'Ah,' chided she, 'it seems a slave has not yet learned his lesson.' 'Please,' I said, 'do not strike me again.'
'Perhaps,' said she, 'a slave should again be punished.'
'Please,' I said, 'do not strike me again.'
'Do you find me truely beautiful?' she asked. She had one finger inside my collar of marsh vine, idly playing with the side of my neck.
'Yes,' I whispered. 'Yes.'
'Know you not,' asked she, with sudden insolence and coldness, 'that I am a free woman?'
I said nothing.
'Dare you aspire to a free woman?' she demanded.
'No,' I said.
'Dare you aspire to your mistress, Slave!' she demanded.
'No,' I said, 'No!'
'Why not?' she demanded.
'I am a slave,' I said. 'Only a slave.'
'That is true,' she said. 'You are only a slave.'
Then, suddenly, holding my head in her hands, she pressed her lips savagely down on mine.
I tried to twist my head away, but could not.
Then she drew back her head, and, in the darkness I could sense her, and her lips, but an inch from my own.
Beams and timbers of misery and wanting clashed within me. It was she who had fastened coils of march vine about my neck, and knotted them, putting me in the the collar of a slave. It was she who had placed her arms about my neck at dawn, on the shore of the rence island. It was she who had beaten me. It was she whom I must obey, she for whom I had cut rence, she who had fed me as one feeds an animal. It was she who had last night, and this night, bound me as a slave. It was she who had tortured me with her beauty, tormenting and tantalizing me, with a cruelty all the keener for its being so offhand and casual. I found myself fearing her, and desperately wanting her, though knowing her immerasurably above me. I feared that she might hurt me, in was true, but the hurts I feared most were those of her insolence and contempt, those that more degraded me than bonds and blows. And I wanted her, for she was beautiful, and vital, maddening, ravishing. But she was free, and I was only slave. She could move as she wished. I lay bound.
I wore besides my bonds only a collar of marsh vine. She wore her swiftness, and her freedom, and an armlet of gold.
But most perhaps, incredible as it might seem, I feared that if I asked for a kindness, even a word or a gesture, it would be refused. Alone and slave, beaten and
