Only A Slave

originally posted February 26, 2006

I was compelled to do it. To place the final ornament on her. The golden ring, tiny and fine, was fixed in her nose. I was struck. Stunned. She stared up at me from the floor with that tiny rivulet that escaped from her eye, borne of sudden, if momentary, pain and a bit of blood on her lips. She was smiling, if only by a hopeful widening of her eyes and the smallest curl of her lips. She wanted to be found pleasing. "You are only a slave," I told her.Months ago, I had told her to dance. She was given a beat that I slapped onto the floor with my palm. Imprinted it. It touched her deeply. With no other music, she danced. Stomping her foot as I directed and soon as she could not prevent herself from doing. She was marvelous. Sweating and rude. I was looking at her, but I was looking right through her. There were painted wagons. Dust. Stinking kaiila and majestic, shambling bosk. Fearsome men with scarred countenances sat beside me. They clapped that beat that I pounded now with my fist. She danced. She was afraid to dance before me. It was fitting, but she could not possibly know why. When she laid there on the floor, panting for breath, muscles alive and aching, I told her."You are only a slave," I said. Last night, she knelt there beside me. I was lost in the flames of the campfire. Others were there as well, prattling whores all of them. "Look into the flames," I told them. And they did. "Do you see it?" I asked them and proceeded to describe the woman in the flames. Bound at the wrists held high over her head. Bound at the ankles. She stood, but could not help moving. Just one evening prior, dark haired and wet-lipped She, new meat on my coffle, was directed to stand that way. The slave, She, could not help but move as though her body was a sinuous, lapping flame. One by one, prattling whores became thoughtful whores. They, too, saw the woman in the flames. The Dancer. Nirah, beside me, glanced up. The nose ring, golden, tiny and fine, glinted by the light of the fire. I thrust her aside. I was suddenly angry. I felt the fool. How did I not see it? How could it have taken me months to understand it. It could be no coincidence. I fetched the kurt. Wicked, five-bladed and oiled to a supple cruelty, I lashed her with it. I beat the high girl. The spoiled girl. The beautiful, fantastic, Nirah. She is My Dear, but I saw right through her; the lies and the machinations. Who would do such a thing to me? What was his name? I must know and I would beat this pitiful whore until she told me. If I were to have an inkling that the Companion, the woman I contracted myself to, was a part of this filthy game, Priest Kings could not protect her. Who placed you? Who instructed you? It made no sense. It was starting to fall apart. As quickly as my mind connected the pieces of this brutal puzzle, the illusion was breaking under the weight of its own cicumstantial evidence. No. I was so sure of it. I saw it so clearly, but it was only coincidence. There were too many assumptions. The poor slave cried, begged, pleaded ignorance to my questions. Finally, I believed her. The weight of what I had done to her, the danger of my emotions opened my eyes. I tried to be gentle with her then. Though she is only a slave, a girl on a whore coffle, I apologized. Further, I asked her to forgive me. She would not know, could not know what I saw. "She is only a slave," I told Sandal after it happened. "Only a slave."