“What better time than when you are most eager?” he asked, straightening from his crouch and heading directly toward his pallet, his arms holding me almost without effort. “I would not have you regret your choice, therefore must I assist you.”
“Master, please,” I began in protest, even more upset to realize that he thought he was doing me a favor, but he had already reached his pallet and was putting me down on it. From the half crouch he slid flat to lie beside me, his arms still firmly around me, a warm, friendly smile on his face.
“Each time I look upon you, I find you lovelier and lovelier,” he said, the fingers of one hand reaching to my cheek to wipe away the tears there, his big, blue eyes unmoving from my face. “You are small, and soft, and lovely and desirable, and I shall keep you forever and ever.”
“Master, please,” I whispered, for some reason feeling a stab of pain at his words. He was so open and vulnerable, and so clearly meant everything he was saying.
“Have no fear, they will not take you from me,” he soothed, folding me in his arms and holding me tight against him. “They would not have given you to me merely to take you away again.” He hesitated for a moment, still holding me close, then said, “Is it true you will please me even more because I have punished you?”
I could feel his big body trembling faintly, much less than it had the last time I could remember, but the excitement was the same, the anticipation unchanged. The child-man who held me was beginning to feel his authority over me, and also most likely the realization that he had not hit me as hard as he might have.
“It is true I will please you to keep from being punished again,” I said after a moment, my hands and cheek against his chest, my body to his body. “Such a thing is not the same as what you suggest.”
“In what manner does it differ?” he asked, sounding legitimately puzzled. “In either case, will you not strive to please me because of the punishment?”
“I-cannot say in what manner it differs.” I was groping, feeling slightly less confused than I had, but still not completely clear. “No other thing do I know save that it does.”
“I care not whether the two may differ, or whether they are just the same,” he murmured, his hands beginning to move over me. “You now must please me, and greet me with a great deal of eagerness. Are you not most eager for my use?”
“Yes, master, I am eager for your use,” I whispered, trying not to shudder as I spoke. It was a terrible lie I told, and it hurt me simply to speak it.
The child-man who held me heard just the words, nothing of the lie behind. His lips came to mine and I tried to respond to his kiss, but his breathing had grown a lot heavier, causing him to simply mash my efforts to nothing. He was kissing me, not trying to share a kiss, and he pressed me flat to the pallet even while he was doing it.
“Hush, lovely wenda, poor wenda,” he crooned when I gasped at the feel of the rough cloth against the welts on my back, his weight keeping me from rising up again. “The high mistress has given you hurt, I know, yet shall I quickly soothe it. You wish me to soothe it, do you not? Tell me that you wish it.”
“I would have you soothe me, master,” I whispered raggedly, beginning to cry again. It was more than just the painful welts on my back that tore me apart inside, and I could almost remember what else it was. “Please hold me and soothe me, master, please comfort me.”
“Yes, lovely one, yes,” he panted, thrusting my thighs apart with his knee, but he hadn’t heard what I’d asked for. The next minute he was inside me, jarring away with strength and abandon, his hands on my shoulders, using me as a substitute for his hand. His head was back and his eyes were closed, he panted heavily and the look on his face was sheer bliss and contentment. After a while he leaned down to slobber me with kisses again, but his hips never stopped moving. The tears ran down my cheeks even as I held him around, simply enduring what he was doing, realizing it would be impossible to do anything else. He didn’t know how much he was hurting me, and I couldn’t go back on my word by telling him.
Happily, it wasn’t long before it was over, but then there were the others. The handsome child-man sat at my side, holding my hand until they were done, never knowing how much worse he was making it simply by being there. He encouraged me and the others contentedly, then insisted that I be given a moment before being made to serve them all their meal. The very plain vegetable stew had been made by one of the others, and I had to put it into bowls and then bring a bowl to each of them. When they finished eating I collected the bowls and scoops, washed them in a tub of water in one corner, then was allowed to finish what was left in the pot before washing that, too. I could remember eating every last scrap and licking the pot in the days that had passed, but that day the constant, gnawing hunger I’d been feeling was absent. For that reason I’d left almost nothing in the pot, and for that reason the almost-nothing went into the wash water instead of me. The pain in my body had increased, but the throb in my head seemed to be clearing more by the minute.
When the pot was done and put away I simply stood there and leaned my left arm against the stone of the wall, unable to remember what I was supposed to do next, my thoughts a mad whirl I couldn’t even begin to follow. My stomach felt upset, and nausea was trying to get a grip on me, but the confusion in my head was worse than anything else. It was as though ten or a dozen people were trying to shout at me about different things all at the same time through a thick pane of glass, and all the while the pane of glass was getting thinner. The thinner it got the more easily I could hear them, but I didn’t know which of them to listen to first.
“Wenda, it is nearly time for us to take our leave,” a voice said from beside me, drawing me away from those other voices. “There is a thing you must do first.”
I looked up to see my master standing there, smiling at me gently and encouragingly as he usually did.
“Where is it that we must go?” I asked, frowning with the effort to remember. “And what is there that I must do first?”
“No, wenda, it is we others, your masters, who must soon depart,” he explained gently, his hand to my hair, as though he had had to say the same thing before. “The thing you must do is drink your wine, just as you do each day at this time.”
“My wine,” I echoed as he took my hand and began leading me toward the corner where the tiny supply of foodstuff was kept, the supply that had to last everyone there for three days. I didn’t remember ever having had wine before, at least not there.
“You seem ever unable to recall the wine,” he observed, gesturing me to my knees beside the boxes. “Also do you seem most confused at this time, yet am I told that that is as it should be. Once the drink is within you, the confusion will loose its hold.”
He took a clay pitcher and a clay bowl from on top of the boxes, filled the bowl from the pitcher, then handed me what he had poured. I took the bowl in both hands and looked down into its dark, muddy gold contents, remembering a sparkling golden wine I’d had-somewhere, at some other time.
“Drink it now,” the man who stood above me urged, the words gentle rather than commanding. “It will take the confusion from you, and will aid you in finding sleep. You must sleep, you know, for the new day begins early as ever, and will be filled as ever with much to do.”
I looked up at him from where I knelt, the bowl held in my hands, grateful to him for having given me something that would take the confusion away. I needed something to do that, needed it badly, and now I had it.
“The time is now, slaves,” a female voice announced from the entrance to the area, a place I couldn’t see from where I was. “Follow me at once.”