The men of this world are terribly strict with us, but few of them are cruel. Their pleasure is found in the manifold perfections of our service, intimate and otherwise, and in our devotion and love, not in our distress or pain. These men keep their animals under perfect discipline, as is their way, but they also, on the whole, treat them well.
I felt his eyes upon me.
“Kneel, and face me,” he said.
Swiftly I complied.
He placed the folded tunic in my mouth, deeply back, between my teeth, crosswise, and I, as I knew was expected, closed my teeth upon it.
He then stood up, and I, kneeling before him, looked up at him.
“You are a pretty one,” he said.
I looked at him, gratefully. Had I not been pretty, I supposed, I would not have been brought here. I gathered they tended to select “pretty ones.” They liked that sort. Interestingly, on my own world, as I have indicated, I had never really thought of myself as being particularly attractive, at least generally, particularly as I had regarded my body as erring, so to speak, in approximating closely the statistical norms for a human female. Here, however, it seemed that the normal woman, well curved and luscious, was, for whatever reason, esteemed more highly than her more boyish, stricklike sisters. I did not mind this, of course. It pleased my vanity. On the other hand, my desirability, such as it was, I recognized, might place me in danger. “I would like to have you in my shackles,” a guard had once told me. “I, too,” had said another. “And I,” had laughed another. I had been frightened. Many men, it seemed, and men such as these, such fierce, strong men, men like predators, like carnivores, might want me in their shackles!
“You are from the slave world?” he asked. I looked at him, puzzled.
“From the place called “Earth”?” he said. I nodded.
“Are there others like you there?” he asked. Tears brimmed in my eyes. I nodded.
He laughed. He then snapped his fingers and indicated that I should rise and leave the cell, going to the right, as one faced outwards.
I leaped to my feet and, going far to the right, stopped only by the stone, put as much distance between me and the six-legged beast as possible.
Then I was outside the cell!
It was breathtakingly beautiful. The air was bracing. I bit down on the folded tunic between my teeth. The wind blew through my hair.
I looked down to the left, and groaned, for there was a precipitate drop there, some forty or fifty feet to another trail below, and below that another such drop to another trail, and thence to another. Similarly, above me, I could see what seemed to be similar ledges, three or four of them, receding. There must have been more than a dozen such trails and ledges, several below, some above. Too, I could see several openings in the mountain, most of them barred. This was, in effect, I gathered, a place of imprisonment. I stepped back, dizzy for a moment, from the edge of the trail, and touched the rock to my right. I gasped; hundreds of yards ahead of me, where the trail led, past several barred cells, and approached by a narrow, ascending trail, there was a startling, lofty, sheer edifice that seemed to rear up from the mountains itself, its towers lost among clouds. It was walled. It was some sort of fortress or citadel. I looked again to the left. I could see the valley below now, or part of it. It was, I was sure, cultivated. Then I looked back, and trembled. The jailer was there, and the fearsome beast, held on its leash. Behind the jailer and the beast I could see the ledge trail going back around the mountain. To my right I saw the panel box, locked now, within which must lie the locking mechanism to the cell. The panel box itself, not to mention the mechanism within, could not be reached from within the cell. Other than this there was only the steepness, the side of the mountain, there on the right, rising up, and, on the left, below the ledge, the drop, forty or fifty feet, to the ledge and trail below. The rock ledge felt very hard, and granular, beneath my bare feet. it was chilly on the ledge. I looked back, again, at the jailer, and the beast.
Though I was out of the cell no leather or chain had been put on my neck.
The beast was leashed, but not I.
I had, incidentally, in the pens, been taught to walk gracefully, and to kneel, and pose, and such, in a leash. We are sometimes taken out in such fashions. There are also wrist leashes, usually worn on the right wrist of a right-handed girl, or the left wrist of a left-handed girl, and ankle leases, similarly oriented.
The point of the leash, of course, is seldom to hold or control a woman, for we all rational, and know we must obey, but rather to make it clear whose property she is, and to display her. Too, it might be mentioned that the leash has a profoundly erotic effect upon the female, as its meaning, and its symbolism of her domination, its profoundly arousing to her.
In this respect it is rather like the collar itself.
It does, of course, as a simple matter of undeniable fact, and this is something which should be openly acknowledged, have its custodial aspect. In it she is held. She is its prisoner. She is on her leash.
But I was not now leashed.
It was not necessary for one such as I, I thought then, to be leashed, perhaps for a free women, or a new girl, or a naive girl, or an ignorant girl, but not for one such as I, who had some understanding of the world on which she found herself, and what she was upon it.
But I would soon learn how wrong I was!
I would soon learn how much that simple device, the leash, had to teach me!
He was looking at me.
I straightened my body. We are not free women; we may not be slovenly or slatternly. We must stand and walk with excellent posture. I lifted and smoothed my hair a little, and moved it back, about my head. We have our vanity. His grin showed me that he saw me as a slave. I saw that he would expect perfect obedience of me, and was well aware that he would receive it.
No, a leash would not be necessary.
I understood the world on which I found myself, and what I was upon it.
How naive I was! How much I had still to learn!
ahead of me was the trail and the looming fortress or citadel in the distance. Wisps of cloud hung about the cold trial, and the turrets, or towers, of the structure in the distance.
He drew down the gate of the cell. It locked automatically. He then gestured ahead. As soon as he did this the best uttered a menacing growl and tugged forward. I swiftly, stumbling, turned, and hurried along the narrow ledge in the direction indicated.
The tunic was clamped between my teeth.
I looked into the cells as we passed them. Most were empty. Some, however, were occupied. In some were sullen men, clad in the remnants of what might once have been uniforms. Their wrists and ankles were chained. In others there were unchained men, some men sitting crossed-legged, playing some game with bits of cloth. Others stood near the bars, but kept their hands well within the bars.
“Hello, little tasta,” called one of the men to me.
I hurried on.
A tasta is a kind of small, sweet candy, usually sold at fairs. It is commonly mounted on a stick. Some men use it as a slang expression for one such as I. Another such is ‘vulo’. The vulo is a small, soft, usually white, pigeonlike bird. It is the most common form of domestic fowl kept on this world. It is prized for its mean and eggs. It is notoriously incapable of eluding hawks and other forms of predatory birds, by which it can easily be torn to pieces.
I passed another cell containing such men.
“Is she to be given to us?” one of them called out.
Again, frightened, I hurried on.
It occurred to me that I might, of course, being what I was, be thrown among them, for their gratification or amusement.