I Am Not the Goddaughter
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Table of Contents Part 1 and part 2 appear in this issue. |
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6
When I awoke I was in a cage. I was on all fours, and verily, there was no room to stand up. My cage was facing a tiled walkway. On the other side was a platform, circular in nature, with a fence made of chains and barbs. Naked flesh would be cut to pieces if it scaled it. No way to escape once placed in that arena.
The slave auction.
I was not alone; there was a row of cages. Most of the occupants were women; there was an occasional man — all naked. They were sleeping, probably from the same drug that had been given me.
I became aware of crunching. Facing me, with an amused grin, was Jean-Paul. He was reaching inside a thick paper box, pulling out distorted corn nodules dipped in some kind of congealed, sticky substance. He saw me eyeing them.
“Want some?” I shook my head. “No? Oh, I know what you want.” He pulled a little bag out from inside the box, poured the contents into his palm. It was the Goblin Ice!
“Nice earrings. They would look lovely on you. And these things...” He placed down the earrings and put the cups in one hand and the triangle in another. “They do not cover much, but what they do cover is what men covet most. Pity you’ll never wear them.”
“They are mine!” I screamed, as he put them back into the bag, and tucked it into his pantaloons.
“Be that as it may, pretty missy, but you are a slave now. Slaves aren’t allowed such finery in this the gem of all cities. Especially if they are to be sold as brothel workers.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” I shook my cage.
“Now, now, you could hurt yourself. And that would lower your price. Ah, here comes your buyer now.”
A portly man, in the motley robes of a New Prydain merchant, was strolling up. Back in New Fairy, he would be mistaken for a Court jester, but I did not take his entrance as a jest.
“This the merchandise?” He nodded in my direction. Jean-Paul nodded in the affirmative.
“Well, one thing about you, Jean-Paul, you do not lie. She is very fine goods. Will make my male slaves very happy.”
“Just one thing I should bring up, I being an honest slaver and all.”
“What is that?” the portly fellow frowned.
“She has hair mites. You might want to shave her head first thing.”
“Oh, well, that will not be a problem.”
“No, you monsters, no!”
When I had been a whore, I had made the mistake of shaving my legs and womanhood, as well as cutting my hair short, thinking to allure offworlders. Only to find that I could not grow hair back, lest the spellminder think I was trying to cover myself. If my head were to be shaved, I would be condemned to baldness as well as nakedness. From the way Jean-Paul winked at me when I had cried out, he knew this too, the bastard.
“She is saucy, that one,” the merchant said.
“It’s the hair mites. They affect her brain. Here, you’ve paid for her, feel free to barber her even without a bill of lading. Strip her eyebrows and lashes off too, just to be sure.”
Jean-Paul reached under his shirt and produced a barber’s clippers. The merchant reached for them. Oh, goddesses, no! To be naked is bad enough — but to be bald — and all over! I found myself ready to beg and give the men anything they wanted to keep my hair, my eyebrows; my lashes.
Ow!” The merchant swatted his neck, dropping the clippers. “What was that?”
“Ow!” Jean-Paul swatted his neck. In moments, they were both covered by a dark cloud. Wasps. Thousands of them — stinging, biting, molesting the two men. Wasps the size of sausages, with pincers around tiny, reddish chitin mouths. Wasps that made a loathsome crescent in the air. Wasps that made the sound of a million saws.
Jean-Paul and the merchant ran off screaming in a bergamask of horror, leaving the box of honey dipped kernels and the clippers lying on the ground.
I cowered back; one thing you learn to fear when naked is stinging, biting insects. But none came near me.
“No time to lose, lovely Rhiannon!”
Raoul had arrived, apparently out of nowhere. Apparently, until I saw the hole in the ground that, from the stench, must have led to the slave ranch’s cesspool. A smell of rotten eggs, decaying flesh and rancid dung. A smell shared by Raoul. The death sword materialized in his hand. He saw me looking at it.
“You left it on the ground when you were kidnapped. You should be more careful with my gifts, Rhiannon, or I will stop giving them to you.”
“I thought it could never leave me.”
“It followed you here, did it not? With me riding on it. You know, I was never much of a surfer, so that was a challenge to my balance.”
He then proceeded to cut through the bars of my cage with Eligor.
“Well, are you coming?”
“The wasps! I am afraid of the wasps. They will sting my unprotected body.”
He looked at me chidingly. “Such a baby. I am the Goblin King. That makes me the king of the wasps. I sent them. So woo won’t have to wowwy.”
“You smell foully,” I said in retort.
“Thanks. But no time for compliments. The guards will be on us in minutes. Rosalyn is waiting. Come on!”
He grabbed me by the hand, and toddled off, shaking from side to side.
“Stop!” he rang out.
I skidded to a halt. “But you said to make haste.”
“It will be faster if you pick me up and put me on your shoulders.”
“What? You must be daft.” You have no idea how I did not want that creature on my shoulders.
“Just do it, Rhiannon. Please.”
He glanced back. I heard footfalls of running men. Nodding, I picked him up, kept him in place by holding onto his legs. His boots came to my bosoms; his stench wafted even further down. The death sword, strapped to his back, was long enough to thwack my butt. It did so repeatedly as I scampered.
I ran in the direction he indicated twisting up a cyclone of dirt as I went. Raoul would inhale deeply through his nose and exhale through his mouth. But I stopped at my captors’ perimeter.
The whole farm had the spiky, barbed shards surrounding its walls.
“I cannot climb those! I’ll be shredded.”
“Never fear, Raoul is here!” He climbed down me, stroking my left bosom and pinching my nipple on the way to the ground, and went over to the gate. Sliced it up and down with the death sword. The gate fell apart.
“M’lady,” he gestured.
I gingerly stepped over the bifurcated gate.
“Hurry up, Rhiannon! These horses are stolen. Ours are still impounded. Guards will be after us any minute,” Rosalyn yelled. She was squeezing the thighs of her horse with her buskins, making the steed move back and forth in an agitated manner.
I bustled, climbed up the black and white one; Raoul climbed behind me and put his arms around me, making me feel like I had just rolled over a wet spot in a brothel’s bed. Rosalyn whistled, and her red mare galloped off.
“Now where to?” I thought it a sensible question.
“The sewers,” Raoul replied.
“Whoa.” I stopped my steed and stared at him. What mean you, the sewers?”
“New Prydain has this intricate catacomb of sewers, all leading to the delta.”
“And your point is?”
“Rhiannon, by going down into the sewers we can get into the palace. You can there get the protection of Branwen.”
“Uh, uh. No way. You are not getting me down in the sewers.”
“All right, then. Spend the rest of your days as a reward for male slaves, always to be pregnant but never to raise a child after it nurses on you. See if I care.” He stuck his nose into my armpit in an ostentatious display of mock indifference.
I sighed. “You win, Raoul. Where is this sewer?”
“Follow my lead, m’lady; just follow my lead.” His nose came out from my pit and he pointed toward a girdled cylinder made of two cones up ahead. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, the little varlet.
To be continued...
Copyright © 2006 by Rachel Parsons
