crossed ankles. seeing my eyes upon it, the
small figure knelt under the wagon, and, its hands coming from the tarpaulin,
their palms now on the gravel, put down its head, rendering obeisance.
“Oh!” she said, softly, as I lifted the tarpaulin back. she looked up from all
fours. The chain which passed through the ring wound twice about her neck, where
it was padlocked. From her neck, through the ring, lifting, and thence
descending, it served also to secure her ankles, which were, as I had
anticipated, crossed and chained closely together. This makes it so that the
prisoner cannot walk. It is common to chain female prisoners so that they cannot
rise to their feet. In this (pg.27) there is not only a security but a
symbolism, one that bespeaks their rightful place. Beneath the tarpaulin I saw
that she was naked, and, as I had thought she might be, beautiful.
She looked up at me, from all fours. Her body now was streaked with the slanted
rain. Her hair, apparently from before, was wet and very dark. It fell about her
shoulders. Her knees were on the tarpaulin, within which she had huddles, over
the gravel. I knelt her back, and then took her hands in mine. They were also
cold. I rubbed them for a time. Then I put them on her thighs. I touched her
body, gently, rubbing the rain about it. She shuddered, her shoulders and
breasts wet now, and slick, with the rain.
“You are helpless,” I said to her, “and will make very little noise.”
“My ankles are chained,” she whispered.
I put her to her back, a bit more under the shelter of the wagon. The chain
moved a little through the loop ring above us. I heard the wagon creak a little,
too, above us. Someone had stirred in it, or was moving, it seemed. The fellow
who owned the wagon, I supposed, was turning in his sleep, or was addressing
himself to his companion. But it then seemed quiet, and there was little noise
except for the wind and rain, and the distant rumble of thunder.
My face was close to here. “You are slave,” I whispered.
Suddenly there was a great burst of lightning and crash of thunder.
I saw her eyes, and pressed down upon her, holding her head, pressing her lips
with the kiss of the master.
I drew back.
There was another great flash of lightning and I saw her eyes, looking up at me,
wild, frightened, needful. “Yes,” she whispered intensely, helplessly. “I am a
slave! I am a slave!” Then she lifted her body and seized me in her arms and
pressed her lips eagerly, needfully, gratefully to mine.
I put her to her back.
Then I caressed her, and she squirmed, writhing on the wet tarpaulin over the
gravel, beneath the wagon, in the flashes of lightning, in the explosions of
thunder.
She was small, naked and cuddly. Her thigh, as I determined, (pg.28) in turning
her about, and caressing her, first, by feel, and then, in a flash of lightning,
wore the common Kajira brand, the small, delicate “Kef,” for “Kajira,” sometimes
called the staff and fronds, suggesting beauty subject to discipline. On her
neck, beneath the coils of the heavy, padlocked chain, was a common,
close-fitting Gorean slave collar.
“Alas,” she wept softly, in misery, in frustration, “my ankles are chained!”
I gathered she might not have been a slave long.
“Oh!” she cried, softly.
I thrust up her legs and slipped between them, and hen her legs were tight about
me, I within their chained circuit. I lifted her up, and lowered her. “Ohh,” she
said, softly. She clutched me.
The storm was fierce.
Then, after a time, I lifted her up and slipped back, freeing myself.
There are various ways, of course, to use a woman whose ankles were bound. I had
utilized one of them.
“If a question comes up,” I said to her, “you were warned to silence, and were
helpless.” To be sure, this was even true. “You were merely utilized by a casual
passer-by.” I said. Such things, incidentally, are not that unusual with