the woman, or even this huge machine they were caught in, but Bonnie couldn't. The only thing she could do was try not to have a breakdown. She had a song stuck in her head, not even a song she liked, but it repeated endlessly over and over as the slaves around her were dehumanized, broken into mechanical, but clean, mindless bodies.
She was being scrubbed mercilessly by two muscular women whose whole life doubtless consisted of scrubbing grimy street girls into pink cleanliness - at least for a night.
But final y her protests led the women to actual y look at her - with her fair, almost translucent skin scrubbed raw - and concentrate instead on washing her hair, which felt as if it were being pul ed out at the roots. Final y, though, she was done and was given an adequate towel with which to dry off.
Next, in what she was realizing was a giant assembly line, were kinder plump women who stripped off the towel and proceeded to put her on a couch and massage her with oil.
Just when she was starting to feel better she was hustled up to have the oil removed, except that which had soaked into her skin. Women then appeared who measured her, cal ing out the numbers as they did, and by the time Bonnie had tramped to the wardrobe station, three dresses were waiting for her on a bar. There was a black one, a green one, and a gray one.
I'l get the green for sure because of my hair, Bonnie thought blankly, but after she had tried al three on, a woman took the green and gray away, leaving Bonnie in a little black bubble dress, strapless, with a glittery touch of white material at the neck.
Next was a giant sanitary room, where her dress was careful y covered with a white paper robe that kept ripping.
She was led to a chair with a hair dryer and the rudiments of makeup, which a white-shirted woman used to put too much on Bonnie's face. Then the hair dryer was swung over her head, and Bonnie, with a stolen tissue, took off as much makeup as she dared. She didn't want to look good, didn't want to be sold. When she finished she had silvery eyelids, a touch of blush, and velvety rose-red lipstick that wouldn't wipe off.
After that she just sat and finger-combed her hair until it was dry, which the ancient machine announced with a ping.
The next station was a bit like the day after Thanksgiving at a big shoe store. The stronger or more determined girls managed to wrench shoes away from their weaker sisters and jammed them on one foot, only to start the process again the next minute. Bonnie was lucky. She saw a tiny black shoe that had a faintly silvery bow coming down the ramp and kept her eye on it while it passed from girl to girl until someone dropped it and then she swooped in and tried it on. She didn't know what she would have done if it hadn't fit. But it did fit, and she went to the next station to get its mate. As she sat waiting, other girls were trying on perfume.
Bonnie saw two entire bottles go down the bodices of girls and wondered if they meant to sel them or try to poison themselves with them. There were also flowers. Bonnie was already dizzy with perfume and had decided not to wear any, but a tal woman bel owed over her head and a garland of freesia was pinned to frame her curls, without anyone asking her permission.
The last station was the hardest to bear. She had on no jewelry and would have worn only one bracelet with the dress. But she was given two: slim unbreakable plastic bracelets, each with a number on it - her identity from now on, she was told.
Slave bracelets. She had now been washed, packaged, and stamped, so that she could be conveniently sold.
Damon! she cried voicelessly, but something had died inside her, and she knew now that her cal s would not be answered.
"She was picked up as a runaway slave and confiscated,"the sweetshop man told Damon impatiently. "And that's al I know."
Damon was left with a feeling he didn't often have. Sickening terror. He was real y beginning to believe that this time he had cut it too fine; that he would be too late to save his redbird.