concealment they wear, let alone their blendings and drapings, the best colors for the time of day and the season, the arrangements ideally in order for receivings, visitings, promenades, attendance at the readings, the theater, the song drama, and so on. In any event, few of us are trained as women’s slaves. Perhaps there are other schools, or courses, in this sort of thing. I have heard that free women, if they have a serving slave, or slaves, often purchase pretty ones, ones of a sort they particularly hate, in this way denying such a slave a master, which gratifies the free woman, and denying a master the slave, which, I suppose, gratifies her as well. It is also rumored that some free women purchase beautiful slaves in order to attract men to themselves, the fellow hoping to see more of the slave. But woe to the slave should she so much as dare to meet the eyes of the visitor. It is then, afterwards, the lash for her. The female serving slave, too, is apparently useful in the affairs of her mistress, carrying messages, arranging meetings, standing watch, and so on. Given the common loathing of the free woman for the slave, Darla’s reluctance to be washed, and publicly, by two slaves, was understandable. Clearly it was intended by Tuza as an insult. Similarly, a captured free woman may be profoundly insulted by her captor, if he has her stripped and exhibited in his presence by female slaves, while he ponders her value. Is she to be kept for a time, or sold? Is she a pot girl, or a kettle-and-mat girl, or does she have the makings, suitably trained, of a pleasure slave? Perhaps, if nothing better, she might be used for sleen feed. In any event, I knew nothing of being a woman’s slave. I had been trained for men.
“Get away from me!” screamed Darla, and Mila and I, disconcerted, drew back.
“Continue,” said Tuza, and we resumed our ministrations, however reluctantly. Darla held her head up, angrily, proudly, and stared out, toward the Alexandra.
“Good,” said Tuza. “Much better. Now brush and comb her hair.”
Hiza located a brush and comb, and I brushed Darla’s hair, and Mila combed it.
“Good,” said Tuza, “you are almost as presentable as a naked slave.”
“Free my hands, free my ankles,” cried Darla, “and give me a dagger, a javelin!”
“I like you as you are,” said Tuza.
“Let us do contest,” cried Darla, “in the manner of the Panther Women!”
“I would not soil my javelin on you,” said Tuza, “pretty Darla.”
“‘Pretty’!” screamed Darla.
“Now that I look upon you, better groomed,” said Tuza, “I think men might find you of some interest.”
“She-sleen!” cried Darla.
“If you had a collar on your neck,” she said.
“She-tarsk!” cried Darla, pulling at the bracelets, with a rattle of metal.
“Look,” said Tuza, “she is crying!”
“No, no, I am not!” wept Darla.
I was startled to see this, but tears ran down the cheeks of Darla. Could it be, I wondered, that she was a female, truly a female?
Tuza drew forth her dagger, and put its point to the bosom of Darla. The former leader drew back a little.
“You are afraid,” said Tuza.
“No,” said Darla.
But I saw she was afraid. She trembled. She turned white. Tears were in her eyes.
She looked then much less like a Panther Woman, than a woman. Darla, I conjectured, in this unexpected, and unusual situation, was suddenly coming to grips with her sex, its slightness, its softness, its helplessness, its weakness, its sensitivity, its limitations, its jeopardy, its fearful and glorious flood of rich and profound emotions, emotions over which she, to her consternation, found she could exercise not the least control, in whose grasp she found herself the lifted and transported prisoner of parts of herself a thousand times stronger than her conscious will, and its depth, its vulnerability, its dependence. Did this situation, chained before Tuza, I wondered, give her some sense of what it might be to be a woman before a man, or, say, a slave before a master?
I feared Tuza would ram the blade into the former leader, to the hilt.
“Do not kill her!” begged Hiza.
“Stand straighter,” said Tuza. “Get your back straight, your belly in, your shoulders back, your head up!”
Tears in her eyes, Darla obeyed.
“Excellent,” said Tuza, “you are standing almost as well as a slave.”
“Please!” said Darla.
“Do you wonder what has become of you, what has been done to you?” asked Tuza. “You are now exhibited as what you are, and