confined and amused themselves at his expense. He endured this and gave up trying to please them, because it did no good. Neither did they care if he was remote or not. He was just an object. Sometime, halfway through the night, Ulaume had had enough. He retaliated.
It happened involuntarily. One moment a har was pawing at his body, the next Ulaume’s hair had wrapped him in a strangling embrace. Ulaume squeezed hard, felt the life start to trickle out. His ears were filled with a buzzing shriek. He could hear panicked voices around him only faintly. His fingernails dug into tender flesh. He felt them sink in, like a blade through softened butter. If he dug hard enough he’d reach through muscle and flesh and find something more vital to tear at.
Then came the terrible pain. His head exploded with it, as if lightning had struck him. He was on fire. Ulaume uttered a roar, lashed out with clawed hands, but somehar was sawing at his hair with a serrated knife. They held his limbs, punched his face, his stomach. It lasted for an eternity.
He was on his knees, trying to breathe. On his knees in a swamp of slippery tawny locks. And around his face, each severed hair was bleeding. His head was a cauldron of pain.
The Uigenna stood around him in a circle, perhaps revolted by what they saw. He could hear their heavy breathing. The dying serpents of Ulaume’s hair writhed and flopped around him and what was left bled in thin threadlike streams onto his shoulders and down his chest. Since the day of his inception to the Colurastes, Ulaume had never cut his hair. Although he had imagined it when he’d first arrived at the white house, he knew he would never have done it. His instincts wouldn’t have let him, and this was why. It had never been dead.
‘Freak!’ One of the hara kicked him in the side.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ another said, and even in the delirium of pain, Ulaume heard the fear in his voice.
Left alone, he knelt on the ground, hands braced against it. His breathing was laboured. Eventually, the bleeding stopped and his head went numb. He dared not move. There was no way out of this. He was lost and his power was lost.
The following morning, the Uigenna struck camp. Ulaume was dragged naked from his tepee and taken to a covered wagon. Inside, was a cage in which a mountain lion crouched: Wraxilan’s pet. Beside it, was another cage: empty. The Uigenna threw Ulaume into the empty cage and locked it. He hunched there, almost mindless, his hair hanging over his face, stiff with dried blood. His face was a bloody mask. He stared at the lion and the lion stared back. They had nothing to say to one another.
When the lion was fed, Ulaume was fed. He was let out of the cage to relieve himself. He didn’t know in which direction they were heading or what would happen to him. His life was this: confinement. Perhaps when they reached the Uigenna town, Wraxilan would give him as a gift to one of his favoured aides.
It seemed that months passed, but it was only a few days. On the evening of the third day, the cages were unloaded from the wagon. Through the bars, Ulaume could see that the Uigenna were making camp, and it appeared to be more permanent than the last few nights. There must be something in this area that demanded their lengthy attention. A har, who Ulaume now regarded as his keeper, came to open the cages. He put a leash on both Ulaume and the lion and let them out. The lion must have been kept in this way since it was young, because it had no spirit. It did not lash out with its great paws and knock the har senseless, as it surely could have done.
‘You’re to clean yourself up,’ said the keeper to Ulaume. ‘Somehar wants you tonight.’
This was not welcome news, but perhaps Ulaume might be lucky and find himself with har who could be influenced by his charms; what was left of them.
The keeper led his charges to a deep watering hole, surrounded by high rocks. Here the lion crouched to drink. Ulaume went into the water and submerged himself, joined to the land by the leash. He wondered if he had the courage to drown himself. The har who held him did not yank