Why was he asking such questions? What difference could it make to him, or to anyone?

“I am confused,” I said. “I was kept drugged. It was now doubtless mixed with my food. I think there was a ship, I think there was a wagon, for a long time. I could not see out of the wagon. It was metal, and locked. The roads were rough. I was kept closely chained in the wagon, and hooded. I could hear little. People seldom spoke in my presence. It was sometimes hot in the wagon. It was sometimes cold. I was in it for a long time. We may eventually have been in mountains. There seemed steepnesses which were being ascended. I know very little of these things. I was unhooded only to be fed and watered. I could hear the locks opening and closing. Mostly I slept. I could not stay awake. I was sometimes slapped awake, to be fed and watered, and was then allowed, once again, mercifully, greedily, to subside into unconsciousness. Then I seem to remember being bound being bound hand and foot, and then being unchained. Never, it seems, was I without bonds. Did they fear I might escape? I did not know where I was being taken or what would be done with me. Could I be of some importance? Surely not! One such as I is not important. But why were such precautions taken with me? I could see nothing for they would not remove my hood. I was then wrapped in several folds of a blanket, it tied about me at several places, the ankles, knees, belly, breasts and neck. Were it not for this precaution I fear I might have died of exposure. I was then placed in some sort of basket. I could feel the fiber though the blanket. I was fastened in the basket by straps, at my ankles and neck. The basket swayed frighteningly. I was muchly grateful for the straps which held me in place. The wind whistled though the chinks between the fingers. Muchly, too, then, was I grateful for the protection of the blanket. The basket, it seemed, clearly, was being borne though the air. At the time I did not understand how that could be. I had thought it must be part of the drug, part of the dreams. Sometimes I heard weird, wild, birdlike screams. Sometimes I was frightened. But mostly I slept.”

“How long was it, after you left the pens,” he asked, “that you were transported, or think that you were transported, in one or another of these possible modalities?”

“I do not know,” I said.

“Days?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so,” I said.

“Several days?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I would think so.”

“Weeks?” he asked.

“Possibly,” I said.

“I would suppose it would be hard to tell, in the state of consciousness you were in,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. Surely he knew how helpless we were in the grip of such substances.

What could be his interest in these things?

“There seems to have been a great deal of caution, or secrecy, in your transport,” he remarked.

“I knew nothing else, at the time,” I said.

“But that is clear to you now, is it not?” he asked.

“I gather so,” I said, “from what I now know.” This was true. Normally there was little concealment, or secrecy, involved in our movements. We tended to be moved about, and shipped, usually, quite openly. More often, it seemed, we were moved about in wagons covered with blue and yellow silk, our ankles chained to a central bar aligned with the long axis of the wagon bed, a bar which can be lifted up and down, and locked in place. Sometimes we are moved in special ships, constructed for us, with narrow, slatted tiers, on which we lie down, chained, closed off from one another with narrowly meshed steel screens. Sometimes, on flatbed wagons, we are chained to frameworks, or kept in metal containers, roped in place, or in sacks, tied, too, in place. There are, too, of course, simple cage wagons, in which, as what we are, we may be viewed behind the bars. There are many ways in which we may be moved. Indeed, it is not unusual for us, even, in brief tunics, chained together, by neck, or wrist, to trek the roads, afoot, under the surveillance of mounted guards astride saddle tharlarion. If others should approach, say, a caravan, we commonly yield the road, kneeling beside it, facing it, in obeisance, until the dust, the bells, passes.

I suddenly looked at him, in agony. He must not tell about the wall, that I had been near it!

Surely he would not tell!

“Stand,” he said. I complied.

I was regarded then, as such men regard one such as I.

“Disrobe,” he said.

My hand moved to the loop at my left shoulder, and I drew upon the loop, and, in a moment, stepped from the silk.

He gestured to the grass, permissively.

I sat back, on the grass, leaning back, on the palms of my hands.

In this fashion one’s hands are rather behind one, and rather held in place, by one’s own weight.

This position is one we are taught. In it, as is clear to us, we are more vulnerable.

He crouched beside me.

I was frightened.

I looked behind me, and upward, to the wall. I feared that I might see the back of a guard there. Although where we were was hidden from the house, by the shrubbery, it would have been an ill-disguised location for an assignation in the garden, being easily visible, as most parts of the garden are, from the wall. To be sure, the guards were supposed to keep their eyes away, unless suspicions were legitimately aroused, from the interior of the garden. Indeed, at certain times, they were not even allowed on the wall. This was, however, the rest period. They might well be on the wall now. Too, we had sometimes seen them observing us, and not merely when it was time for us to swim, or bathe, in the pool, or to try on silks, or for some of us to learn dances, but even when we might be taking our exercise, strolling in the garden, before the one who was first amongst us, though we pretended not to notice. It was interesting how our behavior changes, and so remarkably, when we find ourselves under the eyes of a man. It is as though we must suddenly become more beautiful. I think this is true even of women quite other then we. I think that they, too, thusly, in their hearts, know to whom they belong.

“You are frightened,” he said.

I looked at him.

He put his fingers gently over my lips. “You are not going to cry out, are you?” he asked.

I regarded him, in terror.

He lifted my right foot a little up from the grass, a few inches, with his left hand. My ankle was helpless in his grasp. He rubbed his index finger across the ball of the foot and then, his finger bright with a spot of blood, place it to my lips. I tasted the tiny bit of blood. My foot was cut, of course, from the sharp stones. I had exercised too little caution in fleeing from the wall.

He then did know, of course, that I had been at the wall. Indeed, he had doubtless, perhaps to his amusement, seen me there. What power in the garden did this give him over me! But who such as he needed any further power over one such as I? Did not, if not he, then his kind, already possess absolute power over on such as I!

“You are not going to cry out, are you?” he asked.

I moved my head, wildly, not so much in negativity, as in helplessness, and frustration.

“I am known in the house,” he assured me.

But that did not entitle him, surely, to enter the garden! To be with one of us, as he was!

“Very well,” he said. He reached down, beside me, to my discarded silk, and folded it several times. It was so light that even with several folds, it was not bulky. These layers of silk, folded neatly into a flat rectangle, he thrust crosswise in my mouth. Partly now they were back, between my teeth, my teeth closed on them, and partly, in front, those folds, they protruded from my mouth. I could feel them, between my lips. They extended an inch or so beyond my lips.

“You may recline,” he informed me.

I lay back, terrified.

Did he not know this was the garden? Did he not understand the danger?