(eng) Nina Kiriki Hoffman - SSC by Antiquities

Author:Antiquities [Antiquities]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The seventh time my father sold me, things changed.

My new master took me home to the finest villa I had seen since leaving our palace. He gave me a slave of my own who dressed me and bathed me, rubbed me with scented oils, pumiced the calluses from my feet, ironed waves into my hair, and wound golden chains studded with jewels around my neck, wrists, and ankles. She perfumed me with essences of flowers and trees until I did not know myself.

Always when I went in to this newest master I looked more beautiful than I had ever imagined possible, even when I was still a princess. Always this new master treated me as though I were a favorite wife.

A time came when I thought perhaps all my other lives had melted behind me, leaving me solid in this one so that I would never again have to remember the others.

Later a time came when my master Autolycus became displeased with me for some small thing, a pearl misplaced, perhaps, or one that did not perfectly match another.

The next night my slave, Lilla, did not put any jewels on me at all.

That night my master complained of the way my clothes draped about me, and the next night I came to him naked. The following night I came to him without any perfumes or oils, and the night that followed that I came to him with my hair unpressed and unbound.

This night I was just as I had been when he bought me at the market, except cleaner; if he complained of anything about me, I knew that as a woman, I would not be able to change it more to his liking.

“How rough your skin,” he said, touching me. “How harsh your hair.”

“I am as you asked me to be,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. He stroked his knuckle down my cheek.

“I have changed as I was directed,” I said. “This is as essential a self as I have.”

“And yet I have heard that you can change still more,” he said.

“Oh?” My heart struck harder inside me.

“I have heard stories of men who thought they owned a woman but found that they owned a leopard, a serpent, a phoenix, a horned goat, a basilisk, a lion, a wolf.”

“Strange stories,” I said.

“I heard that these men did not know what they had until they raised their fists in anger,” he whispered to me. He stroked his knuckle down my other cheek, and then placed his hand over my breast. “I wonder if there might be some other way to persuade you to change.”

“Me?” I said.

“Are you not Mestra, daughter of Erysichthon?”

I stepped away from him, afraid of one who stared so deep into my history. “I am not,” I said over my pounding heart.

“Are you not?”

“I am not.”

He looked away a moment, then faced me. “Are you not Mestra Proteus?”

I could not deny it again; any truth thrice denied becomes a lie, with the denial becoming true.

I whispered, “I am.”

“And do you not change?” he asked.

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