Black Wine by Candas J. Dorsey

Author:Candas J. Dorsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

She can’t leave it—him—alone. She calls him into her room, where she has now hung an embroidered bedspread over the wall with the screens, shuts the door behind him, and comes at him with hands flying. He grabs her wrists gently, but his face is angry.

“Uh!” he shouts, his harsh voice like a crow’s.

He lets go and =Talk!= his hands push at her. =You can talk. She could talk. Talk. Don’t patronize me.=

“Patronize” is a sign from top down, and his face imitates the regent’s.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You are my only friend here.”

=If I’m your friend, what’s my name?= he says angrily.

She closes her eyes in despair. Her hands come up, and move, but she can’t look to see what they say or she will stop it coming. She feels his hands take hers. She opens her eyes.

“What did I say?” she says up to him, where he stands so close he casts a shadow over her.

“Lowlyn,” she says. “You’re not like my father at all. You’re as big as Lowlyn.” His question. “A lover I was handfasted to in Sailor Town. What did I say?”

He lets go and makes a sign. Fist opens, flies up.

“Fly up from captivity,” she says. He laughs again, that bitter sound. =You used different words before,= he says, and spells them out.

“Escape … from … bondage?”

=That’s what you said. You couldn’t spell very well, though. That’s new. You can call me whatever you like, now. You’re the princess.=

She begins to shake her head and the motion becomes violent, her head exploding with pain, the world streaking by until she closes her eyes. “No! No!” she says, her voice rising. “I am not the princess. No! I am Essa!” His hands imprisoning her head firmly wake her from what has seemed, suddenly, like a terrible dream.

“What was that?” she says, weakly, her own hands coming up to clutch her temples where a ferocious headache rages, trying to gnaw its way out.

=She used to get bad dreams,= he signs. =Her head would split like that, suddenly.=

“She?”

=You, but she wasn’t you and you aren’t her. Maybe you will join her someday.= She gets the impression he thinks that will be an improvement.

“Can you help me? I am her, whatever you think.”

=I’m not sure. You have a name. She didn’t.=

“She didn’t? But you do, and you are a slave too.”

=I gave myself a name from my dreams. She was afraid of her dreams. She was afraid of everything, but she lived anyway. I used to call her Fierce-frightened.=

“Adjectives? Names are nouns.”

=She might have given herself a noun= he spells it =eventually. A name= he spells that too, for emphasis. =But I was just teaching her what she already knew. Spelling. Lovemaking. She had always been … = His sign is for “sex,” but it has a violence in it.

“Raped?”

But the word is from her home language. He doesn’t know it. She tries to explain forced sex but that seems to be a slave’s life here. She goes back to his sign for “lovemaking,” and contrasts it with the “fucking” sign.

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