Time Slave

28

“Oh!” cried Hamilton, angrily, stung on the thigh. Bees swarmed about her. “Hurry!” she cried. She looked up the height of the blasted, desiccated tree. On a branch, a smoking torch in one hand, stood Ugly Girl. She thrust her other hand, and arm, into an aperture in the tree. Bees, in a cloud, swarmed about her. She scooped out combs of honey, pounds, mixed with bees, smearing them on the branch next to her, on a large, flat leaf. Then she thrust the torch, as she had done before into the hole in the tree, trying to overcome the bees inside the nest. Her left eyelid was swollen. Hamilton could see welts on her body. Another bee stung Hamilton, on the side of the left ankle. Beside Hamilton, about her feet, were several leaves, laden with honey. Ugly Girl rolled the leaf and dropped it to Hamilton, who caught it, put it with the others, and then, as Ugly Girl bent down, squatting, handed her another leaf. Hamilton put her finger into the sweet, whitish mash. There were dead bees in it. Hamilton licked her finger. She could taste the smoke from Ugly Girl’s torch. “Oh!” cried Hamilton, as another bee stung her, on the left side of the neck. “We have enough!” she cried. “Please come down! Please, Flower!” Ugly Girl, with the last leaf in one hand, the torch in the other, had, too, had enough. Bees hot and black about her head and shoulders, she leapt down. Hamilton and Ugly Girl bent down, picking up the leaves. Another bee stung Hamilton on the back of the left leg, some seven inches above the knee. Then another stung her on the back of the neck. Weeping, laughing, she and Ugly Girl scooped up the honey and, torch smoking, fled.

When they were free of the lingering avengers of the nest, the two girls sat down in the grass, beside a large rock. Ugly Girl extinguished the torch. She knelt by Hamilton. Ugly Girl picked a flower, and fixed it in her hair. Hamilton could not do the same, for her own hair had been almost cut from her head, leaving her scalp cut and scraped, by the Dirt People. Hamilton, looking at Ugly Girl, did not feel any longer that she was ugly, though she was much different from a human female. The large eyes of Ugly Girl, dark, deep, Hamilton found to be beautiful. Ugly Girl dipped her finger in the honey, and tasted it.

“I wish to return to the Men,” said Hamilton. She thought of Tree. “Will you help me?”

It seemed not strange now to Hamilton that she wished to return to the Men, that she wished to return to a group where she would be no more than a rightless slave, where her neck would be given no choice but to bend beneath the yoke of a complete masculine domination. She could not, in her new knowledges, envy the frustrated, denied females of her own artificial times, cheated of their absolute sexual subjugation to a male, thereby denied the attainment of the totality, the fullness, of their sexuality.

“I will help you,” said Ugly Girl, in hand talk.

Hamilton hugged her with joy.

“You need not come near their camp,” said Hamilton. “Just show me the way. Then I can go into the camp alone. You will not then be recaptured.”

Hamilton wondered if Tree would tie her and beat her, for not having returned sooner. She hoped he would not do so. She had done her best to return to his collar.

“I will go with you,” signed Ugly Girl. Then she looked at Hamilton. “Tooth,” she said, making the sound, saying the word in the language of the Men, as nearly as she could. Her face seemed strained with the effort.

“You like Tooth?” asked Hamilton. She recalled the prognathous-jawed giant, with the extended canine, so fearsome seeming, so much loving children, he who had been kind to Ugly Girl, of all the Men. “I care for him,” said Ugly Girl. “I love him.”

“But you are of another people,” said Hamilton.

“I love him,” she said, speaking the words in the language of the Men. It required effort. Sweat stood on her forehead. Then she reverted to hand sign. “Do you not want to be owned?” she signed, asking Hamilton a question which, in Hamilton’s time, would have been a forbidden question, one which one woman would scarcely dare to ask another, but which, in this honest time, was natural, a straightforward, civil inquiry.

“Yes,” said Hamilton, smiling. “I want to be owned.”

The two girls hugged and kissed one another, and Ugly Girl touched Hamilton with her nose, in the manner of the Ugly People, drinking in her scent. Then laughing, the two girls gathered up their honey, and made their way toward the shelter of the Ugly People. In the morning, they had decided, they would begin the journey back to the shelters of the Men.

Hamilton preceded Ugly Girl to the shelter of the family of the Ugly People, carrying the honey. Ugly Girl delayed, stopping to gather sticks for the fire that night. Inside the shelter, its mouth now open, as it was during the day, Hamilton saw the male of the Ugly People, and his mate. She called out to them. The child did not come forth to greet her. Hamilton, tired, sweating, carried the honey to the cave, putting it down, in its rolled leaves, to one side. She turned to face the male and his mate, and froze with horror. He sat cross-legged, two pieces of flint in his hand, his head bent over. She, too, sat cross-legged, to one side, leather, with a rawhide thread and awl, in her hands. She was staring straight ahead, not seeing. Hamilton threw her hand before her mouth with horror. Blood was about the head of both. Both were dead. They had been propped in position and each tied to a short stake thrust into the dirt behind them. Hamilton screamed. She turned. In the mouth of the cave, behind her, blocking her exit, was a bearded man, the leader of the Weasel People.