Authors: Robin Roseau
"Hello, Maya," she purred. "You seem excited about something. Tell me."
"Today, we play by my rules."
"Do we?"
"Yes."
"And what are your rules?"
"I will ask you questions. You will answer them honestly, succinctly, without misdirection, and in a fashion I am likely to understand, as best you can. Five questions."
"Oh? And what do I get in return?"
"If you answer all five, then I will tell you how I spent my day yesterday. If you do not answer all five, then the conversation is over and I am not obligated to call you tomorrow."
"You will give me every detail of your day yesterday."
"I will give you reasonable detail. I will not detail every bit that I ate or every word that was spoken in my hearing. The telling will take at least fifteen minutes, or if it does not, you may ask me additional questions about the day."
"And tomorrow?"
"The next time we talk will be by your rules. And then mine, and then yours."
"I agree," she said. "Ask your questions."
"Why do you wish to talk to me each day?"
She trilled. "A most excellent question," she said, "and one I am pleased to answer. You relieve my boredom."
"All right. What is your world like?"
"It is very different from yours," she replied. "It is not a world like yours. There is no planet and no sun. Instead, the place we occupy has no form. It is perhaps like a soup. But we each carve away a section of the soup and make a space, a bubble in the soup if you will. Within each bubble, we are able to form what we want, limited by our imagination and force of will."
"That seems like half an answer," I said.
"I am being kind. I could answer at great length, consuming hours. I would very much enjoying doing so, but you asked for concise answers. So my world, as you say, is whatever I envision, after a fashion. Fashioning a bubble that looks like your world requires a great deal of imagination and even greater force of will. My world changes with my moods."
"I wish a follow
-up question, and I do not wish it to count against my five."
"Ask, and I will tell you if I agree."
"Is it magic that you use?"
"Ah. I will allow that as a follow
-up. You would consider it magic, and if you were here, it would seem like magic. But what is magic? To me, it is my imagination and my will that forms the space. Is that magic? There are no spells that you can cast, and if you came here with magic, it would not cause the bubbles to form."
"Thank you for answering. Third question. When you were ready to take me across the portal, you told me you would hold me in a cage, letting me out from time to time. Would this have been a cage that I would recognize, or something else?"
"It would be a bubble," she replied. "The form would change based on my mood. It may be a cage in the corner of my larger bubble, so that I could watch you, or it could be a bubble next to mine, and I would open a door between them when I wished to do so." She paused. "I will offer more if you want, but again, you asked me to be concise."
"I would accept more," I told her.
"Well then, the nature of your cage would depend upon whether you were seeking to please me. If you were seeking to vex me, your cage could be quite unpleasant. If you were seeking to please me, then I would in turn offer you a cage filled with choices for your pleasures: a soft bed, warming foods, and distractions of your choice."
"Books?"
"If you pleased me, yes, I could provide books."
"I have no books here," I said.
She trilled. "Then I could have offered you things your Amazon queen does not. It may be that your mind could form bubbles, but you cannot form a new bubble from within another bubble, and your body would not survive in the soup."
"I could adjust your bubble?"
"If I allowed it, but of course, I would not. And it would be dangerous. You do not know how to form bubbles, and you could burst mine. I would not die, but you would." She paused while I let that thought settle. "Next question?"
"When we fought, did I hurt you, even a little?"
"You gave me small bruises, readily healed. None of you humans are strong enough to cause real damage with your small sticks. Your swords can sting. That is four. One more."
"I believe you expect far more than daily conversation with me. What is it you want over time?"
She trilled. "Oh, another excellent question. I want you, Maya. I want you to love me. I want you to worship me. I will come for you again, and you will return with me. That is what I want. It is inevitable." She trilled again, and I felt pleasure. "I want you, Maya, and you will grow to want me. You will grow to crave my touch." And I felt her stroking me, and I knew exactly what she meant. "And now, tell me of your day."
"In a moment," I said. She had disorientated me with her answer, but now I knew her game. The question to ask myself later was simple: could I beat her?
I took a breath. "I will start the telling with when we spoke yesterday. Can you see where I am?"
"No."
"I am beside a river near the village," I said. "The river is fast here, but there are pools where fish may reside. Do you know about fish and rivers?"
"Yes. If you say something I do not understand, I will ask for clarification, and you will answer."
"We are from different worlds, and such an explanations may be difficult. I will do my best, but I will not spend a day explaining. But then I hold you to the same agreement."
"Oh, yes," she said. "Go on."
"This is where I have been the other days we talked, and I believe this is where I will be most days when I call for you. I have my tools for catching fish, but yesterday I did not feel like fishing after we talked, so I sat for a while before returning to my queen. I served her breakfast, and we ate together. Then we had morning training. We fought with staves, although I wanted to fight with swords."
She trilled a laugh. "I can imagine why. You wish to fight better the next time we meet."
"Few would believe you have anything to fear from me," I told her. "I fought you with staff because I am so poor with a sword, which you will understand shortly. My trainer told me if I wanted to fight with swords in the afternoon, I first must impress her each morning with wrestling or staffs or bow."
"And did you?"
"I did yesterday. I have not in the past been fond of training, and I believe the Amazons were pleased mostly by my willingness to fully engage in my lessons. I did better than I ever have, but still, I lost nearly every bout. Losing nearly every bout is an improvement for me."
"My poor little school teacher. It is embarrassing to lose to girls so young."
"Yes," I said. "I am perhaps a laughingstock, at least to some."
"You are not to me," she said. "You have a beautiful mind." She trilled, and I closed my eyes for a moment.
"Why are you not talking?"
"It takes a moment after you do that," I told her.
She trilled again, and again. "That?"
"Yes. If you wish the rest of the story, you must stop that, or I cannot continue, and our time ends."
"Go on then."
"There was lunch, and then afternoon training," I explained. "We fought with swords." Then I spoke at length about the training. "But in the end, I fought poorly, very poorly. I scored no strikes, coming close only once. My trainer was gentle at first, but as I fought poorly, she struck me. And again. And again. Five times she struck me."
"I would not strike you for fighting poorly," she said. "I would strike you only if you did not worship me. And even then, I have other punishments if you misbehave."
"After we fought with swords, I
was required to run."
"Amazons like to run," she said. "So do demons. Demons run faster than Amazons do, almost as fast as your horses. Sometimes I like to come visit and only race."
"Race?"
"I let the Amazons chase me, or sometimes I travel around the home of the Amazons and find someone else to chase."
"Have you been doing that since we met?"
"Oh no. You have my full attention, Maya. What did you do after running?"
I told her, briefly, about the rest of the day. "Finally, it was time for bed. And that was my day."
"Oh no," she said. "You have not told me what you did in bed."
"We agreed that my time with my warrior was not your time. I will stretch that to tell you about training and meals, but I will not tell you of our most private times."
"You will give me at least a taste of a telling," she replied. "I will not ask for details."
"We cuddled, and we made love, and I did not think of you while we did so."
"Was it difficult to think only of her."
"Not with what she was doing to me."
And the demon laughed. I would have expected a harsh, grating laugh, but her laughter was music.
"Well, we have each kept our promise for the day," she said. "Tomorrow you will summon me, and we will play by my rules."
"Yes," I said. "It will not always be the same time."
"The time does not matter. Time in my world and time in yours are not the same. When you call, I will be ready, but I will know how long you have made me wait. Call me when you will be alone."
"There will be days I will not be able to be alone."
"Then we may come to another agreement for those days, but only if you tell me in advance or summon me while you are not alone, and then I may talk to you while you are not alone or I may agree to another arrangement."
"Such as?"
"Summon twice the next day, or perhaps permission to see through your eyes."
"All right. We have talked. Be gone now."
And she left me, leaving with a trill in my mind. It took a long time for the memory of the trill to fade.
* * * *
After that, I spent the next two weeks wondering what I was going to do. Malora grew accustomed to my morning departures from her. She knew I was troubled, but she chalked it up to memories of my near-kidnapping at a demon's hands.
Lathana
meted out her rewards for my good behavior. She offered pleasure to me when I called her, "thanking me" she called it, and I grew to look forward to her touch. I found myself excited to call her, knowing what she would do to me. During our talks, if I particularly amused her or did something she ordered, she gave me more pleasure, and I found myself responding more and more quickly to her requests and demands.
At first, I wasn't worried about that, but then she began telling me things she wanted me to do when we were apart. They were innocuous. She asked me to take my hair out of the braid, which I did, and she stroked me deliciously for doing so. After that, she told me she wanted me to wear my hair down when I called for her, and she gave me extra pleasures when I complied.
I didn't know why she cared how I wore my hair; she couldn't see it, after all.
But her requests began to intrude more completely into my life. When she understood I organized the storage shed on the training grounds, she told me I must organize it differently. I held out for three days, and she withheld her pleasure for three days. When I asked her about it, she told me, "You have disappointed me. I made a harmless request, and you have not done what I asked."
And so that afternoon, I reorganized the storage shed, and the next day she rewarded me.
I thought that was petty and harmless, but then she began trying to drive a wedge between Malora and me, and that was when I knew I wa
s in trouble. I had told her how I resented the way Malora and Nori had taken me, so she ordered me to stop serving Nori and to complain to Malora for my treatment. I refused to do either, and again I received no pleasure from her, but two days later, she made another demand, an innocuous demand, and then she rewarded me when I did it.
I knew I was in trouble. I might win some of the battles, but I knew eventually I would lose the war. I had no idea how to fight back. Time was on her side, as I became increasingly dependent on the things she could do to me.
And she hadn't once threatened punishment. I remembered the pain she had given me, and I had no illusions as to how long I would hold out if she began punishing me for refusing her.
I needed to change the nature of the war.
* * * *
"We're done,"
Omie said, looking at me. "A bout?"
I nodded, still panting. She called for Nori, who came with her sword, ready to fight, but I held up a hand and
drew Nori to the side. "This is going to be a strange request, but do it this way. I want to do something different. For a minute or so, treat me like you have been, like you would any other young companion, but then I want you to use your best skill to finish the bout."
"You're right, that's a strange request."
"And I want you to do it five times. Subsequent rounds can be shorter if you want; your choice."