The gold sleeve came free and Anya's nubbin swelled. The woman prised the sleeve slightly open, slid it back again, pushed it deeply home then nipped until Anya cried out with the pain. She felt her hood being sleeved fully back; she heard the grunt; then she felt a sudden prick of pain against the side of her nubbin. The bony wrist twisted as the fingers searched, while the pain intensified. When the thin and piercing pain stabbed deeper, Anya screamed. But the pin continued searching, amid her whimpers, for the small hole on the other side. It found it; the woman grunted, the bony fingers pushed, the scream came again and the nubbin was pinned within its sleeve of gold. But it seemed this alone was insufficient torture.
Her legs were now doubled up tighter, exposing her belly very fully for the woman to grip the flesh there with the hard tips of her fingers, which nipped until her belly flesh was bruised. But Anya knew not what was wanted of her; her flesh was pierced; her flesh was bleeding, she was sure. Was that not cruelty enough? The woman screamed at her; she began to sob, pushing her belly back between her legs to try to meet the woman, so her sex was pushed up in the air. The twig-like fingers entered her again, pushing down to the front, so her impaled nubbin was pushed out hard. She felt the long fingernails beneath the hood again, holding it back; then she felt her nubbin being squeezed, then the stabbing pain withdrew and the numbness seeped until she felt something like burning wire being drawn through that living bud of flesh. And now the full horror of what had been done to her was overpowering.
The cat-woman, having performed her duty as thoroughly as she was able, left. But Anya did not move; she remained with her head down and her bottom in the air. She felt defiled - and broken, too - more cruelly used and broken than when her husband had taken her and torn her inner flesh so callously, so unlovingly, all that time ago. He had used her body, then had pushed her aside, and left her bed - without even covering her defilement - to let her cry herself to sleep. That was his wedding gift to Anya, the only gift that despicable man had ever bestowed upon the woman he had taken - for she had never had any say in it - without passion, without love, without a trace of human kindness.
So to Anya, that piercing and the fitting with the gold split ring did not appear in quite the light in which these people saw it - as a gift, a window to a world of pleasure through one brief stab of pain, and as a symbol of her freedom, once her apprenticeship was served, to take her pleasure whensoever and howsoever she might choose.
When the painted women returned to her side, Anya collapsed, sobbing tears of hopelessness. They stroked her hair, spoke tender words of reassurance which she could not understand; they wiped the moisture from her sweat-drenched body and brought her food - boiled grain and fish garnished with nuts and small pieces of succulent fruit - but she refused it, accepting only the bowl of milknut liquid served freshly from its shell. This she drank greedily. They knew then that she had retained the will to live - 'Abaata', as they termed it - and would in time recover from her ordeal. On the Princess's instruction, she was therefore given over to the tender cares of Miriri, a woman renowned for her warmth and kindness, for a period of seven days.
[10]
Miriri
Miriri's hut was the closest one to the lagoon; this was what Anya liked best about it. In the morning she could watch from the doorway as the women went down to the boats and she could watch the younger girls sitting out on the sand, carving jewellery and threading necklaces of shells. There were jobs to do around the hut - Miriri saw to that - pigs to feed in a small compound, pots that needed cleaning and sometimes, fruit to be picked on short forays into the bush. But in the afternoon, Miriri would allow Anya to stretch out on the beach in the sun. Ikahiti, the young woman who had befriended her on that first day, would sometimes come to be beside Anya and teach her some of their words; sand - arini, sun - otei, the sea - uliwi, and men - rinyi, but it was never fully clear what Ikahiti actually meant by rinyi - whether men or captives. When, on the second day, Anya pointed to herself and asked: 'Rin? Ikahiti simply shook her head.
'Shiniki,' she said.
'Shiniki? repeated Anya, mystified, for she had not heard that word before. Then she pointed to Ikahiti. 'Shiniki?' she asked hopefully. But Ikahiti shook her head again and smiled and Anya found that smile exasperating. She was doubly mystified now. She still knew nothing about the native men - there had to be some - and now she wasn't even sure about herself, because the word for a woman was liwin. Whenever Anya tried to ask about the island men, Ikahiti either couldn't or wouldn't understand, and though happy to instruct Anya in her own tongue, she seemed to have no interest in learning anything in return.
When Anya, frowning, gave up once again, Ikahiti laughed then reached to stroke the cord around Anya's belly, making Anya freeze in fear, then begin to tremble like a frightened fawn, for the cord had been fitted to her after her initiation and it passed down between her legs and was fastened through the ring that pierced her nubbin. Ikahiti moved slowly, studying Anya carefully while Anya continued to shake. To Anya, the feeling - any movement which stirred the metal ring inside the tender unhealed skin - was appalling. The cord seemed to pull through her no matter where it was touched, stirring too the memory of the cruelty of that piercing and making her cheeks turn very pale. But Ikahiti did not stop what she was doing; Anya's very faintness seemed to spur her on. It was as if Ikahiti, kind though she otherwise was, gained satisfaction - or at least a calmness - from touching Anya when she was afraid. With Anya's breathing very shallow now, she was turned on her side, in plain view of the women strolling past them across the beach, and Ikahiti, languishing above her, toyed with cord and ring and bead while Anya quavered on the verge of passing out. In that brief time, a conversation to all appearances between equal fiends had transformed into a tableau in which one woman, according to the vagaries of whim, would dominate and the other, scarcely conscious, would submit.
The cord, a single loop around Anya's waist and through the ring at her nubbin, had a sliding wooden bead attached to it. When the cord was first fitted, it was slipped through the gold ring and drawn up to make a pair of parallel strands. The ends of these strands were pushed through twin holes in the bead, which was next threaded all the way down until it touched the ring. Then the loose ends of the cord were fastened behind her, at her waist. When the bead was pushed up towards her waistline, the cord tightened, the ring was pulled upwards and the feeling made her squirm. The bead had not been adjusted in the two days since, but Ikahiti adjusted it now, with Anya on her side and without any warning. Her fingers lay against the cord, a fingertip toying with the bead while the lightly pulling feeling surged then ebbed away in Anya's nubbin and the ring, as it was lifted, softly pressed against the hood. Anya's mouth was open, but she did not breathe. The fingers tugged, the bead moved up and she felt a wave of nausea. Ikahiti's hand encompassed Anya's belly, pressing lightly against the cord and held her, rubbing gently, very slightly, until amidst the murmurs, the awful sickly feeling turned to a swelling arousal. She turned her on her back and kept her open-legged and kissed her while she held the cord - wrapped her fingers round it now - and Anya, belly bowed and nubbin ringed, could hardly breathe. She lay there with her swelling bud of pleasure tethered to this woman's hand, while the woman kissed her open-mouthed and she trembled in submission. It was a feeling that was both profound and delicious. Ikahiti turned Anya on her side again and tickled her nipples with a fine stream of sand. As her breathing gradually returned to normal, Anya's body glowed with an inner warmth as if velvet pleasure had seeped into her veins. It was the kind of feeling she experienced sometimes after her pleasure had come; but this time, the afterglow was there without the peak itself. In her belly was the echo of the trembling fear and in her throat, the honey-sweet aftertaste of submission.
Ikahiti's fingers, now tiring of the sand game, slipped and snaked about the sun-warmed nipples, plumping them up to firmness.
When at length Anya opened her eyes, she saw a captive man, his cockstem bobbing hard, being chased up the beach by a woman with a stick. This sight was still at that time strange to Anya. When she sat up, Ikahiti smiled, apparently amused by the disquiet as Anya watched the punishment, then she drew her down again and continued touching her skin.
Over the next few days, Anya witnessed many such incidents. There were many pale-skinned men about this village, far more than the four that Anya had known about from the start. They must have been taken from other boats, such as the one she had found buried in the sand, perhaps, to be held by these women as slaves. But the women had been very selective, for all the men were young and there were none of the ugly unkempt creatures that stood starkly even now in Anya's recollection of that contemptible pirate crew. The men here were made to fetch and carry and were frequently beaten with the flat wooden sticks, often for no reason that Anya could determine other than to keep them hard. Every time she had seen one of these men kneeling up and waiting, hands behind head and knees apart, while the woman measured the swing and destination of the stroke, his cockstem had been upstanding and the spanking had seemed only to make his condition burgeon. Anya wondered if this was because of the way the men were tied. Like Anya, most of them had a cord around the waist, but in the case of the men, this cord had been drawn down at the front and looped around the flesh between their thighs. Once, she had seen the woman tighten this loop in preparation for the spanking. To Anya's mind, it was this similarity - the presence of the cord around the waist and the association between such intimate cords and slavery - that most of all made her doubt that she was indeed free to come and go as she pleased. She was never left on her own; there was always someone nearby, working perhaps, gutting fish or shelling clams or weaving leaves, but nevertheless, keeping an eye on her.
The women appeared to use these captured men as they thought fit. Though Anya saw their treatment as nothing less than cruel, she soon gained the impression that to the women, the degradations imposed upon the men were simply allowable amusements. Frequently, when Ikahiti came to visit, she would have one of the men with her and it was always the same man. His skin, though paler than Ikahiti's, was very sun-bronzed. His hair was long and untidy, though his body was very clean. Anya found him attractive, but very docile. When she tried to speak to him in her own tongue, it was apparent that he understood her well, but his answers were vague and faltering and his accent was strange. She asked him how long he had been there.
'I ...' He looked very worriedly at Ikahiti. When she didn't speak, he continued. 'Many days ... Many. Our ship ...' his voice trailed away, as if it were a strain to talk and he was unsure. He kept looking sidelong at Ikahiti, who seemed very annoyed that he had even attempted to answer Anya and who glared across at her when she persisted.
'Days?' said Anya, admiring the uniform sun-bronze of his skin. 'But surely you have been here much longer? What land are you from?' Ikahiti muttered something sharply to the man and now he was afraid to speak at all. Anya became convinced that Ikahiti's vexation stemmed from the likelihood that she had understood not a single word of what had been said.
The man got up slowly, his eyes downcast, and began to walk away. Ikahiti, still annoyed, shouted something after him then watched him disappear into the trees. Anya, aware that she had been the cause of the upset, but feeling none the wiser after this exchange, had just settled down on the sand and was gazing out into the lagoon to watch the women diving from the boats when the man returned. Anya saw the expression on Ikahiti's face - no longer kind, or even simply annoyed, but harsh. Her chin jutted strongly. Anya turned and saw that the man carried a fruit. He offered it to Ikahiti, who took it. But Anya soon realised that though this was a peace offering of a sort, Ikahiti did not mean to eat it. The fruit was long and smoothly skinned and purple, and she meant to use it on the man. She had turned him round and made him kneel.
But it was the way the man behaved that amazed Anya. He showed no resistance. His forehead pressed against the sand. His stem, already partially erect, curved down between his thighs. Its pale bronzed skin looked marked and reddened on the underside, as if it had recently been abused, and the bag was tight against the base. Ikahiti unfastened the cord from his waist, but only to double it and form it into a slip loop which collared both stem and ballocks together. She drew the slip loop tight until he groaned and his back arched down and his buttocks lifted. Despite the pain, he had let her do this without attempting to get away. Ikahiti grunted and he now remained still, his sex and ballocks tightly tethered. Anya could see the double cord cutting so deeply into the flesh below the bag that it appeared almost as a painted double line across the surface of the skin. Ikahiti's fingertips now tested that line for smoothness before gliding gently over the pale coarse hairs on the smoothly up-curved flesh leading back into the groove, to reach the mouth, which looked contused and tender. Anya knew then that he must have suffered this treatment many times before. She looked at Ikahiti's face - an intentness, a kind of cold love burned there as she kept him in this position of subjection.
Ikahiti touched that mouth very tenderly at first, then nipped it. When he murmured, she kept nipping it until he acquiesced. But even that nipping had made the cock stand harder. Then she took a thick ring fashioned from bone. It looked too large to fit upon a finger. She slipped it over the end of his cock and managed to push it past the rim, but it would go no further and he began murmuring more urgently. She pulled the ring off again and placed it in her mouth. It came out shiny with spittle. After forcing his legs apart and drawing the cockstem down and back until it almost touched the sand, she pushed the ring over the cap then used the fingers of two hands to push it back until the skin was forced back with it and the ring formed a tight immovable constriction at the widest part. Then she made him spread his cheeks apart while she gradually introduced the fruit into his bottom. Women moving across the beach stopped to watch and to comment on its progress. While Ikahiti held the fruit in one hand, the fingers of the other worked him. The cock pointed down; Ikahiti's finger and thumb closed around the plum and the cap immediately below the ring; the fingers curled to seal the plum tip in a cup and milk it until the first shudder came. Ikahiti then slowed her wrist movement, but kept pushing the fruit inside him until most of it was buried. Then she shouted, 'Tika!' and he became very still and tight. She let go of him completely.