After a few days, we came to a town surrounded by massive walls. There was a gate - much shorter than the walls themselves - with two guards on top of the wall.
"Hail!" said one of the guards.
"Hail," declared Sir.
"Ooh, you've got a naked woman with you! You must be that ENF Catcher!"
"That I am, sir."
"This is so exciting! We've never had an ENF for the Harmony Harvest Festival before!"
As the gates opened, I pondered this. Harmony Harvest Festival? What's that? What could I possibly contribute to the proceedings here? I'm tied up, so it can't be hucking corn or whatever it is farmers do. Nobody is allowed to touch me, so I'm not getting my body painted or anything. Am I to sing and dance?
Sir pulled me in, interrupting my thoughts. I felt almost blinded by the colours. Everything was painted really bright and cheerful colours - the kind of tacky bullshit you can get in small towns where everyone tries too hard to make it interesting without any sense of taste.
Everyone was working on creative projects, and to my surprise, they all involved artistic renderings of naked women. I saw a group of women sewing dolls of naked women. There was a man making a large mosaic of a naked woman flying through the night sky; he had a young man painting old pottery, another smashing it, and he took the pieces and glued them onto a board.
There was also a small crowd of people each painting their own versions of the nude woman flying through the sky. I was confused. Am I going to serve as their model? And who is this naked woman?
A man in very fancy clothes walked up. He was wearing a sweater with an intricate pattern of crosses and circles on it, and over that he wore a large heavy coat with fur lining and a few thin stripes of colour along the buttons, and over that he wore a brightly coloured cloak with stars embroidered on it.
I suddenly wondered how cold it actually was and how much the protective gel had kept me warm. Had we entered Autumn?
"Ah, my ENF is finally here!" said the man. "I'm very grateful to see you. This will shape up to be the best Harmony Harvest Festival ever! I'm sorry, I was never told your name."
"You can call me Catcher," said Sir, smiling. "It's best if Erica here doesn't know my name."
"Ah, I see. How psychological. Very well, Catcher. I am Mayor O'Donnel. We're not set up for the demonstration yet, it's planned to happen at three o'clock. We have quarters set up for you to stay until then if you would like some privacy."
"Thank you, but Erica is being punished, and her punishment is that she doesn't get privacy. I was going to tie her up on display outside the tavern."
The Mayor's eyes twinkled with joy. I felt blood rush to my face. All this time, I was still embarrassed to be naked and on display for people. It was a reminder that I have very little control over what happens to me right now. All I can do is reduce the humiliation until I get out of this.
Sir took me through town. People were watching me, and I did my best to keep my eye on the ground. I found myself thinking of back when all this started, when I was walked through the streets outside the Maven's shop.
How naive I was! How cocky! I really believed I could overpower and escape Sir. It was like thinking I could fight the ocean. Much better to work with him; I remember a story of some young men seeing an old man in a surging river, buffeted about by the water, only to climb out fine. They asked him how he did that, and he explained he swam with the water rather than fighting it.
That's what I needed to do.
We came to the tavern. Quite a crowd had followed us as I'd been lost in thought. As usual, Sir untied my hands from behind my back, lifted my arms up, then retied my wrists together and tied me to a ceiling beam. He did
not
lift my leg and tie that up, which I put down to me being a good girl.
Sir walked into the tavern, and the crowd of people remained. I chose to look down at the ground, preserving what comfort I could. Then I saw someone's feet come into my view.
"You're naked," said a man's voice.
"Yes," I said quietly, not looking up.
