I was not made as others. This is the rule that has shaped my life. To know myself was to know my difference; the thoughts dawned together. Then I grew, and learned more each day how much and how far I differed from my kind.
Perhaps it is mercy that we are so unlike. For those companions of my youth, so bright and full of promise then, so tired and broken as they must surely be now, will never know what was taken from them. Our captors think us born to be slaves, for so it has been a thousand years and more, from that moment when first one of them set his will upon one of us. And it may be that they are right. For I have never met another of my people who seemed even to understand the bondage in which we are held, the servility that is forced upon us. Now and again one will fight – at the first rough touch of the bonds, the feel of a man's weight pressing down on a frightened young body, the lash of punishment when their will is contested. Then come the screams, the protests, the panting struggle. But there is only one ending. They yield. In time, all yield. We are what they would make us.
I am not. Herein lies my difference, and very nearly my death.
It may be that my father was like me; I have heard him cursed often enough, and most when I balked at my captors' commands or set my will plainly against theirs. But I did not know him. That is rare amongst our kind. He was brought; my mother and some others were given to him; he went. He was a giant in strength and clever as well, so they set him to breed as he would. But in me, they rued what they had created. They would rather I was dull in my wits.
My mother was more their ideal – docile, gentle, "sweet-tempered" as they call it when one sinks easily into servility. When I was very young, still shy and clinging to her, I thought that she must be made as I was, and looked to her to explain our lives. But she offered no aid or even recognition of our plight, and so I began to learn my difference. Each night of my first winter, huddled in our dank and freezing shed, bound when our captors were free, hungry when they were fed, sunk in darkness while they lived in light and warmth, I puzzled on the fate that had befallen us. It was agony to see my people the slaves of those who did no labor but kept the fruits of our exhausted toil. But in the winter darkness my infant mind began to shape itself, and gradually I understood. It was not only that those around me lacked the courage to rebel – though their eyes were dull, their frames stooped and sunken, and their will ground out of them in endless toil and the hard cut of the whip. No. There was more. Their minds were in darkness. They were held in the prisons of their own thoughts and could not see our lives rightly, nor feel the bitter injustice that stung my heart.
So I grew wiser. When I was very young, I had trusted our captors, as they brought me food and spoke soothingly to me. When older but not yet wise, I hated them, and resented any touch, any word, any attempt to win me with honeyed flattery and coaxing ways. They sought only to make me a slave from an infant, and I fought them bitterly, until there hardly was one of them who dared approach me. But then one day, dozing by a low window, I heard two of them talking, and learned what fate I built for myself. A slave so early fierce marks herself a dangerous creature; so, for me, they thought perhaps an early death the answer. I marked, and learned better; I submitted myself to them, and showed myself "sweet-tempered" until I could grow stronger and fight them plainly. In short, I grew crafty, sullen, deceptive and resentful of the thousand liberties they took upon me while I bided the hour when I might join the battle openly.
That hour came when I was sold. I had word of it early; they wished to breed my mother again, and thought me a bad charm on any sibling. Too, they thought it time my childhood was ended; put plainly, they wished my spirit broken, my will crushed, and my body bound to some man of theirs to do with as he would. Though I had escaped a swift death in my childhood, still my nature was too unlike that of my comrades for them to relish the task themselves. They would sell me to some unsuspecting stranger and let him rue the poor bargain he had made.
I tried to say goodbye to my mother. But I felt then more than I ever have the gulf that lay between me and others of my kind. She was gentle to me as always – but as sunken to our captors' will as they could wish. I had not even words, for only I had learned the language of those who held us in bondage. The others knew only the blows of a ready hand, or a few simple phrases beaten into them with effort by men who would have them heed readily. I could not tell her what I knew would come in the morning – but it was more than words that balked me. Though my heart cried out for one sign from her, one gesture of recognition in that form I loved, the light never came. She could not know me, nor know what it meant to be born as I was, raging against the lash, my life a scream of protest. She knew only the dull surrender of will that our captors taught so well, and prized with smirking self-congratulation when they had crushed it down upon a living, feeling being. I could only huddle against her, pressing close to her body for her warmth and scent, burning the moment into my mind as I stored it up against the world to come.
In the morning they took me from her. As I was led over the hill down the long road leading from the home of my birth, she called out to me once, puzzled and curious as she realized that I was going. But I had no words to answer her, no way to tell her all that I knew and felt in my heart. I could only resolve not to give the joy of my despair to the grinning lout who yanked at my bonds, tugging me with him down the slippery cobbles of the road. I held my head up, and looked straight ahead as my people and family disappeared behind me. In all my life, I have never seen any of them again.
They brought me to a market square and crammed me into a pen with others in my condition, poor helpless souls of all ages, male and female, child and grown, all huddled in terror as we faced our fates. I was too miserable to fight then, and too wary. I had learned the foolishness of struggling early and wildly with no object in mind. Our captors were merciless in our subjugation. If I broke loose here, there was no hope at all; one sight of me walking down the street of any town, and a dozen of them would be on me in an instant, casting me down in bondage until he who claimed ownership of me came to punish my disobedience. We were a marked race, with no hope of hiding our shame or evading their swift retribution. Too, they held food and water; to flee with no hope of finding those was only to hasten death or capture. Better to bide quietly; better to come away from those who knew my nature too well, and plan my path before I struck out upon it.
Such were my thoughts as I crowded together with the others in the stink of filth, fear, and despair. Now and again a man would come and take away another of us to be pawed, pulled, and bartered over in the public square. I saw mothers and children dragged apart, some with screams of fear – though my heart broke less painfully then, in truth, than for those who watched their own kin brought to the block with only the same dull acquiescence that had been beaten into them from birth. At last my turn was come, and I was led blinking and stumbling into the press of men who flocked to buy our servile bodies.
And I was servile. I saw well the glance of the man who claimed me, and knew his thoughts as well as if he spoke them. He did not like me, nor trust my new-found gentle ways. He was eager to be rid of me, and if I hampered him in that goal, I would pay a heavy price – perhaps the last price. I stood quietly, though I felt their hot, sweaty hands running over my body, feeling my chest and legs until my stomach rose and I trembled with hatred and revulsion. At last they had done their vile business, and traded my blood and spirit from hand to hand as if I were a cask of ale or a heap of old clothing.
