The Alphaville Herald

Memoirs of a Port Cos Girl, chapters 1&2

by Alphaville Herald on 27/11/05 at 10:12 pm

by A Slave

[The following is the first installment of a serial work, written by an anonymous slave who spent much of her life on Port Cos -- a Gorean island in Second Life. Today, we present chapters 1&2 of the memoirs of a Port Cos Girl. -- U.H.]

CHAPTER 1

I write because I want to be remembered. I think everyone does, regardless of what they say. Of course, I have reasons for wanting to be remembered now: I am 80 years old. My journey here is almost finished and soon my homesick body will go back to the ground that it came from. It is an odd thing to be 80 years old. Alone, I do not feel old. I feel alive, full of energy to myself. I feel beautiful. Then, by chance, I will pass a mirror or a dark glass and see a wrinkled old woman smiling back at me. When did I grow so old? I don’t know. I don’t even ask why the old woman looking at me is smiling. I just feel shock. I feel the shock and I stand there until the shock passes, then I keep walking.

I came to live in this ruined villa forty years ago. In those days, before the wars, it was not a ruin. The gardens then were full of flower trees, Hogarth trees, clovers, and many rare specimens from both the Schendi rainforests and the deserts. This part of the world is a very happy place for plants. All kinds of things grow together here that could not grow together elsewhere, so the liana vines and needle trees make peace together in this unusual climate. I have worked hard, since I came here, first to maintain, and then to restore, the gardens.

Seven hands ago, while visiting for the new year rituals, my youngest son came to me and insisted that I move my rooms from the second floor to the first. My son, although the soul of courtesy and consideration, is still a warrior, and he is accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. His concern for my welfare and comfort came in the form of a simple “Mother, your rooms will be moved to the south wing. Ute says these rooms are damp in the evening.” He speaks to me this way because of his training, and his position. I hear the heart behind the words, smile at him, and simply reply, “Yes darling, of course”.

Now who is Ute? She is one of the nine women who wait on my son’s every wish and desire. Ute is a slave. I have no idea where this manuscript will end up, so I want to say that the institution of slavery in this society is very ancient – at least as old as Glorious Ar, and to the best of my recollection, Ar is around 40 thousand years old, as some measure time. When I first came here, of course, I did not understand slavery and found it a brutal and horrifying practice. I suppose I found it even more brutal and horrifying because I came to this land originally as a slave, captured, and sold off a chain.

CHAPTER 2

It seems to me that the world is moving faster than it did when I was a little girl. I suppose everyone feels the pace of time quicken with the passing years. I can look back and remember when I was a young girl, a child, even, that the afternoons seemed to last forever and there was never enough to do to fill them. I was a mischievous child. I did not attend to my lessons very well, and I had a hard time paying attention to the needlework and mending that my grandmother insisted I learn to do. Grandmother was beautiful, I thought. Her hair was gold and silver, and she dressed always in beautiful pale dresses, trimmed with ribbons and lace. Her veils were almost transparent, and even the quilted veil seemed to shimmer and change color when she moved. She was strict about wearing the veils, and I dreaded the day I knew would come when she would make me wear them. Inside Grandmother’s apparent delicacy, however, there lived a firm spirit. She knew how to talk to a merchant, and she had no patience at all with my mother’s nervous temperament.

Grandfather was very tall and quiet. He was a physician now, and carried the burden of other people’s secrets. His hours were unpredictable, and he was likely as not to be called away in the middle of the night. Grandmother disapproved of people being sick in the middle of the night, because it disturbed Grandfather’s rest. She had learned a long time ago, though, to keep that opinion to herself. They lived in a house that was open, and simple, and built around a courtyard. Grandfather loved birds, so there was an aviary in one corner. He liked to tame wild birds, and he had one or two wild birds that would come when he called them. The courtyard was tiled in an old design, one of those designs that had a meaning if you could read the lines and shapes. The tiles were mostly dark blue, and the lines and designs in green, gold, and gray. I remember some purple also, but I don’t think that’s right. Grandfather had nothing to do with the Priest Kings, as far as I knew.

I had three uncles, also. One was a money counter, one was an artisan, and the other did something that I did not understand. My uncles and their wives would come in the evenings to visit. The men would sit with my grandfather and talk over the events of the day. My aunts would go off with my grandmother to help with her endless needlework. Sometimes I would listen to the men talk because they were interesting. Nobody noticed me, because I was small, and I hid in the shadows, or sat behind their couches.

I remember one afternoon I got very bored with my toys, and made a beautiful skirt from tulips and yellow talender flowers. It was not very long, but very pretty, I thought. In the evening, I decided to show off my beautiful skirt, and so I went into the courtyard dancing, wearing nothing but my little skirt and some bells I had found and threaded onto a piece of ribbon. I was very proud of myself, and thought that I danced quite wonderfully. No one seemed to enjoy my dancing, which surprised me because when the slave girls danced, my uncles enjoyed it. Still, I did my best dance. My uncles looked at the floor, and my grandfather called my mother and grandmother. My mother turned white and my grandmother grabbed my by the arm and dragged me upstairs to my room, speaking very sternly about slaves and free women and one thing and another. I didn’t understand. What I did understand was that I spent that evening shut up in my room doing more needlework, and I was not allowed to come down and listen to the conversations. Also my grandmother took away my little skirt and my bells. The next evening, when my uncles arrived, one of them laughed and called me “Lale” which means tulip. After a few days, it was my new name. No one ever called me Edana again, until I was grown.

It was not long after this event that the wars began. For me it is not so much a matter of remembering what cities went to war against each other as it is a matter of remembering what I felt, and saw, and heard. At first, all I knew was that my grandfather began to speak more quietly. My uncles had less time to play with me, and my grandmother became short-tempered, and began to order more food.

Not long after I noticed these things, I saw a tarn flying across the sky screaming. I had never seen one of these huge war birds before, except in the bird stables. War tarns in the sky are very different than they are on the ground. In the air, wings pounding the sky, screaming, they inspire terror. On the ground they look clumsy. It seems true of nature, even here, that a bird meant for flying does not move easily on the land. I watched the tarn flying against the cloudless sky; the tarnsman looked so small in the saddle. It was hard to believe that the tarnsman controlled the uneasy truce between war bird and man, but he did control it, so long as he did not lose his tarn whistle. As I continued to watch, I wondered what the tarn was doing in this particular part of the world. Then I saw it fly back and forth, and I saw two or three others join it. They circled something I could not see, flying in and out of my line of sight. The screaming scared me. I ran inside, covering my ears with my hands, crying.

-Child, what is the matter with you? this is my grandmother speaking, her hopes for my future dissolving, it seemed, with every new and unintended breach of propriety I committed. Then she heard the war birds. They were coming closer. The household linens she was embroidering slipped to the floor as she stood up and walked quickly to the doorway.

-Aodhan! She cried to my grandfather, Aodhan, come here quickly! The intensity of her speech made the veils around her mouth tremble a little when she spoke.

-Aye, Mab, I hear the birds, he replied steadily. He walked in from the garden with a rolled up medical scroll in his hand, thumb stuck in the scroll so that he would not lose his place. I hear the birds, he said, I have heard them before. Now collect yourself, woman, for the little ones, as you’ll be no example to anyone raising your voice like that, he grumbled. He settled himself in one of the chairs with his scroll, looking for the place he’d left off reading.

Grandfather was handsome I thought. His hair was streaked white and gray, his beard sort of silvery, cut very short, and his eyes reminded me of seawater. His hands and arms were all scarred up, and one of his fingers was missing. A snake tattoo curved around the index finger of his left hand, from the base of the finger all the way to the fingernail. It was a wonderful snake, full of colors and designs. It even had eyes. I loved this snake. Sometimes, when my grandfather played with me, he would make hissing noises and pretend that the snake was real. When he did this, I squirmed and wiggled and laughed, because for all the hissing noises, it was really a nice snake. The game always ended with a kiss on the cheek from my grandfather. I remember my family now, and I realize that these people have been dead such a long time, its almost like they were never alive, but they were alive, and vibrant, once. Soon I will join them in their sleeping.

The war birds got louder. Tower girls and garden slaves began to run into the house, eyes wide with fear. They huddled together, kneeling in corners. Soon the sky was filled with war birds, and the screaming overwhelmed us. Now and then a feather would land on the roof with an odd thud. I ran into my grandmother’s bedroom and hid under her bed. My grandmother continued embroidering her linens, but her hand shook just a little. My grandfather put down his scroll and stood at the door, watching the sky. Then he turned to my grandmother.

-Mab, my darling, we’ll have guests soon, he said to her. I could hear his voice even from under the bed. Then he went back to watching the sky. So began my first war.