A Song for a Slave
Elaa has always been a slave. She was born a slave, long before the white men came, selling steel swords and dyed fabrics in return for men and women. Her mother had been tribute, paid as submission-tribute to the Nzantu, and so when she was born she too was their possession.
She does not know who her father is. She does not dream of him freeing her; a mere eleven summers of her life have passed, and her immature mind does not grasp how she and the others in the dormitory are different.
But come the white men do, and to the Nzantu she is just another possession, to be traded for five swords which could cut a rat clean in two and a necklace of bright red beads.
The iron collar around her neck is heavy. It hurts. It is too loose, and rubs against her neck leaving it raw and bloody. In the stinking hold of this vessel, which creaks and groans like a dying man, she tries to pad it with the dank straw she sleeps on. It does not help, and the pain and the clank and clatter of her manacled limbs alike keep her up at night. They shaved her head, and then threw her in here to moulder.
She loses all track of time in this metal ship. There is no day. No night. Only two meals a day, and something tells her that they do not always come at the same time. By the time she – and the others, for she is not alone in here – are pulled upright into a cow-bell lowing line, she could not tell a questioner if it was morning or night.
Her first sight of Dunwall is in the rain. It is as if the heavens themselves weep, and that is all too appropriate. The scent of rotting meat hits her around the face, and she recoils at the butchered sea-beast swarming with flesh-cutting insect-men which stares her in the face. The white men gabber at her, but she is lost in the strangeness, and their bah-bah-bah is broken babble.
One moment later, and she is on the floor, copper in her mouth and flowing from her nose. She keeps her eyes closed and head down, dripping blood in a trail of red splatters.
When she is older, she will be able to recognise the words they say here. And even if the noises had faded with memory – and they had not – she would be able to go down to the docks and hear them as another ship loaded with human cargo docks beside the hulks with their butchered whale-meat.
She is not like the whale-meat to the white men. No, she is not.
Dead whales have real value.
They have given her new clothes now. They are tight and itch; in their own way, they are another set of manacles. The bulky man in the bowler hat with skin like hers can talk to her, and he makes it entirely clear that the Mandlesteins want their slaves dressed 'like proper people'. And she has a new collar, marked with the emblem of her masters.
And she has a new name. Because Elaa is not the name of a proper person.
And she must learn to speak the words of the bah-bah-bah white men, and if she speaks in her own tongue in front of the Mandlesteins or one of their guests, she will be beaten.
She is beaten often.
She is at the bottom of the ladder of the house slaves. She learns that fast enough. The white ones – servants, she discovers, a different thing from slaves – are above her. So are the paler-skinned slaves, even if they were also taken from foreign lands.
The mistress of the household does not approve of 'slatternly' behaviour. Oh! If she knew what her husband does, she would be displeased. But then again, she is a liar and a hypocrite. Elaa has seen her with that young man with banana-coloured hair. She peeked at the door, smelling the sick scent of sweat-sweet lusts seeping through. She remembers, though she says nothing.
They have a god here, in this cold wet city... or rather, they do not have a god. What they have is temples. She – Elouise, Elaa; she thinks of herself as both now – can see why they do not. The Dark Man would not carelessly come to this horrible place, and their temples let them keep out of the ceaseless rain. Faceless men in masks lecture the slaves on their wickedness. They took someone she knew away when he cursed someone in the name of the Dark Man. They had to all attend his burning. And then the 'pandos' were beaten. She keeps her beliefs to herself.
For she has her secrets, which she hides even as the years go by.
He comes to her in her dreams. He... she dares not even think his title... He sees her. She sees Him. His skin is as black as hers and His hair has the shine of a sky serpent's scales and His eyes... His eyes are the blackest of all, making even midnight seem like midday. Pah! Not that they know midnight in this sodden land, where Sokolov arcs and oil-flame burn through the night. But to speak of light around Him is not done, for He is the creeping shadows and the darkness of the jungle and the scurrying of the rats.
He speaks to her in her own language. He tells her that she is interesting; that her hate, her fury, her bitterness is like a rosebud. He asks her if she will be cut when she is at the peak of her beauty, or whether her flower will die and she will grow old and gnarled and thorny.
She does not answer Him at first. Elaa – there is no room for Elouise, not in front of Him – would not speak for fear that He would linger. But... no, she is already in his gaze, and his eyes will not leave her.
I would grow thorny, she says, haltingly speaking half-remembered syllables. That way they would bleed if they touched me again.
He smiles, and leans down, kissing her on the forehead. Like no man has kissed her ever; like no woman since her mother. His lips are cold and wet and seem to squirm against her skin like hagfish in a barrel at the market, but she would take this kiss over any which she has received since she arrived in thrice-cursed Dunwall. And he sings to her, speaking his first words to her in the language of this place. What he says fills her with glee.
"Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
"The fish are in the river
Eating beggars' eyes,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all will die."
Soon, he promises. You are not the only thing which will come to this city.
They beat her when she speaks a word of her heart-tongue, save when ordered to – and she is never ordered to, for handling the new slaves is not among her duties. But until the end of her days she sings the sweet songs of lost Pandyssia within her head.