As She’s Told

That night Anders brought the cage in from the kitchen to serve as a table, and they all played Scrabble by the living room fire. Karl and Ria worked together, shamelessly combing the dictionary for usable words, claiming the handicap of English as a second language. The board itself was on a piece of plywood to prevent it from folding itself through into the space below. But the wooden racks were held in hands or balanced across a couple of bars. Occasionally a tile was dropped, and much groping and pinching was required to retrieve it. At one point Svend’s entire rack of seven fell through, and the game was delayed for several minutes.

‘Here we go. Vice. Double word score.’ Val announced, laying out her tiles. The laughing group laughed harder.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ said Anders when they had recovered. ‘Do you think there’s some pattern?’ Everyone cracked up again.

Ria, who had had an extra glass of wine, fell about, unable to get her breath.

Already the board contained ‘top,’ ‘sling,’ ‘heel,’ ‘rear,’ and on a triple word score (15 points), ‘ow.’

Svend groaned. ‘I have nothing. Not even an ordinary word.’ He considered for a while. ‘Fuck it.’ He added an ‘s’ to ‘vice’ and received general approval, picked up a new letter, fumbled it deftly, mimed dismay and sent his long arm into the cage to get it back. The creature within squeaked and scrambled up to hands and knees, squealed again as helping hands searched her folds for the tile.

‘Ah ha!’ Anders gloated. ‘Finally!’ He made ‘zoos’ using the ‘s’ that Svend had just laid down. ‘I’ve had that Z since the second turn. Kinky enough if you put your mind to it.’

‘We have our little zoo of one right here,’ Karl concurred. ‘Too bad you missed the double letter score.’

‘Who’s winning?’

‘I lost track. Weren’t you keeping score?’

Before the letters were gone they’d managed to add ‘rod’ and ‘lube’ to the board (the last ruled allowable by popular consent), and then Val in a burst of triumph put ‘latex’ down onto a triple word score. No one had a clue what the score was, but all agreed she’d won.

***

Val and Anders spent a Sunday afternoon exploring the property’s several sheds and outbuildings, which were full of tangled, dusty heaps of obsolete farm equipment, discarded furniture, lumber and other odds and ends. The owner had expressed no interest; in addition to the break on rent that Anders was getting for repairs, he was welcome to use or take whatever he wanted from the sheds; the more the better. So far they had unearthed a rusty pump, a grain mill, and an old, well-used butcher block that Anders figured he could find uses for. Val had decided that some heavy old adjustable wrenches were worth cleaning up, as they were better than the ones she had.

‘Look at this.’ Anders wiped dust from the edge of a slab of wood, about two feet by five, a good two inches thick. ‘Maple. Good quality.

Unused, I think. Let’s have a look at the grain.’ He hefted it up from behind the miscellaneous lumber, manoeuvred it out the door and leaned it up against the shed. ‘Yup, this’ll do. I’ll have to pick up some urethane.”

“Do for what?”

“Another piece of obscure fetish technology; what else?”

“Jesus, don’t you have enough?’

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m in the full flower of kink creativity; why quit now?’

‘As long as you can still find your little prize under all the junk.’

‘Oh, come on. You get off on it, too. You were into that Scrabble game as much as anybody.’

‘Yeah, and I won, too!’

He chuckled. ‘A killer instinct. Competitive to the last tile.’ He picked up the piece of maple and sang a verse from a bawdy old folksong as he headed for the workshop he’d set up.

I said, my dear lady, if you’re fond of the gaming, There’s one game I know I would like you to learn, The game it is called The Game Of All Fours…

‘Don’t you try your musical wiles on me,’ said Val. ‘I’m wise to you country boys.’ She trailed along, examining her wrenches.

‘How do you know it’s a boy singing?’ he teased.

‘Oh, there were dyke deedle-eedle ploughboy songs? I don’t think so.’

Anders went into the hot workshop and found what he was after, then took it outside again where there was some breeze and the air was fresh. He set the wood over a couple of trestles across the bumpy roots of a huge oak.

Leaves were rustling overhead, and he could hear the fast claws of a couple of squirrels. He oiled a cloth and began rubbing the dust off his find.

‘Speaking of things lesbian, how’s Maia behaving with you?’

‘Not bad. Her lip service is improving. Between me and Ria, she’s catching up on some of that basic training that’s been so shamefully neglected.’ Val fetched some WD-40 for the wrenches, set them on an old oil drum and began to loosen their arthritic joints. ‘Your straight-arrow baby’s stopped freezing up on us.”

“You don’t say.’ He had noted this for himself.

‘She’s not exactly eager for it. We’re part of her dom scenery now. I’ll have to ratchet things up a little or I’ll get bored.’

Anders looked up from his wiping, eyebrows raised. ‘I thought all this was way beyond your tastes already.’

‘Not my ideal direction,’ Val said. ‘But I do like taking a girl where she doesn’t think she wants to go, and watching her find out how much she needs it.”

“Needs what? The act, or being taken?’

‘The second is a lot more interesting. I’ve used up dozens of the first kind. No doubt they’ve gone on to lighten the lives of innumerable butch dykes.’

‘You’re such a community benefactor. What have they given you, a dozen toasters by now?’

Val ignored this. Anders smiled to himself and wielded his rag slowly, watching the apricot-hued grain emerge. ‘I take it my girl is the second kind.’

‘Uh huh. It’s all about the journey in her case.’ She looked over at the heavy plank. ‘So what have you got in mind there?’

‘Well you know, it occurred to me during the Scrabble game. The cage was okay as far as it went. But it didn’t require much of her except to curl up and be decorative. Except, of course, when Svend dropped letters in there.’

‘Not just Svend.’

‘Yeah, how hard did you pinch her, anyway? She’s got black and blue marks all over her.”

“Hard enough to get her to move her sweet little butt. Boo hoo.’

Anders grinned. ‘Anyway, she’ll need to work a little harder next time.’

‘Why not?’ Val wiped her hands and came over to examine the board.

‘Not bad. By the way, did you get hold of that Schaeffer guy?’

‘I did.’

‘Any good?’

‘Might be,’ he said. ‘We’re talking. He’s interested.’

‘Cool.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Might all come to nothing.’

‘Just look out that some kind of power and control out in the real world doesn’t make you lose interest in your little ménage. Or menagerie, I should say.’

Anders shook his head. ‘Won’t happen. What, are you after a piece of her?’

Val grimaced. ‘Christ, no. Anything that dependent? Spare me. I’ll help you out with her, you know, like a good buddy should, but I’d never want that kind of responsibility, even part-time.’

‘Good, because I’m not giving her away.’ He turned the board over and started on the other side. ‘So you still think I do all this out of frustration with my failures. Stoking up my inadequate ego and so on; is that it?’

She snorted. ‘Oh, relax. Who wouldn’t use some kind of power at home to make up for all the shit out there.’

‘A lot of people.’ He examined a knot in the grain. ‘But the question is whether I do. Or whether they’re two separate tracks I follow.’

‘You don’t think you put more energy into this stuff when you’re blocked somewhere else?’

‘That, maybe.’ He put down his rag and stared at the thick, deeply-furrowed bark on the tree beside him. A tiny insect was making its way over one ridge and down into the next. ‘But this isn’t some minor diversion, some little hobby that I can take or leave. Whatever happens out there.’

‘Yeah, no shit. You think too fucking much, Thygesen, you know that?

You’re a head case, you’re happy, leave it.’ Val sighted along the plank, and rubbed a thumb over the grain. ‘This is good and straight. Trim this end and it would make a nice coffee table.”

“You read my mind.

***

Karl stood at the kitchen window. A rainy Wednesday morning. ‘I was going to fish, but this is too wet, even for fishing,’ he remarked to Anders.

‘And the pony would be miserable.”

“Yeah. Damn, I was going to get some of the squash and potatoes in.’

‘A day for staying close by the fire, I would say. Ria doesn’t even want to get out of bed.’ Neither she nor Svend had put in an appearance. Val was in the city, this being a weekday, helping a Church Street juice bar double its floor space.

Anders glanced at the books and papers Karl had stored in a ragged heap on the sideboard. ‘Are you going to do some work, then?’

Karl warded off the thought with violently waving forearms. ‘No, no!

Not today! I have had enough of sleep loss for now. Especially since I can no longer relate; I have been sleeping extravagantly!’ Karl narrowed his eyes and stretched until all his joints popped, then dropped into one of the fireside armchairs and sagged like a farmer after a long day in the fields. ‘It is so relaxing, doing all this scening at home in normal hours.”

“I told you. The joys of domesticity.”

“Yes, it is very charming. I never thought I would come to this.’

‘Getting old, Karl. Sedentary habits. Never mind. In another month you and Ria will be completely bored and healthy and ready to get hollow-eyed back at the clubs.’

‘Indeed,’ Karl yawned. He glanced at the cage in the corner. ‘So? Can we have some entertainment for a rainy day?’

‘Of course. What’s your pleasure?’

‘Well, you must first tell me,’ Karl said, looking up at the ceiling above his head, ‘what is the purpose for the eye bolts you put in those beams.’

Anders looked up, considered. ‘I thought we might need to hang a little game.”

“Interesting, given that we none of us hunt or have brought a gun.”

“Braids of garlic?’ Karl sniffed. ‘I would rather hang game. Where is the equipment?’

Half an hour later they had the hunhund hanging by her wrists and ankles before the fire, looking very much like something captured in the woods. The belt was off for a change; Karl had promised to be very careful.

They took turns with Anders’ favourite flogger, until the upraised ass and thighs were moderately red and the slave was crying into her muzzle. Anders went to the coffee pot. ‘A little rest. Let her simmer. You want more coffee?”

“Yes, thanks.’

They sat at the kitchen table and rested their eyes on the dangling figure.

‘Here we are in that secluded country house,’ said Karl, ‘doing our wicked will on her.’ Anders laughed. ‘I forgot about that. What prescience on your part.”

“Your delusions about total control were not so deluded after all.”

“She’s certainly not about to walk away.’

‘Not with those tags you have on her. Someone would return her for sure.”

“Or call from the pound so I could pick her up.’

Karl’s eyes followed the lines of the slender form, and he nodded appreciatively. ‘She is quite lovely,’ he said. ‘You are a lucky fellow.’

‘My little prize, Val calls her.’

‘That is not sarcasm?’

Anders looked at his cousin, surprised. ‘Not from me. She is an incredible prize. And this summer – well, this is the logical extreme, isn’t it?

I’ve actually made it happen.”

“It is coming up to expectations, is it?’

‘It is, you know. How can that be? Incredible. I can’t help questioning sometimes.’

Karl rolled his eyes. ‘Here it comes,’ he said. ‘Cassandra, that killjoy.

Can’t you see, her function is finished now? You have been as careful as can be. You used your luck and good management and you earned the prize.

Leave those threads of Mormor in Copenhagen where they belong, and be a real hedonist for once.’

‘Val tells me I’m a happy head case and to shut up.”

“She’s right.’

Anders drank some coffee, sat silent for a minute, and looked at Karl.

‘You know me. On the face of it, how likely was it that I would ever be able to live a life of anything but makeshifts and frustration?’

Head to one side, Karl eyed his cousin and considered this. ‘I’m not so sure. You have much will, so many resources…there would have been compensation. And one adapts, even if life does not offer perfection.

Perhaps you would have done that. Ria and I have adapted, and we are very happy. But – you aren’t someone who bends very easily. So, okay, if I had had to predict about you, I would not have been very hopeful. Not that you would be truly satisfied.”

“And yet here she is, and I am – myself.’

Karl smiled. ‘I’m glad. And you are of course doing the same for her.

She seems to be thriving in a remarkable way. Like one of those strange species at the volcanic ocean vents. Lovers of extremes of heat and pressure.’

Anders nodded. ‘Good analogy.’

‘And so I wonder if she will get the bends when she must go back up into the world.”

“Not if I’m careful. Take her up slowly.’

Karl took one of the zucchini muffins that Anders had baked the day before and tore off the top. ‘Will you be sorry when the summer is over?’ he asked. ‘Would you rather keep her in this way?’

‘No. Eight weeks is long enough; she’ll need to come up for air. Be a person again, at least some of the time. And I would miss her conversation, you know, if this was all she got to be.”

“True,’ Karl said through a mouthful of muffin. He rolled his eyes toward the mitted hands in their restraints. ‘You know, eight weeks without using her hands, that is rather extreme.’

Anders laughed. ‘She’s been trying to pick up bits of straw with her toes. Very cute.”

“Is she any good at it?”

“No, completely inept. It makes me hot just watching her try.’

Karl’s eyes twinkled. ‘So,’ he said, ‘just the summer then. Perhaps next summer again?’

‘Absolutely; if I can, I will.’

‘We could use a few more of those. Fill the stable.’

Anders’ smile became one-sided. ‘That would be interesting. Given that very few would go to the same extreme. A kinky weekend being locked up and harnessed to a cart; some stockbroker’s dream fantasy. And then off home in his BMW. I could charge admission.”

“Don’t be so superior. Not everyone must be so immersed as you and your property there. Other serious slaves exist in the world. And she could use the company, don’t you think?”

“Hmm.’

‘You aren’t convinced.’ Karl swallowed the last of the muffin and took a peach out of a bowl.

Anders considered, conflict evident in his face. At last he said, ‘The fact is, I like this. I like her to be the only animal among humans. The intensity is so much greater. Nothing gets watered down.’

Karl waved his free hand in a dismissive gesture of capitulation. ‘You must of course define the terms. Control everything.’

Anders snorted. ‘This surprises you? If you and Ria rent an Illinois farmhouse next year and supply the slaves, you’ll make your own rules. In the meantime….’ He got up and lightly pinched the glowing buttocks. Then he ran his fingers up and down the slippery labia. The slave squirmed and rocked, and her knees widened. Anders checked her hands and feet to make sure they were warm, and then picked up a paddle.

The sounds brought Ria and then Svend downstairs at last. They took a hand, in between bites of breakfast. For the next little while they all took turns with available instruments, including a violet wand, which made the creature squeal and thrash in desperation in her attempts to get away from it, and then to find it again.

The rain continued its steady drumming in the eaves. Anders decided it was time to shift the slave to the butcher block he’d found in the shed. It stood solidly on four sturdy legs, and with some rounding and considerable sanding, now fitted her well. She lay over it face down with her arms and legs fastened, handy for whatever came to mind. They read, cooked and kept themselves amused one way and another.

But by dinnertime cabin fever had set in. The slave got locked in her stall and the four of them went into town, ready to see whatever movie was playing at the Regent, no matter how terrible.

***

The sun was hot against my hips; my back was sweating under the weight of the baskets. A whistle brought my head up; I crawled along the edge of the garden plot, along the long line to which my tether was linked, toward the towering figure of my master. He had long, bright-yellow objects depending from between his fingers, and some thicker green ones cradled in the other arm. More squash.

Mud-coated kneepads and mitts rather clogged my progress. The rain from yesterday still lingered in the low places. I reached my master’s dusty jeans and felt the vegetable weight on my back increase. The squash was going into the large basket resting on my spine. Two smaller panniers hung against my ribs. My master’s long legs moved back into the rows, and I stared between my mitts at the mud, past the narrow chain that swung from my nose ring; my link to the long horizontal line at my side.

The click of a tongue came from behind me. Carefully I turned toward my tether and around, back the way I had come. Another towering figure, Svend this time, with a lumpy, dusty bag in his hand, which he emptied into the pannier nearest him. I caught the cellar smell of potatoes.

Ria was picking her way along a row toward me, holding a basket with bright orange peppers, and broccoli in deep green. She wore gardening gloves and looked immaculate. I dropped my eyes, painfully conscious of the nose chain, of mud to my elbows and bridle-induce drool. The spotless legs appeared in my peripheral vision on my other side, and the weight on that side gently increased. I felt a touch along my temple. A strand of hair that had escaped and been worrying at my face was drawn back and tucked into its band. There was a sound of water in a bottle, and then a spout pushed past my bit. I gulped at it. The hand, gloveless, appeared stationary before my mouth, commanding an animal’s grateful lick, and my tongue meekly obeyed.

Ria straightened, and there was a sudden swish and a slice across my rear; a cry blurted from my mouth at the unexpected blare of anguish. The hand appeared again, blurry through a thick and instant screen of tears, and I licked it far more fervently than before. She squatted down, swung my head round hard by the ear to face her, and spoke quietly to me in a sing-song tone of casual, cruel mockery. Then she walked away.

My ear throbbed, my ass throbbed far worse. And I had a sudden vision of how eager and abject I might be, given another chance. By Ria. That cold, judgmental bitch whose touch for weeks had turned me to stone had metamorphosed into something else. Something with power; a hard, hurricane-force wind peeling the roof off my hidden resentment.

***

It was twilight Friday night by the time Val parked her pickup round the back and came in through the kitchen door. She followed the voices into the living room and walked in to a chorus of greeting. Then she did a double take, and snorted.

‘Thought you’d be here soon,’ Anders said. ‘Beer’s in the fridge. Or there’s schnapps. Still some dinner, too.’

‘Beer’s fine; I’ll get it.’ She dumped her bag down on a chair by the door. ‘I see you finished your coffee table.’

‘Yup.’

Val took in the thing from different angles. The slab’s edges had been cut down and jigsawed to more or less follow the outlines of the slave on whose back it rested. The weight still must have been considerable; the slave’s arms and legs had the look of bracing beneath the burden. Tight straps bound the polished wood to the little body, holding that body firmly horizontal. The bridled head was pulled back into an inward curve behind the neck; the head’s weight forced the bit gag deep into the mouth. On the table were three beer steins, a wineglass, a wine bottle, a bowl of mixed nuts, a small pile of change, some playing cards and a riding crop.

Val ran an assessing hand over the top and edges. ‘That’s an okay grain.

And a nice finish,’ she said. ‘Not so sure about the legs; they might get wobbly.’

‘Ve haf vays of keeping zem s-s-steady,’ said Svend, waving the crop.

‘Five card stud, eh?’

‘Come, Val, join us,’ said Ria. ‘What shall we give her to keep her change in? All our hooks are occupied.’

Val bent to see. A little basket hung from the collar ring, and two from nipple clips. She laughed. There was a different arrangement at the other end; a cylindrical magnet hung from a clip on one of the naked labia, with coins stuck to it like barnacles. This was Anders’ cache; he had established himself in that position as guardian to keep the stimulation within bounds.

Generously he offered Val another clip and magnet to hang on the other side. Beer in front of her, cards in hand, Val rapidly checked out the competition. Svend’s face was an open book, and he only took a hand seriously when he had decent cards; a dead giveaway. Ria was a complete tyro, still asking the respective value of straight and flush, and showing her cards to Karl for advice. Karl had the false confidence that came from cleaning up in undergrad games; him she marked as a fish. Anders was her only competition. A head like ice and no tells.

Karl managed to rake in a few small pots, and Svend had a wild but lucky hand or two, but inexorably the weights of the caches shifted toward the rear. Every ante up led to serious shudders in the table legs, and it took increasing effort with the crop to subdue them. Those who folded found other games to play beneath the table while they waited for the next hand.

The atmosphere was becoming increasingly rowdy, like something out of a bawdy old Hogarth print.

‘Would you guys focus, for Christ’s sake?’ said Val. ‘Svend, are you in or not?’

‘I wish.’

Ria elbowed him. ‘Behave. Val takes poker very seriously.’

‘This is serious. We could buy several bags of chips for what she’s got there.’

‘She has taken my laundry money, the shark!’

‘No, that was Anders.’

‘Anyone got change of a quarter?’

‘The table’s moving again. This could be a séance.’

‘Ooh, what a good idea!’

‘Earthquake! Someone make it stop; the pot is rolling away.’

Instead of the crop, Val reached down into the basket beside the couch, brought out a narrow paddle and gave the squirming butt before her several loud and resounding smacks. The resulting quiet had everyone except Val silently grinning; the game resumed.

When Val and Anders had split the available silver between them, Ria pressed for the séance idea. Lights lowered, they held hands and called on the spirit of Pauline Réage. Pauline made her presence known via a good many ghostly squeals and whimpers, apparently channelling O for them. The number of mediums with their feet under the table was probably a record.

When it came to the Marquis de Sade, however, Anders baulked; the man was a psychopathic child molester and murderer, unwelcome in his house, by whatever means he might enter. So they drew cards for what to do next with the coffee table, and Karl won.

***

I was losing it. My body would not keep still.

I could have handled being a table; an interesting function, actually. I could have done well enough, even with all the tugs and torments, had it not been for the nakedness of my cunt, which was driving me out of my tiny mind.

His hands there. Adjusting, tugging, pinching. So close. I could feel the air currents every time he or Val picked up their cards. The aching weights seemed to open me wider and wider. A train tunnel, abandoned by the railroad, all traffic diverted.

The layer of containment was gone. I was exposed, my body reacting without leave from any remaining brain function. Punishment hardly stilled me. Pain was just taking me further out of my mind, away from the most basic obedience.

Then came the séance, and all the feet nudging, toes pinching, weights swaying. One foot curved for a moment beneath my hip and over my pubic bone; I almost howled.

There was a long, noisy pause after the lights came up. Gradually the confusion resolved into two deep voices in the corner in discussion: Karl and my master. Val was still sitting at my rear, shuffling cards above my hips; I could hear the ruffle and snap, feel the slight pressure as she gathered them up. The others were up and moving around, taking glasses and bottles off to the kitchen. I heard popcorn popping, and then I could smell it over the wine someone had spilled.

More comings and goings, Anders’ legs walking out of the room and back in again. A little banging around at the window. He came to me and gently took the labia clamps off, but not the ones on my nipples. The baskets were gone at least. I throbbed.

They lifted the thing off my back. I felt like a turtle without a shell, though I was grateful for the chance to flex my neck. Black Beauty with the checkrein off. Karl took me by the ring at the back of my collar and tugged me over to the other side of the room, beneath a long pole propped at an angle from floor to windowsill. There was a little eyebolt below the window, where floor met wall. He arranged me with the pole parallel to my spine, with my tail at the low end, then threaded a cord through the eyebolt and tied it to the clips on my nipples, pulling my chest down almost to the floor.

Then he linked my wrists behind my back. I crouched on chest and folded knees, chewing my bit gag and wondering what all this was in aid of.

To my left, Svend and Val were rearranging furniture, swinging the couch around, bringing a chair into line with it, all facing me. They sat down, as did Ria and Karl, and they passed around bowls of popcorn. I could hear the crunching, and the place smelled like a movie theatre. All they needed were some liquorice Nibs. I had an audience for whatever it was.

My master stood on my other side. I felt the end of a rod of some kind prodding beneath my hip, and I lifted it accordingly The rod continued to tap, and I raised my hips higher, until my tailbone was up against the slanting pole. It was fixed somehow, not moving.

Lashes slashed down and my ass retreated hurriedly. But the rod continued its impatient prodding. Up again, slash again, retreat again. The implement was a cat with thin, stinging cords. I sucked in breath, whimpered. Again the rod prodded me upward, more painfully this time; the deep voice at my side hard and insistent. My butt raised itself up obediently to the pole and held still and cringing for the next lash. Now the rod tapped beneath my public bone. Further up? Oh, god, this was going to hurt. I hollowed the small of my back and tipped my pelvis, so that the pole was between my ass cheeks, and let out a shriek as the lashes fell on the flesh thus exposed. On the next one my flinching buttocks tried to recoil, but the relentless rod tapped even harder. More? How? I arched higher still, and now it wasn’t my asshole against the pole, but the place where my cunt lips began.

I shuddered and groaned through two more applications of whipcord, glued to the pole, the sting introducing itself to more newly exposed areas.

The rod wasn’t done with me yet. Desperately I arched, my chest grinding into the floor, nipples screaming in their clips. With great effort I slid myself a little further up the pole, which was now between my cunt lips. The cat scourged, and I clenched and almost twisted away, but held – and rubbed.

Grunts I hardly recognized issued from deep in my belly. Away to my left, the sound of laughter, catcalls, cheers, jeers. Please…please let me…oh, god….

Liquid, the pole slid along my snatch. Red pain fell scattershot, thick threads and flicks of agony. More, I needed more…before the god of my life could act on his next whim, before I was parted from the one thing I lacked.

Frantically I strained, finding the last possible centimeter of flex. And touched my clit for a moment to the pole.

I screamed. Heard a mocking chorus, glasses ringing together.

Extreme effort beneath that scourge that stung without mercy. Again that moment of contact, that pure, unbearable, slippery tone, like being inside the sweetest of bells. My body reached back and up in a frenzy, and at last was there: full contact. Straining, shaking, paralyzed between ecstasy and the punishing cords.

And their increasing rhythm took me over the edge. In that instant, falling past the excruciating threshold, nothing existed except a gargantuan, reverberating gong of pure sensation.

The moment faded into a deep, slow throb, like a giant’s footsteps receding beyond the horizon. Once again the applause and laughter reached me. Tears and the pain of scored flesh swelling. When the boots appeared through the blear of tears I licked them fervently, abjectly. Then did the rounds of the gods’ company, offering all appropriate gratitude with my tongue for their derision.