Slave Girl: Chapter 51 (Patreon)

After a moment of vulnerability like that we were feeling closer than ever.  I couldn’t imagine what a relief it must be for Rosa to at last give some measure of release to her pent up grief.  This pain would have been festering and building inside of her.  Only now, now that she could talk about it and share it, could she truly begin to heal.

For a time Rosa talks about her sister, happy to be able to speak about her again after so long, and tell me about the woman she was.  The stories aren’t of dramatic moments or important milestones.  They are simple everyday recollections.  Funny little instances and anecdotes that really brought life to the memory of this special person I had never met.  I learn of a genteel woman that exuded grace and class above her station.  A demanding woman with uncompromising standards who would have been right at home among the aristocracy in Rome.  A woman of dry wit, iron will, and a keen intelligence, but with the fiery temper of her Amazon warrior mother.  According to Rosa, Danae took much more after their mother and Rosa their father.  Like her sister I learn that Danae was a skilled dancer and musician, the pair very often performing together.  Most of all though, I hear about the loving bond the sister’s shared.  It permeated every word of every story.  Danae sounded like quite a woman.

Along the way I also learn that Danae was a Lady as well, though of a very different sort from Rosa.  Whips, canes, humiliation, degradation, cuckoldry, choking and torture were among her tools of the trade.  In the dungeon of the courtesan house she could break a hardened soldier and have him wailing like a babe one day…then see him groveling at her feet begging for more the next.  I got the impression that Ianthe and Danae represented complete opposite ends of the Lady spectrum.  While Danae’s style sounded…intriguing, I was very happy Rosa was the type that she was.

Outside of an occasional comment or question I mostly sit quietly and listen and let Rosa talk openly in a way she hadn’t been able to in a very long time.

Rosa eventually concludes with a sad.  “She would have been so disappointed in me.  Giving myself up as I did.”

“Rosa…”

“No.”  She stops me.  “She would have.  I know she would have.  But…I’m not her.”  She nods.  “In my situation she would have stayed and fought.  She would have tried to lean on her contacts to protect her.  Her pride would not allow her to flee.  She would have been taken eventually.  She would have found her way to the slave block just as surely as I did, only after rape and torture and public disgrace.  I think…I think I made the better choice.”  She looks up at me and the sadness ebbs.  “I know I did…Master.”

“May I kiss you my Lady?”

Her face softens to not quite a smile.  She turns her head.  “Yes, give me a kiss.”  I kiss her cheek.  “Good boy.”

Rosa relaxes and sits back straight again.  I let her go and add another log to our fire.  We sit silently for a time as the fire pops and crackles.

Still studying the bracelet she changes the topic.  “I wonder what it does.”

“Does?”

“Well, it’s definitely magical.”  She turns it over to look along the inside.  “There’s a good chance it can only be used by a wizard though.  Most are reluctant to share their power to those without the gift.”  She runs her thumb along the interior of the bracelet.  “But…I don’t know.  There’s no obvious way to awaken it.  Drusilla’s kin has had it for decades and they never tripped on what it did.  We may never know it’s enchantment.”

“Well, what would your father have done?”

“Papa would have said: Put that down Ianthe!”  We both laugh.  “It can be dangerous to meddle with magic you don’t understand.”

“You think it’s dangerous?”

“I don’t think so.”  She says.  “It’s not a weapon.  It’s too delicate to be worn into battle.  It doesn’t feel dangerous.  But it’s possible.”  Her attentions settle in on the backside of the clasp.  “It is activated here.”   She turns it to look at the Janus symbol, the tip of her finger tracing the shape and rubbing across the deep red eyes.  “The garnets are important.  I recall Papa always looking for the proper gemstones for this enchantment or that.  Most magic items have some sort of gem incorporated in them.”

I watch as Rosa continues to try to figure the thing out.  I offer the only wisdom I had.  “Back home we had a hedgewitch that lived in the village.  No true wizard mind you, but she had her tricks.  She once told Mom that all magic is a bringing together.”

“A bringing together?”

“I dunno.”  I chuckle.  “I had this fever once and Mom went and got some herbs from the woman.  She was told that as she made the tea she should concentrate on the herbs and the water.  That she should think about the hot water drawing out the healing essence from inside the herbs.  She said to keep her worry for her son close to heart but to only think about the herbs and water combining to form tea.”  I shrug.  “I dunno.  All I know is that it tasted awful but that very night the fever broke.”

“A bringing together.”  Rosa repeats as she places her thumbs over the eyes of the symbol.  “Papa too mentioned something about magic being a connection.”  She rubs her thumbs over it as her eyes narrow in concentration.  “I…I don’t feel any connection with this.”

“Keep trying.”  I whisper.  “I believe in you.”

My words prove counter productive.  Touched by my statement Rosa looks up at me with a smile.  “Aw, Quin.”

“Concentrate!”  I laugh.

“Oh, right.” She giggles.  Refocusing on the bracelet Rosa takes a deep breath.  “Connection…connection…the herbs and the water combining into tea…connection.”  She keeps at it, blindly reaching out for something that neither of us understood.  “It’s just not there.  It’s dead.  Inert.  I feel nothing…except...”  Her eyes drift from item in her hand to the trunk of the old tree.  She gasps.  “Connection!”

For just a split instant, so quick I couldn’t even be sure that I saw it, I see the faint glimmer of a verdant glow light up inside of my Lady’s magenta eyes.  Different, but not entirely dissimilar, to the harsh golden gleam I once saw in the eyes of a Christian martyr.  Magic!  Real magic!

“Rosa!”  I say in a hushed voice.

Rosa blinks and shakes her head.  She looks back at me stunned…and then down at her hands.  Where there had been a single twin helix silver bracelet she now held two bracelets each formed of a single silver spiral.  Somehow the wires had parted, something that should have been impossible.  As she moves her thumbs we see that the clasp had split into two as well, each bracelet now having one face of the Janus symbol.

She looks up at me again.  “How?”

“You’re asking me?”  I grin.  “You did it!  You did magic!  I saw it flash in your eyes.”

“I did?”  Rosa looks back to the tree awestruck then back down to the bracelet.  “I did.”  She laughs, more from being overwhelmed than amused.  “I did!”

I give her a squeeze.  “Like father, like daughter.”

Rosa’s brows furrow in confusion.  “What the…?”

I look back down the bracelets and at first I don’t notice anything.  But as she turns the one in her right hand I see inside of the hoop of the bracelet not the palm of Rosa’s hand but fire lit branches above us.  I look up then right back down again.  It was definitely those branches.  A bracelet in each hand Rosa shifts them until…Rosa’s face is staring up at me through the silver ring!  

I see through it Rosa’s eyes make contact with mine.  Flipping them both over to look through the other side we see nothing but the ground, as one would expect.  She flips them back again.  We look at each other through the window within the bracelets, then over at each other directly, then back down at the bracelets again.  You could peer through one side right through to the other as if they were still one bracelet regardless of the fact that they weren’t connected anymore.

“Wow!”  I say.  “That is…wow!”

“Incredible!”

Bringing it closer to her face to see better Rosa holds the left one still then moves the right one around like some crazy extension of her eye.  She points it out toward the bushes and starts panning around as through the left one we saw everything the other was facing.  Just then we notice one of the letters of the magical writing, which we could now make out easily since the two wires were apart, glow slightly then fade to dark.  It was the one closest to the clasp on the left.

“It’s draining.”  She whispers.  “It has a limited duration.  It revives its power when together and expends the magic when apart.”

“How do you know that?”

“I…don’t know.”   She says.  Moving the right one down she points it toward the fire, the glow of the flames coming through to illuminate her face.  She takes in a sharp breath.  “I can feel the heat!”  She moves it even closer and we are both surprised as a wispy column of smoke starts to drift up through the ring.  It takes us both a second to realize the significance.  It appeared that connections between the rings wasn’t simply one of sight!  

Rosa brings the rings back to where they started, with one facing each of us.  “Quin…take a twig…”

I was already on it.  Picking up a slender stick I bring it toward the right one then slowly poke it through.  We watch in amazement as the end of the stick seemingly disappears as it hits the plane of the hoop…only to come through the left one!  I pull it back out and look the stick over.  It looked just the same as it had.  Rosa turns the near bracelet over and I put the stick through again, it simply passes through as normal while the magic in the other one blinks out.  Once the stick is removed the portal effect reappears.  Rosa turns it back as it was, so we could see each other through them.  I try the stick again, pushing it deeper this time.  Again, the moment it passes through one half of the bracelet it comes through the other half.  Reaching over I take the opposite end of the stick with my other hand.  I could feel myself tug against it both ways.  It was a strange sensation to say the least.  Letting go of the near end I pull it all the way through the hoop and again study it.

“Wow.”  I say again.  I didn’t know what else to say.  “Wow!”

“Of course.”  Rosa says as she wipes her thumbs over the two clasps.  “Janus.  The god of doors.  These are small gates connected by magic.”  Just then another of the letters glows for second then fades to dark.  “What was that, a minute or two since the last one?”

“I’m not sure.”

“As a rough guess I’m thinking it would last an hour or so before it depleted.”  She shakes her head in disbelief.  “Gods Quin, this is big magic!  This item…it would be worth a fortune to the right buyer.  A fortune!”

“You said you wouldn’t sell it.”

“I know but…this could set us up for life.”  She blinks and lets out a sigh as she remembers how she got this gift.  “You’re right.  I cannot sell it.  I promised Drusilla.”

I put my hands on my head as the magnitude of the item begins to sink in.  “Rosa, this could still set us up well.  Think of the uses!  Looking at and getting to hard to reach places.  Talking to each other from far away.  Funneling grain into sacks.  Milking a cow straight from the teat into a saucer in the kitchen.  The potential for irrigation alone…!”  My voice fades.  “Wow!”

Slowly Rosa turns her head to look at me, a funny smirk on her face.  “Grain?  Milk?  Irrigation?”  She chuckles.  “You really are a Ceres guy.”

“Oh?”

“My mind went…elsewhere.”  She giggles.  “But I’m terrible.”

“Elsewhere?”

“Never mind.”  She teases.

Chapter 52