Zafira learns the price of fighting back in her new world.
Content Note: Queen of the Raiders is dark, unflinching fiction. This story contains child slavery, human trafficking, abuse, violence, and depictions of systemic cruelty. These themes are handled with intention, not gratuitously — but they are present throughout. Reader discretion is advised.
The first weeks settled into a routine. I was assigned to be a maid, along with my sisters and Pale Star. Henry was sent to work in the stables.
One early morning I had been having a bad dream, not quite a nightmare, about being at one edge of the red-walled Fire Canyon with my siblings on the other side. Henry had lost his bunny and I wanted to help them find it but I could not reach him. They could not hear me. I was trying to shout, but they kept drifting farther away.
“Absolutely not!” It took me a moment to realize the voice was coming from the real world. I opened my eyes to see River towering over my bed in the pre-dawn darkness, holding her lantern aloft. The light hurt my eyes and I squinted. Henry’s warmth was curled up on one side of me and my sisters were curled up against my back, hugging each other. Everyone in the room had startled awake.
River looked furious. “Unbelievable, and completely indecent!” she shouted. I looked around at the confused, sleepy faces in the women’s dormitory. She pointed to Henry.
“Who has been letting this happen??”
There was silence.
“Well??”
Pale Star spoke up. “N-no one, ma’am. They’ve been sneaking into bed together after we fall asleep.” My eyes snapped to Pale Star’s face, her eyes fixed on the ground. I felt a flush of anger , but I also understood not wanting River’s ire. In the week we had been there we had learned of her casual cruelty. River usually made morning rounds when she felt like punishing us. This time she had found a reason.
River turned her attention back to us. “Oh, get out of bed!” she yanked Henry by the arm. He did not resist, falling like a limp blanket as she pulled him over the edge. He did not cry when he slid down but lay quietly on the floor, curled in a ball around his rabbit. “And you, too!” she reached to pull my arm. On instinct I snatched it away. She narrowed her eyes and struck me in the face. She looked to my sisters. “If I ever find out you two are sharing a bed, I will sell one of you off and you’ll never see each other again. Am I understood??”
My sisters looked to me for help. Cheek burning and eyes stinging, I nodded for us all. “Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled to her, my sisters out of bed by now and shivering. Henry was still on the floor. He had peed his pants, I could smell it. I felt a tightness in my chest, a feeling I could not define. My stomach burned and I balled my fists tight, but I kept my eyes averted from River’s. I had at least learned that much in the week we had been here: she could read my face well and I had the sore jaw to prove it.
“The little boy will be sleeping in the stables from now on, is that clear?” she addressed the room.
“Yes, ma’am,” were the soft replies from the other women.
“Absolutely ridiculous!” River spat, glaring at us all. She turned on her heel and strode out of the room. We listened to her stomp back upstairs.
Finally, Pale Star broke the silence. She came over and gently picked Henry up. “Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” She glanced over at my sisters and I. “It’s time to get up anyway, girls,” she said softly. I glared at her, nowhere else to focus my frustration. Her eyes shone in the dim light.
I went to the wooden foot locker at the base of my bed and jerked the lid open. Inside lay my sleeveless gray tunic, a pair of brown linen pants, and a fairly new pair of boots which pinched my toes when I put them on. (I refused to say anything, though, because I liked how they looked.)
After I was dressed I helped my sisters put on their clothes. We washed our faces in the sink of the warm bathhouse, the humid air from the hot thermal pools puffing up my dark locks as I pulled them back into a braid as my mother had taught me. My slave collar sat heavy around my neck; I had not gotten used to it yet. I could fit it over my chin but no farther. We did not even take them off to bathe.
Later that day we were doing the washing. The laundry was below ground, next to the bathhouse. It was a large room filled with steam, the smell of lye, and vats and tubs with washboards attached. Being there with my sisters and Pale Star was soothing as we splashed and giggled while scrubbing the household’s linens and clothes.
We heard River’s heels coming down the hall. She was bellowing about something and obviously in one of her moods – the kind that needed a target. My heart sank and I watched my sisters freeze. Pale Star took a deep breath and squared her shoulders to the door, waiting. I withdrew my arms from the water and pressed myself against a wall. A tightness seized my chest.
River burst into the room, yelling about the sheets. Someone had hung them wrong, or not wrung them out enough, or left a stain. It did not matter which (as the details of her complaints rarely did).
There was stammered speech from Lordes and then a slap, then another. Lordes started howling.
I pressed myself harder into the wall, eyes squeezed shut. The snake was coiled tight, hissing and spitting. Don’t. Don’t. My fists were balled so tight I could feel my nails cutting into my palms. This isn’t right! I thought, she’s so little. Lordes howled again, and I could not stand it any longer. I launched myself towards River. I heard myself screaming while I flailed my fists. River gasped, then shoved me down as if brushing off a fly. As I lay on the ground she towered over me.
“You ungrateful little shit! You think you can put your hands on me??” She looked at Pale Star, whose mouth was hanging open.
“Gather the staff,” River ordered her. “Five minutes. The courtyard.”
River yanked me off the floor and pulled me by my braid up the servant stairs onto the first floor, calling for Bruno. He came running.
“Get the belt,” she snapped. Bruno did not look at me but nodded once and jogged off.
Through the house and out into the garden she pulled me by my hair. There was a large wooden log mounted upright, about seven feet tall, off to the side of the courtyard. It had a large metal ring on top. We approached it and River pulled me up short, growling softly into my ear.
“That,” she pointed at the post, “is so much worse than what I’m about to do. Don’t you ever put your hands on me again. Am I understood?” She rattled my head around on my neck as she spoke, viciously yanking my braid.
“Yes, ma’am,” I managed through my tears. The snake reared its head to strike again but I held it back. I guessed another outburst would only make my punishment worse.
The slaves in the household quickly filed out and stood in a half-circle facing us. Bruno returned shortly with a long worn leather strap and handed it to River.
She addressed the group. “This servant,” she shook my head again, each time rattling my neck. “Tried to commit an act of violence against me. Let it be known this is her first offense.”
She finally released my braid and turned to me, eyes flashing. “Bend over and touch your toes. You will get ten. Count them so everyone can hear.”
“Yes, ma’am,” my heart was racing, snake hissing, rage and terror fighting for the same space in my chest. I faced the wall and bent over, humiliated.
There was a pause, and then the first lash. It felt like I had been punched, hard. Then came the sting, bright and blossoming across my whole backside through my thin pants. I refused to cry out, refused to give her the satisfaction of hurting me again.
“COUNT!” River roared.
“One,” I shouted through clenched teeth. Hot tears fell from my eyes and plopped onto the sandy courtyard ground beneath me. I watched them, detached, unwilling to admit they were mine.
Each lash hurt more than the last. Finally, I gasped “Ten.”
“Get up,” River snarled, and turned once more to the group.
I could barely move. I managed to straighten up. I looked at Pale Star but she would not meet my eyes. My sisters and Henry were sobbing.
“Now, Zafira, what do you have to say to me?” River addressed me loudly. I wanted to say nothing but I heard the warning in her voice.
“I am sorry, Madam Voss,” I managed.
“Are you going to do it again?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Kneel.”
She had the belt. She was so much bigger than me. I was defeated, and did as she said.
“Now, beg for my forgiveness,” there was something in her voice, and I looked up at her face. A faint smile played at her lips.
There are moments in enslavement when you wonder how much thinner your dignity can be stretched before it disappears altogether. Times where you must give up a part of yourself in order to survive. Even then, on my knees, I refused to admit this woman might break me. She was not my destiny, she could not be, I refused to accept it. Still, I was forced to choose then: bend, or break under her.
I took a piece of myself then, a part of who I was, and locked it away somewhere she could not touch. With grim determination I clasped my hands together in front of my chest.
“Please,” I said, the words tasting bitter on my tounge. “Please forgive me, Madam Voss. I’m sorry. Please.”
She stared down at me and sneered. “You’re right, you are sorry, you sorry sack of shit. Attack me again and you’ll be sold to the brothel keepers. Now get back to your jobs, all of you. And you,” she glared down at me. “Sleep in the stables for the rest of the week.”
River turned and strode away without a backwards glance. The other slaves slowly dispersed, filing back in through the kitchen door. Gingerly I stood, willing myself not to cry more.
Without saying anything, Pale Star took my hand in hers and led me slowly back to the dormitory. She assessed my backside, which was bright red with welts and blooming bruises, but no broken skin. She hugged me then, and I did cry, sobbing into her stomach as she held me tight.
“There, there,” she whispered, petting my hair. “You’ll be alright.”
It was not much, but it was all she had to give.
The next time River beat my sisters I stood still while it happened, the way I saw Pale Star standing motionless with her head bowed. Though the snake raged inside me, I did not move, noticing instead a curious sense of relief that crept over me. I did not push the feeling away, but instead turned it over in my mind. Inspecting.
Analyzing.
Young as they were, my sisters should have learned not to talk back to River by now. I believed that about them then, and believed it for a very long time afterward.
I am ashamed to admit now that instead of sympathizing, I began to resent them. I grew distant, separating myself from their naivety, their helplessness. The feeling was small at first, a tiny glow of anger. I did not understand that small feelings, tended carefully, grow into wildfires.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter from my book Queen of the Raiders. Would you have fought back against River, or given up a part of yourself instead?
