Chapter 5

Two hours later I was sitting in a window seat in a front bedroom, looking down the flowery hill towards the village. It was late afternoon, nearly dinnertime I supposed, and although I felt my appetite rising, I was definitely feeling greatly refreshed.

By the time I'd emerged from the tub, the skin on my fingers and toes had wrinkled up like raisins. I was, however, clean all over and the bath oil had left me smelling faintly of roses. There'd been ample towels and even a robe laid out for me and I'd dried myself off, luxuriating in the first real cleanliness I'd felt in years.

Dry and wrapped up in the robe, I'd just picked up the brush by the sink when I'd felt a tap on my shoulder. In the mirror I had seen reflected the face of the bath servant. He'd gestured for the brush and insisted on taking care of it for me. He sat me down in a chair and patiently worked through all the tangles. At first I was squirming, uncomfortable with being handled and simply with having my hair pulled, but by the time he'd worked it straight and fine like silk, I'd grown rather happy on the novelty of being so pampered.

When he'd taken up three lengths of hair and offered to braid it, I'd shrugged and let him try. Although I used to do that for my mother as a child, I'd never had my own hair braided before. Since it had grown long I'd often tied it back, simply to keep it out of my face, but braiding was not something I'd ever gone to. When the servant was done I went to the mirror and found I had a head full of writhing white serpents. I rather liked the effect; it gave me a fierceness I often felt I lacked.

At that point I'd been led out into the hall and over to a bedroom which looked to have been made up especially for me. There was a large bed covered with invitingly clean blankets. Over the back of a chair was fresh set of clothes.

The servant had signed to me that he would be going but that I could find him and ask for anything I might need. I'd let him go, and then, throwing the lock and closing the curtains, I'd changed into the new outfit. It was all black, which I suppose was by design of whoever had selected it, as the darkness contrasted strikingly with the rest of me, especially my serpents hair. I'd pulled on the black boots, which were a little too big, and stomped around a bit, feeling strong and even a bit more adult than usual.

And so it came that I was sitting by the window when the curtain had thrashed strangely, pulled by an air current, and I'd turned towards the room to find Thiede coming through the door, pen and paper in hand.

I immediately got up and went towards him. Although he'd made me feel uncomfortable in the bath but he was my host and after the treatment by the servant, the room and the clothes, I felt I owed it to him to be gracious and try to overlook his strange behavior.

I gestured at my clothes and hair, smiling to indicate my pleasure. Thiede nodded, then began to scribble on his note pad.

"Quite a change," he wrote. "You look like black coals on snow."

I took the pen and replied, "And you look like red coals on snow."

He laughed then, I saw it, and he went over to sit on the bed, where he wrote some more. "You really are handsome, you know."

Naturally I didn't jump to answer this. Modesty, as Thiede's earlier note had implied, was something I strongly believed in.

When I didn't reply, Thiede scribbled further. "Now don't be like that. Don't be ashamed of your body. You should be proud."

Sitting next to him, I looked down and away from him, embarrassed as most teenagers would have been.

A few moments later Thiede changed the topic. "I'm curious, Moon. Has anyone ever tried to cure your deafness?"

I nodded my head vigorously and grabbed for the pen. "Yes. My mother took me to many doctors. There were many tests and even special tests inside my brain. They tried to do surgery once, but it did not work. My mother wanted to try another test but it was too expensive and there were not enough doctors anymore. That was when I was younger."

Thiede was patient as I wrote; my hands, not used to writing so much, were still somewhat unsteady and my memory of writing and spelling was taking some time to retrieve.

"I used to be very unhappy I could not be like other people," I wrote, "but then when I was alone, there were no problems. It is only with people that I have problems. It is not so hard to be deaf when you are alone."

After I had finished I looked up and saw that Thiede was studying me. He'd looked at me in the bathroom and at dinner and in the dump too and I really didn't understand why he kept doing it. To me he was the most interesting looking person I'd ever met. He was so tall and his hair seemed to be inexplicably alive. When he looked at you, you felt he was seeing right through you.

He held out his hand for the pen and paper and I handed it back to him. Slowly, letting me read along, he wrote, "What if I told you that there was a way to cure your deafness?"

"There is no way!" I wrote back angrily, after grabbing the pen.

"There IS a way," he replied. "There is a way that would give you something greater than hearing. Do you want me to tell you?"

I was still irritated -- so many times doctors had dangled such hopes before my mother and me -- but I shrugged and gestured half-heartedly for him to tell me.

"We are Wraeththu," he wrote. "As I told you earlier, we are different. We are not men."

Too many questions popped into my mind. I managed to write out one of them. "If you are not men, then what are you?"

Thiede laughed; I felt it in the way the bed shook. "We are Wraeththu. Hermaphrodites. Do you know this word?"

Of course I didn't so I shook my head.

Thiede wrote on. "We are men as well as women. You could become like us; you would be changed partially into a woman."

I froze up all over when he said that. I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. He was fooling with me surely! There was no way I could become a woman -- except in the figurative sense.

I thought about all the men I'd seen that day. Some of them, I'd observed, had been quite feminine in appearance. Many of them wore jewelry and some of them, Thiede included, were beautiful like women. At the same time, they looked like men to me. With Thiede's comments, I suddenly thought I knew why.

Living in the city on my own, fending for myself, I had not always been safe. Not long after my mother had left me, I'd been raped by a group of older men. They'd acted like I was a woman and they'd treated me like a whore. It had happened a few more times until eventually I'd learned to know when it was going to happen, how to see it coming. It was only one of the many reasons I'd left the city to live at the dump.

"YOU WANT TO MAKE ME A WOMAN?" I wrote in thick, black letters.

Thiede shook his head as he took the pen. "No. I want to make you Wraeththu, like us. You will be changed -- and part of the change is that you will become partially like a woman."

I jumped out of the bed and stared at him. I suddenly knew just what he was talking about. He wanted me to become... to become... some kind of sex slave, like a woman, like those men who'd come after me. Sure, Thiede and his friends looked sophisticated and had enchanted me with fine food, a bath, and other luxuries, but they wanted the same thing. I was not about to give it to them.

I was so angry I couldn't even bother with grabbing back the pen or gesturing or anything else. I simply kept on staring at the redheaded fiend and with all my heart I projected onto him just how I felt. It was something I'd often done when I was angry or frightened or trying to defend myself; I thought really hard and pretended that somehow I would be heard.

I screamed at Thiede as "loudly" as I could. I thought to him that I would never submit to him or anyone else. I thought to him about the rapes. Finally I told him I was leaving and going back to the dump.

The look on Thiede's face was surprisingly resigned, almost as if he'd expected it. I didn't stay and watch him, however. The door was open and I ran out and down the stairs. In the hall I spotted my pack and I grabbed it before running out the front door.

I looked down the hill and decided to avoid the village. Instead I ran straight back, away and up into the hills. The grass was high and full of insects. I kept on running until I couldn't see the house anymore and my chest was heaving.

I threw down my pack, overcome with anger. Why had I gone with them? Why had I trusted them? And what was I going to do now?