Chapter 15 #2
“Now, those talons of yours need attention.” He retrieved a new tool, this one designed, I assumed, to trim claws. My fingers bent, and the tools snapped one by one. “There. Much less dangerous for everyone now.” He dropped the tool back in the bag. “I’ll be back to see how your wound is healing.”
“Is there a reason you talk to the dumb animals like they can understand you?” the attendant asked as the man trudged out of the enclosure, the guard following.
“They are more intelligent than you think,” came the reply.
The guard shot one last wary look at me before leaving completely.
Little did they know.
My wing healed slowly, and I grew impatient with having both wings and arms bound.
My shoulders ached from the position, and I lost feeling in my arms even though the bindings on my wrists did not impede my circulation.
The man who had done the work checked on me, bringing my daily meals consisting of pails of water and plates of raw meat, and offering the only company I currently enjoyed.
Several people peeked into the enclosure over the days, but none of them trusted my restraints enough to venture further.
On the fourth day, several guards accompanied my caretaker. He approached alone, but a complement of guards meant I was going somewhere. He set his bag down and fell into the routine of checking my wing.
“It’s healing nicely,” he said to his entire audience, but he meant it for me.
He returned to his bag and dug around, pulling out bands of leather.
“I had anklets and jesses made,” he said as he grabbed two of the larger bands and a stretch of leather cording, “so we can get those nasty ropes off you.”
My body froze up. Of course, I looked like a bird of prey. They were going to treat me like one. Even if I would never be used for falconry, I would be subject to all the restraints of it. I had harmed several guards. No one would let me go about unbound now.
“Why don’t you let us muzzle it first?"
Maybe I should want to be muzzled because this was going to happen whether I fought it or not.
The urge to beg the caretaker not to do it came on so forcefully that I almost slipped.
I managed to catch myself, the wisdom of silence prevailing since I dared not let any of the guards hear lest they find new interest in me.
My caretaker locked eyes with me. “Do they need to muzzle you?”
I maintained eye contact while he ventured to his knees to undo the rope bindings on my ankles. The moment he touched the ropes, I lunged at him. I had no intention of harming him, but the surprise gave him a jolt, and he launched himself back several feet away to keep out of my radius.
The guards didn’t need to be asked to intervene. They wrestled me to the ground so that I could not struggle. They fit the muzzle over my beak and fastened it behind my head before addressing the ropes on my ankles.
“Gentle with it,” the caretaker said as he dusted himself off. “I am unhurt. I startled it. It was my fault. I sometimes forget these things are wild, especially when it’s taken aid with minimal resistance.”
Even prone, I breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t know, and I had successfully disabused him of the idea of my sentience.
The guards kept my shoulders and legs down while the caretaker unfastened the rope that kept me in the enclosure, and then pulled the rope from my legs. He muttered a curse and ended up putting ointment on them before fastening the anklets. And then the process was repeated with my wrists.
Were falconry anklets on wrists still technically anklets, since in the history of mankind, there had never been a bird with human arms and hands before?
The leather bands on my wrists, although still bound, offered a slightly wider range of movement and did not rub on the healing wounds from my talons. They didn’t let me up right away though, and I strained to see what caused the delay.
“The bewits are larger than the bells,” one of those holding me down said.
“The tsarina wanted them, especially with the history of wandering,” the caretaker said as he fiddled again with my ankles. “Even if they are not proportional.”
The weight and noise told me exactly what was happening.
Falconry bells. I hadn’t worn bells as a jester, not traditional bells anyway, although there had been a few on the feathered mantle of my collar.
But I would wear them now. I supposed, if I had the option, ankles were less annoying than a collar.
Something fitted around my neck moments later.
Blyat.
I couldn’t figure out how they fastened it, although with my hands bound, it hardly mattered, as I couldn’t get at it anyway.
Everyone rose and then released me, the pressure of hands and knees easing until I could shift without being forced back to the ground. I struggled to my knees and waited. The tension in the air spoke of more to come.
One of the guards stepped forward and attached a chain lead to my new collar.
Then he tugged. I took the hint and rose.
Progress was slow with the jesses since they were for birds being carried on a falconer’s arm, not one forced to walk.
And again, I was marched in through the palace, up the stairs, and back through the wing to the tsarina’s quarters.
Of course, she wanted me where she had kept me before. In her bedroom.
I shivered, not with cold, but with apprehension.
She was not there to greet me in her study.
And my escorts took me through the same rooms as the tsarina had led me last time: the receiving room, sitting room, little dining room, Kilikwa dining room, drawing room, then through the monarch’s corridor and to her bedroom. She did not greet me there either.
The cot had been removed.
They fastened the lead to the foot of her bed.
“Is that all?” a guard asked.
“She said to leave it,” answered another.
Scanning the faces of the escorts, the caretaker was not among them.
Did he know what the tsarina wanted me for?
Did any of them? Had that rumor already started circulating?
I wished I could tell someone. The jesters knew that had been the case before, but now, when I was beyond recognition, would they still suspect?
“Then we have done our job,” said the first and turned to go.
The other guards turned with him and left me, filing out of the room a bit too eagerly.
I tested my bonds. I tugged on the chain.
I tried yet again to reach my hands down to my ankles to undo them with no more success than the first time I tried it.
The tinkling bells annoyed me beyond reason.
Maybe that’s why the tsarina had requested them, knowing they would drive me half-mad.
Maybe I already was. Maybe I should want to be by the time she joined me.
I huddled up against the bed and closed my eyes.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I practiced my breathing, trying to ease my frantically beating heart and to stop my spinning mind.
I sought calm, even if my situation did not enable it.
After all, what could I do? I had tried so many desperate things and ended up right back in her power, each time worse than before.
I would be too tired to fight soon. Should I have just agreed from the start?
How much more would I hate myself if I just let the inevitable happen?
“You look marvelous,” she said from the doorway.
I took another deep breath and looked up at her. I couldn’t respond, not with the muzzle, but I was tired and had no wish to banter with her. I just stared. That took all the energy I had.
She passed me on the way to her dressing room and disappeared for a few moments. She returned, still in her day dress but without her gloves. She eyed me.
“I wish things could have been different,” she said, “but you have left me no choice.”
She stood over me and sank to the floor beside me.
From there, she found my sheath of feathers.
I squirmed and fumbled, fighting against her.
I positioned my legs in front of me and forced several strikes with my knees to move her hands.
Pressed back against the headboard as she clutched at me, I doubled over with the painful grasp on my anatomy and the tiny feathers around it.
She took the opportunity to force me to the ground.
Unable to go anywhere else as I recovered, she climbed over me and sat atop my legs, preventing any additional strikes or intervention from them.
With her weight on me, and my hands and wings bound, I could not find leverage to roll or dislodge her.
“I hope your principles bring you comfort in moments like this,” she cooed at me.
She removed her hands from my body, affording me a moment to breathe, and set about arranging her skirts.
“I hoped this would be more challenging,” she remarked as she began to renew her work. “But your little guard at the gate still responds even when you don’t want it to, doesn’t it?”
I shuddered.
“I love the noises you make.” She stroked my face with her fingertip, gentle and appreciative, tracing the beak and the muzzle that kept it shut. “And the sound of the bells as your legs shake only makes me want this more.”
My legs jerked with a particularly effective maneuver of her hands as if to illustrate the sound she liked so much.
“Just like that!” She laughed. “I didn’t expect you to be ready for me so soon.”
I struggled to shift her off me, leveraging my body against the floor to free my legs or find the strength in my belly to sit.
She grabbed at larger, sensitive feathers and shoved me back down.
I struck my head against the tile. Tiny lights flickered through my vision, and when I turned my head to clear it, blood pooled from beneath me.
I tried to beg her to stop. I tried to plead with her that this was an action too low and too base for her.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t beneath her at all.
And when she mounted me, I could do nothing about it.
I breathed. I tried to breathe. I struggled with even that as she forced every ounce of strength out of me until I broke.
She continued even then, even as I shrank beneath her. I shivered and made myself small. And when she was done, she slid herself off me and stood, wiping her hands on a handkerchief she pulled from the folds of her skirts.
“I didn’t want it that way,” she said as if it made a difference.
“I tried to give you everything, and you turned me down. Why have you made me do this to you?” When I did not acknowledge her, she huffed.
“You’re going back to your pen soon. But I will have you brought back.
Don’t ever make me do it like that again. ”
When the doors shut behind her, the tears started. Every indignity, every humiliation, every pain and discomfort and struggle over the past few months, everything, had been for nothing.