160, Age of Falling, High Summer
"You can't cage anyone who doesn't agree to the cage. That is the whole secret of taking a slave. He must agree to the taking, in his head if not his body. The mind is the important thing."
-Attributed to Kerenje Darklinden.
"Move."
Jeyudarthei bowed his head and picked up the bundle that lay at his feet. The rest had been short. He had seen a butterfly flying past one of the great cyanda blossoms, hovering as if it could not decide whether or not to sip. It made him smile. An indecisive butterfly...
"Move on."
The whip snapped somewhere behind him. Jeyudarthei looked up at the sky, and noted that the butterfly still trailed the coffle. Light flashed on its brilliant white and blue wings. Jeyudarthei thought he could almost smell it, as though it had fed after all and the delicate scent of nectar were trailing it.
"You, there!"
The coffle lurched to a halt as someone near the end of the line stumbled. Jeyudarthei turned and glanced over his shoulder, seeing the patterned hides of the other opuuli flash in the sun. Yes, it was indeed someone near the end of the line. He was panting, bowed over as the driver lashed him with the whip.
Most of the others were glancing aside, expressions of pity and horror and outrage in their features. Jeyudarthei watched, his mind as clear as sunlight, and was not surprised when one of the driver's assistants approached him.
"Jeyu." He acknowledged the jaguar Elwen with a dip of his head. He himself was land Elwen, and his pale skin was peeling in the heat of the jungle sun. "Will you come with me? We've got another young one who's going to kill himself if you don't help him."
Jeyu nodded back, and the assistant bent down and unhooked the chains that held him to the rest of the coffle. Jeyu followed close behind as they went towards the end of the line. The assistant smelled of dust and sunlight and the cyanda blossoms; he wore a tunic the same shade of silver as the collar around Jeyu's neck that kept him from Shifting and escaping into the surrounding jungle.
They drew level with the recalcitrant slave. The driver glanced up and nodded in welcome. "Another one for your talents, Jeyu."
"My teaching," said Jeyu softly as he knelt. "It is not magic that helps soothe them."
"Whatever it is, it's damned useful. Wish we had a hundred more like you."
Jeyu smiled softly. They wouldn't be so confident of that if they could see inside his head. But they couldn't, and so it didn't matter. The sight of the white butterfly and the blossoms mattered more. He reached out and put his clawed hand on one of the welts on the young man's back.
The slave straightened at once, throwing off Jeyu's claws with a gasp. He had clear golden eyes, still blazing with the fury that Jeyu himself hadn't felt for one moment, but had seen in the faces of a hundred other captive jaguar Elwens. The trick of it was that he knew how to be free even when he wore chains and was part of a slave coffle, and none of the others he met had ever learned that, at least until he taught it to them.
"What is your name?" asked Jeyu.
"Why should I tell you?" asked the slave, his face glowing with defiance. About him hung the heavy stink of hatred. Jeyu wrinkled his nose. The slave smelled just as musky as a female in heat, but much less appealing. "You're with them."
"I am not with anyone save myself."
As always, the slave driver and his assistant chuckled when Jeyu spoke this simple truth. He couldn't understand why. Of course, their ignorance of his thoughts probably still had a lot to do with it, as it had a lot to do with almost everything that happened while Jeyu was here.
The young man, staring at him, seemed almost to understand. Jeyu was glad. Few could take his teaching, or were willing to. Perhaps this opuul would be one of the ones who could, one of the ones who would stop being a slave even when he was in chains.
"I'm Calothi," he said at last.
Jeyu nodded. "And my full name is Jeyudarthei, though many call me Jeyu."
Calothi's stare was open. Jeyu shrugged. The slave could think what he wanted of Jeyu's name, which meant "to scorn chains," but the important thing was that he learn what Jeyu had to say, and take it to heart.
"Greetings, Jeyu," said Calothi, his eyes slitted. Jeyu knew what he thought, not because he had any mind-reading gift himself, but because he had seen the same expression on the faces of many other young opuuli. Calothi thought this was a trick. Indeed, his eyes moved to the driver and his assistant before he turned back to Jeyu. "Why have you come to me?"
"Did you notice the way you looked at them?" asked Jeyu.
"Looked at whom?"
Jeyu nodded to the driver and his assistant. "Them," he said. "You looked to them before me. Why?"
"I thought that I might learn some clue to this trick in their faces," said Calothi, his eyes alight and his ears lying back. He was shooting his claws now, with audible sound.
"That is the first mistake," said Jeyu softly. "The one that so many never recover from. Do not look at their faces. Do not let them matter to you. Do you understand?"
"They hold me captive," spat Calothi. "They have violated the most basic principles of liberty and justice among Elwens. How can they not matter? How can I not stare at their faces and long to see them scratched and bleeding to death, prey to the claws of our people or our wild kin?"
"Because such dreams are what entrap you, more surely than any chains," said Jeyu calmly. "You look at them. They become important to you. They start mattering in a way that only your mate and kin, if any, mattered before. Truly, Calothi, why should they? They are merely Elwens. You are yourself. Which of those should be the more important to you?"
"They have enslaved me!"
"Did you agree to come?"
Calothi let out a bitter laugh and held up one manacled hand. He was one of the few in the coffle who wore wrist chains as well as leg. "Does it look as if I did?"
"Then I do not understand what you mean, when you speak of enslavement." Jeyu sat on his haunches and looked Calothi in the eye. "If they hold your body, then you may be a prisoner, but you are not a slave. How can you be a slave if you don't agree to consider yourself one?"
Calothi shook his head. "This is some kind of joke."
"It is?" asked Jeyu.
"I am a slave." Calothi's voice was flat iron pain. "I was captured, put in chains, sold like a prey animal, and brought here. I didn't choose any of this. That means that I am a slave, and not even a prisoner, since I didn't commit any crime to bring me here. You don't understand what it means. You are someone who would help a slave driver." He turned, huddling, his head tucked into his flank. "Go away."
"No," said Jeyu simply. "You haven't made any effort to understand what I'm trying to teach you."
"I have no interest in it." Calothi growled at him. His tail swished back and forth so fast it stirred the leaves on the jungle floor. "Go away."
Jeyu sighed. "Shall I tell you what makes me free?" he asked.
Calothi's tail only swished faster.
"I have no bonds outside myself," said Jeyu. "Once, I had a mate, but I do not pine wondering if I will ever see her again. I do not know if I will, but no wish of mine can bring it closer. If I remained hating my captors, then I might have a better chance to escape and see her again, but how do I know that I would still be myself when I emerged from captivity, if I let myself be captive? No, Calothi, I do not consider myself a chained wild beast separated from its mate, or a captive jaguar Elwen. I am myself."
"What is that?" Calothi had uncurled himself a little.
"Jeyudarthei."
Calothi curled back up. "You are insane," he said. "I was betrothed. I would have had children, and a good and beautiful mate who was worthy to be their mother. I had parents, and siblings. I had people I loved. And now I am captive, and I cannot even shapeshift."
Jeyu tried one more time. "You are only as captive as you think you are."
"Go away."
Jeyu sighed and stood up. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think that I can do anything for him."
"That's all right," said the driver's assistant, and took him back to the front, where he refastened Jeyu's leg chains. "We know you tried. Some of them still listen to you. And they really are the ones who become-well, free isn't the right word for it, of course, but something more than just slaves."
Jeyu met the man's eyes. He wondered if perhaps the land Elwen understood something of what he was thinking after all.
The whip snapped again.
"Move."
The coffle moved. Jeyu moved with it, gazing on the flowers in the sunlight.
*****
"You are free."
The collar snapped from his neck. Jeyu stretched, shaking his head lazily. Somehow, it hadn't really surprised him when the driver's assistant turned out to be a secret abolitionist, and now the man stood smiling beside him as his magic surged back.
Of course, he didn't understand everything. Jeyu had always been free. But there were some additional benefits to this.
He sprang to a branch, for the first time in two decades resuming his four-footed form. Color flowed out of the world, and scent flowed in in absorbing waves. He tossed his head back, and listened to the subtle rustles of prey animals about him. Then he leaped down and loped along the slave coffle, towards the chains that had held Calothi.
Calothi stepped free, and stood there for a long moment, eyes burning, staring at the dead slave driver. He smelled of a grief too deep for tears. He smelled of hatred and bitterness. He turned to the driver's assistant in a moment, and began speaking of joining the abolitionists.
Jeyu watched him, then bowed his head. He knew Calothi's death as surely as if a god had whispered it in his ear. The young opuul would get himself killed in a wild and frustrated attack on a slave caravan. His desire for revenge ran too deep, and the slavery he had let himself be tricked into assuming would leave a permanent mark on his life. He would not have the life with his family that he had so dreamed of having.
But, worst of all, he would never be really free again. The falling of his chains had come too late. He was still enslaved in his mind, and always would be.
Jeyu sighed, and then sprang again to a branch, where he reached out and batted at a butterfly. Then he smelled the cyanda blossoms, and snarled aloud in gladness. They reminded him of the scent of his mate. He would go seeking her.
He sprang off the branch and coursed into the jungle, going south, every movement of his body strong and perfect and utterly free.
