As they rode into the city, people stopped and stared. Horses were rather un-ordinary in the city and a man with a tiny girl biting his hand was even less ordinary. As they arrived in the slave gardens, he pulled her off the horse and, by the back of her dress, dragged her inside. People stared, but a young woman walked over.
She offered to buy the girl for 25 gold pieces. "25?!" he exclaimed, obviously annoyed by such a low offer. "Did you expect more with a brat like that?" "I suppose not..." he replied, humbled and reached out a hand for the pieces. She dropped them in carefully and carried a tired girl home in her arms.
Karah woke up to a young man about 10 years older than she. "Where's Mommy?" Karah asked, obviously not thinking that the past night had been real. He laughed and threw a rag at her. "Clean." "Clean?" she asked a second question. "Clean. Now." Karah was now even more puzzled. She was 4 and not well aquainted with cleaning up after herself or anyone else. "Like this," he demonstrated with his own rag and scrubbed a spot on the brass bed clean. "I'm tired," she said and climbed back into the bed. "No, you don't. You need to clean." "No." "Clean." "No!" "Clean!" "NO!" And obviously, if you have ever argued with a 4-year-old, you know what the outcome was. He went off and fetched his mistriss who didn't have the heart to tell a little girl to clean. She adopted her instead.
Karah forgot her past and the power her mother had told her about so often.
