The fat one laughed. He was squatting near the fire, poking at it with a stick.

My sister brought her hands up to her face. I saw the cords had cut into her wrists, “Free me,” she said, her voice naked, empty of significance. She thought that otherwise they wouldn’t understand.

They stared at her. “Free me,” she repeated carefully. “What do you want from me?”

The man with the gun stood up. “Beloved Angkhdt,” he whispered, and even the other one, the musician, took a step back from her uncertainly. And then he smiled and stuck his tongue out of his mouth. “She understands,” he said. And then he turned away. “I think I love her,” he said to the fat man.

The fat man laughed. He was drunk.

“No,” the other said again. “I think I do. She’s beautiful. She’s like an animal.” And he turned back to face her, and showed her his tongue, and said something I didn’t understand. But later I would come to recognize that famous verse of scripture which begins, “Oh my sweet love, let us be free as wild beasts, free as dogs, and let us kiss one another mouth to tail, like the wild dogs . . .”

He stuck his tongue out of his mouth. The fat man laughed. “You’re disgusting,” he said.

“No. Nothing like that. You have to take what you can find. I think she’s beautiful. Look at her. Look at her arms.”

“Yes, look at them. Just be careful. Female or not.”

“She’s a female all right. You’ll see.”

“I’m warning you. Don’t be a fool.”

The musician shrugged. “I think she’s beautiful.” And then he paused and smiled, and said to her, “We heard you were a dancer. That’s why we captured you.”

She shook her hair back from her face and brought her joined hands up to show him. The rope was biting her cruelly; I could see it and could hear it when she talked. “Free me.” They were too deaf to hear the mixed intentions in her voice.

The musician licked his lips. He was standing in front of her, between her and the fire, looking at her body, her naked legs, her sex. She wore the remnants of a sheepskin shirt, and her arms were bare. And yes, she was beautiful, yes, and he thought so too. He was a slave to beauty. He reached to touch her, cupping his palm around the bone of her hip. “We mean you no harm,” he said. “We’ll let you go, don’t worry about that. You’re safe with us.” He was smiling, and working his thumb into her skin as if to soothe her, staring up into her face. Even in his smile I could see his nervousness; still, he met no resistance when he slid his hand, so slowly, down along the bone of her hip, across her leg, down to the hair between her legs. He plucked at it and curled it between his fingers. And then he brought his hand up to his face, to sniff it and spit from his smiling mouth into his palm, but I could see he was still nervous, nervous when he put it back between her legs, nervous as he rubbed his spit into her sex. He was standing close to me, for I had crept so close. He faced away from me, the fire between us, and I could see the fingers of his other hand gripped tight behind his back, gripped tight around the handle of a knife hung upside down between his shoulder blades, and he gripped it nervously as he was rubbing spit into her sex. The other men were excited too, one standing with his long gun, the fat one sitting forward, smoking. Paradise was down, and the fire was low, neglected. And I also was excited. I knew that she was going to kill him if he freed her hands. I took an arrow from my belt.