When I got to my feet, which were bare of course, I saw these men and knew what they wanted, that this was vice, and despicable, and the price of it was Hell. Curses of vanished elders echoed down on me: too pretty, too soft, too pale, eyes far too full of the Devil, ah, the devilish smile.

How intent these men were on their argument, their bargaining. How they looked at me without ever looking into my eyes.

Suddenly I laughed. Things here were being done so hastily. Those who had delivered me had left me. Those who had scrubbed me had never left the tubs. I was a bundle thrown down on the carpet.

For one moment, I had an awareness of myself as having been sharp-tongued once and cynical, and keenly aware of the nature of men in general. I laughed because these merchants thought I was a girl.

I waited, listening, catching these bits and pieces of talk.

We were in a broad room, with a low canopied ceiling, the silk of it sewn with tiny mirrors and the curlicues so loved by the Turks, and the lamps, though smoky, were scented and filled the air with a dusky hazy soot that burned my eyes.

The men in their turbans and caftans weren't unfamiliar to me any more than the language. But I only caught dashes of what they said. My eyes looked for an escape.

There was none. There were heavy, brooding men slouching near the entrances. A man far off at a desk used an abacus for counting. He had piles and piles of gold coins.

One of the men, a tall lean one, all cheekbones and jaw, with rotted-out teeth, came towards me and felt of my shoulders and my neck. Then he lifted up the tunic. I stood stock-still, not enraged or consciously fearful, merely paralyzed. This was the land of the Turks, and I knew what they did to boys. Only I had never seen a picture, nor heard a real story of it, or known anyone who had ever really lived in it, penetrated it and come back home.

Home. Surely I must have wanted to forget who I was. I must have. Shame must have made it mandatory. But at that moment, in the tent-like room with its flowered carpet, among the merchants and slave traders, I strained to remember as if, discovering a map in myself, I could follow it out of here and back to where I belonged.

I did recollect the grasslands, the wild lands, lands where you don't go, except for-.

But that was a blank. I'd been in the grasslands, defying fate, stupidly but not unwillingly. I'd been carrying something of the utmost importance. I got off my horse, ripped this big bundle loose from the leather harness and ran with the bundle clutched against my chest.

"The trees!" he shouted, but who was he?

I knew what he had meant, however, that I had to reach the copse and put this treasure there, this splendid and magical thing that was inside the bundle, "not made by human hands."