The other girls, too, began to join her, and at last even the shyest among them moved pounding, and stamping and turning about the circle. The dances of rence girls are, as far as I know, unique on Gor. There is some savagery in them, but too, they have sometimes, perhaps paradoxically, stately aspects, stylized aspects, movements reminiscent of casting nets or poling, of weaving rence or hunting gants. But, as I watched, and the young men shouted, the dances became less stylized, and became more universal to woman, whether she be a drunken house wife in a suburb in a city of Earth or a jeweled slave in Port Kar, dances that spoke of them as women who want men, and will have them. To my astonishment, as the dances continued, even the shyest of the rence girls, those who had to have been forced to the circle, even those who had tried to flee, began to writhe in ecstasy, their hands lifted to the three moons of Gor.
It is often lonely on the rence islands, and festival comes but once a year.
The bantering of the young people in the morning, and the display of the girls in the evening, for in effect in the movements of the dance every woman is nude, have both, I expect, institutional roles to play in the life of the rence growers, significant roles analogous to the roles of dating, display, and courtship in the more civilized environments of my native world, Earth.
It marks the end of a childhood when a girl is first sent to the circle.
Suddenly, before me, hands over her head, swaying to the music, I saw the dark-haired, lithe girl, she with such marvelous, slender legs in the brief rence skirt; her ankles were so close together that they might have been chained; and then she put her wrists together back to back over her head, palms out, as though she wore slave bracelets.
Then she said, "Slave", and spit in my face, whirling away.
I wondered if it might be she who was my mistress.
Then another girl, the tall, blonde girl, she who had held the coil of marsh vine, stood before me, moving with excruciating slowness, as though the music could be reflected only from moment to moment, in her breathing, in the beating of her heart.
"Perhaps it is I," she said, "who is your mistress."
She, like the other, spit then in my face and turned away, now moving fully, enveloped in the music's flame.
One after another of the girls so danced before me, and about me, taunting me, laughing at their power, then spitting upon me and turning away.
The rencers laughed and shouted, clapping, cheering the girls on in the dance.
But most of the time I was ignored, as much as the pole to which I was bound.
Mostly these girls, saving for a moment or two to humilate me, danced their beauty for the young men of the circle, that they might be desired, that they might be much sought.
After a time I saw one girl leave the circle, her head back, hair flowing down her back, breathing deeply and scarcely was the through the joined circles of the rencers, but a young man followed her, joining her some yards beyond the circle. They stood facing one another in the darkness for an Ehn or two, and then I saw him gently, she not protesting, drop his net over her, and then, by this net, she not protesting, he led her away. Together they disappeared in the darkness, going over one of the raft bridges to another island, one far from the firelight, the crowd, the noise, the dance.
