Ansuya was dancing again. The ghungroo wrapped around her ankles rang and thumped to the vibrant drum music that seemed an ever-present companion to her these days.
She still studied. She studied harder now than she ever had before. She no longer had leisurely afternoons and evenings to practice her math or music. Her life was strictly regimented in ways that felt cold and alien to her. Gone were the days of spending the warm afternoon on her balcony, sipping chai, and laughing over some joke or the latest story brought from the western British Empire, retold in as amusing way as she could by her long friend and tutor, Bali Jai. Now there were alarm bells and curtains being flung back into place before the sun was up.
When she wasn’t practicing her dancing, or singing, or math, she was sleeping. She was allowed a two hour nap in the afternoon and she took it. At first, she felt she was too old for a mid-day nap. She told her mother that she didn’t need a nap and if her studies were so important than she would bend her will to that task.
Her mother had acquiesced. She wished that she hadn’t. It only took a week before she was begging to take a nap. Her mother denied her for another week before she relented and let her daughter rest. It was a lesson that Ansuya had not forgotten.
Here in the dark confines of her prison, at the hands of Kenneth, she could remember what that hot chai felt like on her tongue. How warm and inviting the Indian sun had been to her. She reached down and scratched at her legs. The grime and sweat that covered her body was disgusting. The incessant itching was something that she could have done without.
There was movement upstairs. She could identify at least five sets of footsteps, maybe more. They walked from where the front door was to where she remembered Kenneth’s office to be.
Back logging into Kenneth’s dream world had drained her more than she thought possible. She had never tried anything like that, but through studying the dream, she began to peel back the layers and see the clicking gears behind the clean façade. It had taken her a long time but she finally figured out how to control it.
Seeing Kenneth’s face as she turned his little world upside down and bent the bars to her cage had been a sight worth the half victory that she had sustained. He was very strong but, given enough time, he would have succumbed to her.
Time that she wasn’t allowed. She remembered blacking out just as Kenneth was about to reveal something that he had desperately wanted to keep hidden. It was a hard prize to claim, and she had almost done it. He was in her hand. Till the drug had flooded her body.
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She had seen Kenneth only twice since then. And for a while she had not been able, or allowed, to regain consciousness. It was only after months of her captivity that her body had turned itself inward and worked against the drug enough to where now it was whole minutes before she blacked out. She had maintained that fiction. If they knew that she could awaken on her own they would naturally increase the dose and the progress on her work would be lost once again.
The footsteps stopped and all went back to silence. She would only have a little time before her dose was delivered to her. She had to focus her will and body. Her abilities had been stunted by the drug, whatever the parasites had been using on her.
She breathed deeply and calmly and reached down to her aching legs. She massaged them as best she could in her cramped position. She looked up towards the door that led back into Kenneth’s house. She forced her body to release a faint trickle of body chemicals. The amount wasn’t enough to control, and she didn’t have the strength to attempt to back log into Kenneth’s dreams. No, this was just enough to invade his house. Nothing overt, but over the long months she had delivered an impressive amount of pheromones and other bio chemicals into Kenneth’s house. It was a slow process, but it was a gamble worth pursing.
She had to be very careful. His instincts on these things were impressive. She forced her body to produce just a little more and she focused the chemicals through the air towards the basement door.
She let herself rest. This had been very easy for her not too long ago. Now her body protested even the thought of doing anything physical. The drug kept her asleep but she got no real rest from it. She always awoke groggy, thick in memories that she had to brush away before she could even tell where she was. Her world of memories and dreams were invading on her sense of reality and with no one to talk to, no company to keep, it was up to her alone to keep herself sane and focused.
She looked up to ceiling and heaved a deep, slow, and silent sigh. What she wouldn’t give for freedom, the chance to move around again and heel her body for this lethargy. But it wasn’t time yet. She could wait. She was the daughter of Gayatri Das. She had been raised and trained since before she knew what training was. She could take this. It was not the first time that she remembered just how much she had loved and appreciated her mother’s and her tutors’ lessons.
* * * * *
The Gentleman arrived promptly on time and she bowed deeply to him. The drum was struck once, she smiled radiantly and her leg swept out and in dramatically. The gentleman smiled as well. The drum was accompanied by another and another. And Ansuya danced.
The drums were fire to her fluid movements. The flames of the music gathered against her and swept her around as her legs followed the difficult and intricate path through the beats. Her dress swirled around her and her hair flowed behind her. Her smile was one of pure joy. Her legs had long ago accustomed themselves to this prolonged activity and she was able to flow and hover without touching the ground. The music carried her as she moved her body in vibrant passionate expressions. She let the music direct her and her body followed her heart, which leapt at every hard beat of the drums as her body twirled and shook and her feet kept perfect time.