Chapter 6

When I woke up, the sun was shining on my face while I lay on a hard surface that made my back hurt badly.

I was swaying from side to side and the shaky movements troubled my stomach badly, making me want to vomit. I turned to my lefthand side and vomited my breakfast into a body of water.

It was then that I finally realized that I was in a boat surrounded by women of different ages and features. Their ankles were tied with chains attached to a pole in the middle of the boat. I looked down and saw that my ankles were also tied.

“What are these?” I gasped in horror.

“Are you blind?” A woman asked flippantly beside me. She was middle-aged and dressed in worn-out but neat clothes.

“They’re chains,” she continued. “Or do they look like a string of pearls to you?”

Some of the women laughed. My face turned red but it wasn’t from embarrassment, it was from anger. How dare anyone chain my ankles like this, as if I was some kind of animal that could be tied down?

I leapt up from where I