“My lady…”, he answered to gain time. He didn’t know how to go on.
Fate wanted her to meddle in his words. “Why are you calling me that way? I’m not your lady, white man. My name’s N’ahele.”
Johnny was thinking about the fact that she had talked carelessly. He then realized that the cannibals didn’t care about epithets, and the only important charges were the village chief’s one and the shaman’s above all. Being the latter’s granddaughter, that woman had a certain power too. She was more important even than Sik’is, who had kept silent since they had got there, showing something like an act of subjection. Johnny could catch some sharpness in her reasoning: she wasn’t his lady actually, but the tribe’s one. He had never taken the difference between the two races into consideration, but it
