It was more than two hours since lights-out and the sun had long set on the Colossians Baptist Ladies College in the good old State of Alabama. Why was everything ‘good old’ in this part of the world, she wondered? It was crazy, just like the inmates, nothing was particularly old compared to her native England and so far there wasn’t that much good about it; not here in college anyway. She had as yet not seen much of Alabama. Maybe it was like the movies, she thought ruefully.

Carrie Johns tiptoed down the hall painfully aware that every footfall was a shout; or at least seemed that way. Damn these old wooden floors, she cursed inwardly. The only illumination was from the high hall windows that dropped moonlit oblongs onto the floor at regular intervals ahead of her. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw someone watching her and icy fingers of fear stole down her spine.

Carrie gulped and in her head rehearsed a yarn about being English and stupid and ‘where exactly is the midnight cocoa room’ in her best cliché prep-school tones. Some of the snobs here had already bought that line, but only some of them.

Frozen in place she slowly turned her head to face hard puritan eyes regarding her from the shadows. The Founder towered over her, drilling her with his eyes almost 120 years after he had died.

“Creepy bloody painting,” she cursed in a whisper. But if anyone had been watching her they would have seen the green eyes set in heart-shaped face close with relief beneath the fringe of her red-brown hair ‘that must not touch the collar.’

Carrie was small, slight in build and barely five feet two in height; the main reason she had been chosen for this assignment.

“You want me to infiltrate a Bible-bashing Southern college Chief?” she had gasped, “But I am nearly 25.”

“As Interpol is staffed entirely by graduates, I don’t have too many 18-year-olds at my disposal. The FBI would have used their own agent, but they don’t have anyone that young either. So as the only one who could pass…”

“Oh terrific,” Carrie had rolled up her eyes.

“Cut that out,” the Chief had scolded her in his best paternal manner.

“How long will I be in this dump?” Carrie said with a pout.

“I have enrolled you in the second semester. It should be long enough?” the Chief had told her.

“’Should be’ and anyway, a whole semester…?” Carrie had been dismayed, but already it seemed so long ago.

Carrie looked again at the portrait. It was almost as if he knew she was an interloper. She shrugged. She had no time for this.

The principal’s office was locked as she knew it would be. Its usual occupant was one Martin De Mark, an imposing cuss who could turn from jocular to imperious on a dime. But he was not in her sights. It was his secretary’s office that was her target. Or more specifically the student register. A request for it through the usual channels had been considered by the chief, but it was decided that it might tip off the suspect and with students coming and going all the time a sudden departure would not necessarily be a pointer.

Carrie needed to know who had enrolled at Colossians in the month prior to her arrival. That ought to narrow it down to no more than half a dozen suspects.

“Damn,” she cursed as she tried the door with an improvised lock-pick.

The word was a no-no at Colossians and she blanched out of habit lest someone was there to hear her. There wasn’t of course.

Okay it was worth a try. Now for plan B, she thought hoping she could come up with one.

The trouble was all she knew about the suspect was that she was female and could be no older than Carrie was. The informant had said that the woman was hoping to hide in an Alabama college until the heat was off, but not which one. Their only other lead had been the prospectus found in the trash at the back of the motel she was last known to have been whilst on the run. The motel had porn on tap so a genuine candidate was unlikely to have used it.

Carrie let out a heavy sigh and made to go back to her room. The light that came on left her momentarily blind.

“Miss Johns,” Principal De Mark said breezily. “How might I help you?”

“Eh… oh, silly me, I appear to be lost… where might I get some cocoa. I can’t… eh… sleep,” Carrie said blinking hard, her cut-glass tones laid on with a trowel, her usual accent being rather more estuary.

“I think it was explained to you during your first week here that there are no such arrangements available to students after lights out,” De Mark said sharply, adding, “And during your second week when Mrs Coleridge paddled you for the same mistake.”

Carrie felt her buttocks clench and her hand went unconsciously to her rear end as she blushed. The events mentioned had happened so fast that she had not had time to consider breaking cover. The same thought occurred now.

“Tomorrow; my office after second period, see me,” De Mark said in a crisp voice. “Now I suggest you go to bed.”

Carrie hung her mouth open to reply, but all she said was, “Yes Sir.”

*

“Now Miss Johns, you know the drill,” De Mark growled.

Carrie’s fluttered like a broken-winged bird, her arms flapping straight and nervously at her sides as she took a slight crouching position as if about to flee.

“Can’t we… I mean can’t we talk about this. You haven’t even asked me what I was doing,” Carrie protested with a wail.

The morning had dragged by as Carrie had wracked her brains for a plausible reason for her skulking on the administration floor after dark. Now in the principal’s office things were spinning out of control.

“I don’t care Miss Johns. Let’s face it, whatever you tell me will be a story and I don’t plan on giving you another chance to lie and imperilling your soul,” De Mark said in a bored voice.

“But I…”

“Tell you what Miss Johns, I don’t know how they do things in England, by while you slip your panties down and bend over I will fetch the cane instead of the paddle. Just in case last time we had a communication problem and you didn’t understand that ‘the paddle’ is American for ‘don’t get caught out of bounds.’”

Carrie took a deep breath and clamped shut her jaw.

“Look…” she began, but what could she say?

De Mark cocked an eyebrow until Carrie swallowed hard and reached under skirt to tug at her underwear.

By the time the Principal had turned back, a red-faced and soon to be very red-bottomed Carrie was bending over with her panties at her ankles to display her bare behind.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” De Mark intoned, “You know this English device is so much more biblical somehow.”

“I am not a child,” Carrie said sullenly, her accent slipping to show her rather lower middle class South London roots.

“You are under 21, which is much the same in my book young lady,” De Mark said sternly.

“But I…”

“You’re not going to argue, are you?”

“No… Sir,” Carrie said bitterly through her clenched teeth.

“That attitude will get you two extra,” the Principal barked.

Carrie gasped, “Sir I…” tears pooled at her eyes as she closed her mouth in resignation.

“Bend right over now, right over. If I have to offer you a chair back there will be a further two for the privilege,” De Mark promised. “I don’t know what your game is, but it ends here and now. Do you understand?”

Carrie gulped and folded herself over a little more so that her bare bottom was more obviously on display. She hoped it would be enough.

“Yes Sir,” she said; the words awkward in her throat.

“Legs together and bend a little more. Let me see you grab those ankles,” De Mark growled.

The rush of blood to her face felt hot on her cheeks but she did as she was told until her bottom was thrust right up and back at him in what seemed a somewhat obscene manner. Still he had ordered her legs closed, which was more than she had heard from other girls here.

The hard swish ended in a tight thwack somewhere nearby. It took a moment for the sting to register and she grunted and dipped her knees. The paddle had been worse she remembered, although just as embarrassing. But even as this thought came the cane continued to bite and she struggled bug-eyed for breath as the pain continued to build.

The second stroke was even worse and she sucked in air through her nose sharply as she processed it.

“Breath through your mouth, it will be easier,” he told her. He sounded concerned.

Carrie nodded and after a moment, did as she was told. She was still panting hard when the next stroke landed.

“Ah,” she barked and did a little dance without lifting her feet or standing up.

“You take it well Miss Johns,” De Mark said in admiration.

For some reason she was pleased by the compliment, which disarmed her. It was a transient thought brought to an end by another stroke.

“Ehhhrr,” she growled angrily as she struggled to stay bent over.

“Now, now,” he chided her even as caned her again.

“Ooh ffff… fthank you Sir,” she managed, aware of some wetness on her cheeks.

“You are welcome Miss Johns,” De Mark said, launching into another stroke.

“Aah, uhhhh,” the grunt stayed in her throat for a long drawn out groan and she scrambled to keep hold of her ankles.

“Two more I think. The extras I spoke of,” the Principal said taping her proffered bottom with the cane, an act which made her jump a little in anticipation.

The next stroke sent her up and back down low with an angry growl.

“Do that again and it won’t count and I’ll give you another,” he chided.

She again sucked on air and it was a moment before she managed to say, “Sorry Sir.”

For the last stroke her eyes and mouth flew open in tandem and she crushed her ankles in her hands to ride out the relentless wave of pain.

“Paddle swats from me come in multiples of six starting at 12,” De Mark informed her. “If you are caught sneaking around corridors at night again, that is something that you will truly learn.”

“Yes Sir,” she sniffed.

She was shaking at the knees now and had started to rock back and forth.

“Stand up Miss Johns and repair your dress,” the Principal said archly.

As she eased herself upright her bottom flared up and she was put in mind of her grandmother’s old electric bar fire on a winter’s evening long ago. It felt for all England as if she had sat on it three of four times.

Carrie shot a glance at De Mark and was surprised and glad that he had turned his back while she dressed.

“You deserved that Miss Johns,” he said in a friendly tone.

“Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” she responded.

It sounded strangely natural on her lips and the only resentment she felt was that she was not angry. As her knickers, or panties as they called them here, slid over her bottom she gave a wince.

“You are welcome Miss Johns,” De Mark said and offered her his hand.

She shook it with a limp hand and blushed.

“Of you go,” he said brightly when she did not move.

She gaped at him and then hastily said, “Yes Sir,” as she went out the door.

The moment Carrie was outside she clamped her hands to her bottom and bobbed up and down with her jaw on her chest. If her colleagues at Interpol could see her now she would never live it down. Then walking as normally as she was able she made her way to the nearest ladies’ and secreted herself inside a booth with a stack of water-soaked paper towels.

Lunch would have to wait, she decided as she lowered her knickers and one by one she pressed the wet paper to her bottom. Twisting this way and that she was able to see eight parallel dark pink lines across her flesh, each one standing proud in smooth ridges.

The things I do for Queen and Country, she mused ruefully, but the traces of her punishment strangely fascinated her somehow.

*

Class followed class and days went by and Carrie was no nearer finding her target.

“Why haven’t you checked out the office?” the Chief barked at her over the forbidden cell-phone.

“I have tried Sir, but… it’s not that easy,” Carrie reported.

She was reluctant to tell him she had got caught. Not least because it would bring her competence into question, but also because she suspected that the Chief would guess her fate.

“Well try again,” the Chief spat at her, “For all we know the bird has already skipped town and you are on a false trail.”

“Why not raid the place and zero in on this woman?” Carrie blurted, then she could skip town too.

But she knew why. They had no real evidence and the most important thing was to track the suspect back to whoever she was working with.

“Just get on with it,” the Chief growled at her, ignoring her question.

“Yes Sir,” she said, rolling her eyes up.

“Cut that out,” the Chief snarled, although he couldn’t see.

He knew her too darn well, Carrie sighed. Despite the Chief’s insistence, she could still feel aching lines on her bottom when she sat and nothing could induce her to go sneaking around the offices for a while.

That left her with a new tack. There were only so many new girls at Colossians and she might make headway by drawing up a list a checking out any girl who might be older than she appeared. Carrie wondered if she might even try sneaking some shots with the camera phone to pass on to the Chief for elimination purposes. The only problem was that she had absolutely no idea where to begin.

After a couple of free periods sitting on the main steps watching for loners and any prospects, she realised it was hopeless. Then she had a break.

It was the first day that she had dared a swim since her caning and was in the communal shower wondering if her marks still showed. Most of the other girls did not seem to mind displaying such evidence and there were plenty of well-paddled bottoms on show; some of them with quite outstanding paddle rash.

“Epic ain’t it?” said a bubbly blonde across the way from her who had seen her looking.

The girl had a quite impressive behind with even more impressive purple spore staining it. She dipped her knees as she spoke and pressed her bottom out for Carrie’s inspection.

“Eh… yes,” Carrie replied, suddenly embarrassed.

“Hey, you’re English,” the girl gushed, “That’s neat.”

“Carrie Johns,” Carrie said awkwardly.

It was more than strange offering a naked woman her hand.

“Casey, Casey Clark,” the girl continued to gush.

After several minutes chatter about where they had come from and what they wanted from the course in which Carrie did a mental exchange-and-find to replace key facts to feed the girl her Interpol interview spiel, the undercover cop asked what Casey had done to deserve such a shellacking.

“Oh that, I am always getting it,” she said dismissively, then added in a bright sarcastic tone, “Just luck, I guess.”

Carrie was about to accept that as the usual evasion when Casey continued.

“I got caught sneaking some chocolate from the student storage rooms. Well it was mine. I can usually manage it just fine but… I guess… well it’s an occupational hazard of being the Colossians Cat,” she said enthusiastically. “Oh it’s alright; I get spanked all the time at home. At least here they don’t have corner time.”

Casey rolled her eyes up at the last words in a way that reminded Carrie of someone. The chocolate craving touched a nerve too. It was one of a long list of goodies, like mobile phones, that were forbidden and put in storage at the start of each semester. But that wasn’t what intrigued Carrie the most just then.

“The Colossians Cat?” Carrie was impressed that the girl managed to get into student storage at all, it was quite a challenge compared with the office area; Carrie knew – she had tried.

“Oh it’s just a private joke. I can sneak into just about anywhere, you know” Casey beamed.

“What about the principal’s office and the admin area?” Carrie said casually.

“Oh sure that’s easy,” Casey grinned, “Too easy. Why? Do you want to alter some grades or check on someone else’s?”

“No…” Carrie said slowly, “Not exactly, but… eh maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement.”

It was too dangerous to talk in the showers, even with the sound of running water, so both girls slipped away to Casey’s room.

The small spanked blonde was strangely lacking in curiosity about Carrie’s request and agreed to it with a shrug.

“That is, if you can do something for me,” Casey sounded doubtful and perched herself expectantly, and not to say carefully, on her bed.

“No problem,” Carrie said eagerly, this was the breakthrough she needed.

“You might want to hear what I need first,” Casey looked decidedly shifty.

“If I can do it I will,” Carrie said in a determined voice.

After all she was a detective and whatever Casey wanted couldn’t be that big a deal.

“I have been busted way too many times this semester,” Casey began, “Not that I can’t handle my own lickings mind you, but… well the folks told me that if I get busted one more time then I can expect hell when I get home. You got to understand that I got some serious spanking and corner time coming anyway so when they say hell, well… let’s just say that last summer I got corner time at a family barbecue for… well that was just for starters and it is way too em-bara-sing!”

Casey rolled her eyes up again.

“So what do you want me to do?” Carrie was puzzled.

“Well,” Casey drawled, “I already got in a fix. Something the folks don’t know about, only…”

Carrie frowned; she wasn’t sure where this was going.

“This time I signed out a book and forgot to take it back… if someone else were to… well admit they took it and took the paddling, well then I would just get off with an ear-burning for not signing it back and the folks wouldn’t hear about it.” Casey didn’t look up as she spoke.

“I see,” Carrie sighed. “You want me to fess up on your behalf.”

Casey nodded.

“Maybe you’ll get off light as you haven’t done it before. I have the book,” Casey said eagerly.

Returning a book late was surely nothing to get paddled for, Carrie reasoned and besides, what choice did she have?

“Okay, give me the book, but I need the information first,” Carrie reluctantly agreed, adding sharply, “Tonight.”

“Not a problimo girlfriend,” Casey grinned.

*

It was insane, Carrie cursed herself, she wasn’t going to let some random member of staff paddle her for no reason. But then she reasoned, with any luck this would all be settled before she had to. Although at the back of her mind she wondered what would happen to Casey if she reneged on her deal just because she was a cop.

The girl had given her nine names for new students in the available time. One of those was in a wheelchair with other issues and another, Carrie knew vaguely, was immature for 18 and even had braces. There was no way either of them was the person she was looking for. That left her with seven suspects.

One by one she tracked them down by cross-referencing class lists and waiting by pigeon holes. In one case she even volunteered to deliver pamphlets to a hall residence to observe another suspect. However, with only one more to go, she had seen no one who remotely fitted the bill and was beginning to suspect that either she was on a wild goose chase or wheelchair and braces were very good actors.

“Harrumph-hum,” said someone beside her as she was leaving the residents’ hall.

Carrie turned to see a young 30-something woman in a plaid skirt and designer glasses. The woman, obviously a member of the faculty had her dark hair neatly tied up and piled atop of her head and she was regarding Carrie with a hard and serious gaze.

Carrie was in a hurry to find the last suspect and greeted the woman with a double rise of her eyebrows.

“Are you Carrie Johns?” the woman asked sternly.

“Eh, yes. Who… I mean, I am sorry Ma’am but…” Carrie shook her head in puzzlement.

“You have an unsigned-for book,” the woman pressed her. “Casey Clark said…”

The woman’s gaze fell on the book that was still under Carrie’s arm.

“I am the librarian, Mrs Sandhill,” the woman added impatiently.

“Oh… oh yes, I have it here. I am so sorry about the misunderstanding. I completely forgot to sign it out and… well I didn’t mean to get Casey into trouble,” Carrie said, fluttering her eyes as she offered Mrs Sandhill the book.

The Librarian took it and then looked Carrie up and down just as the secret police woman looked impatiently away for her prey.

“I am sorry, but that is just not good enough,” Mrs Sandhill blustered. “You know the rules.”

“Do I?” Carrie said still looking off to the left to study each passing face.

“Come with me,” Sandhill snapped, “Come with me right now.”

“I…” Carrie pointed impotently in the other direction.

“Unless you wish to see the Principal,” the woman said in a hard voice pointing more firmly the other way.

“Very well,” Carrie said in a bored voice and went where she was directed.

*

“Uh,” Carrie yelled as the paddle seared her rear end.

It was hard to hold position, even with her hands flat to the wall like they were. Her skirt was tucked up and her knickers, panties as the Sandhill woman had it, were stretched between Carrie’s slightly parted ankles.

The Librarian had wasted no time in having Carrie bend over to offer her bare bottom for 12 stiff paddle swats.

After the growing and rapidly unbearable sting, the worse thing was that she was being spanked in the semi-public outer office area of the library where two other library assistants and at least one other student had be on hand to see.

“Your attitude is appalling and your failure to sign out a valuable book will go on your record and be included in your end of semester report,” Mrs Sandhill scolded as she let fly with another swat.

“Yes Ma’am,” Carrie grunted through gritted teeth.

“Yes ma’am,” Sandhill mimicked with another swat, and then with another she repeated, “Yes ma’am.”

By the end of the paddling Carrie was puffing like a steam train and thoroughly sorry for everything she had done, hadn’t done or was ever going to even contemplate.

“Now get out of my sight,” the Librarian growled after almost grudgingly taking Carrie’s reluctantly offered handshake.

“Yes Ma’am,” Carrie sniffed as she wiped away a tear.

Out on the library steps Carrie was just weighing up the relative merits and personal preferences of the paddle as compared to the cane when she saw her.

The woman was tallish and elegant with long well-groomed black hair. The cream band that set off her tresses matched the sash at her model-like wasp-waist in a way that no gauche 18-21-year-old could carry off. Yet she was certainly no member of faculty, she even had a student name badge and a prospectus held neatly under one arm. And despite being the picture of a college student straight out of central casting, Carrie’s expert eye put her at around 28.

Forgetting the throb in her bottom, Carrie casually strolled after her until she was close enough to see the name on the badge. Helena Weir, it ran, the last name on her very short list.

*

Principal De Mark stood glaring at the two women in his office. One, the sassy English girl, stood with an attitude he did not like in a student with the aggressive body language of the cop she claimed to be. The other girl who was sitting bold as you please like butter could not melt in August was a criminal deceiver of all things. He had been duped and he did not like it one bit.

The Chief stood between the two women assuring him that Carrie Johns was indeed with Interpol and that Helena Weir, which was probably not her real name, was a suspect in a criminal conspiracy he would rather not explain just then.

“I have no idea what this is all about, really I don’t,” Helena complained in trim Bostonian tones.

“Hell, of course you don’t,” the Chief drawled.

Principal De Mark cocked a disapproving eye at the Chief’s swearing in front of two students, which was how he was forced to still see them, but decided that for once that the broad grizzled-haired policeman was more than his match and let it go.

Helena sucked in her cheeks pensively and looked away as if considering something.

“Run the whole story by me again DC Johns, for the benefit of the Principal and Miss ‘I have no idea,’” the Chief yawned.

Carrie had explained everything over the phone while the Chief was in transit. The only omissions made were the full extent of her part of the bargain with Casey and the previous consequences of her earlier failures. This time she repeated the story without mentioning the Clark girl’s part in it.

“So Miss Johns and this… this Weir person have been here for weeks under false pretences?” De Mark was fuming.

Real pretences surely, Carrie pondered, but thought better of passing a comment.

“I tell you I have no idea…” Weir began again.

“Miss Weir, you are already in enough trouble, I suggest you be quiet. Do you think I do not know when a girl is lying? I suspect it is a talent that the Chief here shares,” De Mark’s tone cut to Carrie’s quick even though it wasn’t directed at her.

One look at Weir was enough to see that Helena was quailed by him.

“Look I… I haven’t done anything…”  Helena protested.

“Then you maintain that you are a student?” De Mark demanded.

“Yes Sir,” Helena spluttered.

“Well I can see you are lying about something so…” De Mark picked up a long heavy paddle with drilled holes and hefted it. “Assume the position Miss Weir, over the back of the chair I think, you’ll need the support.”

Helena swallowed and shot a glance at the Chief with eyes that seemed to say, ‘you aren’t going to let him are you?’

The Chief shrugged. It was irregular to be sure, but given Alabama law and the fact that Weir was a consenting adult and claimed to be a student, the Principal was within his rights.

“Miss Weir,” De Mark barked.

Helena pouted a little and then gave a dismissive shrug of her own and did as she had been directed.

Carrie threw the Chief a look, but although she felt she ought to stop it this damn woman had been the cause of a lot of bottom pain and embarrassment. If she wanted to tough it out then it was up to her.

Helena made one more appeal with her eyes in the direction of the Chief and then with one more look of scorn at Carrie the woman hiked up her skirt and tugged her knickers down as went over the back of the chair.

The Chief was clearly appreciative of the impressive bottom on display and even Carrie had to gape a little. But the Principal was unmoved as he positioned himself to deliver the first swat.

The paddle was heavier than any Carrie had yet seen and carried two dozen finger-sized holes on its striking surface. She had heard of such a thing, the more hardened girls called it the beast and the others dared not speak of it at all.

The first swat landed with a dull thwack and Helena immediately reacted. In its wake the paddle left perfect stark white trace complete with pink circles on her smooth tanned bottom. Then as Carrie watched the pale flesh flooded with ever darkening pink as the skin began to rise in a welt.

It was on this tender spot that De Mark landed another swat to extract an angry grunt from Helena.

“Any time you want to admit that you are not a student I’ll let the Chief here handle things,” the Principal sounded cross.

“Oh don’t mind me,” the Chief chuckled.

“Uhm,” Helena grunted as she was spanked again.

Her bottom was beginning to look interesting now Carrie thought with a grin.

After four or five more swats Helena was rasping down air and clawing at the back of the chair. Carrie shifted her position so that she could see that the woman’s face was now damp with tears.

“I am a student,” Helena gasped, her eyes fixed on a single point, “Helena Weir is my real name. So it’s legal yah. You can’t get me on that.”

Carrie noticed that Boston had vanished from her accent and she was now whining in pure New York.

“Go on,” De Mark growled after another short salvo of swats.

“I-I… I’m just a courier… I swear. I don’t know what this is about,” Helena sobbed, her accent getting thicker by the moment. “I just gotta hang loose until I get’s word.”

De Mark let loose with a tight volley of spanks that had Helena howling in short order.

“Who do you have to meet?” the Chief said quietly.

He indicated to the Principal that he should stop or at least pause a minute.

“I doan know man. I doan know them and they doan know me. I just have to check a certain book in the library every day or so until I get instructions,” Helena sobbed bitterly as well she might given the state of her well-welted behind.

“Damn,” the Chief cursed.

De Mark glared at him.

“Well when I am done paddling you I want you out of here,” he said, and then to the Chief he spat, “Arrest her.”

“You want to resign your place here and come into protective custody?” the Chief said softly. “Of course you’ll have to tell us everything you know.”

“Yes Sir oh yes Sir,” Helena hiccoughed through copious tears.

The Chief pushed De Mark aside and helped the woman down.

“What about her?” the Principal pointed at Carrie.

“She’s not a student here, she’s undercover, so hands off,” the Chief growled.

But all the same he gave Carrie a withering stare. He hadn’t liked the way she had let Casey take the risks; especially as they didn’t know what they up against. Also he thought that Helena could have been taken quietly without involving De Mark. Then he paused.

The Chief took a long hard look at Carrie and smiled.

“Chief, what you thinking Chief?” Carrie didn’t like the look in his eye and suspected that she was way ahead of him.

“The real suspect doesn’t know who you are. They don’t know Helena or her name. She is just a reader of a note in the library,” the Chief mused. “For all they know, you are their contact.”

“But… but, I won’t do it,” Carrie wailed. “I won’t stay in this place one more minute.”

“You will and that’s an order Detective Constable Johns,” he barked.

Carrie rolled her eyes up.

“You do that one more time and I’ll…” the Chief snarled.

“So do I take it that we are to have the pleasure of Miss Johns’ company for the rest of the semester?” the Principal said in a weary voice.

“Oh yes indeed,” the Chief grinned.

Carrie pressed out her bottom lip and groaned.

“Then allow me to assist in her cover,” De Mark said darkly. “I don’t like liars and deceivers no matter which side of the law they claimed to be on.”

As he spoke he again took up the paddle and advanced on Carrie.

The Chief saw his intent and was about to cite ‘assault on an officer,’ but then he remembered Casey again.

“Chief, you can’t…” Carrie wailed.

“It might keep your mind focussed on the job and besides I don’t like how you have handled things. In any case we need a plausible cover for why you came to see the principal here,” the Chief shrugged.

“But…”

Carrie was a picture of woe as the Chief opened the door and summoned two low-key agents to collect Helena.

“Have fun,” the tear bedraggled former courier said bitterly as she left, shooting a glare in Carrie’s direction.

One of the cops eyed Carrie in puzzlement but then he saw her face and the paddle in the principal’s hand and smirked.

“Chief,” Carrie wailed in a pleading voice.

“I would love to stay,” the Chief grinned, “I really would. But I have to debrief this hostile witness so I can bring you up to speed. And you need to get back to normal college life before anyone notices anything amiss.”

As soon as they were gone De Mark tapped the palm of his hand and said; “Now Miss Johns, you saw how I had Miss Weir. Please assume the same position. This time I trust I will be allowed to complete my work.”

Carrie swallowed hard and went ashen. This wasn’t fair, she thought miserably.

*

Carrie just wanted to go somewhere and have a good cry. It was a bottom searing effort just to put one foot oh so carefully in front of the other. To anyone watching she had the appearance of one walking on fragile ice and every step launched a swarm of angry bees in the rounds of her buttocks. Those who saw her slow progress could not doubt that she had been to see the principal for an exemplary paddling.

Worse still was that Principal Martin De Mark had made it quite clear that he resented her infiltration of the school and was not going to make the slightest concession to her case. In fact she felt she was firmly in his sights for some special treatment she did not need.

“You darn Feds can go to hell as far as I am concerned,” he had told her, “And what in heck’s sake is Interpol doing here? Some meddling idea of the UN I don’t wonder. The people of Alabama and Colossians Baptist Ladies College will not kowtow to interlopers.”

His accent had come out proud and strong as he spoke. Carrie could almost sympathise, she would rather be anywhere but here just then. But then had come the paddle and all her sympathy had had to be reserved for herself.

Crossing the quad to her room put Carrie in something of quandary. She was already drawing sniggering glances and the shadows and seclusion of going around by the less visible way offered a salve for her dignity. On the other hand it was a route that was almost twice as far and full of promise of further purgatory for her poor ravaged behind.

“Oh well,” she said ruefully to herself, “At least the opposition is more likely to buy it if I am seen to be…”

She choked on the word spanked and had to fight back the tears. Chin up, old girl. Play up school. Jolly hockey sticks and all that rubbish, she mocked herself. It was time to go deep undercover in plain sight.

The end?

LSF have published another story of mine. This time it is the novella first published in five parts as the Bannerman Saga and includes the stories The Life and Times of Rachel Kent, The Wise Fools and The Last Days of Eden.

It is an eclectic western adventure about a spoilt girl from ‘back east’ tamed by the strong-willed cowboy and of frontier life at home and at school spanning two generations of cousins.

For those who want it for their kindle or just to keep it is available from Amazon or LSF direct.

The man in the painting had clear blue eyes set under a manly brow that gave his gaze a stern countenance. Unlike many such mid-Victorian pictures his eyes did not look at her, nor follow her around the room. Instead they were set upon something of great importance just over her shoulder and a long way away.

Victoria shuddered. If only he would look at her; could look at her, she sighed.

“I was born into the wrong age,” she groaned.

“It’s a portrait of Lord Harlech,” Emily Bronson said brightly.

Victoria started; she had not known her host was there.

“Oh sorry, I was miles away,” she said clutching her heart.

“He’s magnificent isn’t he?” Emily continued. “An ancestor who held the house oh… back in the 30s and 40s I think. He would have been about 35 then I suppose; shortly after inheriting.”

There was undisguised adoration in her eyes and Victoria blushed as she realised her own face must reflect much the same the look.

“The 1830s of course,” Emily continued as if it wasn’t obvious.

She was a sensible looking woman in a country tweed skirt with non-descript dark blonde hair tied back with pins. At only 28 herself, Victoria thought of Emily as old, although she was probably barely 50 and the romantic fantasies that lit up Emily’s eyes suggested that the two women had more in common than Victoria had previously thought.

“How are you related?” Victoria said quickly to fill an awkward silence.

“Oh, we’re not,” Emily frowned. “I mean when I say he’s an ancestor, I mean one of my husband’s. It’s funny how even today one becomes part of one’s husband in that way isn’t?”

It was a profound statement devoid of self-awareness Victoria realised. In Emily’s case, the transformation was complete and her words were just idle conversation. She too would have been more at home in Lord Harlech’s time, Victoria realised.

“He’s a great uncle three or four times removed I think,” Emily continued. “The line jumped sideways after this Lord Harlech’s time. To Richard’s great, great grandfather… or was it great, great, great… oh heavens; it is so confusing isn’t it?”

Both women continued to stare at the man with his eyes fixed on a future that did not include either of them; perhaps secretly hoping he would notice them.

“He is connected in some way to the woman on the other wall, but no one knows who she is,” Emily whispered, but she was frowning again as if the mention of the other woman bothered her somehow. “Some say he married her, but no one is sure. Isn’t that strange?”

Victoria darted her eyes to the right and took in the painting of a young woman around her own age. But there the resemblance ended. Victoria was as almost in awe of the woman’s dress as she was of Lord Harlech. Compared to her own loose black and white palm leaf summer dress, the woman’s was magnificent.

Victoria compared too, the woman’s high piled dark curls that hung in elegant trains to her shoulders. Her own tumble of reddish untamed hair was a fright. And where Victoria’s own eyes were a mottled brown-blue so as to appear green, the woman’s were coal black and shone like inverted stars.

“If only I could have lived in those days,” Victoria sighed.

“Yes,” Emily agreed in a hushed voice.

*

That night Victoria awoke, or thought she did, for ever afterwards she could never be certain. She was assailed with a strange feeling. In her mind’s eye she could see the portrait of Lord Harlech only now from where he hung, his eyes could see through the floor above him and on into her room where she lay. Then all at once she felt another pair of eyes upon her. Standing now, she turned to see the woman in the portrait watching her with coal black unblinking eyes.

Somehow she now stood upon the half-landing over the hall and the painting appeared as a window with the woman just framed beyond it as large as life watching her. As Victoria approached the frame grew until it confronted her like a door, one side sepia and dripped in shadow, the other bright and vibrant like an Old Master oil canvas.

“There is no danger,” a friendly voice said.

It was enough to quell her hesitance and boldly with one step, Victoria crossed over.

*

Lost in a sea of blinding white linen; Victoria open one eye to face the morning. What a dream she had had? She yawned.

“Miss Victoria, it is time to get up,” an unfamiliar voice called her from somewhere beyond the brilliant shroud.

Victoria sat-up to a whole new room.

The voice belonged to a maid in a Victorian costume, a woman of about her own age, but one she had not seen before. The Bronson’s, the current holders of the Harlech title, had no servants that she knew of, not the live-in sort anyway and anyway, why was she in a different room?

“Who… I mean… where’s Lady Emily?”  Victoria ventured.

“Who Miss?” the woman said in a puzzled voice.

“I mean Lady Harlech,” Victoria amended with the correct address lest this was a game of sorts.

“She is not due to return until the season is over as well you know Miss Victoria,” the maid chided, “You know the climate here does the old lady no good at all.”

“Old lady?” Victoria replied quizzically, then remembering that Emily’s mother-in-law was also known as Lady Harlech she said, “No I don’t mean Lord Harlech’s mother, I mean…”

“Enough of this nonsense young lady, you are in enough trouble as it is,” the maid scolded, “Your governess is waiting. You should have been in the school room half an hour ago.”

“My governess, the school room, what are you… who are you exactly? What is going on?” Victoria demanded.

“Any more of these games Miss Victoria and I will spank you myself so come along with you,” the maid said angrily.

Victoria gaped at the woman and scrambled to her feet to confront her. It was then that she had a good look at the room and the through the window she could see the world beyond. The dream of course, she had gone back to… to where? Perhaps when, was a more pertinent question, as despite the changes, she was clearly still in the same old house.

She hurried excitedly over to the mirror to gaze at her reflection in a full length mirror. It was still her right enough; but dressed in a long flannel nightgown.

“Who am I today… eh… sorry I have forgotten your name,” Victoria asked.

The maid gave her a mighty crack across her behind and said, “Miss Victoria Kittredge, if you don’t get dressed at once I’ll… I will give you that spanking. You know perfectly well you are Lord Harlech’s ward and that I am Annie. It is no wonder that his lordship doesn’t let you come out. I do declare… all these childish games.”

Victoria blushed as she rubbed at her bottom, but before complying she glanced back at the mirror. How old did they think she was? She might look young for her age, certainly by Victorian standards, but how could she pass for under 21? And who or where was the real Victoria?

She was given no time to ponder further as in short order she was pulled and prodded into some far from comfortable clothes.

*

Despite the discomfort, Victoria was quite pleased with the look as she studied her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was piled up, with only a little left trailing at the back “as was befitting a girl who had not yet come out,” she was told.

The nipped-in waist was dramatic, if a little stifling and the colour, a pleasant radiant cream with hints of yellow silk, had Victoria grinning.

“You won’t be smiling long Miss, least ways if you don’t hurry,” Annie said impatiently.

“How long have you known me now?” Victoria said conversationally.

“I have been here three years Miss, as well you know, now cut along,” Annie urged.

As she hastened along after the pensive maid, Victoria could not help but dawdle. The rest of the house was so full of art and knick-knacks that she knew now that most modern Victorian enthusiasts probably played down the look for modern tastes. How did they keep it so clean? Victoria mused, the brass alone…

But her pondering was cut short by their arrival at a heavy panelled door at the end of the hall, which Annie wrapped upon before pushing ajar.

“Miss Victoria Ma’am,” Annie said to someone inside in quite another demeanour from the one she had used with Victoria and she even dipped her knees to bob as she spoke.

Victoria paused, she was suddenly nervous, but Annie gave her a sharp nod that brooked no discussion. So Victoria sighed and taking a deep breath managed a period glide into the room.

The woman inside was her old friend from the portrait next to Lord Harlech. She was rather less grandly attired, but imposing nonetheless.

“You join us at last,” the woman said in a crisp clean voice.

“Yes,” Victoria shrugged, wasn’t it obvious, she thought.

“Tardiness and impertinence,” the woman said in a bored voice.

“Sorry, I just overslept,” Victoria said pleasantly.

It was amazing; she was actually talking to a real Victorian.

“Stop gawping girl and stand up straight, what do you mean by coming here in this manner?” the woman barked. She seemed at a loss as she continued in some consternation, “Speak properly and what do you mean over slept?”

“I… I am not sure what you mean. Didn’t you want to see me?” Victoria asked.

“Diction girl and where did you learn such speech?” the woman gasped. “And such impertinence.”

“I… can’t we start again? I mean firstly, I assume you know me, but I am not sure how,” Victoria began, “Do I look like someone or have I been incorporated here somehow. No that’s not it… you have my name wrong, my surname… I must have taken her…”

The look of horror that passed across the woman’s face did nothing to mar her beauty

“Silence,” she barked. “I will have no more of these comedies young lady, or my name is not Ophelia Grey.”

Victoria was quite taken aback and even went so far as to gulp. Maybe she should play the part better, but how? How did 18-year-old Victorian girls behave with their governesses?

“I am sorry… how do I address you? Ophelia or… or Miss Grey or…” Victoria pulled an unladylike face and wrung at her hands and squeaked tentatively, “Ma’am?”

“This time you have gone too far, much too far. I know these games you play are some form of rebellion for your guardian’s refusal to allow you to come out but I really will not have it,” Ophelia snapped.

Victoria was about to apologise again when she was seized by the back of the neck and propelled forward and across the room.

“Lord Harlech will hear of this.” Ophelia was incandescent.

Victoria was marched awkwardly at speed through the door and back down the hall to the top of the stairs.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming, alright I get it, you don’t have to…” Victoria protested.

“Stop this theatrical urchin… speechifying at once,” Ophelia spluttered.

I guess my vowels aren’t round enough for her, Victoria consoled herself mockingly, but she was suddenly becoming apprehensive. Time travel was never like this in books. How the hell did she end up as someone’s ward for God’s sake?

*

Victoria was marched into a room downstairs where she was prodded to stand up straight and wait. Then Ophelia left her alone.

Looking about her Victoria realised she was in a small library or a study. There was a small desk in one corner under the window that had a scratched green leather writing surface. On it was a pen and ink well as well as several small bundles of letters and a set of keys.

Across the way and at right angles to the small desk was a larger more ornate one set under the direct light from the other window. The only other real furniture in the room were the chairs; one each at the desks and another two against the wall. Bu the thing that drew Victoria’s attention the most was the smell. It was strong for a house, although not musty. There was leather and old wood with an odour she could not place, a bitter rich smell that wriggled at her nose.

Just then there was a movement at the door and Ophelia returned in the wake of large man dressed in brown who swept into the room like a soldier assaulting a fortress. Victoria knew at once that it was Lord Harlech from the portrait and her heart skipped a beat.

“Victoria,” Lord Harlech growled, “What is this about games and pranks? And why were you late for your lessons?”

The man was hard with authority, which sat well on him despite his relative youth, around 32 at most, Victoria judged. His eyes fixed on her with the same intensity of those in the painting, only this time they most definitely had her in focus.

“I-I’m sorry Sir, I…” she remembered the telling’s off she had had at school and how to most swiftly bring them to a close. So she demurely dipped her head and said, “Sorry Sir, I have no excuse.”

“No excuse, I should think not. I tell you girl, until you learn to behave like a lady you will stay under your governess’s tutelage…” he blustered angrily as if the words were overused and worn out. “What did I tell you would happen next time I had occasion to speak to you about this?”

Victoria looked up then, her mouth hanging open as if they had forgotten what words to form.

“Yes young lady, I see you remember,” Lord Harlech said more kindly.

Of course Victoria didn’t, she had no idea. But he seemed less angry now and she adjudged it over.

“I’m sorry,” she said fairly meekly. Then to change the subject, she asked, “Why two desks? There are two desks in here, I am curious.”

Ophelia looked as if she was going to choke and stood gaping at her young charge, as she saw her at least.

Lord Harlech was more relaxed.

“You think I was making idle threats don’t you?” he chuckled indulgently. Then he pointed at the smaller desk and said, “Estate manager’s desk,” and then at the other, “My desk.”

“Oh,” Victoria said, disappointed that the answer wasn’t more interesting.

“He has another office at the lodge, but I like to be on hand when he pays the staff and anyway it is good for me to oversee his management from time to time,” Lord Harlech said warming to his subject. “I’m glad you begin to take an interest in the estate here.”

Ophelia coughed and gave her master an old fashioned looked that in Victoria’s time could have been translated merely as ‘men.’

“Oh, oh yes,” Lord Harlech said more sharply, and then in an exasperated voice he added, “Victoria, Victoria, Victoria…”

“Yes Sir,” she replied more brightly. She was beginning to get the feel for her role now.

“I think it is time that you learned your place. You are a young woman now, but that means less games and more responsibility. Too often you get your own way. So reluctantly I am going to do something that I should have done a long time ago.” As Lord Harlech spoke he removed his jacket and began to roll up his sleeves.

“Sir?” Victoria raised her eyebrows, something tickling at the back of her mind in recognition of what might happen.

Then in one quick move Victoria was seized and turned about. At the same time the young Lord dropped onto the armless chair by the door and pulled the astonished woman across his lap.

“I think I should…” he muttered, looking at Ophelia as he plucked hesitantly at Victoria’s skirts.

Ophelia nodded curtly and pursed her lips.

Lord Harlech then struggled for a few moments as layer by layer he unveiled the bemused Victoria’s stockinged legs and drawers. He arrived at her cotton-encased full round bottom at the same moment Victoria realised what was happening.

“You can’t,” she wailed.

Lord Harlech smacked her sharply across both buttocks and extracted an angry squeal. Then in less than two beats he struck her again more soundly.

“Look I am not who you… eeeh,” she yipped as she was spanked again.

“What that girl needs is a damn good thrashing with a good old fashioned birch rod,” Ophelia offered.

“If she doesn’t learn then you have my full permission to do that,” Lord Harlech agreed.

These words and the next swat garnered a hearty gasp from Victoria who squirmed helplessly across her temporary guardian’s lap.

“The birch is generally applied to a bare bottom,” Ophelia said in a stern voice, “So I suggest we start as we mean to continue.”

With these words she advanced on the prone Victoria and tugged at the draw string on her undergarments then with a series of short tugs she drew them down to first expose Victoria broad white upper cheeks and then the by now red under curves of her bottom.

“Omigod,” Victoria squealed as she was denuded.

“You foul-mouthed brat,” Lord Harlech scolded her as he set to spanking her in a short fast volley.

By now Victoria’s drawers were well down at her calves, exposing a full red bottom set on two firm thighs that pumped vigorously in a vain attempt to gain their liberty.

“I’m sorry,” she squealed, “I’ll be good.”

“Yes-you-will,” Lord Harlech growled punctuating each word with a spank.

The spanking continued for some time before an exchange of glances between his lordship and Ophelia agreed it was over.

“Now my girl, since you wish to play these games and act the brat, you can go and stand in the corner there with your hands on your head. And don’t you even think about pulling up your under things,” Lord Harlech growled.

To augment this arrangement, Ophelia took Victoria by the arm and marched her to the corner so that she faced the wall with her bare bottom turned outward. To make sure Victoria stayed that way, she rolled up the skirts and petticoats behind and affixed them with pins.

“I’ll be good, I’ll be good,” Victoria protested.

“Oh I know you will,” Ophelia warned, “For if you are not, I’ll march you outside just as you are to cut birch twigs for a rod which I will apply to your bare bottom. Now stay there until you are dismissed.”

Lord Harlech stared imperiously at his ward’s submission and then nodded in satisfaction.

“For the rest of this week and next, she will eat in the nursery. And if you get any more trouble from her for the rest of this month you may birch her soundly without further reference to me,” he snapped.

“Yes my lord,” Ophelia said demurely as a smile played about her lips.

“Do you hear me Victoria?” Lord Harlech growled.

“Yes Sir,” she squeaked.

Her mind raced even as her bottom cooled. Never had she been so embarrassed, yet the sharp simplicity of the situation made her feel clean and untroubled somehow. Neither could she ignore the surge in her heart or the thrilling sense of being alive that the situation afforded her. This was after all another world and no word of this would ever reach her 21^st century life. It was oddly liberating.

*

Corner time had lasted through lunch and well into the afternoon. At one point the estate manager had tried to come in but mercifully Ophelia had headed him off. But Lord Harlech and at least one maid had cause to come and go and with each intrusion on her shame she had blushed to a melt and prayed that she would sink through the floor.

The over boiled vegetables and disgusting milk pudding served at the childish table in the nursery had been almost as bad as her earlier punishment, but Ophelia who had remained to supervise her meal, had threatened her with another spanking if she didn’t eat it all up. the meal had taken forever and by the time it was done it was cold and even more unpleasant. But somehow Victoria knew a spanking from her would far more embarrassing even than Lord Harlech’s correction of her and so had not offered the least rebellion.

After her grim supper she was put to bed while it was still light and lay there with the rasp of raw cotton against her tender bottom, which she could not resist augmenting by doing little shimmies. The later having the side effect of stimulating her other side as she imagined herself back over Lord Harlech’s knee. What followed was most unladylike.

She awoke from her daze sometime before midnight and wondered how long her visit to the past would last. Strangely, she realised, she was not yet keen to go, so she slid from the bed and crossed the room to the mirror.

Turning with her back to the glass she rolled the back of the night dress up like a curtain to inspect her rear for any damage. There was still some mottled stains, grey against white in the moonlight, but these tender spots were still sore to the touch.

There was a narcissistic pleasure in standing before a 19^th century mirror with glow-white skin in the moonlight and never had the curves of her bottom been so… so… she sighed. Why was she here? How was she here? Such was the turmoil of her day that this had been the first moment she had had time to even think on that. But despite this, half-naked as she was before the glass, it was all she could do not return to bed and relive her ‘ordeal’ again.

So instead she drew on a gown and slipped into the hall.

The wooden floor was cold on her bare feet and the house was in darkness. Somewhere an owl called to her from the grounds, to be answered by a stranger cry she could not place. Heedless of this warning she ran on tiptoes down the hall to the stairs and drawn by she knew not what she found herself outside Lord Harlech’s study.

There was a light on from within and she knew that he had not yet retired.

With my 21^st century wiles I know I can seduce this man, she made bold claims to herself, after all, why else was she here? Then she heard voices inside.

Damn. Getting a chair she moved it to the skylight and stood on it so that she could peer in.

Lord Harlech sat in the same chair he had spanked her on. He was dressed much as he had been then with his jacket discarded and his sleeves still rolled to expose his manly ruddy-fleshed arms. The girl on his lap wore only her shift and she was giggling like a milk maid as she cuddled into him.

Double Damn. Victoria considered returning to her room but something held her. Then she saw the girl on his lap was Ophelia.

“Now my fine young baggage,” he chided the governess, “Didn’t you enjoy me spanking that little minx?”

Ophelia giggled.

“And why is it that you cannot control the girl? I should not have to deal with her, that is your job,” he scolded.

“She is such a handful,” Ophelia said lightly.

“Perhaps it is you who needs a spanking,” he rumbled as he tickled her chin.

Ophelia giggled again and tucked her head into his.

Victoria licked her lips and felt a surge within. Oh God, she thought, this is like a movie.

“Come here my girl,” Lord Harlech said sternly to Ophelia, ignoring that she was already about as close as she could get.

As Victoria watched, Ophelia was draped unresisting across his lap and so that he could smooth the cloth to her fine curves. Then reaching down he took a pinch of cotton and began to raise the Ophelia’s hem.

Victoria could see the governess’s eyes widen and her mouth gape with wonder as the cotton nightgown slid over the curve of her bottom to expose it to his gaze.

“I would birch you as you threatened to birch my ward,” he said in a thick voice.

“I… I will make another rod if the need ever arises,” Ophelia promised, “I am yours.”

He spanked her sharply then right across both cheeks and she gasped.

“When Victoria comes out I will pack her off to an aunt of mine in London and then you and I…” he spanked her again, “…I’ll find a house nearby, I might even marry you if we are…” and again, “Discreet.”

“Yes, oh yes,” Ophelia cooed.

Lord Harlech spanked her again and again in short sharp slaps so that she kicked and squirmed as if she were truly punished, and indeed from her face and hard bitten lower lip, it was hard to tell.

“I will discipline you in earnest whenever you need it,” he chided her even as he spanked ever harder.

“Yes my lord,” she gasped, struggling now, her breathing ragged.

Suddenly Victoria felt out of place, like an intruder. It was time to let the other Victoria have her life back so that she too could move on and free the lovers. They want her gone so she must be every bit of the brat they say she is, Victoria mused.

As she returned to her bed she found herself hoping that the real girl she had replaced would be soundly birched at least once before she was allowed to grow-up, maybe twice. Victoria giggled; perhaps I’ll come back and arrange it.

This time bed felt good and within minutes Victoria was asleep.

*

The smell that awoke her to the cold hard light of the 21^st century was coffee and bacon.

Naked, Victoria padded over to the mirror, a smaller cousin of the one she had had, and turned to inspect her bare bottom. The spanking had faded somewhat, but there was no doubt that it had been real, as the residual tenderness attested.

Then scrambling for her easy to put-on clothes, she tumbled down the stairs to the dining room.

“Good morning,” she said as she entered.

It was then that she noticed the small portrait over the buffet table.

“Who is that?” she asked.

Emily looked up quizzically.

“Oh that, that’s Victoria something or other, you know she was the ward of the Lord Harlech in the painting we spoke of.”

“What became of her?” Victoria asked as she studied the portrait.

The girl looked nothing like her, although she was pretty. So subjectively in the past that was who they had seen when they looked at her, Victoria decided.

“She married Lord Harlech’s brother and later inherited,” Emily said. “She’s my husband’s great, great grandmother, or was it great, great, great…?”

Victoria was no longer listening. She was already looking at another portrait.

This time the 18^th century man had a cruel mouth and he was looking right at her.

“Oh that’s another Lord Harlech, grandfather of the other one… or was it great grandfather… anyway they say he used to beat his wife and servants. You know, birch rods and whips… the whole lot…”

“Really…” Victoria mused. “How very interesting…”

The end.

Jasmine wondered if it was a paradox, but she had never been good at such things. What it certainly was; was inconvenient. She glowered at her own reflection in the mirror by the door. She knew that word did not even cover it, but it was as close as she was going to get to contemplating the embarrassing situation in which she now found herself. The high cheekbones of the woman in the glass coloured with natural rouge, a vulgar look for one such as she who was of the highest. Her blue imperious gaze stared back at her under the tasteful pile of brown hair. At least it wasn’t all bad, she thought.

The trouble was this.

The High Seer had predicted that a senior royal female was going to be spanked that very day; an unasked for prophesy that had tumbled from his entranced lips; the unasked for insights were always the most powerful.

The High Seer’s prophecies were supposed to be infallible and it was politically essential that they were seen as such. After all it had been he who had predicted the accession of the Empress against all the odds.

Jasmine had immediately suggested spanking her sister or one of her young cousins, which was a regular occurrence at the palace. It would have been a simple enough solution to ensure a fulfilled prophecy. But the Lord Chamberlain and the High Seer himself had pointed out that such a contrived and not to mention mundane solution was hardly worthy of note and would not be sufficient.

“What a ridiculous prediction anyway,” Jasmine had angrily spat.

“Yes quite Ma’am,” the Lord Chamberlain had agreed.

“Women are spanked every day, even royal ones,” well most of them, she amended silently, continuing, “It is both custom and law.”

The Lord Chamberlain cocked his head and tightened his lips. He dare not say it, but there was obviously one royal bottom on hand that was never spanked and was therefore noteworthy enough to meet the requirements of prophecy.

Jasmine and the Chamberlain exchanged glances, they were of one mind and for Jasmine it did not bear thinking about.

Several courtiers shifted uneasily, some of them looking daggers at the High Seer. Among them was Lord Garth, captain of the palace guard, although he looked more amused than angry.

Garth was the son of her father’s friend. In her youth she had carried a torch for him, but marriage had been out of the question due to his low birth. At 18 she had protested to her mother that such things were stupid, but Garth’s grandfather had been a yeoman from a long line of well-to-do respectable mid-ranked farmers and her mother had had a point.

He caught Jasmine’s eye and winked supportively so that she smiled for the first time that day.

“What about a lottery?” The Lord Chamberlain suggested.

“What?”

“Well as you know ordinarily non-dependent women over 25 can only be spanked by their husbands or…” he let the implication hang in the air.

“Or their intended,” she saw where he was going.

“There are near 30 eligible princesses… a name by lot could be matched with another and…”

“The ensuing marriage would be noteworthy enough,” Jasmine said enthusiastically, “Is there time to organise such a…”

The Lord Chamberlain coughed.

“Of course all eligible royal women would have to be included, all the unmarried ones…” he continued.

“You mean…” Jasmine gaped at him; she did not like the sound of that at all. She had no intention of getting married and a one in 28 chance was much too short odds for her.

The Lord Chamberlain shrugged.

Jasmine wracked her brains for a way out; she hated having to be constrained by such machinations. There had to be another way. Then an idea began to form in her mind.

“What about a game of Hazard?” she suggested.

Several courtiers began muttering among themselves.

“Some sort of card game…?”

“No, no, it’s a game I used to play with my sister and cousins,” she grinned.

Princess Harmony, who had been listening, rolled up her eyes, trust big sister to wriggle out of it again. Still as the second royal present she would fare better than her young cousins.

“I don’t understand,” the Lord Chamberlain replied with a fixed grin.

“It is a game of hide and seek with a twist,” Harmony explained.

“Harmony, I didn’t see you there,” Jasmine said stiffly.

Her younger sister with her milk white tresses and elegant curves was often considered the more beautiful of the two. She was certainly the most well-liked.

“Your highness,” the Lord Chamberlain inclined his head to the newcomer.

“The players must hide in or escape from the palace grounds, but it gets complicated…” Harmony continued.

“You see if someone is caught they can either veto their capture or nominate a more junior player to take the forfeit,” Jasmine put in.

“So long as the both the captor and the nominee is more junior, but they can only do either once,” Harmony explained.

“Forfeit?” the Chamberlain asked.

“Why they are spanked of course,” Jasmine grinned.

“In the fullest sense of the word,” Harmony added.

“I am not quite…” the harassed man was beginning to hate the situation almost as much as Jasmine was now. “When does it end?”

“When the most senior players escape hazard,” Harmony said dryly, adding in more hopefully than she felt, “Or don’t.”

The youngest of her cousins usually had to be very good indeed at getting away if they did not want to be punished.

“I really…” the Lord Chamberlain was aghast, feeling certain that if all the royal family did all day was play incomprehensible games then the Empire was doomed.

“The rules are complex right enough, but I understand them,” the High Seer cut in, “This, I feel will fulfil the prophecy, so long that is, as I am the final arbitrator.”

“Excellent,” Jasmine clapped her hands.

Again Harmony rolled up her eyes to heaven. There were going to be a lot of sore royal bottoms today and she was determined that hers was not going to be among them. However, there was one difference to how Hazard was normally played; namely that often the game ended when Jasmine was bored. That particular exit would not be available to her sister on this day.

“There is one condition…” the High Seer said in a tone that was evocative of a vision.

All eyes turned to the old man.

“The royal princes and young noblemen must be the hunters and all the females of royal blood their quarry,” he concluded.

*

All I have to do is reach the secret passage and escape to neutral ground, Jasmine thought, then the first or least bottom captured will serve the High Seer’s vision and the day will be saved. She was confident enough, but was fuming nonetheless. By the end of this day several royal princesses will be betrothed and for Jasmine that dangerous outcome was a great incentive not to lose the game. Still many of the girls will no doubt allow themselves to be captured at some point for that very reason. Maybe that early prophecy fulfilment will stop the game, she pondered. But she found that she was not entirely pleased at the idea. Hazard was her favourite game and she always, always won. The High Seer’s conditions only made it more fun.

Jasmine had eschewed her usual finery and had opted for hunting gear with skin-tight fawn leggings and a short green leather tunic that skirted her prominent behind and barely dusted her thigh tops. It had been a costume of rebellion in her youth because her mother had hated it so much for being too revealing.

Her hair too had been plaited on one side of her head so has not to become entangled in the undergrowth of the garden.

As she stole along the wall behind a stand of roses her heart pounded. Immediately to her right and above her head was a fence of entangling thorns so that she had to creep at a stoop with an arm to steady her against the wall to her left.

Somewhere up ahead of her a royal princess was yelping in accompaniment to a volley of sharp slaps. The sound was dangerously close to one of the entrances to the secret tunnel. Was that just chance?

As she wracked her brains to remember who else knew of the passages under the grounds she edged ever nearer to the sound.

Princess Chloe was held sprawled over the lap of a young nobleman Jasmine slightly recognised. The girl was denuded below the waist with her voluminous skirts piled onto her back and her silk pantaloons dangling around her ankles.

Her bottom was already the colour of a polished strawberry and the young man seemed a long way from stopping.

“Tristan please,” she wailed, tears pearling on her cheeks, “I never meant that you weren’t good enough, I… I… oh please.”

Safe in the palace there was many a princess who could bide their time and keep the young men of the court dangling. Today a great many old scores would be settled Jasmine knew.

Then she saw Prince Arthur, his eyes of jet shiny as he gloated over the scene. His black mane of hair draped of his black leather coat giving him a sinister air that suited his nature. Jasmine shuddered. What was he doing here? He usually had no time for games.

Then her heart went cold. Arthur had several times sought her hand, a futile attempt that she had enjoyed sneering at. But then she thought guiltily, she enjoyed sneering at many men. How many had she humiliated or merely mocked at court? Today there were many who would love to settle an old score or just secure her hand. Fool, she cursed, was all of this some plot then?

Chloe was bawling now and Jasmine could see that she was not alone. Beyond where the spanking was taking place Chloe’s elder sister Catherine had been cornered in head stocks with her skirts pinned to her waist. Her naked bottom had been displayed to any who passed on the main thoroughfare and someone had given her quite a time of it judging by the state of her behind.

Next to her plucking at petals on a rose was another young nobleman and from his attire, not a very rich one. Poor Catherine’s days of being spoiled in luxury were over. She was quite a prize.

As Jasmine drew nearer she could hear her cousin speaking in a low whisper to the man who had captured her.

“Charles you don’t have to… I mean I know this was the only way but Charles please this is so…” Catherine wailed.

“Your days of setting the terms are over my love and for once your family will just have to accept it,” the young nobleman chuckled. “And mark me; there will be a lot more of this.”

“Yes dear,” Catherine said miserably.

Perhaps Catherine had Chloe had been caught on purpose then, Jasmine decided, but that didn’t help her any. Further, the presence of Prince Arthur at one of her only escape routes was too much of a coincidence. He was a descendant of Emperors from the old time and it was more than likely that he knew about the tunnels. How many of his brothers and retainers guarded the exits?

Jasmine backed away and decided to cut through the maze. It was fairly new, but she could navigate it blindfold. It was doubtful that the serious young men of the court had even ever visited it.

Originally she had imagined hiding there until the game was over in the event of anything going wrong, but that was a forlorn hope now. There were too many out for her hide; literally. So instead of dawdling she skirted the outside edge of the labyrinth and cut through the orangery to the gazebo.

She hoped that it was too far from the palace or the way out for most of her pursuers to be searching here.

As she broke cover from the bushes she saw the error of judgement for what it was.

Princess Clair had been cornered by Prince Graham, although heaven alone knew how as she was lithe and he was far too fond of pies.

“I veto this capture,” she said hastily.

Graham bowed curtly and she scurried away.

While his head was down Jasmine ducked under cover and looked around for a way past.

Lord Thomas of Elion was sitting on a stool in the middle of the gazebo with princess Pterion draped across his lap. Even jasmine had to admit that the girl looked cute as she squealed and squirmed under his spanking hand.

The bigger surprise was that her twin sister Patricia was standing meekly in the corner having also been soundly spanked. Surely he did not intend to marry them both?

“I nominated her,” Pterion wailed.

“And she nominated you,” Lord Thomas chuckled, “And neither of you vetoed me.”

A game then, between the three of them, Jasmine realised as she slipped away. The palace grounds would never be the same again after today, she thought sadly, there will be royal marriages aplenty now, and the prophecy had been fulfilled.

All she had to do now was escape. Her best option now was the water gate and there was only one way to get there.

The covered gulley for the runaway irrigation water was muddy and smelled. Jasmine knew that no one would think of it as a convenient exit and after 40 minutes crawling on her belly in the slime she was beginning to see why.

At various points along the main thoroughfare there were openings where Jasmine could stick her head out in the shade of a shrub to get her bearings. From her vantage point she could see that barely a nook or corner of the garden was unoccupied.

Almost anywhere a spanked princess could be put in the corner that space was occupied. In fact the only uncornered princesses she could see were firmly across the knees of a prince or noble son getting the spanking of their young lives.

Not all the men had opted for hand-spanking either. Several had brought along short paddles or even riding quirts to really get to the bottom of the matter.

Poor cousin Amelia was positively bug-eyed as she clawed at the air as if fending of a swarm of bees. Although Jasmine rather thought the sting was at the other end. A broad-shouldered grey-at-the-temples older knight was belabouring her bottom with an improvised switch, extracting soulful wails from her as he did so.

“Oh I forgot, vetoed, vetoed, spank Amy instead,” she suddenly said frantically.

Poor Amelia had never been the brightest of the bunch, Jasmine smirked. It was far too late for such an opt-out and in any case, Jasmine could see that her sister Amy was already bawling across the lap of a rather handsome duke’s son. It was doubtful too that she had remembered to veto or nominate, the soggy secluded Jasmine wondered idly who had made the better match.

She took another look at the raw welts that crisscrossed Amelia’s bottom; the royal princess would be standing to supper for days and days. Her playmates had certainly been decimated.

Finally Jasmine made her way to the end of the culvert and crawled out onto her hands and knees under the Water Gate just a short distance from safety.

“Got you,” a sneering voice said as its owner seized her arm.

Jasmine pulled away and whirled around to see Prince Arthur. Beyond him Harmony was struggling in the arms of one of his retainers spitting bile at her captors.

The goody-goody Harmony had obviously had the same idea as Jasmine. They were obviously last two unspanked royals in the Palace Grounds.

“Vetoed,” Jasmine spat in a panicked voice.

Arthur shot a glance at the Lord Chamberlain and the High Seer standing on a nearby bridge overseeing the unfolding drama. The Chamberlain nodded to verify that Jasmine had not yet used her veto or nomination.

A cloud crossed Arthur’s face, especially when Jasmine stepped back into the strong protective arms of Lord Garth who had also guessed the direction of flight of the two senior royals.

Then Prince Arthur grinned; Jasmine’s sister was almost as big a political catch. He at least had some leverage now. Having recovered his arrogant poise he said in an oily voice: “Your sister has already vetoed me. But as the last possible nominee…”

Jasmine frowned and pulled away from Lord Garth. She had done it then, she only had to nominate Harmony and… the realisation that Arthur had won a small victory struck her. Harmony looked sick.

“While you dance and play the games of court are ensnaring you,” Garth whispered, his firm hold reassuring even as it seemed to threaten her vaguely.

“Unhand me Sir, you have no right…” still preoccupied by the realisation of Arthur’s victory and her sister’s fate, her indignation had no force now.

“You can no longer veto my claim,” Garth whispered, “You must nominate.”

“You… you wouldn’t dare,” Jasmine squealed. It was a non-regal sound and she blushed.

Garth frowned.

“Have a care. You have won, but at least honour the game,” he growled, “Else you insult me.”

Jasmine glared at him and then eyed her woe-filled sister as she pretended not to know what he meant.

“Very well,” Garth said in a commanding voice he usually reserved for the parade ground.

With that he seized Jasmine and hauled her over his lap.

“You’re a mess and this outfit, it is not fitting,” Garth scolded.

The leggings were torn from Jasmine’s legs as she shrieked in protest.

“You can’t, I forbid it,” Jasmine squealed.

The look of anger that flashed on Arthur’s face reminded her that she had but one way out, but the nomination clung to Jasmine’s lips as she lay bare-bottomed and prone over Garth’s knee. Then it was too late.

Garth pounded her exposed behind with one warriors swat and Jasmine screamed in angry frustration. The second came hard in its train, followed by a volley that registered no resistance.

“Thank you,” Harmony mouthed to her sister’s distressed countenance across the gulf that now separated them.

“Him, you chose him,” Arthur raged.

Garth gave Jasmine the spanking she had always needed but could never have. On and on he spanked as Jasmine bawled and wailed her tears splashing now to the floor as her bottom glowed like a country rose.

“Stop it, please, you win, you win,” Jasmine sobbed.

“Not by a damn sight,” Garth growled, “By the time I have done with you won’t sit on your throne ‘til Lammas. Before I’m done you’ll feel a switch and don’t think I have forgotten the corner. I have a nice prominent one all marked out for you.”

“Oh Garth,” Jasmine boo-hooed, but all protests now were fruitless.

On the bridge looking on, the two older men nodded in approval.

“And so the Empress Jasmine marries at last and the Empire is saved,” the Lord Chamberlain chuckled, “How did you know?”

“Know? I know everything, I am a seer,” the High Seer smiled.

“What if she had chosen Arthur for Harmony?” the Chamberlain said.

“Then the prophecy would still have been fulfilled and our empress would have been robbed of her playmates. She would have knuckled down in time,” the seer shrugged.

“So many princesses and so many royal marriages, it is a hell of a way to decide a life,” the Chamberlain protested.

“I suspect that most seized the opportunity wisely. Any mismatches can be… resolved with coin. After all, it won’t be the first time a wench was spanked but not married,” the seer chuckled.

Below them Jasmine was now suffering the indignity of being bent across a fence rail while garth sliced great welts across her bottom with a switch. A situation she did not altogether appreciate, one which she loudly sang about in big gasping sobs.

*

The court was quiet now. The usual cascade of playful laughter and chatter of women had been replaced by pouts sniffing and every corner of the palace held a princess her bottom polished red and displayed in the traditional manner.

Only Harmony sat at the banquet table, the centre of attention for every remaining unmarried noble in the kingdom and not a few ambassadors making advances on behalf of their master’s.

“What’s happening now?” Jasmine said impatiently.

“Pretty much business as usual,” Garth said with a shrug as he bit into an apple.

It did not pass his notice that the apple’s flesh was the mirror of the ruby glow adorning his future wife’s bare bottom.

“Ooh, can’t I at least turn around,” Jasmine wailed.

“You do and I’ll spank you again in front of everyone,” Garth scolded her, “You have nothing on in front thanks to that ridiculous costume.”

“But… but… ooh, this sooo embarrassing,” Jasmine stamped her foot as much as she was able with her nose touching the wall, “I am the empress.”

“Yes my love, but if you want to actually sit on the throne ever again then you had better behave hadn’t you?” Garth chided her.

“Yes Sir,” Jasmine said with a pout.

She doubted that a single princess would leave the corner for the rest of the night; another damn tradition.

The end.

Our story began here.

The Gathering Storm
The air was oppressive with not the merest breeze to ease the soul. For hours now the sky had darkened and further to the west forks of silent lightening flicked like lizard tongues from the empurpled sky.

Tomas grunted as he scratched his arse and looked over the great western plain scattered with broken mountains and great talons of rock. The war drums were getting closer, but he only got a hint of the vast hoard of warriors when the lightning flashes illuminated the dark shadows under the rocks. Even then the oncoming army was just a writhing snake of dots on the trail still some leagues out.

“A storm’s coming Sir,” the sergeant said, in a statement of the obvious.

Tomas nodded, he was tired of sarcasm; the man was too stupid to notice anyway.

“How many do you think there are?” the sergeant spoke again.

The man just likes the sound of his own voice, Tomas thought, it was the fear. All good men of the west lived in fear these days. There was even talk that the War Chief was a demon.

“Enough,” Tomas grunted.

“But how will we feed them all?” the sergeant whined.

It was actually a good question and the first intelligent thing the man had said all morning.

“They are emptying every grain store in the west for the army,” Tomas said with a yawn.

“But what about…?” the man frowned, he was of farming stock no doubt, like a great many of Tomas’s men. His concern for the peasants was touching, if a little dangerous in these times.

“Have we had any more complaints?” Tomas growled.

The sergeant gaped at him but then quickly closed his mouth. The question was a joke. No one ever complained, well almost no one.

“How are we doing?” Tomas asked as he dabbed at the sweat on his neck with a rag.

The sergeant turned and looked down from the watch platform to the yard below.

There were a long line of naked slave women bathed in sweat. The queue extended from the cookhouse where they usually laboured to the trestle in the centre of the yard. The improvised cross-beam held a naked woman in her early 20s. She was bent right over so that her sweat-sheened buttocks were stretched uppermost across the wood while a guard plied her vulnerable flesh with a Graak-hide switch.

Her grunts had turned into tearful wails and the welts on her bottom suggested that her punishment was near an end.

“Next,” the corporal bellowed, his voice carrying all the way up to the watch platform.

The whipped girl got stiffly to her feet as soon as she was released and made her way other to join the other punished women lined up to watch. Before she had even gone three paces the next slave took her place.

“It was only a loaf of bread,” the sergeant mumbled.

Tomas shrugged. Orders were orders, but secretly he was relieved that the culprit hadn’t owned up. Some things even stuck in his craw.

*

Maiestatis walked stiff-legged to the window to look down on his creation. A fact noted by Draken who followed dutifully on behind his master. The body was getting harder and harder to control; Draken suspected that it would have long been a corpse if it had been for the demon who occupied it.

“A little bird has flown the coop,” the Wolf-Demon said in his twisted voice. “She has disguised herself and thought I wouldn’t notice.”

“Who?” Draken was curious.

“Oh an old friend of yours,” Maiestatis said enigmatically.

“Where is this friend going?” Draken tried hard to suppress his impatience.

“To Pandoria of course, where else?” the demon laughed without pleasure. “I have sent a little storm to wash her away, but this one is strong, she might even make it.”

“A storm…?” Had the demon mastered the elements, Draken wondered?

“There is more than one kind of storm my little warlock,” Maiestatis crowed in response to the question he knew was in Draken’s mind.

As if to emphasise his point the demon inclined his head towards the scene below the window.

Looking down Draken gazed upon the gathered ranks upon ranks of warriors assembled there.

Without warning Maiestatis launched into a speech in the for-once-clear-voice of his host, “My valiant sons, my children of my blood, my great host of the West… the world is ours.”

The roar shook the stoned of the citadel and Draken’s heart surged, he was sure now that he had picked the right side.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

Sylvia had discovered spanking novels and had sat devouring them one after another while ensconced in the window seat. Her chores for the day had been carried out under Mary’s tutelage, although the housekeeper seemed to have her mind elsewhere and had not picked up on any of Sylvia’s shortcomings.

The housekeeper’s lack of attention had not profited Tatiana any though as her current predicament would testify.

The maid was currently corseted to within an inch of her life and set on her knees on the floor. Her bottom was bare revealing a rather large and uncomfortable looking plug inserted between two highly welted and maroon coloured hindquarters.

Nor did her ordeal end there. Tatiana had been set the task of scrubbing the floors with a tooth brush which she periodically dipped into a mug of cleaning fluid. Every so often she had to crawl to the kitchen for fresh water and soap where Mary first spanked her before granting it.

This was the maid’s third day of such chores.

She had previously been required to sweep every floor in the house using only an incongruously and uncomfortably placed dustpan brush at one end and another fixed as a gag at the other.

“Don’t you think you are being a little… well OTT?” Sylvia had carefully ventured.

“Oh it could get worse couldn’t it my little Tatiana?” Mary said pointedly.

Tatiana nodded eagerly with eyes as big as plates, desperate that there wouldn’t be a demonstration.

“How… eh…?” Sylvia gaped, not finishing her question.

“I was once made to lick the floors clean,” Mary said with a shrug, “Some trainers can be merciless.”

“I know what you mean,” Sylvia replied in disbelief as she cast an arched look at the housekeeper, all the while thinking that given Tatiana’s current trials, floor-licking might not be preferable.

That had been two days before, now Sylvia barely noticed, absorbed as she was with her own fantasies concerning Gerald.

Turning the page she gobbled up the misadventures of one Kate in Regency England.

The inn had emptied somewhat on account of the hanging. In fact apart from the innkeeper, Kate and her ladies companion Emily, the only other patron was Lord Teacher the man who had had little to say to her for half the journey to London. And if the truth be told, the one man she wanted to speak to.

“Aren’t you going to the hanging my lord?” she simpered in his direction.

“Well patently not,” Lord Teacher replied, “And I am glad that you too avoid it. It is not a small thing or indeed something for childish eyes.”

“I am near 21-year-old,” Kate blustered, “I do not go to the hanging because…”

But Lord Teacher had already bowed to her and was moving away.

Emily had stifled a giggle but her mistress had looked apoplectic. Not that the erstwhile nobleman appeared to notice as he moved away to a table at the other end of better folk’s lounge.

“Oh to the devil with the man,” Kate said haughtily, “How dare he speak to me like that?”

Her outburst was well within Lord Teacher’s hearing as was intended, although he showed no sign of it.

“Doesn’t he know that it is rude to ignore a lady?” Kate said to her companion as she tried again.

“I am sure that he just didn’t hear you Miss Kate,” Emily said placatingly.

“I am sure that he did,” Kate snapped at her, “I think the man has a lack of breeding.”

Lord Teacher gave a heavy sigh and in a deliberation motion put the flagon of ale down on the table.

“I see that the ‘Lady’ has no manners,” Lord Teacher said sharply.

Kate brought her arms to a defiant fold and looked away with a pout.

“I think that perhaps I might teach her some,” Lord Teacher said crisply.

“You boorish oaf, are you really what passes for nobility in Derbyshire?” Kate countered.

“I see a lesson is in order,” Teacher sighed, “Madam, as you insist, I am going to paddle your tail.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Kate scoffed, abandoning her sulk and confronting the man with a glare.

“That is the third insult you have levelled at me, there will not be a third,” Lord Teacher said in a commanding voice.

In a trice he had strode across the room and seized the girl by the shoulders. In short order he had found a bench and upended her without ceremony.

“Emily, oh Emily, fetch the watch,” Kate shrieked.

But the shrieking only got louder as her skirts were raised by turns until the bare thighs and then denuded bottom was exposed to the young nobleman’s gaze.

“Your father should have done this long before now, but perhaps it is not too late to make an amendment,” Lord Teacher said in a firm voice.

Emily didn’t know whether to avert her eyes or laugh; so instead, as her mistress got the spanking of her life she gaped in wonder and imagined how it might be to be so handled by a man.

“Oh gosh,” Sylvia sighed as she hastily turned the page.

“What was that Ma’am?” Tatiana said miserably from the floor, not daring to overlook the least wish of her betters that day.

“Oh nothing,” Sylvia dismissed her.

*

The mysteries of the cellar now open to her, Sylvia had watched from the door as Tatiana was secured in place for an evening of more torment.

The enema regime had been instructive, although Sylvia’s buttocks had clenched in sympathy. Now Mary had set about polishing the miscreant maid’s bottom with an emery-sided strap that not only put the maid’s eyes out on stalks as it imparted its burning sting, but left the skin of her behind an almost impossible red that glistened with the stringent oil to lubricate the punishing strap.

Tatiana tried to endure but after only a minute or two began to sob and beg for a reprieve.

“You have a particular phrase for me?” Mary asked the wailing girl.

Tatiana was panting hard as tears tumbled down her cheeks, she could scarcely get her breath. Mary waited.

“No Ma’am,” Tatiana said at last in ragged bursts.

Mary grinned and the punishment begun again.

“Is Tatiana the only… I mean…” Sylvia swallowed as she struggled with the question.

“Would I ever bring you down here you mean?” Mary smirked as she mopped her brow mid swat.

“Or would Gerald?” she pressed with her real question.

“I think that all this and more is your destiny, don’t you think?” Mary replied.

Sylvia blushed.

“Why… why do we…?”

“Submit? Want to submit?” For Mary it was the same question.

The housekeeper plied the strap crossways and then down the cleft of Tatiana’s bottom, the girl responded by clamping her jaw tight and issuing a low groan. Her face was puce and so wet it was impossible to tell tears from sweat. A true Churchillian, Mary congratulated herself, one of the holy grails of spankmanship.

“Why? Why do you think?” Mary paused and shot a glance at Sylvia.

“I… I don’t know,” she whispered. “Weeks ago I would have… oh Mary, I am lost and don’t ever want to be found.”

“Not even by Gerald?”

“Maybe,” Sylvia admitted. “Don’t you want someone?”

“Oh yes,” Mary said sharply, but her eyes were as steel again and the hapless maid was about to benefit from her newfound zeal.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

The Raven
Deep below those above the four women sat naked in the gloom. The only light was from five embers at the points of the pentangle and the caves around them were dark with sinister shadows dancing at the corners of their eyes. The two newest to the group shivered, unused as they were to such a gathering, the youngest had her chin tucked into her chest not daring to look up lest she see some evil in the tunnels around them.

“We are few for such a group and yet we must try,” the senior told them.

In the dark and on such an occasion even her hesitant words took on import as if the very rocks now pulsed with power.

“Please hold hands,” the leader said with more authority, her raised voice singing back at them as it hummed of the cave walls.

The youngest picked a stray strand of hair from her mouth and shook her head so that her tresses fell more evenly for a moment, but they didn’t stay long so that she had to again push them back. But at least to hold hands she had to kneel up which took the weight off her bottom that had been too long pressed into the cold stone.

The Elder waited for the newcomer to stop fidgeting and for the group to form a circle with their hands and then she spoke again.

At first the words were in the classic tongue and all ran into one long stream so that the others had trouble discerning them. Then she spoke in the common language.

“Sister, oh sister, over the sea, come to us,” she chanted.

“Come to us,” the other three chimed as they had been previously prompted.

“Sister, oh sister, over the sea, be guided to us,” the elder continued.

“Come to us,” the others again intoned.

“Fear not the wall, for it is nothing but fear…”

“Come…” the youngest began before realising she was previous.

“…and fear is our domain and cannot conquer us,” the leader continued ignoring her companion’s failure.

“Come to us,” came the answering chant.

Then the elder again spun out an incomprehensible chant, perhaps in the old tongue or merely classic, there were none there that could tell. Then in common she continued, “Sister, oh sister, over the sea, come to us.”

“Come to us,” the others chanted and so on went the song.

*

The raven had flown so very far. Its wings ached now and the chill wet air had begun to weigh down its feathers so that it dropped ever lower towards the waves.

Even her mind had begun to wander as if the bird’s small brain could no longer hold her true identity. Panic seized her with the thought and the raven dipped suddenly dangerously low.

I am nothing now, she consoled herself, I am flight and my one thought is ‘west.’

In the beginning it had been liberating. The land had been so far below her and green fields and towns had been laid out like toys. Far from being constrained she had felt like a goddess.

But that had been… she knew not for time was nothing now but a moment. When and where had no meaning, there was only near and far and her one thought was ‘west’ and that was so very, very far.

But close to death, minds wander, and the raven pondered on the folly of being a land bird over the sea. There had been a reason, a good one, but she couldn’t now recall. An old woman had said, “The seduction will be great and you might lose yourself,” but what woman? The raven could not now recall.

Then came the storm.

At first she welcomed it. The black cloud closed in fast and promised to release her. What did she care of failure? That was not the west.

But then the storm hit. Not water, not rain, but a million billion insects, swarms of them all black and shiny with biting little jaws and wings that zizzed in her soul.

They clung to her dank grey feathers making them black again in a sick parody of what she once had been. But this raven’s coat now seethed with death.

The weight of them alone was enough to doom her, but the deadly mites were not so easily satisfied. Pincers like fire set to devour her and the west faded form her mind.

“Come to us,” they sang.

The raven might have cawed in answer if it could, but it had no strength.

“Come to us,” urged the song.

Not the storm then, a song beyond the storm, and the raven dared hope.

A splash of the waves brushed her and threatened to end her story, but she lunged away in time. Nevertheless, the salt water hated the insects more than ravens and for a moment she was clean again.

It was but a brief respite, but it was enough to gain more height.

“Come to us,” urged the song.

West, came the raven’s thought as she flew on, this time ignoring the storm even as it again began to devour her.

*

The women had been singing for hours and the respite for their bottoms had long since been traded for the hell that was the floor to their knees. Worse still was the cold, which had now gone beyond discomfort and had reached into their bones.

“Why are we naked anyway?” the younger one hissed.

Both the elder and the witch to her left crushed her fingers to silence her.

“We call it skyclad,” the other newcomer answered in a whisper until she too felt the hand-crush.

“Sister, oh sister, over the sea, come to us,” the lead witch croaked even as she ignored the talking in the ranks.

“Come to us,” the other three replied wearily.

They could not go on much longer, that much was clear, even the elder was flagging. Then something changed.

It began with the light, which seemed to burn more brightly. The pentangle, which had not been visible to the naked women since they had extinguished the torches, was now apparent.

“Sister, oh sister, over the sea, come to us.”

“Come to us.”

There was a definite light now, like a sixth ember forming in the circle’s centre.

“Cripes,” Lucy Pettigrew gasped.

“Silence,” Amber barked.

Tabitha glared at her friend.

“Sister, oh sister, over the sea, come to us,” Amber said more eagerly, to answered by the others, “Come to us.”

There was a sphere of light shimmering within the pentangle now. The faces of Amber, Erin, Tabitha and Lucy Pettigrew could all clearly be seen.

The chants of “Sister, oh sister, over the sea, come to us,” and “Come to us,” rolled ever faster off their tongues now, like a rock rolling downhill gaining its own momentum.

*

It was almost over now. The song had faded and could now hardly be heard above the zizz of biting insects. The raven’s flight was erratic and she weaved in and out of invisible obstacles dipping ever nearer the sea.

“Come to us,” the wind sighed pathetically.

Even the song had given up hope.

Then something changed, even the storm that assailed her felt it. The Raven could smell the wall of fear. It was like fire that promised death to all that went near.

The storm of insects began to peel away, tugging at the raven as they went. But the raven was in hell and the wall was a salvation. The wall was the west.

Ahead where the wall began was a light. And the raven gathered the last of her strength. The light would gain her the wall and on to Pandoria.

*

The light in the middle of the circle exploded and was then snuffed out.

The dark was an anti-climax to hours of effort and Lucy was certain they had failed. Well if this is Wild Magic, then you can keep it, she thought bitterly. She had only agreed to join the illegal gathering because she thought it might be interesting and because Tabitha had told that it wouldn’t work without a fourth.

“What is it, bridge?” she had joked. But she wasn’t laughing now.

But in the dark something darker was moving with a fluttering slither on the stone floor. The smell of the ocean had somehow come with it along with an unearthly croak was that of some great demon.

Amber struck a match and one of the torches burst into life even as Erin seized another and touched them together.

The raven was too bedraggled to offer the threat that the dark had promised. It just sat there with its caw open forlornly trying to gain its feet.

“Not what I was expecting,” Amber said in a brittle voice.

Erin looked as if she would burst into laughter and only Tabitha looked impressed.

“How did we do that?” she gaped.

“Meredith…?” Amber asked the bird tentatively. “Meredith Greydove, is that you?”

As if her words had broken a spell, the raven flew up and grew until a great shadow danced among them. Then little by little the shade became more solid until finally a filthy fifth naked woman stood in the middle of the circle.

“Meredith? Are you alright?” Amber asked.

The woman nodded.

“I… I had to be a raven you see…” her voice was wan, “It was the only hope I had that he would not see me,” Meredith blinked rapidly and after a moment more her eyes rolled back to show the whites and she collapsed onto the floor.

*

Far, far away to the west Maiestatis let out a scream.

“The bitch has escaped my storm,” he spat, his face contorted and in spasm. “She had aid.”

“It happens, it changes nothing,” Draken shrugged, but he was nonetheless disconcerted by the demon’s anger.

“Fool, you understand nothing. It changes everything, everything… I did not foresee this, they have acted beyond my sight, I did not foresee this…” Maiestatis cried, then recovering a little he spat through the twisted mouth, “We must act soon now.”

To be continued

Sammie liked the place as soon as she saw it. It was the kind of house you saw in movies and the hometown cosy feel all along the tree-lined road had broken through her hard LA cynicism like balm for the soul. Not that she would ever admit it, perhaps not even to herself.

The couple who strolled onto the porch were not what she was expecting either. They were young and cool looking. She was at most a young 30 with long well groomed dark hair and looked like someone that belonged in a magazine. He was a little older with short sandy hair and a square jaw that held his easy smile like it never knew a frown. She was put in mind of the Marlboro Man, although this cowboy looked too smart to mess with cigarettes.

The c-word made her wince and was just one of the many reasons she was here.

As the car pulled to a halt the cool cowboy stepped from the porch and extend his arm with natural largesse.

“Aunt Aggie,” he grinned.

“Oh don’t, you make me feel old,” Sammie’s mother simpered.

Sammie rolled her eyes up at the lame exchange as an opener for getting back into character.

“Nonsense, you sophisticated city-types never get old,” he teased, “And anyway we are practically the same age.”

Sammie rolled up her eyes again, this was so lame. She knew her mother was at least six years older than her great nephew Dhenry. Dhenry, what kind of name was that anyway?

“This is Samantha, your… cousin, sort of? I never remember how it works,” Sammie’s mother offered hesitantly.

“Cousin will do fine Aggie, after all I can’t really call an 18-year-old my aunt can I?”

“She wouldn’t be your aunt anyway honey,” the long-haired woman said, coming forward.

“I’m almost 20 you dork.” Sammie muttered under her breath.

Aggie glared at her daughter, but Dhenry appeared not to hear.

“This is Kathy,” he said introducing his wife.

“Kathy,” Aggie said enthusiastically and took her hand.

Sammie folded her arms in defiance to the world.

“Samantha,” Aggie said in a tight voice, “Come and say hello.”

Sammie rolled her eyes up for the third time in as many minutes and heaved a sigh like she had just been asked to walk home on a wet day in January. Then she threw her long suntanned legs out of the car sideways and without unfolding her arms came to an upright position.

“The spit of her mother, with the same red hair and pretty too,” Kathy said with a warm smile as she offered Sammie her hand.

“Give me a break,” Sammie muttered, “My hair is washed out ginger and everyone knows it. And the only pretty one here is you.”

“Thanks… I guess, but you’re pretty too you know,” Kathy said uncomfortably.

Pretty lame, Sammie lied to herself for amusement, which showed on her face as a smirk.

“Young lady if you don’t amend your attitude…” Aggie said in a threatening tone.

Sammie went for a fourth eye-rolling.

“I can see we are going to have our work cut out for us with this one,” Dhenry chuckled.

“Look I am so grateful for taking her in like this,” Aggie said in a weary voice admixed with relief.

“It really is our pleasure, besides, what are families for?” Dhenry reassured her. “What was the beef with the courts anyway? I heard she was cleared…?”

“They never even pressed charges,” Aggie said quickly, “She was just a material witness, but there are some issues that came to light and… well the court said she could not reside within 50 miles of the city…”

“And you have your job… of course,” Dhenry said calmly.

“I don’t know anyone 50 miles from LA and there is no way she is setting up house on her own at the moment. As for family, there are only you or your Aunt Margaret in Boise…”

“Talk about me as if I am not here why don’t you?” Sammie said belligerently.

Aggie had never felt more embarrassed and that was saying something given the number of police stations and courts she had attended with Sammie in the last few months.

“I am rather afraid I took my eye off the ball since Tom left… Fiji, I ask you, he was always such a dreamer. You know his girlfriend is only… sorry,” she sighed, “It’s not his fault. My work has been… anyway it is out of my hands for the moment.”

“Hello,” Sammie said in a surly voice, “I am still here.”

“Excuse me,” Aggie said abruptly, “There is something that needs my urgent attention.”

With some sixth sense Sammie’s ears pricked up, but it was too late to flee. Aggie grabbed her daughter’s arm and without breaking step marched towards the porch with her daughter in train.

“Mom, come on, I’m sorry I…” Sammie whined.

Aggie didn’t speak but availing herself of a bench on the house’s veranda she sat down and hauled her half-struggling daughter across her knee.

“N-not here, come on,” Sammie gaped, her face colouring sharply.

The denim shorts were a struggle, but Aggie was fast becoming an expert and in a moment they were going south to meet Sammie’s ankles.

Before the girl could react her mother hooked a thumb in the band of her panties and they too joined the shorts.

“Mom,” Sammie gasped, “Please.”

For a moment Aggie lamented the fact that she didn’t have the hairbrush to hand, but needs must… she thought and brought her hand sharply down on the bare seat of her daughter.

“Omigod,” Sammie gasped, but the spank was the first of many.

The spanking was sound enough, but it was more of a marker against future behaviour and although Sammie’s bottom was red, the girl was more embarrassed than stung by the time she was set on her feet.

“Now Samantha, do you want to go to Aunt Margaret’s or stay here?” Aggie barked at her by now meek daughter.

“Here,” Sammie said in a small voice.

“Right, then mind your manners while your elders talk. Now face that wall there until you are told to move.

Sammie made to pull up her shorts but was told to leave them with a bark.

“If she gives you any trouble, you have my full permission to spank her,” Aggie said wearily. “And make it count; these days she is used to far more. Something we just got around to lately.”

“Oh I think we can manage that,” Dhenry said pointedly glancing at his wife.

Kathy blushed and sucked in her cheeks, a response that was not missed by Aggie who smirked a little. The older woman remembered just how Dhenry and Kathy handled their marriage.

“Did you hear that Samantha?” Aggie said in a scolding voice.

“Yes, ooh,” Sammie bit her lower lip.

Dhenry was surprised at the transformation. She just needs to be away from LA and the whole sin city routine for a while, he decided.

“I’m sorry for her attitude, but it has been a long drive. Not that I am making excuses…” Aggie said with a sigh.

“Aggie, we get it, no need to explain. I am sure that Sammie and I will get on like a house on fire as soon as she learns the rules.

“House on fire, eh, just don’t let her play with any matches,” Aggie said ruefully and glancing back at her daughter facing the wall on the porch. “She can stay there until it gets dark.”

“That’s in about 40 minutes and by then supper will be ready anyway,” Kathy put in.

On the porch Sammie groaned and shifted from side to side in irritation, but knew better than to complain.

*

Sammie had been with Dhenry and Kathy for about a week and had yet to settle in. The day after her mother had left, Dhenry had given her a pile of community college pamphlets with the pronouncement, “It’s that or you get a job.”

She had considered answering back, if only to test his resolve in disciplinary matters, but he had eyes like the chief cop who had arrested her and so far she had funked it.

The other thing Sammie couldn’t figure was the whole place, both house and town. It was a complete dump by LA standards. The TV was out of the Ark and they had no cable.

“Not a great package huh?” she had said when she had been told.

“Eh no, we have no package, zilch, nada, no cable,” Dhenry had explained.

Then she had been told that the house was a smoke free zone and that included the porch.

“I don’t smoke,” Sammie had said quickly.

Dhenry had given her a hard look then until she had been forced to look away.

“We don’t tolerate lies here either. I know perfectly well your mother has forbidden you to smoke, but you do it anyway, so I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. You’re 19 and what you do in town is your own affair; within reason that is,” he had scolded her.

Shifting uncomfortably and to change the subject Sammie had asked, “About town, what do you do here anyway? You’re not actually a cowboy are you?”

“Cowboy?” he laughed, displaying one of his sudden mood swings she was to get to know so well, “No, I am not any kind of a cowboy. I am the town sheriff.”

Sammie’s jaw had hit the floor; she could see why her mother had kept back that particular titbit of information.

“Kathy is the head librarian in town,” he continued, “No cowboys here.”

“I am one of two librarians,” Kathy put in, “I just happen to be senior. Just as Dhenry here is chief of police in town, but only has three deputies.”

“Rub it in why don’t you?” Dhenry growled good-naturedly, giving Kathy a swat on the tail.

The swat was something that occurred a lot between them and not always in such good humour, Sammie had noticed. It took her that first week to find out why.

Their home was big and solid and Sammie had been given a large cool room above the garage in a wing away from the main part of the house. It was all angles with alcoves so that her bed was out of sight of the desk and she could pretend it was an apartment. This not only afforded Sammie some privacy but as she suspected kept her out of their hair.

But with no real TV and only a magazine she had already read twice, Sammie decide to snoop.

On her first foray she found a paddle, a cane and an antique hairbrush on the dresser with pristine bristles on one side and devoid of varnish on the other. The third item she might have missed but for the first two and the fact that her mother had one like for much the same reason, if Sammie’s guess was correct.

There were also some books with suggestive titles like Sweet Surrender and Her Master’s Voice along with a copy of the Story of O, but they were clearly Kathy’s and on Dhenry’s shelf were car mechanic books and text books on law and law enforcement.

Her second reconnoitre came as a result of the sounds of an argument. Sammie was keen to know that Mr and Mrs Perfect weren’t so and at the back of her mind she was curious about how this might get resolved given her earlier discoveries. She wasn’t disappointed.

By the time she got to the landing where their room was, a spanking was already well under way.

The door to their room had been left open and by hanging back she could see that Dhenry had Kathy over his knee with her denims and panties down at her ankles. Her bottom was already a mean red, but Dhenry was putting the hairbrush to her like he was only just getting started.

“So you forgot to do the laundry,” Dhenry was saying in a hard but calm voice as he swatted away. “It’s no big deal, but don’t bitch to me about it and make it a problem.”

“But you have no clean shirt,” Kathy wailed.

“So why is that my fault?” he growled.

“It’s not I… ow, I was embarrassed and got mad… ah, sorry Sir, I’m sorry.” Kathy’s breathing was ragged and there were already tears in her voice.

This is neat-o, Sammie thought, but her schadenfreude was tempered by concern for Kathy’s bottom. It had got to the hard welty stage where the flesh had become shocked and swollen. Sammie knew herself that it was a hard gig; this from her own experience on the day after she had been arrested.

Dhenry then proved that he was strict and would tolerate no attitude or deflected guilt from his wife. The spanking, which was already sound enough, took on a new tempo and did not end for some minutes. Long before he was done Kathy was bawling like a teen and hugging into him for respite.

“Right young lady, you can put yourself in that corner and don’t move until… well don’t move,” Dhenry barked.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy sobbed.

Sammie watched in amazement as the 30-year-old woman, still hobbled by her jeans and panties, limped carefully to the corner and put her nose meekly to the wall.

“Dhenry,” she said in a muffled voice.

“Yes,” he replied archly.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Dhenry.”

“Yes,” he said impatiently.

“Can you close the door in case…?” she swallowed, “In case… you know… Sammie…”

Dhenry chuckled and said, “Maybe this time, but she is going to find out.”

“I know,” Kathy whispered to someone very far away.

Then Dhenry moved across the room and Sammie dropped back in a panic, but he shut the door without looking up the landing.

Close call Sammie thought and then as carefully as she had come crept back to her room, her heart pounding. Her dad had always been easy going and spankings had been few and far between back home. I guess Dhenry is cut from a different cloth, she thought, and gulped.

*

Throughout breakfast Sammie couldn’t help stealing pointed glances at Kathy. And when the older woman visibly winced as she eased onto her seat at the table, Kathy noticed Sammie watching and blushed.

“You heard what happened last night didn’t you?” Kathy whispered after Dhenry had rolled out the door to mount his SUV with all the show of a cowboy sheriff of old.

Sammie coloured a little and shrugged.

“I wasn’t sure what I was hearing so I snuck down,” she said in an uncomfortable voice, “I saw through the door.”

“You were snooping before that weren’t you?” Kathy said with a blush.

Sammie nodded.

“Busted,” she said, “You gonna tell Dhenry?”

“What do you think he’d do if I did?” Kathy asked as she shifted uncomfortably and folded her arms.

Sammie sucked in a breath that she didn’t release but just stood there with her mouth open and blanched.

“Spanking, paddling, switching are age old traditions around here and Dhenry takes them to heart, we both do,” Kathy said gently, “You are a long way from LA here. I need to know if I have a viper in the nest or just a lost girl who gets it.”

“How do you mean?” Sammie was conscious of the awkward void between her and the older woman.

“I mean sooner or later we are both going to get blistered behinds while the other is around, and that means you brat-girl, LA know-all or not. So, are we going to be friends?” Kathy shook off her discomfort and rounded on the younger woman.

“I don’t know,” Sammie looked at her shoes, “I get it I guess and… I’d like to be your friend.”

“So, what do you think Dhenry would do if I told him you were snooping around our stuff and spying on us?” Kathy’s eyes danced back and forth as if she was willing a right answer from her young cousin-in-law.

“Spank me I guess,” Sammie mumbled and kicked at her shoe without looking up.

“And how do you feel about that?” Kathy pressed her.

“I-I… my Dad was kinda soft… Mom tries but I guess I got too grown-up too fast for her… I guess I kinda got it coming sometimes. I mean I sometimes wish my Dad had pushed back… well you know… kinda,” Sammie mumbled through the speech without looking up until the end. “You gonna tell him?”

“No, I think your snooping aided your education somewhat,” Kathy smiled visibly more relaxed, “Let’s keep it between us, but if I find you have been spying on me getting… well then you can kiss your bee-hind goodbye.”

“Deal,” Sammie grinned.

“Now after you help me with the dishes I’ll drive us both in to town and you can check out courses and the small ads at the library,” Kathy chivvied her.

*

It had rained all morning and the library was busier than usual. Several of the foul-weather readers who had taken refuge from the inclemency outside were somewhat noisy and there had been several complaints from the regulars.

Among the newcomers was Sammie, who was fast making new friends in and around the Main Street coffee shop. She had even secured a part-time job there after Dhenry had called in a favour. A lot of the kids in town were impressed that Sammie knew the cute and cool sheriff, especially the girls and Sammie was quickly becoming popular.

“Will you girls be quiet,” Kathy scolded the small group of young women in the corner for the third time that morning.

“What are you going to do? Fine us?” Rosemary Tailor, one of Sammie’s new friends sneered.

The others giggled, all except Sammie who blushed.

Kathy gave her a hard stare before rounding on the others.

“I could speak to your mother and yours Josephine Samuels, I see you there, I know what she would do,” Kathy said sharply.

Josephine and another girl Kathy didn’t know glowed red like traffic stop lights while Rosemary mouthed a silent mimic of the Head Librarian’s words. But all the same she fell to whispers as Kathy gave Sammie a warning look and then moved away.

“Hey look,” Rosemary gushed as soon as Kathy was out of earshot, “They have some sex books.”

The four girls dropped the magazines they had been reading and moved over to the shelf to look.

“The Art of Fellatio,” Josephine giggled, picking up the book.

“Sex for Beginners,” Rosemary guffawed.

Then Josephine squealed in delight as she grabbed a book emblazoned with the legend: “Spanking, a disciplinary manual.”

Sammie felt a strange head rush and gaped as she coloured. She wasn’t the only one, Lucy another new girl in town went bright pink as she stared wide-eyed at the pictures and title headings on the pages that Josephine flipped over.

Sammie took it from her with something approaching reverence as the two more raucous young women fixed on some Chinese pillow books. But she noticed that Lucy still had her eyes glued to the book so she hastily put it back on the shelf lest she show undue interest.

Further along there were art books with nude men as well as women and it was these that quickly grabbed their interest. Then Rosemary found a Mapplethorpe and the girls dissolved into laughter.

“Oh gross,” Rosemary said in a loud voice, her usual default setting.

“Will you girls be quiet, I won’t tell you again,” Kathy shushed them.

While Rosemary made another show of defiance Sammie seized her chance and whirled around and slipping away to the other shelf, she grabbed the book about spanking. She reasoned that she couldn’t very well borrow it openly and it would be easier enough to return; what did it matter if she didn’t actually check it out?

“If you girls can’t be quiet I’ll have to ask you to leave. I might even exclude you for a month and then I will tell your parents,” Kathy said wearily.

“What are we, kids? We are not in high school now,” Rosemary spat back.

But the others shushed her and each for their own reasons began to move away.

Just then Dhenry came in hoping to take Kathy to lunch.

“You girls causing some mayhem?” he said in his best paternal voice.

All four girls blushed; Josephine and Rosemary even fluttered their eyelashes.

“No Sir,” they giggled.

“Hi Sammie, how is your course hunting going? And anyway, shouldn’t you be at work?” Dhenry said.

“Oh eh, hi… it’s okay… I don’t work today,” Sammie stuttered.

Under his hard eyes, his smile was easy, but a slight frown touched his brow as looked them over. Maybe it was just the innocent guilt of meeting the law but all four shifted uneasily and backed away towards the door even as they continued to giggle.

One step beyond the barrier the alarm sounded.

“Hold up there,” Dhenry called over, he could see at once the look of panic that marred Sammie’s face.

The girls looked bored as they rolled their eyes up at the checkout desk; everyone but Sammie that was. She wondered if she looked as sick as she felt.

Kathy quickly searched their bags, puzzled at the lack of evidence. Then she saw Sammie’s face and the fact that Dhenry had already singled her out for attention. Oh Sammie, what have you done, she thought?

As Kathy looked in Sammie’s bag she saw at once what the issue was. She hastily swiped it with the barcode reader without removing it and then quickly stamped it.

“You must have forgotten,” she said quickly.

Dhenry leaned forward at grabbed the bag before she could close it and stole a glance. He exchanged a look with Kathy.

“Must have,” Dhenry said in a growl.

The others missed it, but Sammie wanted the ground to open up and swallow her down to hell.

“I’ll talk to you later young lady,” Dhenry said quietly.

*

Sammie didn’t quite know what to expect. The embarrassment of being caught with an erotic book was quite bad enough but her immediate emotion had been one of relief that Kathy had quietly validated it instead of causing a scene. Now that she made her way home she wondered how she was going to face them. Dhenry was the law for heaven’s sake, and she rolled up her eyes at her own stupidity, how would it have looked if she had been arrested?

Then as she got nearer the house the feeling of disconnect and an overwhelming assault of butterflies was augmented as she recalled Dhenry’s words, “I’ll talk to you later young lady.”

He couldn’t possibly mean…?

As she reached the end of the drive Dhenry’s SUV swung in off the road and went past her. She noticed he didn’t as much as look in her direction and she wondered if this was a sign that he was mad.

By the time she reached the house Dhenry was waiting on the porch with an opened beer.

“About this time I like to unwind with a brew,” he said in a casual tone, but there was an edge to his voice.

She stopped and regarded him sheepishly, maybe it was alright and he really didn’t have a problem with her.

“But then a chore crops up and sometimes the beer has to wait,” he continued as he set the bottle down on the rail where it was shady.

“I could use a beer myself,” Sammie ventured.

“Oh I bet you could, but that really is not going to happen, not in this house. Not until you are 21.” He sounded a little pissed now, she thought.

“I guess not,” she whispered.

Normally she would have told him she had plenty of beer back in LA and what was the big deal. But just then she sensed that this wasn’t time to test his resolve or the extent of the disciplinary waters.

“So, do you want to wait until Kathy comes home or do you want to get it over with?” he drawled.

She swallowed and wondered if she knew what he meant. She certainly hoped not.

“What do you mean?” It was a nervous breath.

“Are you testing me young lady? You know perfectly well what you have coming,” he growled.

“No I… please can’t we talk about this? Is this about the…” She didn’t finish as she was suddenly aware of the weight of the book in her bag and she hefted it in his direction.

“Oh we can talk about it sure enough. We can talk about theft. We can talk about deception. We can talk about stealing from family and the folks of this town. We can even talk about why on Earth you would want an unsuitable book like that in the first place. Shall I go on?”

Dhenry folded his arms and leaned back a little as if to get a good look at the woman who lived in his house.

Only she didn’t exactly feel like a woman right then. The years were escaping her even as she hopped awkwardly from foot to foot. Sixteen would be a stretch just then.

“No,” she mumbled and looked at the floor. “Look, I meant to bring it back, I just wanted to… you know, look at it.”

“And you couldn’t just take it out like a normal person?” he accused.

“I… I was embarrassed,” she admitted.

“I am not surprised. Wanted to do some research on how we handle treacherous little thieves around here did you?”

“No I… I really didn’t mean to… I was just curious and…” she fell silent.

Dhenry sighed.

“Look I know what you thought and didn’t think, mostly didn’t think would be my guess. If I thought you had any real malice then we wouldn’t be having this discussion and you would be packing your bags,” he said. “And that brings us back to my question. You want to wait or get it over with?”

“Wait…? I… I don’t…”

“Let’s make this real simple,” he said sharply. “You can go and stand on the porch where your mom put you that first day. We’ll see what Kathy thinks when she gets home.”

“Out here on the porch? I mean that’s something that we don’t usually… it was just that one time,” Sammie blustered through a crimson face. “I mean… time out is for little kids.”

“This ain’t exactly a time out,” Dhenry growled. “It’s corner time pure and simple. Now get and do as you’re told.”

Sammie swallowed and tried to gather some dignity. Then with an effort she put one foot in front of the other and walked up the porch steps. Once there she tossed the bag into the swing seat and leaned against the wall sideways on.

“If you don’t mind me young lady, I am going to paddle your rear end raw and then when Kathy gets home you’ll get a switching too.” Dhenry faced her down worse than any city tough she usually tried to avoid.

“But I…”

“Turn and face the wall as you were before. Exactly how you were before with your skinnies and panties at your ankles and be quick about it,” Dhenry rasped at her in a controlled snap just below a yell.

“Ooh,” Sammie wailed, but she was suddenly cowed and hastened to obey.

She was mortified that he could see her bare behind. And then risking a glance over her shoulder, she was even more mortified that he wasn’t even looking at her, but drinking his beer and gazing at the early evening horizon.

*

The sun was low in a fiery sky as Kathy pulled off the road and onto the drive. The white-washed house and picket fences were all bathed in a warm orange glow and draped in long shadows from the trees lining the lane that bordered the property.

As soon as she made the turn she could see Dhenry and Sammie standing on the porch, but it took a moment longer to realise that the latter was facing the wall by the swing seat next to the door. The rail obscured everything below the girl’s waist, but as Kathy stepped from the car she spied that Sammie’s denims and panties were bunched at her ankles and the girl was definitely doing corner time.

Her predicament wouldn’t be obvious from the road but she doubted that Sammie realised that or that it would be much comfort if she had.

“I thought…” Kathy murmured; she could see now that as yet Sammie had been left unspanked.

“It seems our little thief wanted to stall some, so I gave her some time to think about it,” Dhenry explained and took another swig of beer. The chill had left it, but he had tried to string it out nonetheless so as to have only the one before did what he had to do.

“Oh Dhenry, she’s not exactly a thief. I am sure she intended to return…” Kathy protested.

“Oh is that a fact?” Dhenry said sharply, “That’s not what you said when I arrested the Bormann girl last summer. She only boosted a book on witchcraft on account of her father being the preacher.”

“Yes well…” Kathy blushed.

She remembered that the girl’s father had whaled Jenny Bormann’s behind at the family barbecue and she hadn’t showed for work for three days afterwards. It had been the talk of the town.

Her father had promised her another good spanking if the judge stopped at a fine and she didn’t have to do any jail time. Jail time for a library book, Kathy sometimes wondered what went through these folk’s minds. Neither had been necessary as far as the court was concerned, but Kathy doubted that Jenny had sat down for a month afterwards.

Dhenry had later showed his own displeasure at his wife’s lack of perspective. It had helped with the guilt somewhat and she could see now why he was angry at her reticence at his stance on Sammie.

“You think what she did was acceptable?” Dhenry continued.

“No,” Kathy sighed, “You’re right I suppose, just let’s not say thief alright?”

“But you agree she has a good spanking coming?” he pressed his wife.

Kathy looked at Sammie who shifted uncomfortably where she stood. Even from behind it was obvious she was blushing to her ears.

Time stood on end for the cornered girl as she waited for Kathy’s verdict.

“Yes,” Kathy agreed, “I am pretty mad about it actually, but I guess you’re mad enough for the both of us.”

Dhenry nodded, somewhat placated.

“What do you say to that Sammie?” he asked his young cousin.

“Ooh… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” she whined.

“You saying you don’t have a spanking coming?” Dhenry growled.

“No Sir I…”

“Turn around then,” Dhenry barked.

A shamefaced Sammie reluctantly shuffled around to face them with her head dipped and her teeth worrying her lower lip. As she did so her hands moved to cover front.

“I ought to take my belt to you or a switch,” Dhenry said softly, “But I doubt you ever had anything like you’re about to get judging from your mother’s previous efforts, so I’ll settle for the small paddle this time.”

Sammie lifted her head momentarily affronted by the aspersions cast upon her mom’s spanking abilities, but one look at Dhenry’s face sent her chin south again and she decided it might be better to reserve judgement.

It hadn’t escaped her notice that Dhenry had already acquired the paddle and she wasn’t so sure it was all that small.

“Any final words?” Dhenry asked; he included Kathy with his eyes.

“No Sir,” Sammie’s voice was on the very edge of panic.

Kathy shook her head. It was going to be strange seeing Dhenry spank another girl.

Dhenry took her by the arm and guided Sammie’s shuffling steps towards him and tumbled her gently over his lap. For Sammie this was novel, never having been spanked by a man before. His thighs were firmer than Mom’s, and where with her mother she had put up token resistance for form’s sake, here she was truly helpless and exposed across the sheriff’s knee.

The blood pumped to Sammie’s head with the increased embarrassment and pinned down as she was, she felt both lost and secure at the same time.

“So you’re interested in spanking are you, well here is a first-hand insight for you,” Dhenry growled.

At the reminder of what she had done Sammie felt vaguely sick and for a moment and for the first time in her life, it crossed her mind that she might actually deserve this.

Dhenry gave her no time to dwell on this epiphany and brought down the short hard leather paddle with a firm crack that arrested Sammie’s train of thought. Even then it took a moment for the shock to transform into a sting that pricked her behind the eyes.

The second swat built on the first and then as another blasted down as the sting mounted to an out and blaze that extracted a decided wail from the helpless Sammie.

“Omigodfuckbejeezus,” she shrieked.

“Yeah, he tends to have that effect on me too,” Kathy said ruefully as she watched Sammie’s firm young bottom cheeks go from a sharp pink to an ever deeper red.

The swats came in a regular beat now so that Sammie tried to kick back with her constrained legs and bucked up and down across Dhenry’s lap.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, please,” Sammie shrieked in a rising crescendo.

The sting had become a real fire now and Sammie thought of skinned knees as child, only this was on her bottom. The tears overtook her suddenly and came as great chuckling sobs that rattled in her throat.

Kathy shifted against the rail and clutched at her throat. Her confused mind thrilled with concern but also she was aware of where her thighs met as she always was when a spanking arose. Despite Sammie’s distress Kathy’s eyes took in the tight domes of the girl’s bottom with the two scarlet welted pads that crowned them and wondered if her bottom ever looked like that. But she knew that it did, she had many times felt for herself the hard shocked pads of flesh that sang for shame in her tail.

The spanking lasted for a good while as Kathy knew it would and Dhenry did not let up until sometime after Sammie had begun protesting her sincere regrets.

“Now young lady are we done here?” Dhenry said after a pause.

“Yes Sir,” Sammie said frantically.

“So you’re not going to take any more books without checking them out?”

“No Sir,” she sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Good girl, now you can go back to the corner… the one in the house now I think,” Dhenry quickly amended as he glanced around at the gathering gloom, “You can stay there and think about what you did until I tell you to come out.”

“Yes Sir,” Sammie agreed eagerly, realising the spanking was over.

It briefly occurred to her that sometimes with Mom she had tried to resent being spanked, but today for the first time she knew it was an unworthy thought. In fact far from resentment, she actually felt cleansed and when Dhenry had said ‘good girl’ she also felt forgiven.

“Come on, I’ll show you the corner,” Kathy said gently as she took Sammie by the arm and led her shuffling into the house. Then she added ruefully, “I know it well.”

“I’m sorry Kathy, I’m sorry,” Sammie said, continuing to sob.

“I know, I know,” Kathy shushed her.

*

Sammie sat uneasily for the next few days, which was about as long as it took for her to look either of them in the eye.

“I feel such a screw up,” she finally plucked up the courage to say to Kathy. “I am really sorry I boosted that book. But I promise I would have brought it back.”

“I know kiddo, I get it. I would never have had the courage to check that book out, not at your age anyway. If Dhenry hadn’t have been there I am not sure I would have told him,” Kathy reassured her.

“I… I kind of hope you would have done, I mean… he was right to be mad at me,” Sammie said shyly.

Kathy pulled her mouth into a sympathetic line that might have passed for a smile.

“Well it’s over with now,” she shrugged.

“Yeah, you know, that’s what I like about this small town way of dealing with things. I had to go through months of ass-pain with the suits back in LA before I could even get it over with. I realise now what I put Mom through. That’s why I am glad Dhenry found out. I mean, I think I would have had it on my conscience and so would you maybe. You know, like Mom sort of, you would have had to be in it with me.”

It was the most introspection Kathy had heard coming out of Sammie’s mouth, but then a spanking often did that for a girl.

“So, did you make any great discoveries about spanking in that book?” Kathy asked to change the subject.

Sammie blushed and gave a shrug.

“I don’t really get where the punishment thing and the fun parts meet. Or don’t,” she said, averting her eyes again. “I mean I kind of get that seeing someone spanked is fun. You know I spied on you… well that was neat now that I think about it. But it was just a thing, you know. I think what Dhenry did will stay with me forever, like, you know, it means something.”

“It’s a really big deal when you know you are going to get it, isn’t it?” Kathy prompted her.

“Yeah,” Sammie said eagerly, “It’s like you matter, you know, like what you do matters, even if it is a screw up.”

“At the time it’s a sensory overload that you need more than want, even when you hate it,” Kathy suggested in a half-mumble. “But afterwards you feel…”

“All clean and forgiven,” Sammie gushed in agreement.

Kathy nodded.

“The book said something about the most erotic spankings being associated with punishment,” Sammie said with a frown, “I kind of get that now.”

“You mean you found being spanked erotic,” Kathy gaped at her.

“Noo… not exactly, but the intensity afterwards… a long, long time afterwards,” Sammie said ruefully, rubbing her bottom, “Well I kind of get it, you know. It’s crazy isn’t it?”

“I never thought about it so much, let alone talked about it,” Kathy admitted, “It’s just something that Dhenry and I do. It’s how he takes care of me. Well one of them.”

“But isn’t kissing and making-up afterwards more fun if you have been… you know?” Sammie wanted to know.

Kathy blushed, “I think that is quite enough about that,” she said tartly.

Sammie giggled and joined her in blushing.

Kathy moved towards the car to get to work but as she reached the top step she turned and said, “Oh… maybe… maybe I could borrow that book before you take it back?”

Sammie grinned and said, “Sure.”

*

It was a week later and Dhenry stood on his usual spot on the porch drinking a beer when Kathy’s car made the turn at the end of the drive. He could tell at once that there was something wrong. The engine noise was off and as it drew near he could see off-side fender and headlamp were a mess.

“You okay honey,” he called over, concern carved into his face.

Sammie jumped up from the swing seat and ran over for a closer look.

“Man, what happened?” she gasped.

Kathy sat grimly behind the wheel and chewed at her lower lip.

“Kathy?” Dhenry put down his beer and crossed the yard with heightened concern.

“I’m okay,” Kathy said, opening the door. “It’s just the car.”

“I can see that, what happened?” Dhenry sighed. “You know we only had it fixed three months back.”

“I know, I know,” Kathy said irritably.

Dhenry bent his head to kiss her when he smelt the mints on her breath.

“Someone’s birthday?” he threw the curveball.

“Elaine’s having a kid,” Sammie said without thinking, “Why…? How did you…?”

“You stopped off at the Dewdrop for a beer.” It wasn’t a question. Then seeing that she blanched, he added, “Two or three maybe?”

“Two,” Kathy whispered.

“Is that when you hit something?”

“Atkinson’s car,” It was terse statement of fact. “Hell the old man wasn’t…”

“Wasn’t what, drinking?”

“He was just going in for one,” Kathy mumbled.

“Did Helen or Bart or anyone deal with it at the scene?” Dhenry asked in a professional voice.

“I wasn’t drunk, Helen agreed. Old man Atkinson was fine about it, he said…” Kathy’s voice tailed off; Dhenry was giving her the look.

“One beer might have been fine, if you hadn’t of been sucking mints, which is a kind of lie,” Dhenry growled, “But two, if it was only two, and wrecking the car…”

“I didn’t wreck it, it’s…”

Dhenry silenced her with a scowl.

“I’m in trouble aren’t I?” Kathy winced.

“Big trouble little lady,” he growled.

“Ouch,” Kathy squeaked and pulled a rue-filled face.

“I wait until I am home before I have a drink,” he said sharply.

“Yes Sir,” she conceded with a blush.

She was well aware Sammie was just there within earshot and shifted uneasily.

Sammie smirked on hearing Kathy use the s-word and with a snigger she moved quietly away to a safe distance lest she be completely dismissed.

“You know how I had Sammie the other day,” Dhenry said icily.

Kathy gaped.

“Not out here… someone…”

“You remember last time when I sent you off to the woods for a switch all naked below the waist?”

“I had more than two that time,” Kathy wailed.

“That’s why I am letting you off easily,” he scolded, “If you mind me now that is.”

He pointed at the porch without taking his eyes off her.

“Ooh,” Kathy stamped her foot offered him a lemon-sucking face, but marched off obediently nonetheless.

Once on the porch she shiftily looked all around, especially towards the road, before working the zipper on her skirt and stepping out of it. Then with one more angry and defiant look, she shucked down her panties and turned to face the wall. There were no neighbours to see and the view from the road was obscured, so unless anyone came right up to the house it was private enough from outsiders. Kathy darted a sideways look at Sammie sitting nearby. Still she felt embarrassingly exposed.

Sammie swallowed a smile and drew her legs up into a hug as she sat on the swing seat just a few feet away.

“Having fun,” Kathy hissed at the girl without turning her head from the wall.

“Oh, the most,” Sammie giggled.

*

Dhenry let his wife stew for a good while until he had finished his slow beer. The fact that Sammie was drinking it all in would serve as an added lesson to Kathy. She knew better than to drink and drive, for safety’s sake at the very least. Never mind how it looked to the town that the Sherriff’s wife and head librarian was so feckless.

He glanced at Kathy who stood nervously swaying with her nose pressed to the white-washed wall and let his eye wander down the elegant curve of her tightly split behind. Something twitched in his pants and he had to shake himself for focus.

“All right honey let’s get this over with,” he drawled, seeing her start.

Dhenry eyed Sammie and gave her warning look, which caused his cousin to blush. But then she garnered his meaning and leapt out of the swing seat to retreat down the porch some.

The broad-shouldered ‘cowboy’ cop dropped into her vacated place and drew his wife to him as he did so.

“Now, are you going to tell me you don’t have this coming?” Dhenry said in a low voice as he smoothed Kathy’s bare bottom with his hand.

“No Sir,” Kathy lisped; her eyes wide and blinking rapidly.

Dhenry reached down for the medium wooden paddle that he had earlier put under the seat and placed it next to him. Kathy tried to look back over her shoulder at the sound of wood scraping on wood and gulped.

But for now her husband had other plans. Before she knew what was happening, his great open paw swatted down like an angry bear and she gaped like hunted fish with the impact.

“Just a little hand spanking to set the tone,” he growled.

Kathy had no breath for protests and squirmed under the rapid volley that followed.

Then she found her voice, “Oh, ahh, Dhenry, please…”

At the other end of the porch Sammie pressed both knuckles to her mouth as she watched Kathy’s bottom quickly turn deep red.

“Hush baby, you know you got this coming,” he said sharply.

Kathy bucked as she crossed and re-crossed her ankles under the onslaught, but Dhenry took his time and the hand-spanking lasted a good 15 minutes before he was done.

When it was over a moist-eyed Kathy lay panting across his lap, all fight gone from her body.

“Now you know we aren’t done, don’t you honey?” Dhenry murmured and picked up the paddle.

Kathy didn’t reply, at least it wasn’t the heavy paddle or something worse, she thought as she braced herself. He could so easily have made a sharper point given what she had done.

The paddle was some 16 inches long and fitted easily in Dhenry’s hand. It wasn’t too thick, but had finger-sized holes drilled in the striking surface like her old sorority bat.

“I don’t think you’ll be sitting for a spell by the time I am done,” he said sternly.

Nor do I, thought a rueful Kathy.

This time the bear had claws and the paddle swat had real bite.

Kathy met the challenge with a jaw-clenching grimace. Her red bottom was suddenly invaded by a shocked white rectangle with angry puce holes. But it didn’t stay white for long and the oblong rapidly filled with yet more red.

The second swat, not quite matching the first, welted along one edge and Kathy gave an angry wail. From then on at one swat every few seconds she had to contend with a growing fire that soon had tears spilling form her eyes.

This spanking was shorter than the first, but throughout Kathy bucked and squirmed on Dhenry’s lap until finally she broke down sobbing.

Dhenry shot a glance at the still enthralled Sammie and jerked his head towards the door. Sammie took the hint and crept away.

“Oh baby, I’m sorry,” Kathy sobbed as she crawled up into his arms.

Dhenry kissed her forehead and then rocked her gently to let her cry herself out. As she wept he traced the extensive welting on her bottom with his fingers, drawing hisses and sighs from her as he did so. She was one well-spanked girl, he decided.

Nevertheless, he was still mad with Kathy and all further reconciliation had to wait until they were both safely in bed. As was brought home to her when she tried to suggest she escape to the kitchen.

“Shall I make supper,” she ventured once she had stopped crying.

“Oh no my pretty one, you can go into the house and find your usual corner just as you are. You don’t get off that easily,” Dhenry rumbled like a bear.

Kathy gaped at him, “But Sammie…”

“I really don’t care,” Dhenry intoned, folding his arms against further discussion.

As Kathy took her place inside for a long stint of corner time, Sammie offered to make some food, but Dhenry wouldn’t hear of it.

“I don’t see why you should be put out just because Kathy got herself a spanking. I’ll order pizza,” he said.

“Ooh,” Kathy wailed from the corner.

She bobbed up and down at the knees in frustration until Sammie thought she might burst.

“You know the rules my love,” Dhenry scolded.

“But…”

“We won’t let the pizza boy see, not if you’re a good girl,” he said with a wicked smile.

Sammie giggled at the idea of Kathy being so exposed.

“Can’t I at least move over to the other corner?” Kathy pleaded.

Dhenry appeared to consider this and Kathy stole a hopeful glance at him over her shoulder while he pondered.

“No,” he said at last, “I don’t think so.”

“Oooh,” Kathy wailed again in frustration. Something told her it was going to be a long night.

*

“So now you know,” Kathy said sheepishly as she took the last item out of the back of the wardrobe.

Sammie stood bug-eyed at the array of paddles, straps and canes laid out on the bed.

Kathy sat carefully on the bed to ready herself for deluge of questions, her bottom flaring a little after her encounter of a few days before.

“There are quite a lot of… has he… have you… felt all of these?” Sammie asked in an incredulous voice.

“Most,” Kathy answered tentatively, “The cane is… a challenge and I have never felt the big one. It’s English I think. Dhenry prefers a good old American switch.”

“What about this one?” Sammie gasped as she seized a large thin-bladed paddle.

“Uh-huh,” Kathy answered in the affirmative. “It stings more than bruises. My old sorority paddle is much worse.”

She pointed at a slightly larger version of the one Dhenry had used on her three days before.

“I felt that a few times at college, my sorority took discipline seriously back then.”

“Back then? You make sound like the Stone Age, you were only there what? Eight years ago,” Sammie pointed out.

“Oh, don’t remind me,” Kathy winced as reached back to her behind. “It bruises like the devil.”

“Speaking of which, how is your…?” Sammie murmured.

“Still blistered and bruised thank you very much,” Kathy said crisply, “Well still sore anyway.”

“Do you always have to stand in the corner like that? I mean for so long?” Sammie’s brow furrowed with something like concern.

“More or less,” Kathy admitted with a blush.

“With your eh… bottom left bare like that?”

“Uh-huh,” Kathy winced.

“When that pizza boy came I thought you were going to die,” Sammie gasped, reliving her disbelief.

“He didn’t see did he?” Kathy asked in a panicked voice.

“No, no Dhenry was careful,” Sammie reassured her.

“Not that Dhenry hasn’t threatened,” Kathy sighed with relief, “And drink driving is something that might earn it.”

“Then I for one am going to stick to Coke,” Sammie rolled her eyes.

Kathy laughed.

“Hey, let’s see that book,” she said suddenly, “I showed you mine after all.”

Excitedly both women scrambled for the book on the chair and began giggling over its contents.

*

It had threatened to rain all day and then with just hours to go until sunset the sky had cleared to bathe Main Street in a warm orange light.

“Typical,” Sammie’s boss said as he left, “Still maybe I can get out into the yard for a spell. Need a ride home?”

“No thanks,” Sammie smiled, “Kathy is picking me up in a minute.”

As she spoke Kathy pulled around the corner and slowed to a stop.

“Well okay,” he said with a cheery wave.

“Hi Sammie,” Kathy smiled at her from the car. “You don’t mind if we call in at the Sherriff’s Office first, I have to drop something off for Dhenry.”

“Hey, a real life cop-shop, I haven’t been there yet, it might be cool,” Sammie replied as she dropped in beside Kathy.

“If you say so,” Kathy snorted, “We won’t be a minute.”

Sammie picked up a sack of books off the back seat and began to turn over the covers one by one.

“Nothing about your current obsession there, sorry,” Kathy said with a wink.

Sammie blushed. It had been two weeks since the spanking incident and with Kathy’s collusion, she had checked out the library for any other books to clue her in about spanking and domestic punishment. There hadn’t been a great deal. The Story of O was too hands off for Sammie’s tastes and the Marquis De Sade was too much and rather gross in places.

Kathy had pointed her in the direction of the used paperbacks that were for sale at 50 cents each. There had been a couple of Danielle Steels that were better than nothing and some other pre-PC romances. Then Kathy had nudged her towards the sci-fi section and to some authors such as John Norman and Sharon Green.

The books were all very dog-eared with lurid drawings of scantily clad women on the covers. Both authors had been very coy about actual spanking scenes, but the scenarios were more to her taste than O.

Sammie might have plucked up some courage and asked for some more tips but the car pulled up outside the station house, a small modern building behind Main Street. There was only one police vehicle in the parking lot and it looked as if it was primarily for off-road pursuit or major emergencies.

“Coming?” Kathy asked as she got out.

Sammie shrugged and reluctantly followed. Now that she was here the police HQ brought back some unpleasant memories for her. But Kathy seemed right at home and just pushed on through the large glass doors in front.

Jolene Bates was the only staffer in the building as they entered and she was on the phone.

“Just wait in there,” she mouthed with a nod towards Dhenry’s office.

Kathy nodded and smiled.

“Pretty small,” Sammie sniffed.

“Like I said before, there are only four deputies stationed here. The State troopers take care of the highway and we don’t get much trouble in town,” Kathy explained.

Sammie ran her finger along the shelves and looked about at crime posters and one that said in big letters; “Get Your License.”

Then she saw some files on the desk with names of people here in town that she recognised.

“Hey look at these,” she exclaimed.

“Oh I don’t think you should…” Kathy began but then her eye fell upon an entry, “Oh my God, she never did… I can’t believe it.”

“What?” Sammie said excitedly, “Oh shit, that’s the preacher’s wife.”

Both women clapped their hands to their mouths and squealed in disbelief.

“What else does it say?” Sammie said eagerly.

Kathy picked up another file and began flicking through some pages.

“Tom Willover hasn’t paid his fire arms licence… oh and,” she snorted disapprovingly.

“No about the preacher’s wife,” Sammie said eagerly.

Just then they heard Dhenry’s voice out front and Kathy snapped the files closed.

“Leave them,” she hissed.

Sammie realised that the files were confidential but she wanted to know more about the preacher’s wife. So once Kathy had left the room, Sammie snatched up the file and began to nose through it.

The voices in the outer room sounded far away so Sammie just skipped to the page on the preacher and his family.

“What in hell do you think you are doing?”

Sammie whirled around with a start to be confronted by an angry Dhenry in the doorway.

“I was just…” Sammie blanched.

“Don’t you know they are not for your eyes?” his anger was contained but more than a little apparent.

“I guess,” Sammie squeaked.

“I ought to run your ass into jail,” he barked.

Sammie felt sick. This was LA all over again. Her mother was going to kill her.

“Wait until I get you home.” Dhenry’s voice had an undertone of menace.

“Yes Sir,” Sammie squeaked as she shot a glance at the cells at the back of the office.

But Dhenry took her by the arm and led her firmly from the building with a flustered Kathy in tow.

*

Sammie knew she was going to get a spanking. Or hoped she was in as much as it was a preferable alternative to being packed off back to LA. Not that either choice filled her with much joy as she gulped back bucketful’s of apprehension.

Neither did she glean much comfort from the setting of her dressing down. The porch was too near the road out of town for her liking and as a location for another spanking it positively sucked.

“What in the Devil’s name do you think you were doing?” Dhenry said in a hard-edged voice she could imagine he usually reserved for suspects.

“I was just curious,” Sammie offered weakly, it was lame and she knew it.

“Yeah, I am getting that, like you were just curious before when you stole that book,” Dhenry said dryly.

“You’re not going to send me back to LA are you?” she was close to tears.

“Oh, I’ll give you something to cry about,” he barked, but added in a sigh, “No I am not sending you home.”

“Dhenry…” Kathy interrupted.

“You know she’s has this coming,” he said impatiently.

“Well yes but…”

“There are no buts about this. This one could cost me my job,” Dhenry had never sounded so disappointed.

Tears really did pool at Sammie’s eyes at the words.

“Dhenry, please it’s not that bad, Jolene won’t say anything, but listen…” Kathy sounded as if she was reasoning with a bear.

“Kathy I know you think I am too hard on the girl, but that is hardly the point,” he said wearily.

“I know but it wasn’t her fault,” Kathy let the words out slowly.

Dhenry whirled on her to refute her claim but something in her eyes told him he was missing something.

“I… I kind of looked too, Sammie was just…” Kathy leaked the words to Dhenry like water to a dying man in a desert.

Sammie felt sick, like the time she had frozen back in LA instead of calling the cops. It couldn’t happen again. If only she had listened to Kathy when she said to drop it? But she just had to know, hadn’t she?

“She said not to, I was just curious,” Sammie blurted.

“Was that before or after Kathy looked too?” Dhenry said in a low voice, not taking his eyes from his wife.

Kathy sucked in her cheeks and coloured so that the truth was written on her face.

“It was my fault, you caught me,” Sammie said in a pleading voice.

“I caught you, but not her, is that it?” Dhenry sighed, his eyes still fixed on his wife who would not meet his eyes.

Kathy nodded.

Sammie winced. The gig was up and nothing could save either of them now.

“It was my fault,” Kathy said dejectedly, “I set her a bad example.”

“So it would seem,” Dhenry groaned. “Well you can both forget what you read. If one word of it leaks out I’ll know who to blame. I’ll take the skin of both your ‘hinies and neither of you will sit down for a month.

“Yes Sir,” they both chirruped in unison.

“Now guess what comes next?” Dhenry drawled.

“Where do you want us?” Kathy said glumly.

“I want you both out there in the woods cutting switches,” Dhenry told them.

Kathy didn’t look surprised and Sammie just looked at her shoes.

“Before you do that, you can both leave your denims and panties on the rail here,” Dhenry said wearily.

Kathy nodded, but Sammie gaped.

“The woods over there by the public highway?” she wailed, not quite believing it.

Kathy pursed her lips and nodded on Dhenry’s behalf.

“And when you get back you can both face the wall out here until I am ready for you,” he added.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy said in a tight voice.

“Ooh, this is…” Sammie moaned.

“Deserved,” Kathy finished for her.

“I guess,” Sammie said ruefully, adding in a put out voice, “But LA was never like this, let me tell you.”

“I bet it’s not,” Kathy said grimly as she began to shuck down her denims.

*

Sammie and Kathy didn’t have long to wait. Once they were denuded below the waist Dhenry handed a pair of clippers to his wife and told her what he expected.

“We can’t just go and… not like this,” Sammie wailed as she stood at a crouch tugging her sweater down in front.

Kathy was less coy, but it wasn’t her husband seeing her that concerned her. She looked at Dhenry’s impassive face and then at the woods on the other side of the main road. As she watched a car went by at a lick, although with no sign that the driver even saw them. But still it was barely 80 yards off and they had to cross the road.

“Come on, let’s be quick about it before another car comes by,” Kathy said in a determined voice.

Right on cue another vehicle came by, this time slower so that the driver might have seen had he glanced in their direction.

“Don’t go far,” Dhenry warned.

Kathy steeled herself and then keeping the shrubs on their drive hard to her left she made for the road. Sammie chose to back away until Dhenry turned away to grab a beer and then she scurried after Kathy mooning the house in the rays of dying sun.

One more car sped by before they hit the road and Sammie could see a sullen-faced kid looking their way in back. But he showed no sign of noticing their lack of lower attire and in any case the car was gone in a moment.

“Come on,” Kathy yelled in an excited voice, “Before another comes.”

Then like two college girls skinny dipping they shrieked in a parody of joy and scurried across the road to the relative safety of the trees on the other side.

“Maybe it will be dark by the time we have to cross back,” Sammie said hopefully as she struggled for breath.

“Dhenry will want us back long before then and I really don’t want to make him any madder than he already is,” Kathy said glumly.

“This is crazy, what if someone sees us,” Sammie said excitedly, “I bet no one else ever had to this.”

“I have never been caught, not since I was your age anyway” Kathy replied, but she was smirking, “But last summer Dhenry and I were out walking around here and we saw your friend Josephine out here in much the same state as we are now and I am pretty sure she was collecting a switch.”

Despite their predicament Sammie smiled.

“She ducked away before we had a good look, but it was her right enough. I can’t think of any other reason she would be out here mooning the world.”

“A local custom then?” Sammie replied, feeling a little better.

“It was certainly how I was brought up, well once I reached senior high and beyond anyway. Nothing like it for putting a college-aged girl in her place,” Kathy said ruefully. “Also I am pretty sure I am not the only spanked wife around here, although I am not sure how many go bare-assed into the words to cut switches.”

“If my friends back in LA could see me know I would die,” Sammie grimaced.

“Screw your friends in LA, what about that little madam Rosemary?” Kathy pulled a face.

“Oh don’t,” Sammie groaned.

“Come on, here’s the right sort of tree here,” Kathy sighed; she should know she had been cutting switches like this for half her life.

Getting back across the road was another trial and at least 10 cars went by before Kathy urged them to run.

Sammie was still puzzling as to why they needed three switches each when Kathy broke ahead, her white bottom bobbing in the growing reddish the last of the evening light like a foretaste of what was to come.

The sound of another car was the only spur she needed to catch-up and by the time she breathlessly reached the porch she had never been so glad to be home.

Home? She mused. I am about to get my behind whipped and I think of this as home now.

“Right you two,” Dhenry broke into her reverie, “Get your tails up here and face this wall.”

God, I hope we don’t get visitors, Sammie groaned inwardly as she put her bare bottom next to Kathy’s so that it faced outwards towards the drive.

*

Kathy had no idea how long they had stood there. At some point the porch lights had come on, which banished the shadows and made her feel even more exposed. The only sound apart from the occasional passing car and creak of floors as Sammie shifted a little where she stood was when Dhenry stood up to open another bottle of beer.

That was always the worst moment as Kathy was sure it was about to begin, but then she heard the click of a bottle top and the heightened tension was dashed.

So when Dhenry finally spoke it was a shock.

“I’ve selected the best switch for each of you, come and take one and return to the wall with it held under your bare bottoms,” he said sharply.

Kathy’s heart lurched, but again the imminent threat receded. She knew this stance and it was usually one that Dhenry employed at the outset of corner time before a switching. So God alone knew how long this was going to take, she groaned inwardly.

Both of them dutifully turned and grabbed a switch from the rail. Kathy swallowed and immediately turned back with the switch pressed exactly to the under curves of her bottom.

For Sammie it was harder and she didn’t know the drill. So watching Kathy with wide eyes she blushed at the intimate gesture before copying it.

“Feel that,” he said once they had both obeyed him.

“Yes Sir,” Kathy said in a thick voice; echoed by Sammie a beat behind.

“Feel where it caresses your bare behinds and imagine what it will feel like with some force behind it,” he rasped.

Sammie gulped and a pulse in her head began to beat.

Kathy wondered how long he was going to draw it out.

“Have you any idea how damaging to everyone concerned your actions might have been?” Dhenry growled.

“Yes Sir,” they both breathed in unison, as if a louder voice would shatter the world.

“Do you?” Dhenry raised his voice so that they both started.

“I’m sorry,” Kathy wailed, “We’re both sorry.”

Sammie nodded frantically, desperately fixing her eyes on a spot on the wall as if to break her gaze with the one she had chosen was to die.

“Let us see how sorry,” Dhenry sighed. “Sammie turn around and bend over the rail.”

Sammie moved hesitantly, but the exposure of her front side encouraged her to obey quickly. As she did so Dhenry took the switch and then waited until Sammie got into position with her bare bottom jutting out towards him.

At that moment another car went by and Sammie wondered if anyone could see her and her shame, just as the preacher’s secrets were exposed by her snooping. In that moment it seemed only fair somehow.

“Bottom back a little more,” Dhenry instructed.

The indignity irked her as much as anything, but Sammie had no option but to obey. Then she again felt the switch as Dhenry tapped her bottom with it to line up for a stroke.

The sound began as a whisper and long way off, followed by zip that landed across both cheeks of her tail at once. For the longest moment Sammie could barely connect the sound with the sudden needle thin line of pain she felt in her bottom. Then the connection filled her mind and she grunted with surprise.

She tumbled forward but her fall was arrested by the rail that pressed to her lower belly and she bounced back in time to meet the next stroke.

The whisk-whip of the switch came thin and fast then and as the pain grew exponentially she went form a wail to a series of shouted yelps.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she strained to scream.

Forever after she would look fondly on a mere spanking.

As the switching progressed Sammie dipped at the knees as she bobbed and bounced at the rail in time to the slices of pain handed out by Dhenry.

Kathy had not seen a switching close up for years and with Dhenry focused on Sammie she risked a peek over her shoulder at Sammie’s punishment.

The girl’s bottom looked huge as it was displayed; two red rounds lined with purple scores that raked her bottom in ever greater rills. Each mark would be hell to touch for days to come and the thought of panties against them was just a hint of the terror that sitting down would promise for a week or more. Kathy knew this from long bitter experience.

“I’ll be good, I’ll be good,” Sammie wailed, “Please, oh please, I’ll never be bad again.”

Cured then, Kathy thought ruefully, just like I will be for about a month. Then I’ll forget. I always forget and Dhenry will remind me.

Sammie was a sobbing wreck by the time Dhenry let her stand to face the wall again. Now it’s my turn, Kathy quailed.

The cold wood of the rail came lower down atop of Kathy’s thighs compared to Sammie. This gave her a greater sense that she might fall over forward. But the Dhenry had her edge backwards and push her bottom out behind so that she was fully exposed and had a good purchase on the porch crosspiece.

“I am so mad with you,” Dhenry whispered.

“I know,” Kathy said the tears welling, “I’m so sorry honey.”

Then she had to brace herself with a teeth-creaking grimace as the switch burned a track across her flesh. As ever, the pain went from bad to impossible within five or six swipes and Kathy quickly went form rapid breathing to a continuous wail.

“Oh shit, shit, shit… aieee,” she screamed through her teeth.

No doubt her banshee wail could have been heard from town.

*

I don’t suppose either of you wants to sit down,” Dhenry said mischievously.

“No Sir,” they both said quickly.

“Then you had better stay in your respective corners while I order some pizza,” he chuckled.

Kathy was grateful to be cornered inside and was under no illusions that she would escape before bed time. And although Sammie was still gently crying, Kathy could tell from Dhenry’s tone that they had both been forgiven.

Pizza did sound like a threat though and given the serious of her crime, it was not above Dhenry to invite the boy in when he came while he pretended to search for some money. Not that it had happened since she had been in college, but still… she just melted to a blush just considering it.

“You okay kid?” Kathy whispered to Sammie.

She hadn’t stopped crying and it had been a hard gig.

“Yes ma’am,” Sammie said sorrowfully.

“I think ma’aming me now is kind of redundant,” Kathy laughed.

Sammie glanced over and saw just how welted Kathy’s bottom was. It looked as sore as Sammie’s felt.

“I guess so,” Sammie smiled through her tears. “But I feel so sorry right now that I’ll be all Sir and ma’am for a month I wouldn’t wonder.”

“Oh yes,” Kathy said in a clipped voice, “I know exactly how you feel.”

“If you two don’t stop yattering I have a paddle with both your names on,” Dhenry growled a warning.

“Yes Sir,” they both squeaked.

As Sammie got her bearings and began to mind being in the corner she started to look forward to bed and a cold flannel where it would do the most good. She might even re-read the Warrior Within, I might as well use my experience creatively, she decided.

Meanwhile Kathy contemplated other diversions, albeit ones that could only be enjoyed face down on her knees and only then very carefully. But then making up was the best part of a marriage like hers.

The doorbell startled them both and promised just one more sting in the tail.

Please, please, please don’t let him come in both Kathy and Sammie prayed together. I have seen enough of this lifestyle for one day, the younger of the two thought ruefully. One more witness was now surplus to requirements.

The End

The clock was ticking like the counterweight would break free of its housing and spill onto the floor. It was getting on her nerves at any rate. Then every 15 minutes it made another racket with bells and chimes all screaming at her that the appointed time was getting nearer.

All the while the sun which had started the day so nicely, with soft yellow light in a window-shaped puddle on the floor, had grown. It had turned an angry red as the afternoon progressed and was now even visible below the top of the glass as a great red fearsome eye accusing her of her sins.

In the hours that had passed the toilet down the hall had been graced by her presence far too often and not just for the usual. Twice she had been almost sick, the butterflies clawing at her tummy.

I am too old for this, she asserted impotently to herself, I am over 30 now and when he gets home I’ll tell him. That’s it, she decided.

She swallowed the lie and sat heavily on the settee while she still could.

She longed for his arms and folded her own around herself like a safety blanket and rocked back and forth for the scant comfort.

Why don’t I learn? Why didn’t I…? On and on around her head she cursed her folly. If only I could have one more chance…

“I won’t do it again Daddy,” she rehearsed over in her mind.

Daddy? Why did she call him that? He wasn’t her father. Who called their husbands daddy?

The thought was unworthy and she felt sick again. It was like a denial of Christ, she chided herself. Just because it was their secret didn’t mean… She didn’t know and rocked back and forth on the settee to think of a way out of it.

What was she afraid of? Didn’t he always take care of things? Hadn’t he always? Well he would fix this alright, the same way as he always did, but that was no comfort now. Her bottom itched as she thought on how he would resolve the matter.

How did she come to let him spank her in the first place? When had it even started?

Let him? She managed a smile. No one let Daddy do anything. He was a force of nature.

That first time, that first day so long ago…

He had been a grown up and had ordered a cognac on their first date. She felt like a waif or numpty girl next to him. She had been so shy.

“You were late,” he had said.

She was always late. All the boys knew that. All the boys waited for her.

“I’m so sorry,” she had stuttered.

Now why had she said that?

“Don’t be late again or I will spank you for it,” he had said sternly and as easily as he had ordered the cognac.

The waiter even heard him, she was sure of it. And the woman at the next table, but she only smiled. Was that envy in her eyes?

She should have slapped his face right then, but instead she shushed him and blushed.

“Don’t think I am joking young lady,” he had said in a cross voice, “I can always spank you here and now, in front of everyone right on your bare bottom.”

She had gaped and then shrunk back into her seat. Why didn’t she leave? She had thought then.

Instead she had blurted, “Not here.”

That day she would have done anything to take that back. It was an admission of surrender. She could have died.

“Alright,” he had conceded somewhat mollified, “There is a bench in the car park behind the restaurant. That will serve until I get you home.”

You cannot die of embarrassment. She knew that for a fact. If it were at all possible she would have died then and there.

The waiter had smirked and several people at tables had abandoned all pretence of not listening and had laughed openly.

Part of her had hoped Daddy had been joking, not that she called him that then. Part of her had prayed that he was not, but that was a mystery to her then. She was so embarrassed.

The cognac finished and the bill paid they had departed as any other couple. Their exit via the car park was not unusual nor was the slow approach to the bench at the far side. But her heart pounded all the way to it.

Sure enough once there he had tumbled her easily over his lap and drawn up her skirts.

“Please,” she had squealed, but even to her own ears it might have been ambiguous.

It had been a warm night and the swish of cool silk on her thighs as he drew down her scanties had been sensuous.

She was bare-bottomed across the knee of man she hardly knew in semi-public. Why hadn’t she protested more?

A glance at the roof garden of the restaurant across the way confirmed that the waiter had heard. He must have been on tip-toes to watch them. Her face had melted.

The spanking had been hard and sharp. She never knew how many car owners had seen and heard her.

“You won’t be late for Daddy again will you?” he had scolded her.

“No Daddy,” she had promised as he stung her bottom.

That had been the first time.

She had broken that promise many times since and he had spanked her every time.

Now what she had done was far worse. She glanced at the clock. He would be here soon.

But she promised, after today, she would never be naughty again. This would be her last spanking.

Our story began here.

The Trouble with Witches
Word that a witch had penetrated the Pandoria Barrier spread through the college like a summer gale. Among the younger students there was a tangible panic and when Amber saw William and four adepts in the Dovecote scouring for malevolent patterns she knew she had to see the Grand Magus as soon as possible to come clean.

How had they known so quickly? She was dumbfounded only a few hours had gone by Meredith and the others were still asleep.

As she left the Dovecote to make her way to the Barbican suspicious eyes turned in her direction and everywhere male apprentices gathered in huddles to whisper at her passing.

“Amber Sage,” an imperious female voice called out her name.

Amber felt a chill at her spine and swallowed down the fear. Then gathering her dignity she stopped and turned to face Maxine Du Jared a small posse of blue and grey clad students who now barred her way.

“What evil is this?” Maxine accused.

“Evil?” Amber blinked back her surprise.

“You reek of it,” Maxine spat.

“What, evil?” the witch said again.

“Wild Magic,” Maxine pronounced the words as if she were holding her nose and holding something nasty between finger and thumb.

“Ah yes, you are skilled maestro. I salute you,” Amber said diplomatically.

“Then you do not deny it,” Maxine said triumphantly.

“I performed a ceremony last night and into this morning,” Amber said with more confidence than she felt. “Matters of great…”

“It was not sanctioned by the Magister. It was a forbidden act,” Maxine snarled.

A group of journeymen of all disciplines were gathering now and Amber took a half-step backwards. It was beginning to feel like a mob.

“I too would know of this ceremony,” a commanding voice cut across the gathering.

All eyes but Maxine’s swept upwards to take in Gort the High Hand standing on the upper level and glaring down.

“And I too,” came a gravel voice filled with supressed rage, “If it pleases you Maestros.”

Dniester was suddenly in the crowd leaning on his Dragon’s Tooth and glaring at the Witch.

“But what are you boys doing here?” he continued, sparing a hard glance at the gathered apprentices. “Cut along to your studies,” he growled.

Despite his deference to her seniority Maxine inclined her head and realised that by not dismissing the students herself, she had breached protocol.

As the men dispersed Gort descend the stairs and came to stand next Maxine so that they appeared as two judges on Doomsday on the half-landing above. Whilst on the floor below with Amber the old wizard completed the tableaux by taking up a stance like a prosecution lawyer.

Amber gulped. She had hoped to have got to the Grand Magus to explain before this confrontation. Now even Dniester was against her.

“Certain matters are coming to ahead. I received word from the mainland that…”

“All messages pertaining to Pandoria come through the college not junior members of the faculty,” Gort barked at her angrily.

“Well patently not and there was no time… she was already on her way… she would have been…” Amber protested anxiously flustered at the unexpected inquisition. This was not going well.

“You spoke of ‘she?’ There is another witch among us?” Maxine said sharply.

“Yes, an associate of Draken…”

Gort seemed to double in size and his eyes glowed malevolently.

“A former associate,” Amber added hastily, “She…”

“You have allowed witches to breach the Pandoria Barrier. You truck with demons, this is beyond an outrage,” Maxine was almost shrill now.

Amber could sense a great gathering of the patterns around her. The air was tangible and seemed to choke her.

“Please, I…” Amber’s eyes watered.

“Maestro, perhaps this matter should be referred to the Grand Magus,” Dniester coughed.

Gort relaxed a little, but the glare never left Maxine’s face.

“I agree,” said another voice behind them.

It was William and his posse, who had finally tracked down their quarry. Between two of the adepts was a rather bedraggled Meredith Greydove.

“The Grand Magus will see this one at once,” William continued.

“So be it,” Gort growled.

Maxine inclined her head in agreement.

Dniester sighed inwardly with relief. The whole episode was fast becoming unseemly and why were two senior mages so keen to keep Amber from the Grand Magus, if that’s was their intent?

Nor did it escape his notice that William had been quick off the mark with some improvised security. He was one of the other mages in college who like Gort and Maxine had Challis connections that had so troubled Davidus.

*

William Tulore stood like a pillar of salt in his white robes and waited for the Grand Magus to admit entrance to his quarters. He was a tall man whose prematurely white hair matched his robe that signified his mastery of the element of air.

Perhaps fearful that his prisoner was too powerful for the assembled mages or perhaps for other reasons, he had not yet dismissed the cadre of adepts that he had gathered for his search. But this seemed to trouble no one but Dniester and Amber Sage who despite her differences with the man had stood as close to the old wizard as she could for some kind of support.

Gort and Maxine stood at the back of this group, strange allies in this mysterious affair. And it struck Amber that even their robes complimented each other’s with his hard mustard juxtaposition to Maxine’s dark blue almost black robes like some great hybrid wasp. The witch had never been so aware that she technically only held the authority of a journeyman here, not even when Dniester had caned her.

The Grand Magus’s doors, so often a venue for polite sympathy and even afternoon tea, now seemed like some sinister entrance to Hades. Amber prayed that she had done the right thing, but even now she could not see how she could have done otherwise.

Before the door opened on her doom the sound of footsteps touched the stone floor beyond the passage and rapidly drew near.

“I sensed a great change in the air,” Fear said in an anxious voice. “It came from below, some kind of Wild Mag…”

He stopped talking as he reached the middle of the assembled company and came to a rest on his staff.

“Meredith Greydove,” he observed, but his eyes shot to Amber. “This has something to do with you?”

Amber had never been so pleased to see anyone in her whole life, but now she saw Fear’s disapproving eyes she could only quail like a former student and bite her nervously.

“Far be it from me to speak out of turn in this august gathering, but can I humbly suggest that we save all questions until we are admitted to see the Grand Magus,” Dniester suggested politely with a curt bow.

Fear swallowed a smile at the idea of his old teacher being humble. Only the old man would stand on the ceremony of being merely an adept. In truth his experience exceed that of those present combined.

As if to confirm the grey wizard’s wisdom the doors slowly opened and in a formal pose Sejanus Jacelon the Scroll Keeper appeared in the ever widening opening.

“The Grand Magus will see you now,” he intoned pompously. Then as one of William’s adepts moved forward he sighed, “Not you lad. You and your companions can wait here until required.”

The adept bowed and at a signal from him the other two men and one woman spread out like a formal palace guard. With them Dniester also fell back.

“Not you, you old fool,” Sejanus said wearily.

Dniester graciously inclined his head, but nonetheless waited until the mages and the two witches had entered before following.

The Grand Magus fixed his guests with hard greys until Amber feared they would all turn to stone.

“I won’t ask you how you come to be here,” he shot a hard stare at Amber, “But I would know your purpose?”

“I found her hiding in the witch’s quarters,” William put in.

“I wasn’t hiding, I was asleep,” Meredith said indignantly.

“Yes, yes,” Davidus said impatiently, “But why are you here?”

Amber held her breath. This had better be good, she thought.

“Demdike Runecaster had a dream,” Meredith said earnestly.

“Oh,” Davidus said, somewhat taken aback and his tone confused. “I am so glad that you could clear it up for us all,” he added sarcastically.

“You don’t understand,” Meredith said impatiently.

“The witches of your coven have mastered understatement then?” Jacelon said dryly.

Amber winced and the Grand Magus looked to heaven for inspiration or at least patience.

There was some shuffling among the gathered mages and Gort began to smirk.

Fear coughed.

“Dr Fear, you have something to add?” the Grand Magus asked, his voice like a sheathed blade.

“Demdike is a seer, her dreams are… important,” Fear said carefully.

“Ah,” Davidus looked on more comfortable ground now. “And you can vouch for this?”

“The matter concerning…” Fear hesitated.

Sejanus leaned forward and whispered something in the Grand Magus’s ear.

“Oh yes, I remember. We will not talk of that. Unless…” he let his words hang on a future promise. Then seeing that no one else was going to speak further he said, “This dream?”

Meredith saw that he was looking at her and she returned an easy smile. But Davidus remained frosty.

“Perhaps you could enlighten us further,” Sejanus suggested.

“Oh,” Meredith started, “You must forgive me, I am still a little tired; the vision yes.”

The Scroll Keeper nodded encouragingly.

“Demdike saw a million wolves all running towards the rising sun and when they came to the sea they swam,” Meredith had closed her eyes and her lips moved as she concentrated.

“Is that it?” Maxine sneered.

“Shush,” Davidus said gently.

“On land where there were not yet wolves the ground writhed with snakes and above them all flew crows,” Meredith continued.

“Then the wolves and the snakes became as men until the last wolf in the west howled.” Meredith opened her eyes and finished, “The three who are one are coming.”

“And is that it?” Maxine gasped in disbelief.

“There will be a pre-emptive strike, probably three at once. Soon, very soon.” Meredith looked at them as if they were all mad.

“We know all this,” Fear said gently, “I don’t…”

“Don’t you understand it is beginning? Now,” Meredith yelled at them.

Dniester frowned and the others in the room looked about them, some with eyes closed.

“Did the witch’s arrival weaken the barrier perhaps?” William ventured.

“Impossible,” Maxine spat.

“It is sound,” Sejanus said thoughtfully.

“The barrier is born of Wild Magic,” Dniester reminded them.

Maxine looked about to deny it, but held her tongue.

“I will consider the matter. For now send word to all leaders who stand against the West and warning them to be vigilant. Especially with regard to traitors and sabotage,” he said decisively. “As for Meredith Greydove… she is our guest, but the manner of her arrival cannot be overlooked. Amber sage you will face a hearing for your part. The witches here who aided you must be punished.”

“The responsibility is mine,” Amber protested.

“Yes,” the Grand Magus agreed, “But unless you want them to risk standing trial with you, they must be dealt with for a major breach of the rules.”

“I did it alone,” Amber said defiantly.

“With Erin Stone and at least two others,” Fear said angrily. “One of those was Tabitha I think. I only need to ask her, so name the fourth freely and save them from further disgrace.”

Everyone looked at him puzzled at his certainty.

“I found the pentangle in the caves, a novice could have followed the patterns,” he sighed.

Davidus frowned. It was a patently ridiculous thing to say. Few of the Magister could have tracked down a Wild Magic trace so quickly and how did he know who was responsible?

Tears pooled at Amber’s eyes and she looked up at the ceiling.

“I will protect them,” Fear promised.

“You’re right, it was Erin and Tabitha and the new girl,” Amber croaked. “Lucy… Lucy Pettigrew.”

“A novice? You were desperate,” Fear said with a sad smile.

“They must be punished,” Maxine sneered.

“I will deal with Tabitha,” Fear’s tone was final.

“Precedent demands…” the Scroll Keeper began.

“Leave the little mischief-makers to me,” Dniester chuckled, “They won’t sit down for a month.”

“Agreed,” Fear said quickly.

“That’s one job settled,” Davidus ruled with a literal rubbing of hands. “Sejanus, make arrangements for a hearing about Amber’s part in the affair.”

Amber knew that Fear and Dniester had acted for the best and had kept her girls out of Maxine’s hands, but it didn’t stop her feeling responsible. Their crime was a technicality surely. And why was Demdike so vague? Where will they attack and how?

“A hearing, is that it?” Meredith gaped, “The demons are coming. The time is nigh.”

Dniester remembered some graffiti he once saw in a brothel in his youth. It ran: “The time is nigh, very demon-fornicating nigh.”

That he should remember it now was very prophetic perhaps.

“Nigh?” Maxine snorted and waved at the air to indicate the lack of evidence.

“Now,” Meredith whispered, “Today.”

To be continued.

I received a decent email from Paul D last week who offered his own review of some of my recent publications. It is nice to be appreciated, especially when someone parts with some money.

Hot on the heels of this mail, came a very nice review of the Russell Corner over at Blossom and Thorn. Thanks to them for their kind words. You can read the review here.

Paul’s comments came in this letter:

Hallo Damian,

I have just finished a reading fest of DJ Black.

The Lanark Island Herald. ***

The Academy. *****

The Life and Times of Rachel Bannerman. *****

I’m not by any means saying that ‘The Lanark Island Herald’ is badly written. In my opinion it feels somewhat truncated, two or three chapters of Mary’s experience as “part of the family”, would have rounded it off nicely.

This novella is only three stars, by your own high standards.

I loved ‘The Academy’, it appealed to my testosterone driven youth; a dystopia/utopia where woman outnumber men 4/5 to 1, wow a teenagers dream. Winking smile

It is very well crafted with a few interesting plot twists to keep me on my toes; I particularly liked the scene between Julia and her Grandpa, and the one where Candy was rejected by her not very nice boss. I also enjoyed Felix, very much.

“The Life and Times of Rachel Bannerman,” a cowboy story with plenty of attitude, not to mention a full crop of bare bums very well spanked.

What’s not to love about hoity-toity Eastern girls learning the ropes via their bottoms, John Wayne certainly advocated this system. Rachel’s last thought was very telling.

Finally, the eroticism was not overt, though there was most definitely an undercurrent, in all of these, in my opinion, just as it should be.

Best regards,

Paul.

Incidentally the one book not reviewed above, Lizzie Baines, is apparently outselling the others – especially in the US where the publisher tells me it is housewife’s choice.

Thanks Paul, Season and Michael for your words.

“I get it,” she said rolling her eyes up, “I’m a screw up, what can I say?”

Zoe Frayne sat with her arms folded across a pink mohair pullover crushing her small but prominent breasts. The pink matched the tinge of dye in her black hair, the only visible concession the punk-come-Goth girl had made to her femininity. Her black faded jeans were ripped and the whole parody of an ensemble was covered with masculine leather biker jacket.

“Look at you, you’re 25 and… what are you wearing?” Masterson sighed, “You have no job, you have spent the allotment your uncle gave you at 18, and you have given up on that PhD in what was it… the impact of music on Western Civilisation?”

Masterson, Zoe’s late uncle’s lawyer listed her deficiencies on his fingers.

“I said I get it,” Zoe shifted uncomfortably in the overstuffed leather armchair of the lawyer’s office. “I had to make something of myself by the age of 25 or no filthy money.”

Masterson sighed again and sat back.

“That’s it then, I’m screwed,” Zoe threw him a sour expression as she got up to leave.

“You want to hear about plan B first?” he said wearily.

“I can see from your face that I won’t like it,” Zoe grunted and gave him another eye-roll as she slumped back down.

“Your late uncle Benjamin Romantique was a very wealthy man, but an eccentric one,” Masterson let out a long breath.

This was nuts, he admitted, wondering how he was going to broach the subject.

“He was out of the Ark, I know that, but I always thought he was kind of cool,” Zoe snorted.

“Old fashioned, yes, that’s a positive take I suppose and that brings me to the point,” Masterson leaned forward and made a bridge of his fingers as he clasped them as if in prayer. “There is a man called Anthony Barnwell Steel…”

Zoe shifted uncomfortably in her seat and blushed.

“…He was your uncle’s friend… I see you know of him?” Masterson put in.

“We met when I was a kid…” the words clung to her mouth like a childhood lollipop being removed from a saucer.

“If you spend the summer with him, on his terms, then however it works out you get an indexed £30,000 a year until you are 30 and then a first payment of 10 million with a second 10 million when you marry or when you turn 45, whichever is first.”

Zoe was still thinking of Tony Steel and that summer not so long ago when the ‘second 10 million’ got her attention.

“You mean I get 10 million quid when I marry?” she said incredulously, “But what if I don’t want to get married?”

“You have to spend three months with Mr Barnwell Steel first. On the same terms as you had when your uncle was alive. I believe you know what that means?” Masterson let the question hang.

He too had a pretty good idea and he was dreading explanations and the quite reasonable fall-out that would ensue.

“A three month holiday at the old family estate… it could be worse,” Zoe said brightly.

The 10 million was too far off to contemplate, but with 30 grand a year she could get a neat pad and hang for a while until something turned up. There was a certain amount of relief that she wasn’t off to the dole office just yet, but the thought was tempered by the rousing little bugs that begun to tickle the inside of her tummy.

The summer she had spent at her uncle’s after her gap year and before college had been the best of her life. It had been the only time she had not felt in utter free fall and the screaming need for attention had faded to a dull roar.

“It might not be a holiday…” Masterson said carefully, “I have read the side letter… I am not even sure that it is legal. We might…”

“I’ll do it,” Zoe rolled her eyes yet again. She hated all the boring faff.

“You have to sign an agreement first and if you do then you are pretty much committed. I am sure…” Masterson was suddenly uncomfortable with the whole deal.

“I said I’ll do it,” Zoe said impatiently.

*

The old house was much the same, although Zoe knew that it was now rented to a Middle Eastern millionaire. Tony had inherited it from her uncle, but he had chosen to continue to live at the old lodge which he had rented before.

Zoe had never been sure of the relationship between Tony and Uncle Ben; she only knew that they had met in the army and that Tony did various jobs around the estate for the old man.

She had first met Tony as a girl on her first visits to the estate, but in those days Tony had been a distant figure, always driving tractors and hefting great tools about the woods.

Only after her mother had died and she had come for an extended stay that summer had she really got to know him.

“Still a fright then,” Tony snorted as Zoe strolled up the drive to the lodge with a black denim bag hauled across her trademark leather jacket.

Her short pixie cut hair looked bedraggled as if cut with a knife and fork for a mixed salad.

“And you look so chic,” she countered, nodding towards his tattered checked shirt, which was rolled above his elbows to reveal his tanned and toned arms.

He was younger than she remembered, maybe not even 40, although his dark brown hair was dashed with grey flecks. But then at 10, 25 would have seemed old she now realised. It was a strange thought, because now at the same age she didn’t feel remotely grown up.

“I’m surprised you agreed to this,” he said in a non-committal voice.

Zoe shrugged.

“The old man can keep his millions, but the 30k a year is worth putting up with you for a few weeks,” she replied in a bored voice. “But I am not sure what the point is.”

“The point…” Tony sighed, “I don’t know there is one. Show half willing and you can bugger off and leave me in peace and you’ll get your cash. But that summer you were here… well you almost left here a decent human being. I think your uncle hoped that one more chance and you would stop wasting your life.”

“What didn’t he like me blowing his money on sex, drugs and rock and roll? Or was it that I wasted the rest?” Zoe said drily.

“That smart mouth of your will get you…” Tony let an edge touch his voice.

“What are you going to do, spank me?” Zoe challenged.

“You know I will,” Tony warned her.

Zoe blushed and worked her suddenly somewhat dry mouth. She remembered long hot days and the smell of freshly cut grass and of giving him attitude. It had been a duel between them and a way to get some attention.

She remembered taking the dump-truck after he told her not to and ending up in the ditch. He had hauled her over his knee and had spanked the seat of her jeans right there next to tumbled truck.

She had been embarrassed, especially as afterwards when her determination to show it hadn’t hurt had ended in a bottom-clutching dance and some barely supressed tears as Uncle Ben had laughed.

“You touch anything dangerous again without training or my permission and you’ll get some more. Only next time your pants and trousers are coming down,” Tony had promised.

No one had ever stood up to her before and the line he had drawn in the sand for her was the clearest of her murky life; a line that was shiny and sharp and a border to a foreign land.

It was too exciting not to cross no matter what the cost and cross it she had. Not that she had believed in the consequences. At 19, one never does. Not the first time or the last.

The industrial trimmer had been ripe with limb slicing potential, but the instruction not to touch it had seemed babyish. The topiary hadn’t appreciated her efforts and nor had Tony.

Across his knee, her skinny jeans and knickers had slid over her slender hips with a single burst of the button at his hands. She had been mortified, an emotion that retreated quickly with the first biting sting of his palm across her bare bottom.

“Are you determined to cross me?” he had snarled at her.

“Get off me you bastard,” had been just her opening tirade.

But even with what followed he must have heard worse and had spanked her for some long minutes until her bottom had sung to him and had taken on the appearance of two polished tomatoes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she had sobbed.

“Are you?” he had asked.

“Yes, oh yes, please Tony,” she had pleaded.

“Then stop struggling and stick your bottom up to accept what you deserve,” he had ordered.

It had been too embarrassing and within the confines of the potting shed she had renewed her struggles. In response Tony had resumed the spanking as if from scratch. It hadn’t taken long for Zoe to tuck in her knees and proffer him her obscenely rounded bottom for continued punishment.

The rest of the spanking was neither token nor brief and afterwards Zoe would have obeyed any command.

In the corner afterwards Zoe had seen her real self for the first time in a long while. All anger and resentment had been stripped away as she was reduced to her rightful place as a little girl at the bottom of the heap. Or so it had seemed. And it had been liberating.

Every four of five days after that Zoe had found a way to challenge him. And each and every time she had earned herself a sound spanking and a good hour or two standing bare-bottomed in the corner.

It escaped her notice that her battles were not only small, but increasingly diminished as the bar was set ever lower towards a destination that represented civilised behaviour. By the end of that summer she had not only learnt some manners, but had enjoyed sharing them.

Despite her battles, she had vowed to return the next summer to continue her contest with Tony and Ben, but that winter her uncle had died and that chapter had been closed.

“I am here to work hard and learn some good old-fashioned values aren’t I?” Zoe broke from her recollections with a jocular tone and mock saluting punch to the air. “I mean I’m too old for… what happened before.”

Tony folded his arms and regarded her seriously.

“Pretty much, but I haven’t changed and you weren’t exactly a child then and you’re certainly not now,” he said examining her curves appreciatively. “So you mess with me young lady and you know exactly what to expect.”

“Does that mean I can’t drive your dumper truck?” it was an attempt at levity to disguise her embarrassment.

“You go anywhere near it, and you’ll get what you should have got last time,” he said in a dark chocolate voice rich with menacing promise.

Zoe blushed.

“You didn’t exactly pat me on the head last time,” she blustered.

“It won’t be your head I’ll be patting next time either and they really won’t be pats,” he said earnestly.

Zoe sucked in her cheeks and looked at the ground. For once her smart mouth failed her and the almost-girl from a summer long ago reasserted itself.

*

Zoe had been painting the fence for over an hour desperately trying to make an excuse to break off from it. The smell of the undercoat was vile and she was feeling a little sick. The hot sun made it even worse and she berated herself for not resisting Tony more when he had given her the job.

Still, she reasoned that he couldn’t have that many evil jobs for her and if she knuckled down for a few days as he had suggested, then he would soon tire of her and sign off for the lawyers. It was a mature attitude and Zoe wondered when and where she had acquired it.

However, as the morning rolled by the heat of the sun and the smell made her early clarity of thought a little fuzzy and she was bored. The trouble was the fence was only half done.

I could skip to an early lunch and finish it later, she considered.

She was still pondering the wisdom of her choice by the time she reached the pub. What the hell she thought, after a real worker’s lunch and some cider and she could get back to work.

The pub hadn’t changed a jot. Even the pictures were the same. She remembered how she had come here in the early days in a bid to get some reaction, but it seemed no one had minded a 19-year-old girl drinking and she had soon tired of that particular provocation.

“No workmen eh workers in the lounge,” the rather bored barman yawned.

“Worker’s?” she chuckled, “No that’s just…”

Zoe had been about to say that she wasn’t really a worker and then she realised that she still wore an old pair of overalls Tony had given her and stank to high heaven of paint.

“Can I get food in the public bar?” she asked, suddenly proud of herself.

Me, a worker, she grinned until the man gave her strange look.

Lunch went by without a hitch and the third cider tasted as good as the first. This really isn’t so bad she thought as she finished up.

The fence was no chore after that and Zoe finished before Tony came back to check up on her. His reluctant praise was welcome, if an anti-climax. But what had she expected?

The glory days are over aren’t they? I can’t even raise an eyebrow from Tony and I don’t even want to, she mused. A short working holiday then and what, back to her old life, the one she had tried so hard to wreck? It all seemed so hollow, but what had she wanted?

The last birds of the day sang in tune and as the light grew red the shadows stretched out on the lawn like fingers. Did they point at her or the house? Were they an accusation or… a signpost?

Romantique tosh, she giggled. And I used to think this place was magical.

*

“Dinner?” Tony grunted as she emerged from the bathroom refreshed.

Zoe looked up to see that he had forgone the usual shirt for a plain slate blue one and that he had shaved.

“I mean, would you like to go out for dinner? In the way of a welcome?” he expanded casually.

“The two of us?” Zoe asked.

It was a strange idea for both of them as neither usually did anything as civilised as dinner.

“I just thought… there isn’t much to do around here and no longer having access to the big house and a cook…” his voice trailed and he suddenly seemed unsure.

Zoe struggled for a snide comeback or a put down before she accepted. That would have been usual between them. Instead she shrugged and replied, “Sure.”

Then as an afterthought she added, “I don’t suppose you can cook anyway.”

He smiled, “Can you?”

“Fuck off,” she laughed dismissively, “Domestic Goddess I ain’t.”

That was more like the old Zoe, but a frown crossed his face, nonetheless. Such language in casual banter had once been her stock in trade, although she had never used it in front of Uncle Ben. But although he was used to urban language, even from women, he had never liked it.

“I’m not sure the old man would approve of your language,” he suggested.

He had said that once before long ago and she had replied with another foul-mouthed tirade. Then a cocked eyebrow had sent her into retreat.

This time she wistfully replied, “I suppose not.”

“The whole urban brat thing you have going on is just a façade isn’t it?” he observed drily, “I wonder who resides beneath the mask these days.”

Zoe glowered at him, bristling at his use of the b-word and disconcerted that he struck so close to her own doubts.

“Shall we go?” he smiled fondly.

*

“What will you do, when you leave here I mean?” he asked over coffee.

Zoe shrugged. She had expected him to take her to the pub, but the upmarket restaurant had been a surprised. She felt under dressed, another new experience for her.

“You have to do something, another course perhaps,” he suggested.

“What has it got to do with you?” Zoe snapped as her old self reared.

Tony gave her a hard stare.

“Oh that’s right; you are my appointed guardian for the next three months,” she said with an amused sneer, recovering a little.

His stare did not soften as he weighed her up. In many ways she was still the same little girl dancing on the edge of womanhood, but when he looked on her, he could now see past the punk-Goth shock of hair to the woman underneath and felt an unfamiliar surge in his chest.

“Look, we’re stuck with one another for a while, but what I do is my business,” she said in a more conciliatory tone.

He cocked his head as if to say ‘is that it’ and she broke eye contact with his stare.

“Okay, I’m sorry but… I don’t know,” she sighed.

They didn’t say more until after they left. Tony paid the bill and then walked in silence back towards the lodge.

It wasn’t quite dark in the lane. The last of the summer glow was grey yellow against the western sky and in a couple of hours it would shift around and grow again until became dawn and herald a new day. Coupled with the full moon, this faux twilight gave everything a magical air so that a silver fire danced on the birch tree bark and the white painted posts that ringed the pond.

Zoe looked over at a thoughtful Tony and wished she hadn’t been so… rude was it? She had consciously abandoned manners long ago as a defence and now she could not remember them. The thought suddenly scared her.

“The moon is beautiful tonight,” he said unexpectedly.

She looked down into the water and saw the flickering sphere mirrored there before looking up at its true form. His words were an observation from a man she realised she hardly knew. Where was that old hard-arse?

“Yes,” she whispered.

Then shaking himself he said, “Come on, I’ll make some cocoa,” and he began to stride out for home.

*

The next morning Zoe awoke with a resolve to burn through the summer with a mission. There was another fence that required her attention and this time it would be creosoted by lunch time. The trouble was it was longer if anything than the one she had tackled the day before.

“Bugger this,” she sighed and without looking for Tony she threw open the shed door and began trawling through his kit. “What is all this stuff?”

It didn’t take long to seize upon a very large green plastic bottle with a hand pump and a nozzle on a hose; just the thing to fill-up with creosote and power through the damn fence.

Once she got passed the smell everything went well until halfway through the nozzle that up to then had worked so well began to clog.

“Bugger it,” she screamed, kicking the green bottle so hard that it split sending creosote into the flower bed.

“What the hell?” Tony barked from somewhere on the other side of some shrubs.

Zoe answered with a string of expletives and kicked the green spray bottle again so that it shot down the lawn.

“I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t,” she wailed.

“That’s a weed killer spray,” Tony groaned, shooting an angry glance at Zoe.

“So fucking what,” she spat.

“It’s ruined,” he said numbly, wondering how many other tools had joined it in the graveyard.

Then he saw the extent of the damage to the garden.

“This is my tenant’s lawn,” he said in a strained voice and swallowed.

“Stuff your stupid lawn,” Zoe said sullenly, she hated this feeling, she hated the lawn and she…

“Young lady I had thought that we could do this another way,” his voice was sharper now, “But I see that you need a firmer steer.”

As he spoke he advanced on her across the partially ruined grass, rolling his sleeves up as he came.

“Look I just…” she gulped, surely he wasn’t going to…

Zoe didn’t wait to find out and made a break for it. She made it all the way to the side door to the kitchen before he overtook her with great easy strides. There she was upended and draped across his lap.

“Tony, Tony, come on, you can’t,” she reasoned in a calm voice, but uncertainty clawed at its sides.

The overall was one of his and baggy, so it peeled off her like a Satsuma skin. The jeans underneath were tighter on her hips than he remembered and he struggled with them for a little longer. Fortunately she wasn’t wearing a belt and the once-tight faded black denim was more yielding. Her knickers were nothing but a thong and he paused.

Her full round bottom was more womanish than he remembered and for a brief moment he forgot himself.

“Tony,” Zoe was shrill, “Please I’m sorry.”

Then deciding on a symbolic action he tugged on the elastic and drew the skimpy briefs down her legs to join her jeans and overalls.

“Tony, Tony, you can’t… I-I…” Zoe’s voice wavered between reason and panic now.

He spanked her hard across both bottom cheeks, revelling in the sharp satisfying impact.

“Tony,” she shrieked.

The discarded green bottle rolled over in a breeze to highlight the damaged lawn.

“Now it is Tony,” he growled and spanked her again, not once but several times until the pale flesh of her bottom coloured-up to a reddish orange. “I’ll give you Tony. You should have called me before if you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Ah,” she yelped as he began in with a fresh volley, “Alright I’m sorry, please,” she wailed.

“You’re always sorry aren’t you? But where does that ever get us?” he snapped at her, “Well if you are so sorry then you know what to do.”

“What? Tony, nooo…” she squealed.

What did he want?

He held her firmly as she bucked under the onslaught of twice a dozen hard spanks. The fire-red well and truly staining her bottom rounds and with no signs that it was over.

Zoe he knew he wanted her surrender but she wasn’t ready. Years of being lost crystallised in her mind and now she was 19 again with a future maybe.

“I can do this all day and I am a long way from finished,” he barked at her as the spanking continued.

“Is this about last night?” she yelled.

“It’s about the bloody lawn, it’s about the garden, it’s about everything,” he beat out the punctuation on her scarlet bottom.

Zoe clenched her teeth determined to give him no satisfaction but the veil opened in her mind and she saw that all her protests were unjust. The unbidden sobs chuckled from somewhere in her throat and with an effort she pushed her bottom up to meet the spanks, presenting it to him in surrender.

Encouraged he brought his arm back and with great flowing swats he belaboured her bottom until she was bawling like she had of old.

“Now you can stand and face that wall while I assess the damage,” he ordered her.

Zoe looked miserably at the wall to the lodge and desperately prayed he wasn’t serious. What was wrong with the corner in the parlour or kitchen? That was a haven compared to this. But Tony was implacable and one hard look sent her tottering to the wall with her overall, jeans and thong still wrapped around her ankles.

Still there was no one about; not even Uncle Ben anymore and no one to see her. Zoe broke to great heaving sobs at the thought, the tears falling freely down her cheeks as she clawed at her thighs as a proxy and tried to shake the sting out of her bottom by doing a tight shimmy.

Thoughts of her uncle and lost days opened the flood gates and she truly cried for the first time since he had died. Why was she never angry with the man who had spanked her? How could he know what she needed so well?

The cathartic vigil facing the wall outlasted its welcome and little by little Zoe became aware of the breeze on her thighs and as her tears abated she became aware of other sounds. She felt silly and embarrassed with her knickers around her ankles where however unlikely someone just might come by, but all rebellion had fled now. She would not dare move until told to.

Somewhere a woodpigeon called mockingly to her and biting her lower lip she let her fingers stray to her bottom to feel it out. Twenty or 30 minutes had gone by, it was hard to tell, but finally Tony returned.

“It’s a mess, I’ll have to dig some of it out,” he sighed.

“Shall I…?” she said meekly he hands snapping away from her bottom as she stood up straight.

“You won’t touch it,” he snapped, “You can go and finish the fence; this time the old-fashioned way.”

Zoe sighed and stooped to gather her things.

“Leave them,” he barked, “They can stay at half-mast while you work. Step out of them if you must.”

“But…” Zoe’s eyes were wide.

“Then you can come back here and face the wall as soon as you think you are done and wait,” he continued.

“Oh please,” she wailed.

“You can have another spanking first,” he warned.

“Can’t I at least stand in the corner inside after?” she pleaded.

“Very well,” he agreed, “Now jump to it.”

*

The afternoon had been a difficult one for Zoe. The garden was secluded enough but not from Tony and she could almost feel his eyes studying her as she worked. Her bottom felt huge and exposed so there was little guessing needed as to where his were drawn.

Several times she had nearly snapped and had been on the verge of rounding on him in a rebellion, but then she remembered the spanking. Neither was it so much the fear. With every stroke of the brush on the fence she remembered the green spray she had destroyed in a childish outburst and she blushed. She could not even look herself in the eye and honestly say she did not deserve her predicament, far less Tony.

By the time she was finished hunger gnawed at her belly and Tony was nowhere to be seen. But the garden looked more or less in one piece, no thanks to her, so she made her careful way to the house.

Earlier she had opted for removing the clothing from around her ankles, it was too difficult to work and in any case it made her feel completely stupid to be hobbled so. However, the act of placing them in a rough pile on the ground had been a commitment to her imposed submission and had brought a fresh onslaught of blushing. Now she gathered her clothes and scurried for the back door out of sudden fear that she would be seen before the last hurdle.

The kitchen was at right angles to the dining area with one obvious corner that could be seen from both. She knew if she appeared to be hiding Tony would move her and he might even make stand outside again. Zoe sighed. Going unbidden to the corner he would chose was almost as hard sticking her bottom up in submission to the spanking; almost but not quite.

“Bugger it,” she murmured as she surrendered.

She had known that it might or perhaps would come to this when she agreed to come. Now that it had happened she was mortified yes, but also something else, something like familiar ground or an old friend. As her breath lightly dusted the wall she could not help feeling that buried somewhere in her humility was a second chance at something just out of her view.

Almost at once Tony was behind her nodding in satisfaction at her penance.

“The fence look’s okay, but the lawn will die off in places,” he grunted.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled and felt it.

“I only hope the roses survive, they have a chance at least and if not,” he shrugged; there was nothing to be done.

“I suppose I do have this coming then,” she said weakly and pulled a face over her shoulder.

He motioned that she should turn and face the wall, but not before noting her coloured cheeks and the contrition in her eyes.

“I’ll make some sandwiches, you can eat them in the corner,” he said casually as he moved off to the kitchen.

“Oh come on,” she groaned, “This is silly.”

“Do you want to still be standing there at bed time?” he countered with a growl.

“No,” she answered sullenly.

The silence that followed was unbearable and with every scrape of knife on plate as he worked she imagined him studying her behind. So to claw back some dignity she struck up a conversation; it seemed more like a game that way.

“How did you get to know Uncle Ben in the first place?” she asked.

“The Army, you know that, he was briefly my company and then battalion commander,” Tony told her.

Zoe had no idea what that meant but was desperate to fend off the scrutiny of silence.

“Uncle Ben was a… colonel wasn’t he? What were you?” she ventured.

God it was a strange feeling having a casual conversation with a man she hardly knew with her bare bottom on display.

“I would have made Major but the warrior got pranged; a roadside job. Ben was on staff by then; this was in the Gulf. He was due to retire and despite our best efforts the Army invalided me out,” Tony realised he hadn’t spoken of these things for years.

“You don’t seem that much of an invalid to me,” Zoe observed ruefully.

“Plenty had it worse,” he said quietly, “Even so I was in the hospital for a year.”

“How comes you never married?” she was suddenly very interested in his answer.

“I was,” he laughed, “We lasted almost three years. The army wasn’t for her.”

“She was a soldier?” Zoe didn’t care, but she was desperate to know more.

“Army wife, same thing,” he shrugged. “Ironically the decree absolute came the week after I got pranged.”

“So why not since… I mean the army, that was years ago?” Zoe pressed him.

She risked a look over her shoulder and scrutinised his face for any sign of a soul-wrecked past as he cut the sandwiches.

“There have been a couple of times, the last one was two years ago,” he said looking up.

She whipped her head back to face the wall.

“What? Didn’t they like being spanked?” Zoe found that she could smirk with her back turned.

“You know that is almost the last thing women ever complain about,” he said as if only just realising it; “Most wanted to change me and get me a high-powered job.”

“I am not the first who has stood in this corner then?” The question was more loaded than the teasing tone she was going for.

He chuckled, “Not by a damn sight.”

The answer made her feel better and worse at the same time; less of a fool maybe but also less exclusive. At that moment he put a sandwich-half over her shoulder. The green lettuce under a layer of cheese and ham was somehow appropriate.

*

As predicted within days of the spanking the lawn broke out in brown patches like a stain on paradise. Only the survival of the roses was any consolation and Zoe felt an unfamiliar pang so strongly that she wouldn’t have blamed Tony if he had spanked her again for good measure.

She stood a little way back pensively folding her arms as Tony stooped to examine the lawn. He reminded her of a doctor about to pronounce on a patient.

“Some of it can be repaired by reseeding but the rest will have to be re-turfed,” Tony sighed. “I have a good mind to make you repaint every fence on the estate with a toothbrush,” he scolded her.

Zoe blushed and dipped her head.

“Will it cost much? Maybe I can pay,” she suggested.

“Oh listen to lady muck,” he teased, “Not a penny in the bank and already spending it.”

“I-I only meant…” Tears pooled in her eyes.

He smiled warmly.

“You do know that I got a fair wedge from old Ben without strings don’t you,” he assured her.

She hadn’t. His interest in her was… was what? Zoe’s heart flipped like she had stumbled.

He was still watching her from the lawn and held her gaze for a long moment.

“Just… just how old are you?” Her eyes slid sideways coyly.

“I’ll be 40 next year,” he said wistfully.

“Before or after I turn 26?” she asked quickly.

In her head she ran the little calculation ‘half plus seven years.’

He frowned and shook his head in utter bewilderment. What had that got to do with the lawn?

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she blushed.

I’ll be a year or two short… she shook herself; silly game.

“Get some grass seeds from the shed, let’s see how much we can do here,” he suggested.

They spent the rest of the day chatting on the lawn while they scattered seeds on the smaller bare patches.

*

The summer went by and in time the lawn recovered and even Zoe and Tony’s dining adventures became less fraught. In fact, away from the gardens and grounds Tony was far less dour and he was given to making witty observations and telling stories of his time in the army.

Zoe as well became more relaxed and was able to laugh at her innocent notions in academia and her failures in the workplace.

“No boyfriends then?” Tony asked casually one night.

“No one in particular,” Zoe shrugged, “I tend to burn through boys too easily and the men are turned off by my style.”

She made an exaggerated Cecile B De Milne type pose and put her nose in the air.

“I see you have let your hair grow out and those pink tinges have gone,” he said carefully.

She shrugged again.

“Time for a new look maybe,” she replied, “When I get the dosh I might buy some new clothes.”

“Don’t grow up too fast,” Tony said with a wink.

“But just grow up, is that it?”

“Maybe a little,” he conceded, raising a glass.

So as July turned to August Zoe began to consider September with some trepidation. The change in season would mark a new chapter in her life.

Over the summer Tony had trained Zoe to use many of the tools and her role had expanded greatly. He had even given her a couple lessons on the dumper truck, but he had still cautioned her not to use it until she was ready.

Nevertheless, one day after it had been raining Zoe contemplated a pile of deadwood by the gravel path and considered where to move it. It couldn’t be burnt, certainly not where it was, and the wet wood made it the devil to heft into wheel barrows.

With a sigh Zoe eyed the dumper and turned over an idea in her mind. She had never owned a car, but she had a license. And in any case they were on private land. She knew that the steering was backwards on the vehicle and when Tony had showed her, she had managed it fine.

“He did say when I was ready,” she mused aloud, “How hard can it be?”

The dump scoop was no easier to load than a barrow but it did carry almost half the deadwood at a time. Zoe reasoned that she could pile it all up behind the old sheds in an hour or two and then once it was dry it could be made into a pyre.

Steering was difficult at first and she kept instinctively turning the wrong way so that the dumper tended to weave dangerously along the gravel. But soon she could more or less do it right and made rapid progress.

It was only when she made her first return journey did she see the ruts in the wet grass.

“Cripes, maybe I should have gone around,” she groaned, visions of the last spoilt lawn loomed. “Well, what was I supposed to do?”

Even so on the next run she tried to keep to the track but steering between the trees was tricky and a couple of times she clipped one of them. Then to make an approach she took it wide but the 90 degree turn was beyond her and the back wheel slid.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she screamed as the dumper slipped.

There was a splinter of bark as she hit a juniper tree head on, the force of which threw her backwards onto the wet ground.

She was still sitting on the grass in a daze when Tony came running over.

“Zoe,” he yelled anxiously, “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Zoe said in a strained voice as she got to her feet.

“That was a hell of a knock,” he said, concern carried on his face.

Without further comment he grabbed her into his arms and held to him.

“I’m okay,” she said softly, enjoying the contact.

She looked up at him and his face softened. It was hard to tell who kissed who, but in an instant they were in a firm embrace and their lips were pressed together.

“I’m sorry, I should have been more careful,” she said shyly.

Tony frowned and then he took in the damage. The tree was in a bad way and the grass alongside the path was churned to a quagmire.

“What did I say about driving the dumper?” he scolded her.

“I tried to be careful, I thought I was ready,” she said, biting her lower lip.

“You nearly broke your neck and… look at the grass,” he sighed heavily. “That tree is over 200 years old.”

“I have a good mind to paddle you raw… what did I say I would do next time you…?” he seized her by the shoulders and shook her.

“That was years ago, anyway…” Zoe broke off.

Tony frowned. He had forgotten that this was the second time she had pulled the same stunt. One look in his eye and Zoe knew what was coming.

“Tony…” she said backing away, “Not again please… I… I…”

“You…” he accused his hands moving to meticulously roll-up each sleeve.

Zoe offered little resistance as she was thrown over his shoulder. She could only hope for at least some privacy.

Nearby the woods were deep and cool. The tenant was away and anyway this end of the estate was not much visited by the household. Behind a screen of trees was a fallen log and it was to this that Tony took her and deposited her on the ground.

“When are you going to learn?” he rasped as he sat on the log.

Zoe’s overalls were already rolled to her waist and underneath she wore nothing but M&S cotton briefs on account of the heat. It did not take long until both items were draped over her work boots so that she was bare-bottomed and served up over his knee.

“Ooh, this is so unfair,” she lied and squirmed for a less tummy crushing position.

The first spank struck her as hard as any yet from him, not that she was given long to ponder it. The second, third and fourth spanks came one atop of the other until Zoe was all fire in the tail.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed.

If there were any there to hear it, they might have thought that someone was applauding in the woods. And had they dawdled they might have amended that to an ovation, for log minutes on minutes did the spanking continue until Zoe’s shrieks and squeals were heard even above the impacts on her bottom.

Zoe kicked and strained, crossing and re-crossing her ankles as she began to bawl. She even remembered to offer up her burning bottom in submission as he demanded but it gained her no respite.

Finally he deposited her face down on the log and strode over to a stand of wild apple trees.

Zoe lay panting, her eyes tear-dripped and her bottom burning.

Across the glade from where she lay Tony availed himself of a lock-knife and snipped off two or three lengths of apple branch. They were as thin and stout as a spinster’s fingers and made sharp swishing sounds as he tested them in the air.

“I’ll never touch the truck again, I swear,” she pleaded, “I’ll stand in the corner for a week, I’ll do anything…”

The first stinging cut was as bad as she feared and she shrieked.

“Spank me every day for a month,” she continued pleading.

In short minutes a dozen and more weals striped her bare bottom, some of them fresh standout proud flesh-coloured scratches while the earlier lines were swollen and purple in hue.

“Please Tony, I’m sorry,” she wailed, but the switching sting went on for as long as she had yet been spanked until she was a bawling mess.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said at last, all passion spent.

He hauled her into his arms where she clung to him sobbing and crying over and over that she was sorry.

*

Corner time had been a bitch. For the rest of the day he had put her against the wall, not letting her sheepishly emerge until late into the evening.

“Sorry,” she said shyly.

“I suppose that’s the last spanking you’ll get from me,” he sighed.

“Is it?” she whispered.

“Isn’t it?” he countered.

“I could stay until Christmas maybe and learn some more about gardening,” she offered.

“In that case, I can’t imagine you won’t get spanked sooner or later,” he said in a soft voice.

“Nor can I,” she smiled. “And what about after? Won’t you need help in the spring?”

“Plenty, but be warned a green sapling hurts worse than apple,” he said quietly.

“Ouch,” she said ruefully, still not confident about touching her raw behind. “I think I’d rather just go over your knee.”

“That would be for me to decide,” he said in a stern voice.

“Oh yes,” she said with wide-eyes, “I didn’t mean…”

He silenced her with a kiss and she kissed him back.

“Do you think… do you… I mean can this work?” she said eagerly.

“Let’s plant a seed and see,” he replied kissing her again.

She smirked and looked up to where the bedroom was.

“I think this is what Benjamin Romantique wanted all along,” he breathed.

“Maybe, maybe not, at the moment I really don’t care about Romantique or the legacy,” she sighed, “Not one jot.”

The end.

Our story began here.

Embracing the Dragon
Dniester eyed the three young women as if he had never seen them before. They had been summoned before him directly after the meeting with the Grand Magus by a journeyman. All three now stood in a row in the old wizard’s Ivory Tower study all eyes fixed on the Dragon’s Tooth delicately grasped in his fingers.

Nor had it escaped their notice that the saddle stool had been pulled away from the wall and placed in what was for two of them a familiar but unwelcome position.

Tabitha stood meekly biting her lip her eyes downcast as if watching hope running off down a drain.

Erin had even more cause to fear the Dragon, having in recent months gone from a position of defiance to one of humility under Dniester’s tutelage. The young witch was bleached white in trepidation and was serially gulping.

Only Lucy Pettigrew was passive. She had heard much about the dread Dniester, but with her customary thirst for knowledge and curiosity concerning all punitive adventures, she had an almost patient air about her as she analysed the situation.

“I am impressed,” Dniester said at last.

His expression was honest but praise was so rarely on his lips that all three girls assumed that it was a given that his words were an opening ironic shot.

“To assist in a ritual that breached the Pandorian Barrier…” he continued, “Well I don’t suppose you quite understand the significance do you?”

“We only did what we were told,” Lucy suggested tentatively.

Tabitha and Erin winced; no one spoke when Dniester did.

“Indeed, and you did it so well,” Dniester agreed. “That is what makes this such a hard lesson.”

“Sir?” Lucy tried to interject.

“When I am talking students are not,” he said icily, his glare enough to fell a dragon.

Lucy swallowed her lips and her face coloured somewhat.

“The hard lesson I am about to impart is that sometimes to do the right thing is to do the wrong thing. Sometimes one had to make choices and live with the consequences,” Dniester’s said with a hint of sadness in his voice. “Erin knows what I mean, don’t you?”

Erin nodded.

“Tell me my young witch; did you know that despite Amber Sage’s leadership in this what you did was forbidden?”

“Yes Sir,” she admitted, it had been the main appeal for her she now realised.

“So you knew what you were doing?”

Erin allowed herself an almost imperceptible nod.

“And you recall that my standing orders were that you were never to practice Wild Magic outside of class without referring to me first?”

Erin squeaked. This was going to be bad, very bad, she knew. It was all the defiant and arrogant witch of old could do not to get on her knees and beg.

But Dniester had already turned his attention elsewhere.

“Tabitha of the Silver Shore,” Dniester cast his eyes to heaven thoughtfully, not looking at second of the hapless trio. “You are so nearly a journeyman and have been here long enough. Did you not realise that you should have sought out Dr Fear before agreeing to take part in a forbidden ceremony?”

Then Dniester let his terrible gaze fall on Tabitha. It was all she could do to squeak in the affirmative. Why did the old man have such clarity of mind? It never seemed to matter what position one took, he could always show that you were wrong and make you believe it.

“And who do we have here?” The old adept sighed as he appraised the most junior member of the assemblage, “The brilliant Lucy Pettigrew who has yet to experience my wrath. Do you wish to claim ignorance?”

“Oh no Sir, the rules are quite clear. It was obviously a clandestine ceremony…” Lucy gushed enthusiastically as if embarking upon an oral dissertation.

“Enough,” Dniester barked, “I had been minded to go easy on you at least, but I see you are imbued with a little too much arrogance.”

The Dragon’s Tooth cut the air to punctuate his words and all three girls jumped.

“You will all undress to a sufficient degree as to denude your impudent little bottoms,” he commanded with a dismissive air.

Erin moved first. After some time as Dniester’s lawful apprentice she had the drill down pat. Her rainbow knitted coat together with her trademark beret was placed neatly with her bag by the door and then with only the merest hesitation she dropped the tie-dye skirt in a puddle next them.

Her blouse had been adapted to form an apron to her front while leaving her bottom bare behind, therefore exactly meeting the wizard’s requirements.

Tabitha too wore no underwear as was the custom in the Southern Desert, but she was more carless of her forward modesty as she stripped down to just a shift.

Only Lucy had not had the foresight to dress for the occasion and took some minutes removing and adjusting layers of petticoats and lowering her lacy cotton draws.

Finally all three stood back in a row facing Dniester with the bare bottoms presented to the door behind them.

“I rarely chastise a student in the presence of others, but then I rarely find three who are willing to defy me all at once,” Dniester explained and then added in a cursory tone, “You will all face the wall until you a called. And then once dealt with you will return to your place.”

“Yes Sir,” they all whispered in unison.

Dniester watched as they obeyed and then waited until all three bottoms were correctly aligned and their owners had stopped fidgeting.

The old man was not cruel and for once he regretted that the three girls could not have been spared this. But given the prejudice against witches at the moment, not to mention that he had correct and lawful orders on the matter, he had little option. Any sign that they had got off leniently would be held against them.

Nor in all conscience could he not punish to the full extent that their transgression required. Besides, he reasoned, what the fools had done was dangerous beyond all folly and they had done it in the full knowledge that it was forbidden.

Furthermore Erin had been instructed time and time again not to indulge her passion for the Craft. Her talents far outweighed her sense of caution and it terrified him. Not that the girl would ever know.

As for the Pettigrew girl, well she was one of the most promising academic thaumaturgy students he had encountered in years. And as far as he could tell, she had absolutely no talent for Wild Magic. Her involvement was as dangerous as it was pointless.

Not like Tabitha, who was destined to be a witch, even if she did not know it. And one who tended to take thrashings in her stride, if not to out-and-out court them.

Above all the ceremony had been dangerous. It might have even have been necessary as Amber claimed, but he doubted that even she knew with what she was truly dealing with.

It was as well that they dwelt upon this last point he decided. If afterwards they conclude that the consequences were worth it, then they would have learned the most important lesson of magic. And that was sacrifice.

*

Half an hour went by while the three would-be witches shivered in unbearable expectation facing the wall. Each praying to various deities, real and imagined, that the oft promised war or some other calamity would come to save them.

Lucy, who had previously balanced her apprehension with a sense of adventure, wondered if she might trade on her youth and faint. But the intellect that conceived this idea also realised that Dniester knew every trick in all the books and had probably written some of them. In any case, a good stiff thrashing from the famous wizard was a rite of passage; something to tell the grandchildren.

“Lucy Pettigrew,” Dniester intoned.

Had she been speaking out loud, Lucy gaped, or could the man read minds.

“I will take you first,” the wizard continued.

Lucy gulped and moved back away from the wall. The stool in the middle of the room looked all at once a million leagues away and far too close to hand.

“Place yourself over the saddle with you head right down and your tail absolutely uppermost,” Dniester instructed.

Lucy felt her throat tighten and then gathering her courage she walked slowly forward. In her mind the stool resembled one that might be set before a chopping block, but she knew it was not her head that was to be sliced.

There was a cushion for her shins and the old worn heavy embroidery chaffed her knees and calves. On the uppermost saddle the leather was cold and firm against her belly as she went over, and then just inches from her nose, every chip and blemish on the stone floor screamed for her attention.

Dniester studied the slight pale-white redhead with an expert eye. But even after years of such work he was struck by the myriad of orange freckles that marked most of the girl’s body like an inversion of a starry night. He was even impressed by the astonishing whiteness of her tight proffered bottom, which jutted up at him like two polished hard snowy domes.

Then wasting no time he lined himself up and positioned the Dragon’s Tooth cane for a stroke.

When it came Lucy was momentarily robbed of her senses. For a splintered second she thought again of the headsman’s axe. Then even as she realised the stroke was at the wrong end and began to process the line of pain, its true effect bit home.

She felt her eyes bulge as she clawed the air in a parody of escape, all the while the sting continued to build. Still, at least the opening shock had been too great for her to scream.

That pleasure was reserved for the second stroke, which by some miracle of the universe the gods themselves contrived to be worse.

Rarely before had Dniester seen such a hard red contrast of a raised welt on flesh. The two ridges that scored Lucy’s bottom were in exact replica of the cane in his hand.

“You come from a bottom smacking family do you not,” he observed drily.

“Yes Sir,” Lucy gasped her voice already drenched in tears.

“I can always tell,” it was an academic comment. “I expect you have taken the monitor spankings in your stride up until now.”

“Yes Sir,” Lucy managed through a heavy pant.

The third stroke extracted a long drawn out painful groan from the girl, which continued long after the impact.

“One stroke is like a minute’s worth of spanking by itself, don’t you think?” Dniester suggested.

He suspected that the girl processed the world in a catalogue of neat experiences and had yet to truly rue the rod.

Lucy nodded vigorously and clenched her teeth.

“What is a promising thaumaturgy student like you doing consorting with witches? It really isn’t your field,” he suggested, laying on another stroke.

“No Sir,” Lucy wept.

“There is an exercise where a girl such as you is required to study the patterns while her bottom is caned thus,” he said caning her again. “It takes a while to master but it can be done.”

“N-not n-necessary Sir,” Lucy sobbed.

“No? I am glad to hear it, for if you ever,” he caned her hard, “Ever play the witch again…”

The threat implied, the next stroke was extra tight and right on the under curve of her bottom where in a former life she had sat.

“Doooeeeeee,” Lucy shrieked, hissing through clenched teeth.

It was a new one for Dniester, an improvement on ouch certainly. He wondered if such things could be studied.

Lucy was now beyond conversation and took her remaining strokes noisily and over a slow extended time.

“Lesson learned I think,” Dniester said at last.

Lucy was heaving with great sobs as she struggled for an even breath. Her bottom was literally scored with dark red and purple-black ridges that ran more or less parallel up across her bottom from cleft-top to where the buttock fold met the thigh.

“Thank you Sir,” Lucy sniffed, wiping the snot from her nose. “Your reputation is entirely deserved.”

As she straightened up she offered Dniester her hand and managed a dripping smile.

Handshake over, the wizard watched as Lucy limped back to face the wall and allow herself an unrestrained cry.

“Now young Tabitha, if you will join me,” Dniester said breezily with a swipe of the cane.

Erin shifted uncomfortably and mumbled something under her breath.

“Oh it will be your turn soon enough,” he said to his apprentice, “You know I will be less merciful with you.”

Meanwhile Tabitha looked thoroughly cowed with her head down and her shoulders stooped. Days like these were only fun after many, many beers and at a long distance in time.

*

Tabitha and Lucy had yet to completely stop crying and their bottoms looked like they had sat down on a town-market breakfast grill. They would both be scum-kissing bitch slaves for any monitor appointed to get out of another spanking any time before Mabon, they each promised in their own way.

Both stood in meek surrender with their noses pressed to the wall while Erin underwent her submissions to Dniester’s cane.

The arrogant young witch had bawled that she was sorry since the first stroke and many, many biting slices later she was begging to be good.

Maybe she hadn’t had so many more strokes than her friends, but the gaps between each had been long and filled with a comprehensive discussion of her shortcomings. Each acknowledged and each admitted to with the insistence of a totally elevated bottom to receive the whippy cut of the cane.

“So you like Wild Magic do you?” Dniester growled. “Well Amber Sage is not the only one with a devil root. They can be ground with sabre salt for quite a tangy cleanser too, did you know that? I bet you did.”

Erin was bug-eyed with misery. The cleanser spoken of was quite effective when applied both externally and internally. Worst of all she knew that from experience he would require a long, long letter of apology complete with an academic paper explaining her failings and why she deserved punishment. Now she was duty bound to discuss his suggestion with a real chance of having to request it. The exercise was to curb her pride and ensure that they were both on the same page with the curriculum, he had once explained. These days she complied unasked; her discipline was much improved.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” Erin bleated as she absorbed the last two strokes.

“Join the others,” Dniester sighed at long last.

Erin could have kissed him.

As she took her place for a good cry facing the wall there was a knock at the door.

Ordinarily Dniester might have sent them away, but it might be important given recent events and in any case the humility would be of added benefit for the girls.

“Come,” he called.

The door opened slowly and a very sour faced Amber Sage entered with very reluctant steps. On seeing the row of blistered and welted bottoms her face became ashen and she swallowed hard.

“If you have come to intercede, then as you see, you are too late,” Dniester said softly. “They took their punishments well,” he added, “Well mostly.” He eyed Erin.

“I… I have…” she coughed, “I have come for my turn.”

“Indeed,” Dniester frowned. “Girls, you can…”

“I would prefer they stay,” Amber said in a thick voice.

“I don’t think that is entirely…”

“Please Dniester… Sir,” Amber pleaded; her eyes sad.

“You already face potentially grave consequences,” Dniester said sympathetically, “Deserved in my opinion, but then I am not in full possession of the facts.”

Amber looked at the row of bottoms again and licked her lips. This was going to be harder than she thought.

“The girls deserved their punishment as well they know. They are not children and made their own choices, each no doubt for their own reasons,” Dniester said sharply seeing her gaze and misreading it, “But I really do not think it is a discussion to be had in their presence. After all you are…”

“I am a journeyman and the senior one to blame, as you never cease to tell me,” Amber said bitterly.

“If you are going to take that attitude then I suggest we leave all further discussions to your hearing. After all, they may conclude you acted correctly,” Dniester said huffily. “I will not punish a resentful woman.”

Erin might have contested this statement, but a glance to her right at the others suggested that she was alone in this attitude. Then she paused. Did she resent this man? She wanted to, but already he had taught her so much, even more than Amber in his own way. Chief among his lessons was that magic was a hard road. Damn the man, he could cane her again there and then and justify it with fine words and she still wouldn’t hate him.

“I’m sorry,” Amber was saying, “I only meant… look I was the senior in the offence. If I am more culpable, then I will suffer. But what if you are right and I am exonerated? Then I will have used these women and escaped unscathed.

“I do see your point,” Dniester pondered, “But let me dismiss the girls and we will discuss it.”

“I rather suspect that I can let you do nothing, but even as I welcome your sensitivity, I think that I must be punished as one of them if this chapter is to be closed,” Amber reasoned with some dignity and added, “If I might humbly request it so.”

She had discussed the issue with Meredith beforehand and the witch had agreed. So much so that she had offered up her own bottom for the pyre of honour. But that was to miss the point. Regardless of the justice of Meredith’s intrusion, the punishment was an internal matter between the impromptu witches’ coven and Pandoria.

“Very well,” Dniester sighed, “Present yourself in the customary manner and go across the stool.”

Amber responded with an open-mouthed sigh but after smoothing down the skirts across her thighs moved across the room to comply.

*

With very mixed emotions the three girls still faced the wall as Amber took her turn. Tabitha wouldn’t have minded being allowed to go and soothe her behind, while Erin had never felt so close to Amber and was touched by her loyalty.

Only Lucy viewed it, albeit out of the corner of her eye, with a sense of adventure and with any academic detachment.

For Amber herself, she felt anything but detached. Dressed only in her shift she found that her previous experience was no solace as her bottom arched upwards to present their full rounds as Dniester directed.

“Keep your legs together,” Dniester scolded her impatiently.

Amber blushed more strongly, if that were possible and for some reason thought of her grandmother.

“Heels together for your switching girl, no one wants to see what you had for breakfast.” Odd that she should recall the event now.

This was far more humiliating she decided as she fixed her eyes on a spot on the floor and glowered at it.

“I gave the girls 20 each with 25 for Erin on account of a private arrangement between us,” Dniester announced, “You will take a perfect 30 I think and any that land across a poorly presented behind won’t count and will cost you a penalty in addition.”

“Yes Sir,” Amber acknowledged in a thick voice. It seemed only fair she conceded.

The first stroke tested her pride and dignity to the utmost as she grunted at its impact.

Dniester waited for it to fully take before adding to it. While he waited he put his cane over his shoulder and made a slow turn of the target. Actually having the real culprit under his hand was quite satisfying and this tough witch was a strong woman.

For Amber the sawing burn and begin to abate so that she thought she might cope. Then the next sliced down with finesse.

“Gods,” she gasped.

It took an effort not to pump her thighs and even so her bottom shimmied a little. Amber prayed that the wizard wouldn’t take umbrage.

Dniester decided to demonstrate an old technique for the witch. One that was suited to a hardened case and a penitent volunteer such as her. And it would also serve to humble the other girls if their leader was taken down a peg or two.

So instead of the standard delivery of one stroke every 10 or 15 seconds he let the full burn to take before adding a fellow some 40 seconds or so later. With a longish pause at halfway, that meant the caning could last a good 20 minutes.

The gap between strokes was too great for Amber to judge the timing so it quickly played upon her nerves. Added to that was the fact that her bottom was under constant assault for minutes on end, far longer than she had the reserves to counter.

She had to admire the old bastard, he meant to break her in front of the girls and remove the chance that she would be martyred in their eyes and therefore encouraged. So after seven or eight minutes she was hissing in distress through her nose desperately gripping the wood of the saddle-stool for some respite.

“Dniester please,” she wailed.

It was unworthy and if he should count it against her then he was within his rights.

He didn’t, but the scheduled stroke stole her last reserves of will in any case.

With just 10 bars of searing pain across her bottom, her supressed panting began to gurgle out as sobs.

Perhaps now able to afford some mercy Dniester quickened the pace and delivered the next five within two minutes, but that only served to push Amber over the edge.

“Ah-ha-ha-a-hah,” she bawled, openly sobbing now.

She had been broken at exactly the halfway mark as Dniester had intended and he paused in the assault. Then bending low he whispered in her ear, “I admire you greatly you foolish girl and your gesture was magnificent. But you could not think I would allow you to best me did you? Not in front of the girls?”

“No Sir,” Amber sobbed, her voice a cracked ruin and the words but a whisper.

“Do you remember when you were my student, you were always so proud?” he said affectionately. “You must have known you couldn’t beat me even then, but still you always tried.”

Amber nodded, her red mottled face awash with tears so that a bead hung on the tip of her nose and another ran down her cheek to splash on the floor.

“Help me Dniester, I… we…” she pleaded.

“There is danger, I can feel it, but I will compromise nothing in the face of the enemy,” he whispered, “As for the hearing, I will think on it and help you if I can.”

Amber nodded again, his words more of a comfort than she could ever have believed; both for his assurance of help and for being Dniester. The enemy had much to fear when they came. The old wizard was formidable and only now could she see that her gesture had been in part at least another expression of rebellion. The man was a master at showing a girl her sins.

The short interlude over Dniester resumed his position and reverted to the slow caning style of before until Amber all but bayed at the moon.

After what was for Amber some long, long minutes and a life time later the last and final stroke fell.

“Please stand up,” Dniester instructed.

It took a minute for the witch to gain her feet and once she had done so she held out an unsteady hand to him.

He shook it brusquely with a curt nod and then gestured towards a space by the wall next to the other three girls.

“Thank you Sir,” Amber sniffed. “As proficient as ever.”

“Thank you Miss Sage,” Dniester said courtesyly, “Now be please to go and face the fall.”

“Yes Sir,” Amber said miserably struggling against renewed tears an effort which failed her the moment she stood alongside the others.

Dniester eyed the row of four miscreant well-caned bare bottoms for a moment and then satisfied they were all meekly obedient he crossed the room to his desk to consider the day’s events.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

Dear Gerald, it was a good beginning to a letter, accurate and straight to the point. However Sylvia could not think what to put next.

Looking up she saw Tatiana on her knees on the lawn. It must be tiresome to have to cut the grass using only nail clippers, but after last night’s ordeal Tatiana must be finding it something of a reprieve.

Sylvia shifted in the window seat and squeezed her thighs together and not for the first time that morning. The thought of what Mary had done to the maid last night had so filled her brain that Sylvia was still fuzzy-headed from lack of sleep.

To so utterly submit like that… her heart lurched and she thought of Gerald. Tatiana’s ordeal had been totally degrading, painful, uncomfortable, humiliating and so much more, but despite some guilt, Sylvia had loved it. Yet the surprising thing was that when she had finally gone back to her room in the vain hope of slumber, looking in her mirror her eyes had carried the same wanton look she had seen in Tatiana’s eyes. Further, when she had tried to sleep her hands had kept straying as she run the events in the cellar over and over in her mind, but in her fevered dreams it was not the Russian maid who suffered but herself; and her tormentor was Gerald.

Sylvia glanced again at Tatiana on her knees in a harness. Her denuded bottom was sticking up in the most obscene way, the forward part of her body slumped into the grass as she worked at snipping green blades. The girl’s tongue protruded slightly from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on her task; almost eager was the maid to please Mary.

Sylvia cast her over the girl’s up thrust curves, astonished at how deeply and almost translucently red her skin was, it looked positively raw and not just there. Sylvia blushed to look at more delicate areas. Would Gerald ever make me do that? She fanned her face with her unwritten letter at the thought. What if someone came and saw her? She shifted in the window seat again and squeezed her thighs together.

Dear Gerald,

I miss you and I cannot believe how much time we have wasted. No, that is not fair; it is I who has wasted time.

That is just one of the many crimes for which I must be severely punished. No that is not enough either. I must be very severely punished and in any way and for as long as you deem necessary.

It goes without saying that you must put me across your knee and spank my bottom until it is very, very sore and I have a good cry. Then you will put me in the corner like a bad girl for ever such a long time. But then this would not be punishment as such, but only your just due and I must expect that at your whim whenever you require it of me.

No, I dare say the strap, cane and birch is my fate for a true punishment, but does that count as severe, or even very severe? Given my crimes, probably not, but that is for you to decide.

Tatiana has been very naughty too, but she at least is being properly punished. The other night she was secured in the cellar after a jolly good thrashing and then left there with an awful thing in her bottom. She did deserve it I suppose, but it must have been awful to be alone so in the gloom never knowing when your mistress will return to punish you more.

But I want you to know that if you wish it I will endure the same and much more if you will it.

For too long I have been too proud with very little to be proud about. And I do want you to be proud of me. For this too I must be punished, I shudder when I think of how you might tame and humble me. Perhaps you will do something like put me across your knee and spank my bare bottom in front of those hunt people. I would truly hate that, but it would do me good; especially if you made me stand in the corner afterwards with my naked red behind on show while people had lunch or something.

But there I go again telling you how to punish me. All this is for you to decide.

I love you and I am utterly yours.

Obediently, submissively and very sincerely,

Sylvia

There, Sylvia thought emphatically, that ought to do it. Then rereading her letter she blushed and squirmed not quite believing that she had written it and so very glad she had. She thought of going to her room, but then she decided that any such thing would be shameless and from now on entirely at her husband’s whim.

“Oh God,” she groaned, lost in excitement even at these thoughts.

*

It was three days later and Sylvia dined alone with Mary standing vigil by the door in the role normally reserved for Tatiana. The reason the maid was not serving in this capacity was that the house keeper had assigned her another task.

At first Sylvia had been shocked on entering the room as Tatiana was kneeling on a chair bent right over the back with her freshly strapped bottom upper most. But it was not the fresh shiny red stain that was so shocking; Sylvia had not seen the maid with a white behind in days. It was the candle that was inserted so neatly between the maid’s proffered cheeks that made her gasp.

Tatiana was facing the table, her face utterly miserable and a heavy paddle-taws device clenched in her teeth.

“That is for after,” Mary told Sylvia in answer to an unspoken question on the latter’s face. “And only if she is good. If she lets the candle go out or makes it flutter from undue movement then she will be more severely punished.”

Sylvia swallowed.

“I see,” she said, and thought ruefully about another sleepless night. Will these distractions never end? She thought, but did she really want them too?

“There is a letter for you, I regret that Tatiana being otherwise occupied it… was overlooked at breakfast,” Mary said impassively.

If Mary felt at all responsible for a late delivery of a letter then it did not show on her face. Seeing that the letter was from Gerald, Sylvia was suddenly annoyed, but was not ready to confront the house keeper, although someone should, she thought.

In any case, she was too eager to read the missive than to dwell on the others. She tore at it and pulled the single blue-masculine sheet from the Basildon Bond envelope.

Dear Sylvia,

Do not reproach yourself so. True you are not all that you might be and if you wish to explore being a No-thing for a while, then we may consider that – it can be very therapeutic. But you are so much more and although I am grateful for your submission and welcome it, I think there is little to be gained from fruitless recriminations about our past and that we should look instead to the future.

That said, when I see you, I will most definitely put you across my knee for a sound spanking on the bare bottom for your impious suggestions. But I most certainly won’t be doing it in front of the hunt. Not on this occasion anyway.

I love you and be assured we will be together soon.

There was one other matter that you raised that gives me cause for disquiet. Have no fear it does not concern you directly or us in general, but it must be attended to.

To this end Mr Drake will be calling and in this regard he has my full authority and it would please me if you cooperated.

Ever yours,

Gerald

p.s. Do not speak of the Spankman or the contents of this letter with Mary.

Sylvia clutched the paper to her thundering breast. Strangely it was the spanking threat that thrilled her most, but also the fact that she was in on a secret that Mary was not party to. Whatever did Drake want and what had happened?

To be continued.

John and Petra exchanged a narrow-eyed glance; neither were quite sure if the girl that stood before them was for real.

The girl’s ‘aunt’ had assured them that she was 25, but by her appearance, that of a 1950s school girl on her half-hols, she barely looked 18. She was short with well-groomed dark blonde hair drawn back in a plait down her back. In most regards she was petite although her short grey skirt did struggle to contain her prominent bottom and her over-plump lips were emphasised by her constant nervous worrying of them by the girls nibbling teeth.

The girl’s dark-haired corseted ‘aunt’ had no discernible blood-ties with the girl and in any case she seemed barely old enough for her role especially if the girl’s age was to be believed. They had asked her to leave while they interviewed her ‘niece’ and pondered on what they might do with her.

Neither of them were usually happy about working with anyone under 21.

John broke his gaze from his wife to study the girl.

“Tammy is it?” he asked.

She nodded and suddenly looked even more terrified.

“Your… eh… aunt seems to think that you would benefit by coming to live with us for a while? What do you think about that?” he continued.

“I would love to ever so much,” Tammy gushed, “Auntie says the… div… diversity is it? She says the diversity would do me good and make me a better girl.”

“I see,” John pursed his lips and glanced at his wife again.

At 34 she was much younger than him and still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He loved the way her casual ordinariness shone through without the assistance of hairdos or expensive clothes, although she had figure that most super models would die for. Sometimes he wondered what she saw in him.

He looked back at the girl. She still seemed far too young for their guidance, or too immature at any rate.

Reading his thoughts Petra said, “I think we should hear more Sir. I don’t think her aunt would bring her if she didn’t think she was ready. ”

“Oh Sir, please Sir, I am ready. Honestly Sir,” Tammy said eagerly.

“Very well,” John said thoughtfully. “Tell me about your aunt and your time with her.”

“I… I have lived with her for three years now when she sort of adopted me,” Tammy said shyly. “She is the only person whoever really cared about me.”

“What did you do before?” John absently arranged some papers on his desk, although they had nothing to do with Tammy. It would serve to distract her and maybe ease her nerves.

“I…” Tammy swallowed, “I was on community service… I had a bit of trouble when I left college…”

“I know about that, yes,” John reassured her, “But I didn’t know you were in college.”

“Two years… but I… messed it up,” Tammy admitted. “I mess everything up.”

“Don’t you think that maybe you should be with people your own age?” John asked.

“My own age…? Do you mean 25-year-olds? Or other girls like me who want a fresh start… Sir?”

“A fresh start?”

“I am not a child Sir, I know what I want. Auntie has offered me something special but she… she thinks… well that we are in too much of a comfort zone her and I… a rut if you like,” Tammy’s voice suddenly sounded more assured, “If you follow me Sir?”

John sat back. He was now certain that Tammy was all of 25, chronologically anyway. He looked at his wife who nodded. Her judgement was better than his in these matters.

“Tell me, if you come to stay for a while, do you think we will be stricter or less strict than your… aunt?” John leaned over to one side and seemed to pull his words from the air.

“Aunty is very, very strict, but she says you will be different; maybe stricter, maybe not. Why, does it matter Sir?” Tammy frowned.

“How strict is your aunt? I mean, does she smack your bottom?” John said quizzically. He knew that she did but it was important to measure the girl’s own response and attitude to it.

“Oh yes,” Tammy said earnestly, “She spanks me ever such a lot, on my bare bottom too. She says that a punishment must be as painful and embarrassing as possible and should put a girl well and truly in her place.”

Petra licked her lips and shifted where she stood. John remained offhand and relaxed.

“Talk me through a typical punishment,” John said in an academic tone.

Tammy blushed and looked at Petra.

Then she swallowed and said, “Yes Sir.”

John nodded encouragingly.

“Well last week I went out without permission and came back… very late…” Tammy rolled her eyes so that they looked at everything but John and his wife.

“Where did you go?”

“Oh… just to the library… I went online, I am not allowed to do it too often at home you see,” Tammy explained. “I forgot the time and the library had late closing…”

“I understand,” John pursed his lips, “Go on.”

“Aunty was ever so cross. She made me wait for my punishment and sent me to bed without supper. Then the next day I had to report to her fully dressed but without my… my lower things. I have to dress smartly but with my… bottom and…” Tammy gulped, “…on show, well it is embarrassing and I feel very… exposed.”

Petra wiped a hint of moisture form her lips and hugged herself as she didn’t know where to put her hands.

“Then I had to go and stand in the corner,” Tammy continued. “Not the safe corner, out of sight of everyone but aunty and her guests, but the one in the hall by the front door. We share that part of the house with Mrs Denver you see.”

Tammy blanched and then as she stood wringing her hands the blood flooded back to her face in an epic flush.

“It is sooo embarrassing Sir,” Tammy said in a hushed voice.

“How long do you have to stand there?” John asked conversationally.

“It depends Sir, sometimes only an hour or two, well usually that long in one go, but never the less than 40 minutes anyway; eh but sometimes… um… much longer.” Tammy lisped shyly.

“Does anyone ever see you standing there? Apart from Mrs Denver and your aunt I mean?” John wondered how amenable Mrs Denver was.

“Mrs Denver’s daughter… the postman sometimes, a delivery man once or twice and one time Mrs Denver’s son came to see her,” Tammy blushed. “There are of course aunty’s friends, but I am usually standing in the safe corner then.”

“I see,” John mused, “Is this before or after you are spanked.”

“Before Sir, well to start with. It is so I have plenty of time to think about what I have done and what I have coming,” Tammy said ruefully. “Then comes the spanking or whatever?”

“Or whatever?” John picked up on the aside.

“Yes well. Usually I go across auntie’s knee and get a very hard and very long spanking with the hairbrush. There is nothing like it and I always cry. Then I have to go back to the corner to cry and sometimes wait if I have another spanking coming and so on. Aunty likes to spank in instalments sometimes,” Tammy said in a reluctant voice, “But, well sometimes if I am really bad there is the strap, cane and… eh the birch.”

Tammy’s face glowed red and she dipped her eyes to the floor.

“Then there are the other things…” Tammy said shyly.

“Go on,” John said sharply.

“She has soap which I… if I lie, I mean and not just mouth soap… she has this thing… in the bathroom… please Sir…” Tammy began to wring her hands. It was too embarrassing.

“I think I see,” John said kindly. “Tell me do you like these punishments sometimes?”

“No Sir,” Tammy said in a puzzled voice, “I hate them, but they… well it is for my own good. I know that.”

“What about afterwards? Does getting a spanking give you… feelings?” John asked.

Tammy looked like a trapped bird and looked at Petra for help. The room became quiet and the only sound was the ticking of the clock.

“Sometimes,” she admitted at last, “But it is not that. It is the feeling of being all forgiven and clean, you know.”

“I understand,” John said kindly. “If you come here, do you think I should punish you or my wife? We can agree things now, but we can’t change things later.”

“Yes Sir, I mean, whatever you think best, but if you both… I mean that would widen my experience Sir wouldn’t it?”

“And the other things that you mentioned, that would be hard for you wouldn’t it?” John asked.

Tammy nodded.

“How do you feel about that?” Petra asked.

John gave her a sharp look, but again he trusted her instincts and let her interruption pass.

“Please… whatever you think Sir. Aunty is right, for a punishment to work it must be as long, painful and as embarrassing as possible. It’s what I need Sir; eh… Ma’am.”

“Very well, let’s see how we get on. Please sit over there, I am going to have a word with your… aunt,” John agreed.

He nodded at Petra who moved around the desk and went to the door to fetch Tammy’s mentor who was still waiting outside.

The woman entered as a picture of elegance, like a queen on catwalk. Under her immaculate chocolate piled-up hair her chestnut eyes danced and a small smug smiled played about her lips, which bothered John somehow.

Petra followed her through the door as an attendant, completing the picture of dominatrix royalty on tour.

“Ah Ms…” John had forgotten her name; it was one of those pretentious scene names, “Ms Dom…? I’m sorry.”

“Domina, just Domina, unless you prefer auntie you naughty boy,” Domina said in a husky voice that reminded John of a young Fenella Fielding.

He fixed her with his eyes and curtly bid her sit down.

“So how do you like my girl?” she purred.

“She seems enthusiastic enough and polite too. Tell me Miss Domina, why do you want her to train with us?” John asked deliberately using the junior title with her name.

“I should hope she is, or I will spank her bottom for her,” Domina said with a pout, not welcoming his challenging tone. “As for placing her with you, well we all need to step out of comfort zone don’t we?”

“Do we?” John said crisply, “Isn’t she a little old…”

He was going to say, ‘a little old for that personae,’ not that he thought so himself, but Domina cut him off.

“Oh a young lady is never too old for a good spanking,” she said, her husky voice rising an octave.

“A punishment should be ‘as long, painful and embarrassing as possible,’ I believe you said,” John looked at Tammy who blushed and looked at her shoes.

“Indeed, without a doubt,” Domina was blinking rapidly, irritated that this man should be questioning her methods.

“And from where do you derive your authority for such… intervention?” John said carefully.

“Oh, I think if one is of a certain disposition and experience and encounters one who willing seeks out their guidance then one has a duty to address the supplicant’s and indeed one’s own need,” Domina said as it were obvious.

“I see,” John nodded thoughtfully and shot a glance at his wife.

Petra suppressed a titter and shrugged.

“Can I be clear then?” John asked, “You have come here actively seeking my guidance with regard to educating Tammy here?”

“Indeed,” Domina said blinking again in frustration. Was this man dense?

“And you think this will enhance your relationship and Tammy’s future relationship choices?” John had a schoolteacher air now, comfortable in his authoritative verbosity.

“Exactly so,” Domina said pointedly.

By golly, the man has it, she thought, letting a smug smile cross her face.

“Good,” John said decisively.

He reached down and opened a desk draw and brought out a hairbrush. And then standing up he slipped off his jacket and began to roll up his sleeves.

Tammy blanched and licked her lips, but she wasn’t entirely surprised.

“That’s right, start with a spanking. Even if a girl hasn’t done anything much, it is as well to put a supplicant in her place at the outset of an arrangement such as this,” Domina giggled elegantly.

“I am so glad that you agree,” John nodded.

“Stand up Tammy,” Domina ordered.

“No stay where you are,” John countered her, “Miss Domina, it is you who must stand up.”

“Me?” Domina asked, puzzled.

“I think so,” John said sharply, “You are after all a supplicant here are you not?”

Domina blanched, “but I… you don’t understand, I’m not… I mean, I don’t usually…”

“Young lady, you have been impertinent and condescending since you arrived and furthermore you have been most eloquent in your request. So I am going to put you across my knee and give you a good sound spanking on your bare bottom,” John informed her.

“On… on what authority?” Domina gulped.

“Oh… let us say ‘I think if one is of a certain disposition and experience and encounters one who seeks out their guidance then one has a duty to address the supplicant’s need’ wasn’t that what you said?” John patted the flat of the brush menacingly across his palm.

“Yes but… I meant…” Domina, having stood up, backed nervously away.

“This is my domain and you have come here to seek my guidance have you not?” John intoned.

Domina blushed and could scarce catch her breath.

“Hoist by my own petard,” she squeaked in an attempt to make light of it. “It’s been a while for me but… at least send the girl away.”

“I don’t think so. After all you were quite impudent and you thoroughly deserve to be punished,” John countered.

“Yes but… look I’m sorry, but can’t you… please… just you and I… yeah?” her imperious and carefully crafted voice slipped as she reverted to a former time perhaps.

“A spanking has to be as long, painful and as embarrassing as possible, don’t you think?” John touched his tongue to the inside of his cheek.

Domina blushed as she hadn’t for years and breathed through an open mouth.

“Come here Miss,” John growled as he sat in an armless chair and crooked his finger at the usually dominant aunt.

Tammy gaped in disbelief and Petra clapped her hand to her mouth in glee.

The corseted and well-groomed Domina had lost some of her poise and flicked an anxious glance at Tammy. The professional aunt suddenly looked a decade younger. Then she meekly half tottered and half stumbled across the room to be taken across John’s knee.

“Bugger,” she sighed, and then with a reference to her early remark she added ruefully, “Definitely well and truly hoisted.”

Domina’s black pencil skirt conveniently zipped all the way up at the back and parted from her ample curves like curtains. Perhaps so as not to spoil the line of her skirt or perhaps for other more practical purposes, the insolent vixen wore no knickers, her only underwear being sheer black stockings attached by garters.

“Oh we are a naughty girl,” John chided.

“It is a warm day,” Domina blushed.

Tammy giggled and her aunt glared at her.

“Never mind her,” John barked, apply a short sharp spank to Domina’s curves with is hand

“God… this is… this is really quite…” she spluttered.

John had never seen someone colour quite so much. Then grasping the hairbrush he patted her bare bottom with it.

“When was the last time you were spanked?” he asked.

“I… well,” she swallowed, “Not like this for some years.”

“When?” he snapped, spanking her sharply.

“Ah,” she gasped and clenched her jaw.

“When?” He spanked her again.

“I see a friend, once a month or so,” Domina squeaked, “Please don’t, not in front of… oh, ooh…”

John didn’t pause but set about delivering a brisk spanking as he interrogated her.

“But not truly punished?”

“No Sir,” Domina agreed.

“Because a punishment in your eyes needs to be a bit more humbling doesn’t it? Like this.” On the word ‘this’ he gave her an almighty spank.

“Yes Sir,” Domina wailed, “You won’t, you won’t, you won’t… ooh.”

With no sense to be had out of her John settled down to give her an expert spanking he knew she could handle and suspected that she badly needed.”

“Has aunty been ever so bad?” Tammy lisped.

“I am afraid so,” John told her.

“Then I do hope you can help her as she helped me,” a wide-eyed Tammy said without a hint of irony.

Is this girl for real or just one hell of an actress, John mused, but with a shrug he supposed it didn’t really matter.

“I’ll be, I’ll be, I’ll be goooood…” Domina shrieked.

“What is your name anyway? Your real name,” John asked.

“Beryl,” Domina sobbed.

“And how old are you?” John asked.

“Thirty…” Domina sucked in a breath before letting out as a sob, “Four.”

“You know this is for your own good don’t you Beryl,” John had begun to really put it to her now.

“Yes Sir,” Domina wailed with broken sobs and seemed to beg, “But… please… I’m… I’m… call me… Domina.”

“Alright Domina, if you admit you have this coming,” John said in an almost kindly voice that was at odds with the continuing action of his arm.

“Yes Sir,” she sniffed.

“Say it then,” he ordered.

“Domina is a naughty girl,” she sobbed. She knew the drill, she had used it often enough.

“Are you still glad you came to me?” John asked as he brought the spanking to an end.

“Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” she said in a voice literally dripping with penitent youth.

“Now I want you to go and stand in the corner like all naughty girls have to,” John chuckled. “I haven’t finished with you.”

“Oh please…” she protested.

“Go to the corner to wait for the cane,” John said sharply.

Domina gulped, and with one final miserable glance at Tammy, did as she was told.

“Off you go Tammy, Petra will show you your room,” John said cheerfully.

“Yes Sir,” Tammy said gaping at her humbled aunt.

After they had gone John put the hairbrush away in the corner and reached for a cane.

“You and me are going to have a nice long chat,” he soothed.

“Yes Sir.” Domina sounded a little strained.

*

Domina, her displayed bottom still throbbing, was wild with the thought of being in the corner. It was shameful, embarrassing and thrilling beyond endurance. At any moment she felt she could break out of her compromising position and regale the b… regale John with a piece of her mind, but as she quickly realised the submission kept drawing her back until she was stretched like translucent silk .

It had been a long time since Domina had submitted to a man but submitted she had and there was no denying it. It was the kind of adventure she often secretly entertained in her most private fantasies, but to have them played out so suddenly and so unexpectedly in front of Tammy was a soul-burning event.

If any of her friends found out she would never live it down. She might even be drummed out of dom society. But oddly the shame of this thrilled her almost as much as the spanking had. She had always been torn by the dichotomy of her inner submissive and outer dominant and never having been able to balance the two she had always tended to go overboard in one direction or another.

Now she found she was too committed to Tammy and that world to more than flirt with submission, but perhaps John would show her the way. Her hand reached behind to cop a feel of her tender bottom. An extreme breach of discipline she knew. If he saw or even asked her if she had rubbed… she snatched her back and clasped it again in the small of her back.

And what of the cane, she had always struggled with it; a guilty pleasure when she had used it on others. She gulped and extended her fingers as far as she dared to brush the top of her bottom cleft and anticipating the cruel impact to the region below.

The door opened and someone, presumably John entered the room. Domina snapped her fingers back into a fist.

“Now young lady,” John said sternly, “I rather think you should visit us once a week to be apprised of your niece’s progress.

“Yes Sir,” Domina said meekly.

“It will also give us the opportunity to continue our chat,” John continued.

“Eh… you mean…” Domina swallowed hard.

“You know exactly what I mean,” John scolded her.

“Yes Sir,” Domina said quickly.

“Good,” John said in a firm voice, adding, “Now, turn around and bend over. We still have to address your earlier impertinence.”

Domina turned to see the cane and gaped.

“Look… I don’t… I mean this is…”

“Yes?”

Domina’s breathing was audible as she studied the cane.

“You are not going to argue with me are you?” John demanded.

“No Sir, but…”

“Bend over,” he said sharply.

Domina dropped instinctively and seized the back of the chair. The posture offered John a magnificent aspect of her bare bottom.

“That will do nicely,” John said appreciatively. “How many do you usually give?”

“Eh…” Domina swallowed, “It depends, not many…”

“Shall I ask Tammy?” John asked casually.

“Never less than a dozen, usually twice that,” Domina said quickly.

“Usually?”

“Mostly that or… more,” Domina croaked.

“What’s the most you have ever given?” John asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

“The most,” she squeaked the word from a very constricted throat, “What ever, or given to Tammy?”

John swished the cane and then leaned over to be level with Domina’s ear.

“If you continue to be evasive I will give you 24 to get us started and then twice whatever you have given Tammy in one go on top,” John whispered in a voice like ice.

Domina shuddered even as she thrilled.

“I once gave a hundred for a bet,” Domina rasped, “But the most I have given Tammy was… 30… eh 36.”

“I see,” John said pointedly. “So I suppose that justice demands that we split the difference, which would be around twice Tammy’s bill. Does that seem fair?”

Domina’s heart pounded so hard she could feel it between her ears. Seventy-something strokes she hastily calculated, omigod, it sounded sickeningly right, she realised.

“I… please…” she swallowed twice, “It’s fair I know but… please…”

“Put yourself in my place, or indeed your usual place. Give me the ideal answer,” his tone was suggestive, but it brooked no defiance.

“Please Sir, permit me to… humbly submit in any way you want…. Please I’ll do anything,” she spoke as tears filled her eyes and clung to her words as they dripped form her mouth, “But if… if it does not please you to be merciful… then… then please Sir, give me…” she couldn’t not do the maths, so she added in a whine, “As many strokes as you said… please Sir.”

Her submission was complete and the wetness under her bottom made that undeniable.

“Excellent, almost perfect,” John congratulated her.

His praise thrilled her and she blushed.

“Actually I make splitting the difference 68 strokes, but I am happy to round it to 70. But since you are so amenable and contrite… I think 24 plus an added six just because will suffice. What do you say?”

“Oh thank you Sir,” Domina gushed with relief,” a fresh tear rolling down her face.

“Excellent, shall we begin?”

Domina was about to say something; anything to delay when the first stroke bit in hard. She yelped.

“Oh I trust the interview is over and you have no further questions?” John asked.

“Yes Sir, I mean no Sir…” Domina groaned.

“And you are happy with our little arrangement?”

“Yes Sir,” Domina found herself saying.

“Oh good,” John said as the cane came bitingly down again, “Good.”

Ends

LSF have published another novella by yours truly. This time it is the socio-religious exploration of an alternative Earth where college girls have guardians and questioning the faith or the mysterious origins of their society can be seriously dangerous for a young girl’s bottom.

The publishers blurb has it:

Chelsea and Candida are lying in the sunshine trying to study the complex history of their country, Americana. They read about banned books and the World Beyond – a world which inspired their civilisation. Their own land is one that has a strict religious fraternity, based on the teachings of the Holy Church of Day and Night.

In this land, corporal punishment is the norm. Every infraction is punished, no matter how trivial – as Chelsea discovers when she arrives 45 minutes late for dinner. The girls are routinely punished whilst wearing the traditional garb of the penitent’s dress – demure at the front and cut out at the back! Even marriage ceremonies involve spankings in this land.

You can get it here.

Our story began here.

A Beast in their midst’s
A long time passed before Dniester finally dismissed the three students. By then, for them and their teacher, it had seemed like a geological age had passed. Worse still, as soon as they moved a tear-jerking pain flooded back to their still simmering bottoms.

Erin kept her head down even as she lifted her eyes to Dniester. It was their custom to exchange a few words; of dour wisdom on his part and contrition on hers.

“Cut along with you,” the wizard said gently nodding to the door.

Not needing to be told twice the three miscreants gathered up their clothes and made for the door with slow painful steps leaving Amber still facing the wall in humble submission.

It wasn’t until the witch and the wizard were alone that Dniester bid Amber to get dressed.

“I think you and I should talk,” he said in a hard but neutral voice.

“Talk?” she became a little wide-eyed and glanced towards the saddle-stool.

“Well assuming you don’t have any more sins to share then yes, just talk,” Dniester replied with a twinkle in his eye.

*

The three girls walked in silence until they were well clear of the Ivory Tower. Their painfully slow gate and pigeon-like steps drew a few smirks, but it wasn’t so unusual to see such a penitent departure near Dniester’s study, so no one lingered to mock.

All three were moist-eyed and open-mouthed with discomfort and at the turn in the path it was all Erin could do to point towards her quarters. She had another paper to write for Dniester on top of the rest; all of which he was sure to scrutinise thoroughly. As a general rule she had a seven in ten chance of escaping a reprimand with the Dragon’s Tooth. In light of the bite it still had on her, for the next day or so she existed only to improve those odds.

“Can you believe what Amber did?” Lucy gasped, finally able to speak.

“Well she deserved it every much as we did,” Tabitha said grudgingly.

“I know but… wow,” Lucy gaped, “And he kept her behind, you don’t think…?”

Tabitha shrugged. At that moment she didn’t entirely care. After all it had been Amber who had got them all in to such big trouble.

The path became steep and their going was more laboured for them and walking caused a flare in their tortured buttocks with each step. So it wasn’t until they reached a flat bit to the path that they felt willing to speak again.

“Poor Erin,” Tabitha said ruefully.

“Poor Erin?” her friend exclaimed, “It was you in there and not some doppelganger?”

“I know, but with luck we should be clear of another tail-tickling for quite a few days. Erin might not be so lucky,” Tabitha pulled a face.

“I don’t know about you, but I felt much more than a tickle,” Lucy pouted reaching around to grab at her behind and instantly regretting it, “ooh.”

“Did Dniester live up to your expectations then?” Tabitha said with a strained amusement.

Lucy nodded vigorously, “I can honestly and quite literally say that I won’t be able to sit down for a week.”

“Or in three or four days you’ll manage it fine with the aid of a pillow anyway,” Tabitha confided, “And in 10 days or so you won’t feel it at all when you sit down.”

Lucy stopped and gaped.

“At least that’s how it usually is for me. You, you have a little less to sit on. So maybe you are right,” Tabitha suggested ruefully.

“Oh please,” Lucy groaned, “I doubt if I can stay out of trouble that long.”

“And that is the other little problem,” Tabitha winced, “You know on reflection, we might never sit down again.”

*

The Dovecote and indeed all of Pandoria was still buzzing with the news that a witch had come among them. The part in played by Amber was particularly prominent in the news, although the fate of the three novices had scarcely been noticed.

But among it all life went on and the Dovecote’s library, the province of women novices was as busy as usual.

Katrin had opted to come here partly because she only needed a standard text and could not be bothered to walk all the way over to the Apprentice Hall to the main library and partly to be on hand when Tabitha and Lucy returned.

She had hoped to have a word with Fear about everything that had happened; especially regarding Tabitha. But he had been brusquely striding between his study and the Barbican all day. It seemed that on a day such as this, magus only spoke to magus.

“Did you hear?” a girl whispered behind one of the shelves, “The war has started.”

“Oh brother,” another groaned, “Not that again. It seems that that war is always starting. Yet why does nothing ever happen?”

Ignoring her friend the first girl whispered loudly, “And what about that witch? Some say she is a demonologist. I have even heard that she is a shape-shifter.”

Katrin rolled her eyes up. She thought of Peel, Demdike’s daughter who had turned into the creature. She hadn’t liked either of them. But Meredith had been more measured, Katrin remembered. I wonder why she is here, she mused.

But the witch too had been kept from the general populace. A guest they had said, but Mage William’s cadre of adepts had been on the prowl all day throughout the Dovecote. As security they were about as subtle as a fire ball.

Katrin snorted. What did they think was going to happen?

Just then the lightest of breezes tickled the leaves of an open book and Katrin felt a shiver down her spine. She glanced at the window and saw it was closed. She might have puzzled on it further but someone called out.

There was some general groaning to keep the noise down but the librarian wasn’t at her station. So whoever it was free to act the lout. Katrin bristled into monitor mode and turned to confront the noisy girls only to see her friends. Tabitha and Lucy looked the sorriest pair of students she had ever seen.

“Oh the Gods,” she gaped. “You both look as if you have been dragged on your arse through a fire thorn bush.”

“Tell me about it,” Tabitha said ruefully, tentatively rubbing at her bottom.

“What are you doing here? You should both be in your room with a bucket of ice on your… tails,” Katrin winced in sympathy.

“We needed some books. I don’t want to go up and down those stairs again anytime soon,” Tabitha groaned.

“How was it? As if I didn’t know?” Katrin whispered; conscious now that other people were looking with pained in expressions in their direction.

“Oh Dniester was on form and then some,” Tabitha grimaced.

“I won’t sit down for a month,” Lucy said proudly.

She was shushed and blushed to her ears that she had been heard.

The leaves on the book that had stirred before rolled over several pages and Katrin frowned, looking from door to window for a cause.

“Amber was there,” Tabitha said quietly, taking Katrin’s attention again.

“I bet Dniester didn’t like that. I hope he didn’t take it out on you?” Katrin groaned.

“No I mean…” Tabitha began.

“She took a thrashing too,” Lucy said in an excited whisper.

Katrin shook her head and frowned, not quite taking it in.

“She was making some kind of crazy point… and, well the old man obliged her,” Tabitha shrugged.

“It was pretty neat of her,” Lucy put in.

Another breeze swirled around the room and the book that had previously been disturbed slammed shut. Several readers noticed too and some had their own papers tossed about.

“What is that?” Katrin said in irritation.

Giving it her full attention she realised now that the disturbance was not just in the air. The patterns came easily to her and instead of random straight lines in a sea of chaos struggling for order; they were twisted into great circles.

“What the…?”

Tabitha frowned and slipped into pattern sight too.

Although Katrin had much better skill at seeing the patterns, Tabitha could see beyond them to more fundamental aspects as Fear had taught her. To shadings in the ether that had little do with elemental magic. Here she could see the dark undercurrent perverting all four elements. It was horrifically beautiful and held her spellbound.

Had she been more experienced she would have recognised that Wild Magic was supplanting the natural order creating the beginnings of a vortex.

Papers and books were scattered in all directions now and some tomes were even pulled from the shelves in the gathering roar of an indoor storm.

“What is it?” Lucy squealed, struggling now to be heard above the hum.

“I don’t know,” Katrin replied struggling to make sense of the failure of the text-book elemental states all around her.

Several students gathered up books and scrolls and began heading for the door.

“It’s like a whirlpool…” Tabitha was shouting now. “There is something…”

She screamed and all remaining eyes turned to look at her. When they turned back they could see a great looming dark shape forming in the middle of the library.

Tabitha stood transfixed by the apparition as if she could see more than the others. Not that anyone but Katrin and Lucy had waited. The room was suddenly full of screaming girls all making a break for the exit.

By now the swirl of nothing was tangible as a black liquid glass. Then one moment it was there and then as the gale died down it was gone leaving the creature that standing there.

Katrin felt sick, no worse than that. How does one feel when a creature from one’s worse night comes calling?

“Tugaal,” she choked, all colour drained form her face.

Next to her Tabitha could not comprehend what she was seeing. The ape-bear-like beast was black like a hole in the world, yet it had razor like fur all dripping with oily droplets that rained continuously but never reached the ground.

“Katrin De Lacy,” it hissed as if from the end of a long dark tunnel.

Its voice had no resonance, a dull dead sound yet hard and brittle like ice; a chill in which Katrin froze.

Tabitha could take no more and without a thought turned and fled for the door.

“Katrin,” Lucy screamed as she tumbled after, “Katrin come on.”

Then all courage banished, neither girl looked back as they ran.

“No, oh no,” the whisper strained at Katrin’s throat as she fell to her knees.

“You are mine,” the beast sang like death in her mind, oozing across the floor towards her as it did so.

It did not move fast, nor slow, but covered the ground as a man might do, with great purposeful lumber steps. Too quick to escape, yet slow enough to allow an understanding that it would take her and that there was nothing she could do.

“Katrin, get back,” a commanding voice spoke from somewhere behind her.

It was familiar, but far, far away in another existence. Too late to run, she thought idly. And then as the beast closed, Katrin remembered herself and gathered up the patterns and flung them at it.

Her gift tore impudently at the rock floor and with no water to hand the on rush of air barely slowed the creature who lashed back with a wave of pain.

Katrin was in the air and flying backwards, too fast, but at least she was moving away from the beast. Then she crashed hard into a bookcase that splintered like glass and tumbled with her to fall hard into the floor and eternal blackness. As she landed something broke deep in her body and her last thought was…

“Katrin,” Fear cried out in anguish.

Next to his beloved’s fate the beast was a pale shadow. Then useless observer that he was, the dull crunch twisted inside him as keenly as it had in Katrin.

“The body is a mere distraction,” Tugaal said conversationally, “I have come to drink her soul little man.”

Dr Arlon Fear let out a long anguished sob and fell to his knees.

“Pandoria is mine and all its petty power will serve we who are three,” Tugaal continued, its eyes scanning the world for the first time in countless millennia. “Were you not warned? Did the little witch not announce me?”

Fear regarded the little black-robed man dispassionately. His world was gone, not just a lover. So tragic that he only now does he know it, Fear pondered with his ober-mind. He watched the little magus tickle at the staff on which he leaned not even feeling the wood, nor the stone on which he knelt. The once noble Black Mage could not even see the patterns which danced in harmony all around him. Patterns that he could once have shaped at will. Who was he now?

“Fear, what a very apt name,” Tugaal hissed, “You were looking for me were you not? Scouring the world to… what? What would you do?”

No one could do it, the ober-mind considered. The Wild Magic was closed to him, or should have been. But that had always been his secret. He looked dispassionately at the life force ebbing from Katrin’s fallen body, its essence trickling like water towards the beast; like blood.

The little man lifted his eyes to the beast, his gaze hard and deadly. Behind them the ober-mind saw all that the beast was, saw all that Tugaal the hidden one, the raven, the seducer, Inlecebra… all that it was.

“Who are you to defy me?” The dead voice of the beast bordered on an emotional shrill now.

The Black Mage cocked his head, the ober-mind and he were one, all passion, all sensitivity set aside. Grief could wait.

“I am Fear,” he said.

The ancient hard stone floor rolled like an ocean wave towards the beast as in his mind’s eye, Fear altered the patterns to mimic water. Then even before Tugaal could react he whipped blue-hot fire balls from the air and sent them like comets across the room.

Tugaal brushed them off like snowballs.

“Pretty, pretty lights,” he mocked. “Is that the best you can do?”

Even so the beat struggled to keep its footing as once hard rock became like quicksand.

“Oh no,” Fear breathed in answer.

At his command a shaft of lighting tore through the window and drove Tugaal deeper into the rock.

“That tickles,” the creature hissed in a sneer.

Another blast of lighting punched it down to its neck as Fear launched himself into a better position, placing him between Katrin’s body the demon.

“Enough, I grow bored,” Tugaal bellowed.

But as even as he slid from the liquid stone it hardened and held him fast.

“I shall smash it as I smash you,” he screamed, cracks radiating from where his chest heaved in its captivity.

“You will smash nothing,” Fear said fiercely.

As he spoke the stone became again liquid and yet another lightning bolt hammered Tugaal back into the floor to its neck.

“Beneath you lies the bedrock of the mountain,” Fear spat, bolts of electricity pounding with his words all tearing at the beast. “I shall make it your tomb.”

Alternating with blasts, Fear liquefied the floor by turns so that Tugaal could not gain a purchase to escape. Little by little he sank ever deeper into the mountain until even the lightning could not reach him.

Then seizing his staff, Fear held it like a lance and drove it into the floor projecting waves of power in its train. At one with it he seized the mountain and tamed it to do his bidding. Then at his command it to sucked Tugaal into the depths of hell until he felt the beast no more.

*

When they found him Fear lay crumpled on the floor holding the lifeless body of Katrin in his arms.

“William, summon the Magister, I want Pandoria swept and fortified,” the Grand Magus ordered.

Beyond Davidus, his mustard robes stark like a caution, Gort the High Hand stooped to examine the scar in the rock. He was followed by Dniester and another.

The latter was Meredith whose face was ash-grey as with eyes closed she felt out the closure below them.

“Is it dead?” Gort asked.

Meredith shook her head.

“It used the last of its strength to pass beyond,” she said tersely.

Dniester nodded.

“It will be back then,” he said.

“Undoubtedly,” Davidus agreed, “But next time we shall be ready.”

He looked at Meredith and offered up a small smile.

“What for, why will it come back?” Amber sobbed, “It has what it came for.”

She was kneeling next to Fear now touching Katrin lightly on the head.

“No,” Fear said gently, “I at least spared her that.”

He too was crying.

“A triumph of sorts then,” the Grand Magus soothed.

“Not if the beast escaped,” Fear rasped angrily.

The library was a ruin. Here and there books and scrolls burnt like scattered bonfires. In places even shards of splintered wood lay smouldering. The floor was mostly flat, but it would never be quite the same again.

Around the room stood various mages and adepts, some of the latter guarding the door against curious students.

“Was anyone else…? Is everyone alright?” Amber asked.

Fear nodded dully, his eyes fixed upon Katrin in his arms.

“Here let me see her,” Meredith said quietly.

Fear hugged his lost love more closely and turned her away from the witch to shield her.

“It’s alright,” Amber said gently, taking his arm.

Coming as close as close as Fear would let her, Meredith examined the body. As she did so Katrin’s eyes flickered.

“Amber quickly, there is still time,” Meredith said sharply, “I knew there was a reason for me to be here.”

To be continued.

Our story began here.

Love Lies Sleeping
Ten days had passed and Fear had scarcely moved from the chair in the infirmary. In all that time Katrin had not even blinked as she had that first day. Instead she had lain on stark white sheets that matched her complexion like a wax effigy or… Fear sucked in air through his nostrils and refused to follow that thought.

Pandoria’s resident healer, Spendlove Skinmender, had fussed over her like an old crow, but it had been Meredith with Amber’s help who had mended her broken body.

“What is wrong with her?” Fear had asked a week earlier.

Amber had opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Nothing that I can tell,” Spendlove said encouragingly, “We will soon have her on her feet.”

The old man was the only male witch at Pandoria. He had never been a student, but was someone who Davidus had encountered on his travels. He was a Wiccan by discipline, the only form of Wild Magic that Pandoria could readily accept. As far as anyone had ever seen, he had boundless optimism, which in many cases had been sufficient by on its own to heal his patients.

“We don’t know,” Meredith had put in gently. “The attack was… more than physical.”

Fear remembered the vision of Katrin’s life force draining into the floor. Was that what a soul looks like? He suppressed a chill thought.

“Her body was…” Fear began.

Amber had pulled a sympathetic face.

“We have mended it the best we can. Nerves, bone, flesh… but if she should wake… well we won’t know then if we were successful there,” Meredith said gently.

Now a week later nothing had changed. The ever attentive Spendlove had added chants to his healing ritual, but Meredith had told him that the practical nursing the man provided was of far more use.

Despite Spendlove’s protests there had been cavalcade of visitors to the room. Even the Grand Magus had come more than once. But besides Amber and the other two healers, the only regular visitor was Tabitha.

Each day she had come to stand ashen faced at the door. But Fear had no words for her.

Fear knew he could have saved her, if only… He thought about the scream in the ether. The great swirl among the patterns. If he had not delayed to search for others… if he had not thought of the gods’ cursed bigger picture for once…

Tugaal, Tugaal I will hunt you down, the world is too small for you and if you will it, I will pursue you into hell, Fear vowed.

*
As Tabitha left Fear to his grief, so she embraced her own. The young witch was as broken inside as Katrin had been. Not a day went by or a minute, that she didn’t relieve the events in the library and how she had fled. If only she had stayed, she thought bitterly, and over and over these thoughts came.

She walked endlessly the corridors of the Dovecote seeing nothing and hearing no one. Not that anyone paused to speak to her. Most studies had been set aside and only the initiates still went to class. Anyone who had any skills had been drafted in tasks related to mystical defence.

Several of the mages had been sent from Pandoria to bolster the forces of the allies. Those remaining had other things to do rather than teach and could be seen with groups of adepts at strategic points creating internal traps and barriers against further demonic incursions.

Too late, Tabitha wailed inside, and it is all my fault. Through endless corridors and passages she went until somehow she arrived at her room to find Lucy deep in a book.

“How is she?” Lucy asked.

Tabitha shook her head.

“Not good eh?” Lucy sighed.

Tabitha dropped onto her bed and hugged herself.

“I have some sort of… the gods know, I have to report to some bloody journeyman at High Steps,” Lucy said quietly. “Don’t you…?”

Tabitha shrugged. She had no idea if she had been assigned anything. She didn’t care.

“It’s all my fault,” she wailed, “I ran away and left her.”

Lucy coloured and took a deep breath. She knew the feeling well.

“I left her too, we all did. I told her to run, but it wouldn’t have helped. There was nothing we could do. Dr Fear only just managed to…” but Lucy saw that Tabitha wasn’t listening.

“If she dies… if she…” Tabitha muttered to herself.

*

Ordinarily there were few she would rather see less, but today Tabitha could think of no one better. The Ivory Tower loomed above as she stood at the door where she had had so many lectures, but today she had another purpose.

The climb to Dniester’s door took forever and each step seemed crash like a peel of doom or the drone of some great war drum. It took her an age to find the courage to knock and then just as she found it a voice from within said, “Come.”

For once Dniester looked puzzled as he stood in the middle of his study leaning on the dragon’s tooth. The old man had heard the approach of gentle feet all the way up the stairs and could only think it was Erin. Although his apprentice should have been assisting Amber Sage in the herbivorium preparing medicine’s against any future need.

“Young Tabitha of the Silvershore,” he said as if announcing a queen, “What can I do for you?”

“I… I…” then she fell to sobbing.

“Interesting reaction, although I do take a lot of people that way; especially women it would seem,” he said with a twinkle. “Come now, it can’t be all that bad, not even if you are here for another thrashing. And since I didn’t send for you on that score and I don’t generally work to order, I am sure you are not.”

“But I am,” Tabitha wailed.

Dniester frowned. It was possible of course that Fear had sent her, but he doubted it. And even if true; it was unlike Tabitha or any of his students to take on so before he had raised his stick.

“I am old I know and one day I will be so feeble that I will summon the entire college for stripes and it will slip my mind,” he chuckled, “But I do not think that day has yet come. So suppose you start from the beginning.”

“I… I ran away,” Tabitha sniffed.

“You ran away from…?” Dniester prompted her.

“From Katrin, from the demon, from everything,” Tabitha said miserably, “I should have stayed to help.”

“Ah,” Dniester sighed. Now he understood.

“So… so… so… you should punish me,” Tabitha said in a childish voice.

“Come and sit down,” Dniester smiled.

There was only one seat other than Dniester’s own chair and that was the saddle stool usually reserved for a somewhat reverse situation. It looked hard and Tabitha was still a little tender behind from her earlier meeting with the wizard. Then realising she deserved it she strode across the room and dropped onto it hard. She lacked the will power not to half start upwards a bit and her discomfort showed on her face.

“Tell me oh great hero, what hidden power do you have?” he asked.

Tabitha frowned.

“I mean, did you have some ingenious plan to thwart the demon that you deliberately failed to act upon?”

“No I… I ran away,” Tabitha said in a dull voice.

“I should ruddy well hope so,” Dniester replied. “The Beast would have devoured a little girl like you and not broken its stride.”

Tabitha was crestfallen by this and dropped her head.

“Oh come now little one,” Dniester said kindly, “The Beast would have had me for breakfast too. It took a senior mage just to banish it. There was nothing you could have done, absolutely nothing.”

Tabitha looked up into Dniester’s cracked face. It was terrifying. Then she realised he was smiling. Strangely, her only thought was about what good teeth he had for a man reputed to be over 100-year-old. She sighed.

“So you’re not going to punish me the?” Tabitha said quietly.

“Not today,” Dniester chuckled, “Why don’t you talk to Dr Fear? I am sure he will tell you the same as I.”

“He’s… I think he may blame me too,” Tabitha said sadly.

“I doubt that, but young Arlon is somewhat preoccupied isn’t he,” Dniester muttered absently. Then more brightly he said, “Go and see Amber Sage, she is much better at this pastoral lark than I am.”

“She’s doing stuff for the war,” Tabitha said sullenly.

“Stuff and nonsense, she is a teacher and this is a school. Not some bloody fortress. Tell her I sent you,” Dniester said dismissively, but then he winked.

Tabitha stood wishing that she felt better. But at least the old man’s words had been wise as usual. But his mention of the war sent a chill down her spine. Did he think it wouldn’t touch us? It already has, she thought bitterly. Then she had a flash of vision of the old man lying dead on the ground and she shuddered. A world without Dniester did not bare thinking about.

At the door she stopped and looked back.

“You are not so bad at the pastoral lark you know,” she said with a sad smile.

“Ha, be off with you, before I change my mind,” Dniester called after her in a mock scolding tone.

To be continued.

Our story began here.

Love of the Lost
Amber was completely frayed. Her workload in the herbivorium had doubled with the demand for medicine and simple magic charms to detect Wild Magic. On top of that she had to assist in Katrin’s healing.

Still at least as well as Erin she had several other journeymen and talented novices to help. Some of them had shown such aptitude for the work that she suspected some were covert witches only appearing to follow the elemental path.

“Not those,” she sad to a harried novice, “I spotted some mould on them this morning. Throw them away and pick some fresh.”

Novice flushed, embarrassed she hadn’t noticed and gathered up the spoil into a wicker basket.

Satisfied, Amber did a quick check on the other stock before making sure that new growth at the back of the cave wasn’t being over-harvested. It was then that she noticed Lucy Greystoke hanging around her desk.

“Maestro can I help you?” she called over. Then seeing she hadn’t been heard she dusted off her mucky palms and crossed the cave to the more constructed end of her herbivorium. “Maestro?”

“Ah, there you are,” Lucy beamed, “And call me Lucy, of course you must.” The Green Mage adjusted her robes as she cast a distracted eye over the books on Amber’s desk. “I see you have been reading up on the Triptych.”

Amber frowned, it was an unpleasant topic and with so many novices around, she realised that she should have put the book away. But nonetheless there were no words on the cover and the only thing to identify it were the symbolic glyphs on the cover. So Amber had thought it safe enough.

“I recognise those symbols,” Lucy offered by way of explanation.

“Ah, of course,” Amber replied feeling foolish at her surprise. Lucy was after all a mage.

None of this appeared to concern the Magus.

“Have you ever considered how akin Wild Magic and Green Magic are?” Lucy asked, still smiling.

“You had better not let Dniester hear you say that,” Amber chuckled.

“Or the Grand Magus for that matter,” Lucy added conspiratorially. “But it is true. There are some overlaps, especially when it comes to herbs and such.”

“I suppose so, I do find my affinity of help sometimes yes, but then I will never be an adept let alone a magus,” Amber said diplomatically lest she be seen to compare herself to Lucy in ability.

“But your gifts lay in other directions,” Lucy beamed in her most charming manner. “By the way, did you find out anything useful about…” she coughed, “Our nasty friends?”

“I was checking if anything had ever been recorded about a similar situation to Katrin’s,” Amber said wearily.

“But you found nothing?” Lucy asked casually reaching out for the book and tentatively lifting its cover. “Perhaps a more experienced eye…? With regard to Green Magic I mean, I know you far surpass me where Wild Magic is concerned.”

“Any help would be appreciated,” Amber said enthusiastically.

Lucy closed the book and went to take it.

“But… that book is from Sejanus, he said… not to lend it to anyone without his or the Grand Magus’ permission. I…” It was so embarrassing Amber thought, sometimes these notions of security go too far.

“Oh of course,” Lucy snapped her hand away, “I don’t want to put you in an awkward position.”

“There is another copy… I am sure that if you ask… it’s just that I…” Amber blushed.

“Absolutely, I will look into that, besides, I suppose you still need this copy, I mean two heads are better than one and if… anyway the truth is being a woman I feel that my talents have been wasted rather since the attack and I just thought that I might be of use here,” Lucy pulled a face. “Oh well I’ll look into it, as I say.”

*

Tomas stretched and yawned as he walked onto the battlement above the east gate. Below him yet another army was heading east past low squat buildings. Without him asking for it, one of his men handed him a hot cup of sporitt. It was bitter in his mouth, whoever had made it had over boiled the leaves, he thought as he worked his mouth in disdain. But he had tasted worse. The soldier shrugged; no doubt he had tasted it too.

He was one of the new transfers from holding camp, an assignment that was a sure sign the last of the army would soon move. To reassure the man he was not one of those officers who lashed out at subordinates for the least thing, like foul sporrit for instance, Tomas snorted in agreement and tendered some small talk.

“Did you hear those damn witches last night? Bloody racket,” he said.

“It fair gives me the creeps Sir,” the soldier said with a shudder, “Those men… the priests as well… what is it with their voices?”

Tomas didn’t know, but he had heard that they were eunuchs, so he said, “I tend to stay out of Shadow Dreamer business.”

“Oh… yes Sir,” the soldier said quickly.

Seeing he might have put the man at unease, Tomas added, “Not for likes of you me eh, those people?”

“No Sir,” the man laughed.

Tomas took another swig. As if on cue just below him were a line of witches and Shadow Dreamers about to pass through the gate.

“Sagy-sah, sagy-say, ompoomi-da; saggy-say sagy-sah ompoomi-da,” they sang, each phrase punctuated with a bell.

“I hate that bloody noise,” Tomas spat, the sporrit splattering on the wall at his feet.

Just then one of the priests turned and looked up at him. His cold dead eyes drilled into Tomas’ own and the officer fancied that a piece of his soul had been taken. He shuddered.

“Why do we need these creeps just to have a go at the Easterner swine?” the soldier said oblivious to Tomas sudden discomfort.

“Shut up you fool,” Tomas rasped.

He was relieved only once the column moved on through the gates and on towards the Central Plains.

*

Far to the east in the Central Plains coastal city of Glanthros, the richest man in the world reached out for a date with pudgy fingers dripped with gold rings. His hand hung over the fruit bowl like a man poised over a chessboard, before plunging to snare its prize.

In the background a gang of admirals pored over sea charts and maps moving coloured flags and little wooden ships. Xerses, still toying with his date, knew little of such things, saving for the fact that the fleets of Challis were the key to his wealth.

He was a large man with a soft look of self-indulgence. He lived for his comforts and above all respect. Despite his superior wealth, the Eastern kings and princes continued to look down on him and his kingdom. Well he would soon explain to them their error.

He glanced at his favourite concubine Talia and smiled. The girl dropped her chin onto his arm and gazed back of him with unrestrained adoration. Her eyes seemed to say, ‘You will show them all.’

“How goes your little plans over there?” Xerses said without taking his eyes from the woman.

The babble of conversation ceased and all eyes turned to regard their king.

“Majesty, the new ships you authorised are ready, but many of the crews are mercenaries, our own manpower…” Commissary Admiral Darius Han explained.

“There are some issues integrating the foreigners into our regular forces your majesty,” First Admiral Mykonos Milan put in quickly, irritated that a junior admiral would speak out of turn.

“I don’t want to hear about problems, I have promised our new allies that we would crush Pandoria and those Precips upstarts before they can be reinforced by their allies from Timbre,” Xerses said angrily.

“The Timbre fleet has yet to leave port and anyway is far to the south,” Admiral Milan assured him.

“There must be no mistakes,” Talia cooed under her breath, “Do not permit them to fail you.”

“Spare me your complacency fool. How soon can my fleet sail?” Xerses spoke angrily even as he gazed affectionately into Talia’s eyes.

“Everything will be ready for our attack. Have no fear majesty,” Admiral Han assured him.

Talia smiled broadly at this news.

*

Amber was just finishing up for the day and was considering if she should call in on Katrin. Heaving a sigh she cast her gaze around the cave for any stragglers.

“I’m closing up here, anyone left working back there?” she called out.

There was a cough and something moved. Only it wasn’t towards the back of the cave, but nearer the door. Amber reached for a glow globe and shone it that way.

“Have you got a minute Amber?” Tabitha asked.

“You gave me a start, I didn’t see you standing there,” Amber gasped clutching her throat.

Since the demon had attacked, Amber had been more fearful than most about its reappearance. It didn’t help that she had now found a rich vein of research about the Triptych and what it was capable of.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to… I guess we are all a bit jumpy at the moment,” Tabitha winced.

“How is Katrin? I haven’t had a chance to see her since this morning,” Amber asked.

Tabitha winced.

“Nor have I really, I called just after you left. I think the master would be shouting the place down if there had been any change,” Tabitha said forlornly.

Or tearing it apart, Amber thought grimly. She liked Tabitha’s optimism better.

“It is about Katrin that I wanted to see you. Well in a way,” Tabitha said meekly.

“Is there something wrong?” Amber frowned.

Tabitha nodded.

“I… I…” she sighed, “Mr Dniester said I should talk to you.”

“It looks like you are,” Amber suggested.

“Oh Amber,” Tabitha wailed and in a blink she had tumbled into Amber’s arms.

“I think you had better tell me all about it from the beginning,” Amber soothed.

*

Katrin lay unmoving on her bed while Fear sat in silent vigil. But his attention was wavering.

Patterns, patterns everywhere, he thought like a man drunk, his ober-mind not so tightly under his control now as the two entities that formed the magus phased in and out of synchronicity.

Of course it was just a psychological trick; a discipline that protected the fragile emotional Fear from his hard powerful persona. But the man was at the end of his tether now and his mind was going places it could never have reached before.

“Perhaps its the gods,” he giggled as he gazed at invisible patterns like a man on hill mushrooms.

Never had the patterns come so easily to him. In fact he could not shut them down if he tried. The whole room around him was a cascade of all four elements… no five, he amended.

“But there aren’t five elements,” he cackled joyfully, his eyes were manic now.

His ober-mind regarded the display dispassionately even as the man fell apart. The four elements were in perfect harmony, shimmering like northern lights, defining everything in the room but himself and the woman laying comatose on the bed.

But here the fifth element kicked in. Katrin and he were made of it. Not an element though, he considered. I have seen this before, he mused.

“Although you are not supposed to,” Fear chided himself in a conspiratorial tone bordering on hysteria. “Shhhh,” he added, putting a drunk-like finger to his lips, although there was no one to see.

It is the Wild Magic, he realised. It defines all anima, all that is not bound by the elements. He had observed it before, but had been too afraid to try his hand at manipulation. Besides it was forbidden.

Looking now more closely than ever and free of emotional distractions his ober-mind studied the phenomenon.

Fear giggled again, but his mind ignored the fool.

It is the glue that binds us to the elements, he realised and with the deftest of touches he disentangled a loose hair down into its elemental patterns.

Then he turned his attention to Katrin and looked deep inside her. Something was wrong, very wrong. Black tendrils of… he brushed them with his mind, clearing some of them.

Fear sat up the manic expression gone from his face.

“Maybe I can…”

*

“You foolish self-pitying brat,” Amber scolded as she brought the short wooden paddle down hard across Tabitha’s exposed bottom that lay uppermost and vulnerable across her knee, “As if we don’t all have enough to do. What did you think you could do?”

The growing sting in her behind had grown to blaze now and it was all Tabitha could do not to cry. Not that she didn’t deserve it, but tears now would seem another indulgence to add to her crimes.

“You troubled Dniester with this nonsense, I cannot believe you. It would have served you right if he had given you a repeat of that day. I have a good mind to send you back to him,” Amber said angrily, the paddle emphasising her displeasure. “Just you wait until Fear hears about this. How do you think he feels? Have you once considered that? What are you even doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” Tabitha wailed, no longer could she hold back her dacrylic self-indulgence and tears poured from her eyes.

It felt good to cry, although she hated herself for it. She was convinced that she didn’t deserve any such relief.

Amber well understood Tabitha’s feelings; she herself had felt much the same just days before over the incident with the witches. In the fall out from Tugaal’s attack and Meredith’s intervention to try and save Katrin, all talk of a hearing for her behaviour had been ignored. But Amber could not shake off the lingering doubt that her breach of the Pandorian Barrier had weakened it somehow and had allowed the Beast entry in the first place. She too would love a spanking to make it all better, but life at the extremes was seldom like that.

Nevertheless, Tabitha’s reaction and guilt was as foolish as it was pointless. What was done was done and there were better things to than console the girl. On the other hand she was young and if this short cut worked then what the hell? And hell was just about right, Amber mused over the matter with a grim determination.

The paddle had turned Tabitha’s bare bottom a clean even red now, giving it a russet glaze that more than justified her howling. Too bad for her that they were only just beginning.

“Do you remember the last spanking you had? Believe me it will be a fond memory by the time I am done. This spanking will compare with a Dniester caning before it’s over,” Amber promised.

It was an exaggeration of course, but for one undergoing a spanking, such distinctions were fairly moot.

“I’m sorry,” Tabitha wailed. It would be her sole and miserable response for a while yet.

Amber spanked until her arm was weak from exertion and she could scarce hold the paddle. Her anger had triumphed over technique on this occasion, but still, maybe it had done them both good.

“Right you,” Amber barked, “Go and stand in that corner while I go and see if I have any devil root left.”

A thoroughly miserable Tabitha couldn’t help clasping her tail as she stumbled for a bare space of wall. It was where she had stood once before.

“I see,” Amber sighed as she returned with the ‘medical’ roots. “I said the corner, if you can’t obey a simple instruction then we can begin over I think.”

Tabitha was going to be one little girl who would think twice about seeking a consolation spanking from her, even if it took all night, Amber decided as she took the sobbing witch back across her knee and started in again with the paddle.

*

The corner was rapidly the worst place Tabitha had ever been. The second spanking had lasted a week packed in a night and she seriously doubted whether she could sit down. The tears had long ceased to be cleansing as the devil root inserted firmly in her fundament had taken on all the properties of a hot poker.

She was finally sorry. Sorry she had run. Sorry that she couldn’t help. Sorry about the whole damn thing. She was even sorry now that she had come to see Amber. There was nothing she could have done. She knew that now.

“Amber please,” Tabitha hissed through gritted teeth, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste everyone’s time. I couldn’t do anything. I see that now.”

“That’s good to hear. I am glad you have finally got things clear. Just imagine how much clearer they will be in… oh another hour; especially if I decide to spank you again for good measure. Especially if I employ this other root as well,” Amber sighed.

“Ooh, how do I keep getting myself in this mess,” Tabitha wailed.

“If you really want to make amends…?” Amber let the words hang.

“I do, really I do,” Tabitha groaned.

“Then you can stand in for Katrin as monitor,” Amber said.

It is time she learnt some responsibility and giving her that job is worse than spanking her.

“But I… I couldn’t… you don’t understand,” Tabitha gasped.

“I think I do,” Amber said in a tone of finality.

To be continued.

You know you learn something every day.  Well that actually might not be true, but that is a digression.

“Let me see if I can help you,” I say.

She sighs and puts on her second best irritated face.

“God what does that..?” I say as you lean back and try to focus on the blur in front of me, “Where’s my glasses?”

She makes a frustrated groaning sound and tries to push me aside to get at my computer.

“A mouse, who uses a mouse, you are so old fashioned,” she says in irritation.

By then of course I have found my glasses and I’m wearing them. I am pretty good these days at putting on reading specs, I can do it in less than two seconds all while chewing gum. If I were partial to the old Wrigley’s that is. But I am not.

I might have said this to her but she is puffing like an old train and dancing around me like the proverbial hot cat on a tin roof. What do you mean I have that wrong? I know exactly what I mean.

“Ooh,” she says. She sounds angry now.

“Now what is it you want to check?” I say pulling up a page I suppose she wants.

It seems slow to load.

“Let me do it,” she says impatiently.

“This is the page isn’t it?” I say.

Her hair is fire red and I could swear it is smoking now. She needs to calm down or her head will explode.

“Here it is,” I say.

“Yes,” she says with a roll of her eyes, “Click on that one.”

That’s easy and I do that.

“Click on it,” she says impatiently.

She is dancing again.

“I have,” I click it again and something happens, but I think it is from the first time I did it. “I think it is a slow web site.”

“It’s your connection,” she says impatiently.

“I have mega fast broadband,” I say indignantly.

“But maybe you have exceeded your limit,” she sighs.

“I have unlimited,” I explain.

The page loads.

“Yes but…” she has the angry face on now, “Unlimited doesn’t mean unlimited, it is just a standard term for an industry package with an agreed limit.”

“Really,” I say, “But surely that is misleading.”

“It is to do with what a reasonable person understands by the term. Obviously nothing is ever really unlimited.” She has the same tone when she talks to children.

“I am a reasonable man and I take it to mean that unlimited means that to all intents and purposes it is unlimited,” I reply.

“Can we just get on with it?” she says angrily.

“It’s this one, I clicked it; it is loading. Look,” I say patiently. “I can talk and click on links at the same time. I am multi-talented that way.”

“Ooh,” she growls.

“I think you had better moderate your tone young lady,” I say sternly.

This is usually a signal for her to calm down, but today she doesn’t.

“Your damn computer is as old as you are,” she snaps. “Why haven’t you got an Apple?”

“My computer is precisely 18 months old. It was top of the range then and it is for business not a toy,” I say sharply. “I was using Mackintosh when you were still in school. Back then they had the edge, now they are just pretty and expensive.”

“I am going to look it up on my i-pad,” she says childishly and storms off.

I sigh and open up another browser and visit Google, the BBC and my blog in short order. The connection is fine. The PC is fine. Returning to the page I see the article she wants had finally loaded. The download speed is all at its end I decide.

“I have it,” I call. It is the last of my tolerant reasonableness.

She reappears with a pout, her toy in her hand.

“I can’t get a connection in the front room,” she says accusingly.

I stand up and move aside with a flourish.

She might have said ‘thank you.’ She might have said ‘at last,’ and still got away with it. But that was definitely border line.

Instead she says angrily, “At f…ing last.”

“I see,” I say, “This is over now.”

I take her gently but firmly by the arm and pull her to her feet and she comes without resisting. She knows she has gone too far.

There is an old fashioned Victorian armless dining room chair in the corner. It accommodates us both easily; me sitting, her across my knee.

“I’m busy, I have to…” she says plaintively.

The first spank is hard and lands on the seat of her skirt.

“Ow,” she says with a pout.

I spank her twice more and then tug at the hem of her skirt.

“Oh no, please,” she squeals.

I spank her again and admire the red spillage from under her dainty little knickers.

“Ooh, this is so unfair,” she moans.

I spank her four or five more times before hooking my thumb into the elastic of her underwear. At this she offers up a loud sigh and kicks her legs prettily like a distressed maiden.

Her bare bottom is bright pink on her pale flesh and I run my hand over her skin enjoying the contrast between cool and hot.

“Is that any way to talk to me?” I say, spanking her again with a crisp resounding crack.

She doesn’t answer.

“I tried to help you and all you do is give me attitude,” I say.

The spanking starts in earnest now and I try out a dozen or two swats for size.

“You don’t talk to me like that. Do you hear me?” I scold.

“Yes,” she replied in a small voice.

“You mean you do talk to me like that?” I press her.

“No,” she says meekly.

“I should hope not,” I spank her again a few more times.

“Ooh, I’m sorry,” she lisps.

“I won’t have it.”

“I’m sorry, please Sir, I’m sorry,” she wails.

Her bottom is a vivid red now so I pause.

“Now go and stand in the corner,” I tell her.

“Can’t have a cuddle?” she says softly.

“Corner,” I bark.

She does as she is told, remembering to hold her skirt up and leave her knickers down.

I return to the computer and minimise the article and open a news page. It takes several minutes, but eventually she finds the courage to speak.

“How long must I stay here?” she asks very respectfully.

“Oh, I don’t know. An unlimited time at least, I am sure a reasonable girl knows how long that is,” I tell her.

Then turning back to the news I find an interesting article on growing demand for sea cruises in a recession. You learn something every day.

End