Sisterhood - Temptation Ch. 02

Vera's apartments were located near the northeastern corner of the house, on the third floor. The library spanned more than one floor, but the main entrance was at ground level, and the few smaller entrances on the upper floors were likely to be locked, even more so given that there was a public party soon to get underway.

Katharina set off along the empty corridor. She steadily accelerated up to a brisk march, then slowed down a little when she felt a distinct discomfort between her legs. She hadn't taken the time to properly tuck herself back into order beneath her tight shorts after Mari had succeeded in getting her flustered.

She reached one of the main flights of stairs that linked the floors of the building. The second floor, just below, was one on which many of the dorm rooms were located. As she rounded the first doubling back of the staircase, she heard a distant chatter, doors opening and banging shut, some laughter. She made her way on down and reached a long, high-ceilinged corridor like the one above. Three girls were filing out of a door on the right, heading away further up along the corridor. One of them, whom Katharina knew from study meetings, turned and gave her a smile of recognition before skipping off.

Katharina's own dorm was at the very opposite end of the hallway. She contemplated passing by there briefly now, to pick up a notebook and writing materials, and maybe rethink her choice of clothing. But she decided it would only be time wasted. Then she heard a whistle and saw two girls walking towards her, waving.

Katharina's two roommates, Ivy and Lia, were dressed in swimming costumes and flip-flop sandals, and each was clutching a towel.

It was Ivy who had whistled at her, her lips pursed into a tight circle. "Last chance to get in a swim before the pool is opened to guests," Ivy called out.

"Come on, Katja," Lia waved, "Go get your swim stuff. Join us."

Katharina watched them approach. Her two roommates were intimidatingly pretty. Ivy was dark-haired, athletic, with a pleasing curve to her figure, and an inviting pair of full, soft lips. She spoke in a loud, enthusiastic voice that broadcasted confidence, as did somehow the slim ring she wore through her nose. Lia, a little taller, was slim, statuesque, with light auburn hair and a scatter of freckles across her nose and her shoulders.

Ivy's swimming costume was reasonably modest, a pair of small, tight swim-racing bottoms in navy blue, her dick visible as a sideward bulge across her hip, and a matching top with shoulder straps holding her petite bust tightly against her body. Lia's almost flat chest was bare. Around her hips there sat a thin string tied in bows at her sides, which supported a tight gold-colored triangle of material that only barely contained a dick that was noticeably larger than Ivy's.

Before she had joined the Sisterhood, even the thought of getting into a swimming costume had been enough to provoke in Katharina a visceral, churning dread. She retained something of an instinctive aversion to it even now. Here, among other girls like herself, she had found the courage to give it a try a few times, in the huge outdoor pool at the back of the Summer House. She had even somewhat enjoyed it, feeling her body concealed and warm beneath the water. But she found she still got a lot of attention from the other girls that she would rather not have.

Katharina feigned disappointment, "That would be nice. But I have to do some studying unfortunately."

"So bring your books with you," Ivy nodded at the book under Katharina's arm, "You can get in a bit of sunbathing while you read."

Katharina shuddered at the thought of the book getting wet. "This is Miss Vera's book," she replied, "I can't take it outside. Besides, I have to look up some other things in the library."

"Miss Vera given you some more 'extra study', has she?" Ivy's mouth curled into a teasing smile.

"Teacher's pet," Lia chided, giggling.

"Oh Katharina, you're such a good student," Ivy cried, in a surprisingly good imitation of Vera's cheerful, sing-song voice.

Katharina's cheeks flushed warm. "No," she protested, "It's... I'm just helping her with some research."

"Oh yeah," Ivy continued. She tilted her head back, opened her mouth, and pumped her fist in the air above it, murmuring as she rolled her tongue against her cheeks, "Mm, more research. Yes, harder research! Katja, give me that big dic-"

Katharina glared at Ivy. Ivy paused, then righted her head, "...-ctionary," she concluded with a smirk.

"Har har," Katharina smiled despite herself. She found Ivy's teasing strangely gratifying, in the way that being teased about a crush sometimes could be. It offered her a brief chance to indulge herself, which she relished. She suspected that Ivy knew this.

"Oh well," Ivy smiled back, "Suit yourself."

"Fuck I wish I was as smart as you Katja," Lia sighed, "I'm never going to learn anything."

Katharina felt a certain sympathy for Lia. She was beautiful, energetic, popular, but was one of those girls who could just never bring herself to concentrate on anything.

"Come with me if you like," Katharina suggested, "I can show you a bit of what I'm working on."

Lia looked for a moment as if she were seriously considering it, and Katharina's heart sank. She realized suddenly that her impulsive offer had been meant rather as a token of sympathy. Lia's company would be distracting, and would probably slow her down a lot.

"Thanks, but nah," Lia held out her hand to Ivy, "Come on Ivy, let's go. I want to get in some serious laps before the pool is closed."

"Give some serious blowjobs, you mean?" said Ivy loudly.

"No!" Lia shrieked, giggling, "That's you that does that. And then you always say it was me!"

"Whatever. See you Katja," Ivy waved and then flip-flopped hurriedly off, leading Lia by the hand down the stairs.

"You see," Lia called over her shoulder in a loud whisper, "She's in a hurry. Those senior girls aren't going to suck themselves off."

"Some of them have probably tried," Katharina heard Ivy snort as the two girls passed out of earshot.

Katharina watched Lia's skinny, string-clad behind wiggle out of view round the corner. The quickest route to the library also led down the stairs, but Katharina waited for a moment before descending. It would be awkward to catch up to her roommates again right after having seen them off.

Here on the eastern side of the building, the main stairs down from the rear wing terminated at one end of the spacious hallway that housed the entrance to the East Wing. As she completed her descent and alighted from the staircase, Katharina looked up. The ceiling far above her was shaped in a shallow arch, and at the foot of the arches she could make out the discontinuity between the weathered facade of the East Wing convent and the more recent polished stonework of the Summer House. In her induction week, back when she had first joined the Sisterhood, she had learned a little about the history of the house, during a tour given by a dour, bored-looking senior girl. The convent, and the church that had been converted into the great hall, were older dark age or early medieval buildings around which the rest of the Summer House had been built much later, in the eighteenth century. The iron-studded doors to the convent were shut. Katharina had seen the nuns a few times, crossing the house, their faces veiled. They were unlikely to be out and about now, just before a public event.

There was nobody else in the hallway. Katharina crossed the grand space, her slip-on shoes scuffing against the flagstones. The paneless windows to her right gave onto one of the gardens in the inner courtyard, where a few girls were tending to plants. As debutantes, Katharina and her roommates had been allocated no duties on the day of the ball, to give them time to prepare. They had done their part earlier, over the days leading up to the ball. The girls at work in the garden were all senior, and Katharina didn't recognize any of them.

Rounding the corner into the longer hallway that linked the western and eastern flanks of the building, she saw more girls at work at the far end, carrying boxes and small items of furniture through the open doors of the great hall. She felt nervous imagining that soon she would be entering the hall, amid crowds of girls, many of them outsiders. She would be expected to dance, to flirt, and even to seduce.

She headed quickly for the main entrance to the library. Joined on one side to the central hallway, and jutting out into the inner courtyard, the library was almost like a separate building. In height it spanned all three storeys of the house, plus attic space, and it looked down on the courtyard gardens that surrounded it on three sides.

In front of Katharina, the thick wooden doors were open wide on their iron hinges. She stepped through into a dimness that her eyes took a moment to adjust to after the bright, airy space of the hallway. Like any space that houses a large quantity of objects of the same kind, the library had a particular, permeating smell. Here at the entrance it was predominantly the acidic, sickly smell of processed paper that emanated from the smaller collection of new books that were stored in the front section. Beneath it was the mustier, less abrasive odor of the older books housed deeper inside the building. It was a smell that Katharina knew ought to be unpleasant, but that she had grown to like and to welcome, by association with the quiet comfort of studying alone. It smelled like the distant past, like history.

"Are you bringing that back?" asked a quiet, slightly nasal voice.

Katharina took in the front desk, a long, low wooden bench with a shelf in front of it, rather like the choir stall of a church. Peering up at her through big, wire-rimmed glasses was Polina, a senior girl who often worked at the library.

"Oh. Not yet," Katharina looked down at the book under her arm, "Just want to cross-reference something."

"Can I help you?" Polina smiled.

Katharina found Polina strangely unsettling, even though in what brief conversations they had had, Polina had always been entirely civil to her. It wasn't that Polina was attractive. Sweet perhaps, slim and delicate, but fairly plain. Rather it was that discreet smile that accompanied almost every utterance. It was hard to tell whether it was timidity or arrogance. Too, Polina was bookish and hard-working like Katharina herself, and so it felt as if the two of them ought somehow to be in competition with each other, though they had never particularly clashed.

"Um, maybe I could look at Sister Ruth's index," Katharina replied.

"Okay," Polina smiled again and sat up primly. She slid along to the end of her bench, stood up, and walked round to where several wheeled trolleys were parked side by side behind the front desk. She pulled on one of them, and dragged it forward with some effort. Katharina made to help, but by the time she stepped forward, Polina had already swung the trolley round in front of her. It bore a thick book bound in old leather, and almost as wide as the span of Katharina's arms.

Sister Ruth was a woman who had been cloistered at the East Wing convent, some time between the 12th and 14th centuries, long before the Summer House had been built. This had been a time at which the Sisterhood itself was in disarray following persecution by local rulers. Some of its core members had sought asylum in the convent. They had brought with them treasures and antiquities, including the archive of books that was now housed here in the library. It was not known whether the Sisterhood had entered the convent with the consent of the order or by means of deceit and infiltration. But either way, at least some of the nuns had taken it upon themselves to protect the Sisterhood and preserve its secrets, among them Sister Ruth.

Not a great deal was known about Sister Ruth herself except what could be gleaned from the book that she had bequeathed the convent. Her index had been a lifelong labor, painstakingly collating disparate occurrences of the words and symbols found in the Sisterhood's collection of books in the old language. Every time Katharina returned to the index, she marveled at the time it must have taken to complete. Sister Ruth's feat was all the more impressive given that she was not herself a Sisterhood girl. Her annotations and marginal notes revealed only a rudimentary grasp of the language, which she had evidently taught herself as she read. She had clearly done most of her work without actually knowing what was written, nor presumably knowing much about the Sisterhood at all. She had simply memorized the appearance of each symbol and then sought it out in each book, noting where she found it. Later custodians of the library had continued Sister Ruth's work in places, but probably about half of the entries were hers. The index was by no means complete, as Katharina had discovered before to her frustration, but it was the best place to begin most searches.

"So what are you looking for?" Polina looked up, her arms still spread wide gripping the edges of the trolley.

Katharina hesitated, then lied, "I'm looking for texts about the Summer Ball." She felt a sort of vague, proprietary jealousy about Miss Vera's research assignment. It was her assignment, and she wanted badly to triumph alone. If she revealed exactly what she was looking for, Katharina faced the disconcerting prospect that the studious Polina might already know the answer, or want her share in finding it out.

Katharina saw the quizzical expression on Polina's face and realized too late how ill-chosen her hasty lie had been. It was the sort of thing with which she could have fobbed off someone like Lia or Ivy, who knew very little about the history of the Sisterhood.

"The Summer Ball is a recent invention," Polina said, surprised, "I don't think there will be anything about it in any of the old texts. You want the modern section, not the index."

"Sorry," Katharina thought quickly, salvaging her deception, "I meant about the older rites that it's based around."

Katharina was fairly sure that Polina too would be aware that although the ball itself was a very recent innovation, the rite of offering that followed at dawn was much older, probably as old as the Sisterhood itself.

At this, Polina seemed satisfied. She leaned further over the book and pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. "That's quite broad. Do you know what words you want to look up first?"

Just as it was becoming clear that Polina wasn't going to give up and leave her to it, Katharina heard from behind her the quiet swish of robes in motion. She turned and saw a girl enter through the doorway. Polina looked up too, then suddenly stood up straight and clasped her hands in front of her waist before bending subtly at the knees in what seemed to be intended as a gesture of deference.

The girl who had just entered marched over gracefully in long-legged strides. She towered atop a pair of red high-heeled shoes, and looked like she would already have been slightly taller than Katharina even without them. She was broad-shouldered, slim and athletic, and dazzlingly beautiful. She had large chestnut-brown eyes and glossy, shoulder-length hair to match. Her deep red silk gown was worn loose and billowed out behind her, revealing a pair of very tight black leggings that clasped the outline of her impressively long and heavy-looking dick against the inside of her thigh. A short, shoulder-strapped top held a pair of small, firmly-bouncing breasts. The skin of her bare midsection was tanned a deep golden brown, like that of her face and arms.

Katharina recognized the girl. Julie. She was one of the Seven Sisters, the cabal of powerful senior girls ultimately in charge of the Sisterhood and responsible for ensuring that its rites were observed and that its secrets remained guarded. Katharina tried hard not to stare. She weighed up whether she should say something or perhaps make some gesture that might signal her acknowledgment while being less obsequious than Polina's odd curtsy.

Katharina was relieved when Polina skipped forward first. "May I help you?" Polina asked.

"Thank you, but no," Julie smiled curtly, "I just need to fetch something."

"Of course," Polina retreated.

Julie's gaze lingered briefly on Katharina and it seemed her big eyes narrowed with the faintest expression of interest. Then she marched on, up the central aisle of the library, her gown spread and shimmering in her wake.

It took Katharina a moment to return her attention to the index. The Seven Sisters possessed an elusive but compelling aura of attraction, conferred on them by the Goddess in return for their observation of her rites. Katharina knew that it had its most powerfully bewitching effect on dmurrhisi girls, but she felt a trace of it insinuate itself into her own imagination as she watched Julie depart.

Katharina turned and saw Polina departing through the door to the library office, perhaps chastened by Julie's rejection of her offer of help. She was now alone with the book. She leaned over it and began delicately turning the pages, careful not to tug or fold the thin paper. The entries in the index were grouped according to an ad-hoc taxonomical system that had evidently started out being based purely on commonalities in the appearance of the symbols, but had later evolved to incorporate aspects of their meaning, as Sister Ruth had come to understand more of what she was reading. It helped that in any case meaning and form were loosely linked in the old writing system.

Katharina pondered where to search first, then she recalled with a smile the pig's-tail curlicue at the foot of the unknown symbol. In many of the early sections, Sister Ruth had organized unknown symbols into groups based on a fanciful resemblance to animals. Katharina set down the book she had been carrying under her arm and opened it to where Vera had bookmarked the page they had read together. Though the curly flourish indeed resembled a pig's tail, when Katharina squinted and let the rest of the symbol fade a little in her vision, she fancied she saw rather a cat, its tail curled behind its back. There were dashes that could just have been whiskers, for someone who really wanted to see them.

Katharina plumped for cat over pig, in part because she remembered first where the cat-like symbols were to be found. She turned carefully to a section near the front of the index and found the page she was looking for. The entries were arranged in a neatly-ruled grid of square spaces. The symbols of interest were written at the top of each space, followed below by a list of references to the books containing occurrences. Many entries were sparse, with only three or four references, but a few were very crowded. Katharina made her way through them methodically, turning back and forth between the index and her book to compare each symbol to the one she was looking for. Precisely because the symbols had been grouped by visual similarity, it was tedious work, and on several occasions she had to look back and forth from the same symbol more than once before she could assure herself that it was not quite the one she sought.

She stood for what felt like some time, engrossed in her task. Then near the foot of the page she found herself looking and comparing a fourth and a fifth time and realizing suddenly and unexpectedly that she had it. All the components were there, the dashes at the edge of a circle, the interlocking loops, and of course the curly tail-like flourish. She had prepared herself earnestly for disappointment, to the extent that there was a moment of stillness before the excitement kicked in. There were just two references for the symbol. As a matter of habit, she closed her eyes and took a moment to commit each short sequence of numbers to memory. Then she cast about for a pencil, found one lying on the front desk, and carefully copied them both in very light strokes into the margin of Vera's book, as a precaution. She reflected that she was defacing an antique, but reassured herself that she could rub them out easily later on. Or else they might remain and many years later serve as an aid to whoever next read the book, and that person would wonder wistfully who had first taken an interest in this mysterious passage and done the work of deciphering it.