The Imp of the Perverse

Of course, the moment she walked me in, under her command as my master's wife had secured me, my eyes fell on the rack of discipline canes and paddles and punishment pastes.

Quassi laughed at my focus and bade me sit. I didn't have any choice: the terms of my slavery are a form of art. A direct command is one I shan't disobey—and if my master hands me to his wife, and then his wife to her daughter, so I am equally trapped.

She had bade me sit on a small stool that I supposed was designed to belittle penitents and she sat behind me in one of the leather chairs.

"Turn around, 'E'," she said, her pet-name for me, I surmised. Perhaps 'Eleni' had too much dignity to it? I generally travel with master, and his youngest had been away for the beginning of my sentence so I knew Quassi very little—only by reputation of the house-maids, with whom she was charged with punishing.

I turned away from her, feeling her eyes on my back. If you read this, know that this is not a turn of phrase. I am a spirit and I can feel the gaze of a being as a flutter-light touch, a sultry caress, a testing finger, and so on. If you wonder what makes Dryads and Nyads and some Nymphs shy, consider that if your breasts were touched or even groped every time a human came upon you, you might well use your abilities to hide and watch rather than greeting them!

So I felt her gaze across the nape of my neck and down my spine. I cannot read minds from the feel of it—but I can read certain types of intent. She was admiring my skin, which is green.

This is fairly common since I am exotic to most who might read this diary. I also knew that admiring my skin had little bearing on how it was to be marked in the course of punishment.

Her gaze flickered away and when it returned, it came with an unusual focus—not on my spine or shoulder blades or bones, but diffuse. Then I felt a brush.

My captor was gently brushing my hair out. I have lengthy dark green hair—a shade that on a human would be a light brown. I often have small buds, flowers or leaves, or vines in it. These grow in an ornamental way and reflect my moods.

I had kept it a dire secret from my master that the pink and yellow flowers that I grew would be known by another of my ilk, as flowers not of rage or depression, but as a sign of . . . interest—of a kind of entertaining pursuit. It would seem that I was experiencing my awful captivity and horrid parade of punishments and indignities (such as the chastity belt, my master makes me wear constantly!) as a kind of stimulating journey that held fixed my interest!

I would never have admitted this to him and I hope he never reads this! But I am writing it here now, to my supreme embarrassment because his youngest stumbled upon the horrible control my slavery binds me to.

"I think," she said, brushing out my hair, her fingers performing some kind of . . . manipulation of it as she went, "that you should keep a punishment diary."

"What?" I demanded. I'm not required to refer to my jailers by titles unless they are clearly vexed with me.

"When I was abroad at college," she said, "at an order school," our dorm mother required the keeping of punishment diaries. It was . . . well, it's a form of punishment itself, so it wasn't pleasant—but it had its uses and, I guess, it's charms?"

I wanted to round on her and demand that she explain these 'charms' but she was brushing my hair out and I am ashamed to say I was enjoying it.

"How, Miss?" I asked, more meekly. The humans are very intent on making their penitents meek.

"Well, a punishment diary," Miss Quassi said, "is a diary—a journal? You know it?"

I did. My absorption of human tongue comes through a forest art. As people have lived in my wood, I have come to understand them, and with them, their language and ways.

"A text comprised of the dead skin of my wards," I said, icily. I am admitting here, because of my geas, that I do not actually regard books or parchment to be a deflation of the dead. It is true that some kinds of human enterprise are distasteful to Nature Spirits—but the production of parchment is within the natural order. Still, I sought to vex her! Had I known what was coming, I should not have done it!

"So, every day, we made an entry—but the entry isn't just what happened to us or what we thought or felt or what have you—but that too—no, we were to detail our punishments."

"Now," she said, still working at my hair in what, as I said, was a pleasant manner, "we were expected to put in . . . embarrassing things. Which boys or girls we fancied. Which teachers we did not. What things had caught our eyes or what hopes or dreams we had."

"These are regular things to put in a journal, but they are usually considered so private that even a mother will hesitate before invading her daughter's diary."

"I, understand, miss," I said. I turned this over in my mind. I understood the words, yes—but this application was only just coming into focus.

"Now, in the order college—especially in my dorm—we were all pretty much always under punishment. One of the reasons why mother selected the school. Anyway, it wasn't as bad as it sounds—we were twenty and six girls and we were all badly behaved enough to well deserve it—but our dorm mother laid out the rules for the diary."

"The rules were such that we were to reveal embarrassing elements of our lives in great detail with colorful language to convey the incidents. The same—even more so—with punishments. If I were caned, I was to describe the feeling, the recovery—the tears after—the cleaning up in the bathrooms following my time baking and exposed in a corner. Were I lectured I was to write how the scolding had impacted me, what had found its home in my heart—if I had cried. And so on."

"She collected these diaries at regular intervals. Once or twice a week. If they were not up to date, there were substantial punishments for any girl that was being lazy—but—"

"If the entries were both properly timely and of the required detail and ability, then there was a possibility of reward."

"Reward?" I asked. She was conducting a complex braiding of my hair which felt as though it was a Keltik Braid—I knew this could not be so. I doubted any human from her lands would know it!

"Oh, yes! The girls with the most expressive diaries—the most . . . embarrassing revelations, the most thorough descriptions of any ordeals—they were scored. We didn't get to read each other's diaries but we saw the scores and the top girl would be . . . rewarded."

"How so, Miss?" I asked. It was a Keltik braid! GREAT SKY!? Where had she learned it!?

"Ah—ehhm—" Miss Quassi's blush was palpable in her voice. "Well, we might spend the night with our Den Mother—you understand she was a fierce acolyte! Stern with us—strict—and protective. In her care, we were restricted from spending and while I know many of us got around it, with the arousal from the order's activities and our young . . . bodies . . . inexperienced and away from home for the first time . . . the reward of joining her in bed—as her submissive—but being gifted a . . . extremely powerful orgasm . . .

She trailed off. I knew how the girls had been rewarded. And I could well imagine the sounds (even if muted by heavy doors) of one of their number finding the relief that plagued them—and ME—could powerfully incentivise them to improve their diary craft.

"Wouldn't you . . . lie?" I asked her. I could feel her fingers deftly working my hair into a pair of complicated and even arcane designs.

"Some of us tried," she admitted. "It was a big mistake. Not only did you get punished for it but the false entries were displayed in the dormitory! It was mortifying!"

"Did you lie?" I asked.

"Thankfully no. Once I saw the shape of things, though, I wrote things in that diary that were beyond mortifying. I got my share of rewards—more than—and I felt the favor of our Den Mother as . . . well . . . mayhap as you feel the sun? I don't know?"

"Sort of," I admitted.

"Anyway—it also—erhm . . . boys with order experience may know the diary exists. If I become close to one, it is mother's decision to show him some. Or a girl, I'd guess. Either."

"That sounds horrible," I said.

"Oh, of course—but if I fancy one and mother agrees, if they agree to look at the diary, it is . . . a powerful hook. Their parents, knowing the diary has been read by their son . . . or daughter . . .." she giggled, "will be far more likely to allow or enforce an arrangement."

"It's considered the best possible way to test a possible mate to see if they are interested in a commitment!"

She bade me stand, and I examined myself in a full-length mirror. I wore a robe, my infernal chastity belt, and I could see the long braids in my hair—they had been done well, in Keltik knots.

"How did—How did you learn this, Mistress?" I asked, using the title out of actual astonishment.

"My father has an extensive library," she said. "When I knew you would be here with us for a time, I read about your kind—what I could find, anyway. A book suggested the braids—the, uh, mathematics of them? You find the maths . . . pretty?"

She seemed confused by this but I found myself hugging her—my jailer! My master's—my owner's—daughter!?

"Just suffice it to say I find them pretty," I told her. In truth, I had not had my hair braided such, since I was a sproutling and my mother tree active and awake!

She beamed. Pleased to have done a kindness for her judicial slave?

"Anyway," she said. "I think you should keep a punishment diary with those rules. I'll be the grader—when you are off with my father, you can save the entries and I'll examine them when I return."

I felt a sort of warm shudder. She had not ordered me to do it—but I realized I had accepted her suggestion as an order. Perhaps because of the braid.

Then panic struck me.

"Mistress—please—you must not show it to your father!" I begged. "Nor . .. your mother. Please!"

She laughed then. "I make no promises, Eleni! Just as my Den Mother could show pages of it to my teachers and I feared the mortification of such, it was part of the game—and it was a game that came with rewards!"

I felt her gaze over my cheeks—across my lips, like a finger brushing them, down my neck.

Women's gaze is usually more intimate than men's. Men's is more unpleasant, usually—drawn directly to my private areas—but her gaze was a gentle warm touch—the kind a spirit can enjoy . . . if she is not a slave who this mistress is charged with punishing as a part of her sentence!

And so, I condemned myself to write this accursed diary. I must follow the spirit of the rules which means writing things I desperately hope never to be read—but which I know will be. I am writing this in my cell, my room, really. It is a normal bedroom without even a lock on the door and with all the normal amenities that a human guest would be provided with—but I decry it as a jail cell!

I cried to myself, realizing what the small leather book Quassi had provided me would mean. Ohh! How angry I am at her! At master! At the Stag Spirit! At myself!

She brought me a tray of food when I declared myself too distraught to eat with the family. What if she disclosed the fact of the book to master? I should die!

His wife would scoff at me—I would be exposed before them as having collapsed completely into their daughter's arms!! I felt certain she would order me down—or her mother would send a girl to do so—but they let me curl up on the bed and whimper.

If not for the horrible belt, I believe I would have soothed myself with my fingers. If I could have turned into a tree, I would have done so to relive myself without the pleasures of masturbation—but I was forbidden that, so I curled up and sobbed.

Mistress Quassi seemed indulgent of my misery in a way the master rarely is. He is more blunt in his assignation of punishments to the point where I sometimes feel I am a chore to him! A feeling that makes my captivity even worse!

I began to think that my stay in his household under the care of his youngest might be more intolerable than even the awful trip to the Key-City had been! And there, I had been kenneled with the dogs!!

CASTLE ORMALLY - DINNER - QUASSI

Quassi sat to the left of her father at a large table. An incredibly . . . drenched . . . looking servant girl was taking point in serving and Quassi thought the poor thing was inches from collapsing into a heap and begging sobbing forgiveness for her mere existence.

Her father, seeing his servants—and even slaves—as soldiers under his command, sought to gently improve and encourage her, rather than dismiss her—which, of course, was even worse!

She blushed as the girl tried to escape his attention, hide from her mother's gaze, and complete her serving duties without crawling under the table.

"Maya," said her father, when she flitted away to get something.

"Yes!" praised her mother.

"Who is on her humors," said her father in a tone of horror.

"Yes," her mother agreed.

"Should I—" Her father started.

"Do NOT say a word that you know," Mother forbade him. "I want her to live through this serving without fainting."

Father grumbled and nodded. I refrained from giggling.

"I have been asked to provide Eleni to the order for a . . . brief trip out to an abbey," he told me. "Where is she?" He glanced around the table as if the dryad might be sitting there and he'd somehow missed her.

"Feeling slightly depleted," Quassi said. "I had dinner sent to her—she will be fine."

"Is she on her humors?" He asked.

Quassi's mother burst into laughter.

"Next week," said Quassi, brightly. "I've been tracking her. It's mortifying for her—she's . . . not truly used to human bodies. Even by now."

"Enn—oh," said her father. The serving girl bustled up and laudably served a sauce without spilling it, and a jug of water. Quassi knew she was predominantly a kitchen girl—her requirement of service here was a bit of a stretch and obviously a modest punishment. She found the girl's distress charming!

Quassi asked: "When does she go?"

"The Proctoress has arranged for transport in the morning," Lord Grummurand said.

"The morning??" Quassi asked, appalled.

"Yes?" Her father said, surprised at her reaction. "Is that—"

"I'll need to pack her! How many days?"

"She's a judicial slave," her father said, seeming baffled. "Why does she need to be packed? The ordrer has—"

His daughter rolled her eyes. "The order will dress her in shackles and a collar and leash! I will prepare suitable clothes for us both."

"Both—" her father started. "Quassi—she is needed to—"

"Father," his daughter said. He paused. She could punished just for interrupting him. He wouldn't of course. The conversation was still pleasing to him. But—"I was tasked to be her overseer, was I not?"

Lord Grummurand looked to his wife, who was clearly giving him no material support. She nodded, looking only interested at the back and forth.

"You were," her father said. "I take it."

"I was," she confirmed. "If she is ordered off my post, does that edict end?"

He knew she was couching domestic policy in terms of military responsibilities—but even if the logic was not quite sound, he was impressed with her adoption of the duty.

"I am assured it is safe," he told his wife. "I am not certain they would be prepared for two—"

"I'm sure they can make do," Nartha said, airily. "Will our Dryad be dismayed to find she has not escaped you?" she asked her daughter.

"I doubt it," said Quassi. "We got about famously today."

"Famously enough that she can't come down to dinner," her mother observed dryly.

"I'll look after her," promised Quassi.

Her father made mental notes to send a courier—and perhaps a squad of soldiers to the abbey in two days time to make sure his daughter and his ward were well in hand.

CASTLE ORMALLY - LORD GRUMMURAND

It was after dinner and he knew that Nartha was entirely correct and he ought to come to bed—but with his ward and his daughter going to the corrections abbey tomorrow he wanted to know things. He had requested the castle archivist to provide him a selection of books from the extensive castle library. He had also taken books from his own private collection.

On a parchment he had written "IMP OF THE PERVERSE" and under it several scrawled notes as he pursued pages of old texts.

There was the tiniest knock at the frame of the open door to his study.

"Mmph," he grunted, and gestured for them to enter. I was looking at the text and caught only the flutter of an apron and skirts from the corner of his eye as the girl delivered hot tea.

He glanced up, catching a shuddering of the girl's breath.

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second and she nearly dropped the tray.

"Maya?" he asked, removing his reading spectacles and rubbing his eyes.

"Yes, master!" she squeaked, clearly horrified that the lord of Ormally Castle knew her name! He looked her over. They were really putting the poor thing through it! She probably ought to be in bed now, herself—but here she was, still being made to serve the high-master of the castle and the town. She was, he thought, unconsciously shuffling away—perhaps preparing to flee.

"Nartha put you in the pillories this afternoon," he said.

She covered her mouth. He'd walked by her and seen her face shine with blush—but now realizing that he had REMEMBERED her was more than she could face.

"Come here, girl," he said, gesturing to her. He could see the oh-no-no-NO look on her face as she trudged forward to stand before him, her hands behind her back. She was blinking rapidly, likely trying not to cry in front of him, he thought.

"I lost my head and started a row with another serving girl," said Maya, somehow apparently getting the words out without any air in her lungs.

"And for that, she gave you what? Three bells in the pillory?"

"One bell only, master," the girl squeaked. Sattva! If she didn't breathe she was going to faint on him. "I'm sorry! It ought have been more—I—"

Out of habit, he reached out and took her wrists, examining them. If the domestic pillories were leaving bruises or pinching, he would need to have them looked at. Her wrists were unharmed. She had shut her mouth with a

He guided her chin up to examine her throat. The girl gave the barest gasp of horror as he inspected her. No, her throat had not suffered from her hour in the pillory. She was young and new and serving this close to lord and lady of the castle was beyond her.

Well, he knew how to deal with this.

"I am not just the warden of the castle and her lands," he said gently, "but those within—and especially my kitchen girls." She was sniffling now, probably deciding that crying in front of the castle ward was preliminary to her being released.

"So I am going to punish you and send you to bed," he said. Her face was so brightly blushing, he thought he'd better get her over his lap before her knees gave out.

"Master! Master, please! I'm—ohhh—I'm on my humors!"

The abject horror in her voice was touching as he swept her skirts up. She wore a humors panty that was thickly padded in the crescent between her bottom cheeks and her nether-lips. It was cut so it left her bottom mostly exposed—but this lesson needed to show her she could expect punishment from either he or his wife and all that was required was for her to mend her ways.

Or not—there was more than one servant on staff, not counting slaves, who was more or less constantly under discipline. His wife was very attuned to the poor things and would never have discharged them from service, than she would have evicted a puppy for wetting the floor. Maybe Maya would be one of these?

He drew her panties down from her pale buttocks, hearing her inarticulate, desperate begging. Did she really suppose he had never spanked a girl on her humors before?