Her foster parents had decreed that the start of her love-life was ominous, at best. They were very astute, and very correct.
But she couldn’t help herself. Every time she saw a boy she liked growing up, she would scramble to sabotage the relationship before it had enough solid grounding to survive her. She knew she didn’t go out of her way to do it—it just happened. There was some horrible, rotten piece of her that seemed to come out around men, as if it was simply her nature to sting everyone in her path with uncalled-for retaliation.
She had poured proverbial sand over Ashcroft’s head, and she knew it. She was only waiting for the moment that he would crawl, sputtering and a shell of himself, away from her. After all, that was the general pattern.
Instead, he did something she did not expect: Ashcroft poured the sand right back onto her.
She didn’t much care for it.
While her friends were buying things they were planning to put in their college dorms, she was getting everything she owned into a couple of suitcases to get sent to Cambridge… And not for the college. No, she didn’t have the luxury to sit around wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She didn’t get to choose her major, it was chosen for her.
Her life had been chosen for her at birth: to ally herself with Ashcroft Medwin, the famously good Archivist Wizard, to be his apprentice, and to possess as much knowledge of the Byndian Craft as she could get out of him.
She had a feeling by the time they brought her to England, and then into the Otherworld to sign the contract under Ashcroft, that she was going to be hosed. She knew quite well that if she didn’t sign her name to the (admittedly non-lethal) apprenticeship contract, her foster mother, Peggy, was going to cry her eyes out… Peggy was supposedly her mother’s best friend, and she was always wailing that she’d ‘failed’ Charlotte’s mother in raising her.
Ah, a witch’s guilt and a mother’s love. That’s what led to this.
Although, when she’d first met Ashcroft, Charlotte was actually excited… And then she realized that he was doomed before she even wanted him to be. She wondered if she’d ever blushed so hard as the first time he looked at her, riveting his eyes on her like she was the most appallingly curious thing he had ever seen.
Because of the way her parents revered Ashcroft as a living-legend, she had already built the imagery of Ashcroft being an old wizard with a long white beard and a pointy hat, just like a human girl might imagine a wizard to be. But in actuality, Ashcroft looked more like a warrior with his brawny arms and strong chest and shoulders… And she had a thing for strong-looking guys.
He looked like he wasn’t too old, either. Oh, well—older than her. He looked like he was a hard thirty, and of course he did. He was an immortal wizard, after all. They stopped aging after they ‘reached immortality’, when their appearance stopped in time. Charlotte knew she would stop aging, too, when she reached her own age of immortality.
Her parents had tried to assure her that Ashcroft would be hard to look at because of the dark gashes on his face. And the dark, visible gashes were certainly there, looking like he had been in a very serious fight with a very wild animal before he’d reached his immortality and could not heal from the scars. But they weren’t as bad as she’d imagined, either. They were just as interesting as the sun wrinkles around the corners of his eyes or the way it looked like he had worked hard in the elements as a mortal. The tan in his skin only made his light grey eyes seem even smokier.
She had distantly wondered how their relationship could come undone, but the answer to her question had appeared with clarity after the first week of her apprenticeship.
They couldn’t be more different. Ashcroft was a tutor, a scholar, despite his rough, roguish looks. There were supposedly many types of sorcerers, and he was an Archivist—a race of wizards who got their powers through grueling study and practice.
And she was his worst nightmare. She was a slacker born from a race of wizards that were powerful, but also carefree and nonchalant, and she was raised by herb-wizards; a race who had about as much desire to be in control of her (or of anyone) as her pet goldfish had. Ashcroft was a rude awakening for her—he liked being in control of everything and everyone, and was.
Which was too bad, because she also liked to be in control. She was used to it; she certainly ruled her foster parents’ roost.
He probably was ready to throw something at her head by their third meeting. Still, not all was lost on her. She REALIZED that he had been attempted patience with her. It merely backfired when Moriarty, Ashcroft’s steward, would escort her—“for her safety”— through the Otherworld entrance and would say some cutting remark about how she looked, how she dressed or wore her hair, how she walked, talked, ate, drank, acted, or didn’t act…
By the time she got to Ashcroft she was a time-bomb set to go off at the smallest huff of angry air unable to get stifled from Ashcroft’s tongue.
She’d never thought it would get this far, though… She never thought she would have run away, but that end seemed to build on itself, as well. Ashcroft had worn thin on patience that had never seemed to work on her.
And now she’d just gotten spanked, hard, by the tall, strong wizard like she was a naughty five-year-old. She had for a brief, shining moment, thought she was just going to suffer through it like a big girl and not give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry.
And then she realized that big girls weren’t ever spanked at all, and that just made her want to cry even more. There was no keeping it in, anyway. Her bottom was well-roasted, aching and burning still even though the spanking was over.
The worst part was, now that Ashcroft rested his hand on her most tender flesh, she realized once again—for she had thought about it immediately when he first tossed her over his knee, before all the pain—that she was very underdressed for this sort of thing. Actually, she wondered if she had ever been more embarrassed. How much could he see? Far too much—far, far too much of that area of her body that she had never been particularly fond of.
“I hope you’ve learned a good bit about yourself when you were gone, Charlotte,” he lectured. “Hopefully you realize how fortunate you’ve been.”
She had learned that… But when she came back into her apartment after a week when all her money had been spent on hotels and room service, only to find her stuff gone and her credit cards canceled, she had definitely had a rude awakening. She’d been miserable.
But she wasn’t about to crawl back to Ashcroft. Moriarty was right about that.
“But your leniency has been cut to a close. You will live here, since you’ve proved you can’t handle the freedom of living by yourself on Earthside. You’ve proved that you can’t be trusted. Maybe one day you can earn back some of my trust.”
“You can’t keep me prisoner!” she gasped, unable to even comprehend what it would be like living here. Ashcroft himself might have been none-too-hard on the eyes, but the Otherworld was quite eerie, and Ashcroft’s tower was doubly so. It was dark and castle-like. She was used to carpets and drywall… Not stones and tall ceilings with dark oak rafters…
Not to mention she had to live with Ashcroft when they had yet to survive four hours together. He would be moved to murder her within the week.
“Oh, yes I can,” he argued above her head, his fingers seemed to grip uncomfortably into her swollen flesh. “I can do exactly that. You signed a contract—saying that you will live wherever I allow you to. And when you live here, there will be rules, and they will be followed or else there will be discipline.”
She felt her throat tighten. More discipline? Why? Did this time go amazingly well? She certainly didn’t think so. Her throat hurt from crying, she was still panting with exhaustion, her nerves were still rattled… And, of course, her ass was on fire! “Please, Ashcroft. Don’t—no more of this. I can’t take any more,” she assured, her words stumbling out of her mouth with choking sobs.
She had heard that many men could
n’t stand to hear women cry. Ashcroft apparently wasn’t one of those men, because he continued on without even faltering from his stern tone. “Rule one; as always—and please don’t take this lightly—don’t leave the property alone. Remember how I said the Otherworld is dangerous? Well, it still is. Even when you live here, don’t become complacent.”
That rule wasn’t new. Moriarty waited for her in the mornings by the Otherworld entrance until she rolled in every day so that he could escort her to the tower, gripping the sword he nearly always carried on his side. In the afternoons when she wanted to go back to her Cambridge apartment, Moriarty would have to escort her to her car. He never even acted very grudgingly towards this responsibility, even though Moriarty was normally full of piss and vinegar. Even he didn’t want Charlotte to walk alone, despite the fact that Charlotte had never seen anything dangerous on the way there or back all summer.
She didn’t argue, knowing she’d get nowhere.
“Two—you will speak to me and to others more respectfully. Sometimes the things that come out of your mouth are so crude they could make a sailor blush. It makes me shudder to think what you might say one day to the Wizard’s Circle if you don’t try to reign yourself in now!”
She gritted her teeth. How did he want her to talk? Like she was in the Regency Era? Certainly that was the last time he’d felt comfortable traveling outside the Otherworld. She could just imagine it. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Medwin, I hope you can join me for a jolly cup of tea out on the balcony. Such a lov-e-ly day it ‘tis!’
Urgh. Besides, the Wizard’s Circle’s opinion or approval she couldn’t care less about. They were nothing but a bureaucratic, small, opinioned federation of wizardry with far too much power. Hearing about them merely gave her the willies.
“Also,” he continued, “you will not talk over me, and you will not talk back to me.”
“Fine, so you want an automaton,” she argued snidely, unable to keep her comments behind her teeth any longer.
Ashcroft sighed. “No. I want you to be civil and respectful, like you grew up among people and not among wolves or apes. You will not bite, pinch, kick, or do other awful things to me or anyone else. You will be obedient.”
“I’m not a slave!” she snapped.
“No, I just want you to stop acting like you’re a small child. It’s far more tiring than it is cute. Do you want me to find a book on manners, because I’ll happily—”
“No, Ashcroft,” she fumed. “This is ridiculous! I am who I am and if you don’t like it, then—”
“—get one for you. Especially because you can’t help but talk over me within two minutes of your spanking!” His voice was exasperated only for a moment before he gave her a few more very firm spanks.
Her eyes widened and she renewed her struggles immediately to full-force. She did not want him to start up again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He continued his volley for a few spanks, making it an even ten, before he stopped.
His hand felt like freaking wood.
“Rule three,” he said above her, and she felt a tear escape her eye and drip down her face onto the floor below. There was nothing to do but to comply with whatever ridiculous, pedantic nonsense he was about to throw out there. “You will give some sort of noticeable effort to the tasks I assign you, including your studies.”
She narrowed her eyebrows, even though she had nothing to glare at but the ground. Ashcroft was stubborn, but so was she! If he assumed that she was just going to obey him like some sort of wayward schoolgirl, he had another thing coming! “Will you let me up now?” she said, the words coming out raggedy and soft.
He finally let go of her hands and gently helped her to her feet. She meant to glare at him—even slap him. Instead, she was too humiliated to do anything more than quickly pull down her skirt and look away from him. Her eyes skirted the farthest wall and then the floor; everywhere but in his direction.
“Do we have an understanding, then?” he asked as she busied herself by rubbing her forearm over her face, rubbing off the hot tears that had acquired there.
“Yes. You think because I was born with some freakish genetic ailment,” she seethed, “that you can force me here to work for you like a servant.” Her eyes bravely looked up at his face, which stared at her every bit as darkly as she stared at it. “But read my lips—ain’t gonna happen.”
“Did you like your spanking?” he answered lowly, standing to his full height. He seemed like a giant.
She ground her teeth together in response.
“Then you’re going to stay here and behave accordingly, do you understand that?” he asked her threateningly.
She grumbled, and then stepped back when she saw him even twitch a movement. “Yes.”
“Promise me?” he reached further.
“Sure.”
“Good. Then progress has finally been made,” he said lightly, and he gave her that look he used to give her—the one she used to like.
Now that look made her virulent. It was everything she could do not to snarl at him. It was certain; she was going to have to do a better job of staying away from him next time. Even sleeping with Jimmy, her band’s guitarist, would be better than being treated like a child.
Next time, she wouldn’t be caught.
* * *
She had only ever gone into the Otherworld in the light of day—when light shown through the trees and she could almost call the place peaceful. She might have even enjoyed journeying there so often if she didn’t know Ashcroft was waiting to squawk at her.
But once the moonlight shown through the clouds, the Otherworld became horrifying. It was past midnight now, and the forest howled with noise… Howled and screamed and crunched...
Even though she had eaten something more than a can of soup for the first time in three days, and she was pleasantly full, the noises kept her more than wide awake.
Sheesh—and she thought the highway running adjacent to her apartment was annoying! This was annoying and scary as hell! At least she knew what was making the noise on the highway. Here, she had no idea what sort of horrifying creatures were running around out there.
And yet, despite the nighttime noises and the too soft and too large featherbed that Ashcroft gave her, or the fact that her room was larger than her whole damn apartment on Earthside, she couldn’t stop thinking about her spanking.
She’d realized he was serious when he first threatened her with a spanking six weeks ago; that’s why she didn’t return. Ashcroft had finally reached his breaking point with her, and he was not a ‘modern man’ in any sense of the word. He was well-read, but even so, he would be startled to see what Earthside was like now. He used to frequent it constantly back in the 1850s, he said, but then he hadn’t gone back until 1927. And then he said that it was ‘too fast paced and startling to comprehend, let alone want to go back to’.
If he thought 1927 was something… He would probably crap a brick at the sight of the world over eighty years later. It had been quite the eighty years—internet, telephones, Xbox360... Ashcroft had never even watched TV before. Everything he needed or wanted from Earthside, he would simply send Moriarty out for.
In essence, somebody might not have told him that spankings simply no longer happened, that pain was no longer a given, and that feeling pain was no longer common place. And if someone had told him that, it obviously hadn’t gotten through to him.
And he spanked too hard. Certainly she wasn’t still supposed to be feeling the sting enough to be sleeping on her side? The nerves on her bottom tingled and seemed to think even the soft cotton panties she wore were far too scratchy for comfort.
With a sigh, she realized the sun was coming up in the horizon. The crunching and screaming noises from outside had finally subsided into gentle morning chirping. She hadn’t slept a single wink. She got of her bed, pulled on her clothes from yesterday, and crept out of the doorway, her hands wringing her hair nervously as she looked back and forth down the hallway and the spiral
staircase.
Nobody sounded awake yet—in fact she could hear the distant sounds of some people snoring lightly—they might have been servants, maybe Ashcroft himself. But she was determined not to make any noise that might awaken any of them.
Torches actually lit her way through the darkness, as if she was in some seventeenth century castle. She could feel the cold coming from the stone underneath her feet around her ankles. She knew that it was going to be freezing outside—it was freezing last night when she was getting carried back. They were a few days into autumn, now, and she’d run out of the bar before she could grab her jacket.
Urgh! The spiral staircase took forever to go down. Ashcroft’s tower was more like a very round, very tall castle with tall ceilings. No wonder Ashcroft was in such great shape—just going up and down the stairs… Her eyes glanced into his office as she passed it; out of habit. And just like always, much to her astonishment, Ashcroft was in there, sitting in a chair by the burnt out fire with a book open but resting on his chest. His eyes were closed.
That man has got to get a life. For a moment she actually cocked her head to the left, looking at how exhausted he looked. He worked far too hard—she wondered why, and what for. He was always working, always writing, always reading.
That man could not be anymore her opposite.
The moment of pity was over, however. It was time to go. She gave a fleeting idea that, maybe in a hundred years, when her age provided her with a little bit of respect and mayhap leniency, she would stop in and check on him…
The Otherworld was like England in the fact that it was foggy in the mornings; mostly she didn’t have much experience with it, particularly this early in the morning. She would normally stroll in nearer to noon.
She shivered and, crossing her arms tightly to her chest, she walked back towards Earthside. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe a mile, though she realized, accompanied by a falling-feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she had never walked to the entrance by herself, and she had to think through the ritual of how to get home.
Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson Page 3
