The Box

By Callipygian

The ornate wooden box sat under one of those glass domes that Victorians used in museums. Mysterious and enticing beneath a silver shield, forever out of reach. As a child Adrien had stared at it for hours, tracing the intricate designs with her eyes, trying to divine hidden secrets from the mysterious markings that almost formed words.

Even more intriguing was that Aunt Freya had told her never to touch it. She was not even to go near it.

“Can’t we open it?” more than once Adrien had asked in eager tones, her eyes alive like a child at Christmas.

Aunt Freya had gone deathly still at such times and Adrien had imagined that she actually shuddered. Then Freya had leaned close to tell Adrien, “Only the wise, noble and entirely innocent dare open the box or the great old god will come for you.”

 At 10 this lit a candle that would never go out. This interest, if not obsession never left her. As she grew older she came to know that the strange pattern-words were known as runes and that the box was very old.

“It has been in our family for… for so long that you would not believe me,” her aunt told her, “When I am gone it will come to you, but promises me…”

“Yes aunt,” Adrien laughed, “I will never open it.”

*

The wake was a quiet affair. Most of Adrien’s family lived far away and most of Aunt Freya’s friends had already passed on into the Summerlands before her. The priest came to pay his respects, but none remembered Freya ever going to church before her funeral and the few gathered eyed the man with disdain and suspicion.

“Thank you for coming,” 28-year-old Adrien said to him as he made a diplomatic exit. “It was a good ceremony…” She had grown into quite the shield-maiden, her aunt might have said, tall, lithe and golden blonde; her deep unfathomable blue eyes seeming to miss nothing.

“But your friends and family do not believe,” he finished for her, taking both her hands in a gesture of kindness.

“Oh they believe…” Adrien began, finishing, “But they go to another… church.”

The priest nodded, he understood, “My condolences.”

Adrien smiled blandly and watched him go before closing the door.

“We must be going to,” Frida Hanson told her, she and her husband were the last of her aunt’s friends. “I did not know what to do with this,” she said and handed Adrien an envelope. “Freya gave it to me for you, I…” she shrugged and patted Adrien on the shoulder as she left.

Adrien put it on the mantle next to a dozen other unopened letters of condolence. She would open them later. She would make coffee for the remaining guests.

Soon enough everyone had left, leaving Adrien alone as she bid the last farewell from the garden pat.

The wind picked up as she made to return to the house, like an aggressive librarian bidding readers to silence and then the mighty shush was gone. The silence held her so tight that she wondered if she too had departed for… then birdsong touched her and the sun emerged from behind a cloud as if to say what had passed had passed. She allowed the reassurance to fill her emptiness, but it could not, not that day.

Back inside Aunt Freya’s cottage she was alone; just her and the Box.

“Don’t open it.” Adrien drew close and allowed each rune and exquisite line to guide her eyes. She had never even touched it. She didn’t even know how to lift the glass. The box held her gaze for a long minute and then she went to bed.

That night she dreamt. What it was that troubled her sleep she would never remember… perhaps a man, his back turned… and a lake or… “Do not open it.”

Adrien was awake. The night was misty black and only liquid silver leaking through her window let her see anything. She was awash with her own sheen of damp, so that all of her not covered was cool in the air. The moon it had spoken… then that last nonsense from dreams evaporated too.

Adrien yawned and fell back into sleep.

In the morning she made breakfast and made plans to return to London. The cottage would be safe enough and in a few days she would return and make a start winding up her aunt’s affairs. The house she would keep for now and the money was easy. There was a list for handing out certain things, like an antique painting for the Hanson’s. That left only the Box.

It was the next day when all packed did she even look at the Box again. She wondered if a museum… but it would keep.

London was a bustle without hustle, her work seemingly beginning before its end and ending as quickly as it began. The streets, the cars, the people, the papers she had to sign all flowed around her as if she were but an islet in a stream. Then there was the Box.

She sat up in bed with a start. Wasn’t she just at work or… she lay back down? Why dream of the box? Then she did…

“I am not asleep,” she said.

“Of course you are,” said the man, he still hadn’t turned his back to face her.

Was that this dream or…? ideas and questions slipped through her fingers like wet paper. “I don’t see the box, but I am dreaming of it…”

“That makes no sense,” the man said, “It is in the fjord.”

“I won’t open it… I won’t,” she said, as if defying some B-movie plot or…

“You will.”

The phone was ringing and she wondered when she had got to work. “Don’t open it,” said the man on the other end.

Then she was awake.

The next day she phoned the British Museum, the Jorvik Centre and the Museum of Oslo. The nice woman at the British Museum asked too many questions she did not have answers to and suggested she make an appointment. The man in York said it wasn’t their line and the Museum of Oslo said they had lots of such items… perhaps their website?

At the weekend she went back to Aunt Freya’s cottage and the Box.

*

Adrien’s aunt believed in certain things, she did not dismiss this. After all, she had seen things, magic was real, but it was all a bit subjective. This happened sometimes, things that might have happened anyway, but unlikely things… Her aunt had died, and now she was haunted by the bloody box.

“If I open the glass and photograph it,” she said aloud, “That’s not opening it.” All the while thinking it was all just… “Aunt Freya, I won’t open it.”

The glass sat in a wooden grove. The mere twist and lift exposed the Box to the motes and specs floating in the strong sunbeams pouring through the cottage window; a literal spotlight without fanfare for the grand opening. Adrien listened hard; perhaps for another imagined warning… she was answered by a warning crow outside.

“Oh the melodrama,” she mocked herself. It was just a box.

She looked closely, it looked old, but not centuries old, maybe Jacobian… but that didn’t fit the runes. She snapped the box from all angles, especially the runes and emailed them to a friend in the community. Then careful not to even touch the Box she bowed down and looked very carefully. The Box was just a box, surely?

If she opened it there would be a mummified hand or the random contents for something like a witch bottle.

The phone sang in her hand and her answer was back. Adrien took a deep breath and then looked.

“Hey interesting, would really want to study some of this further,” the message ran, “There are a couple of runes that aren’t quite right but what you do have are the Elder Futhark runes: ansuz, jera,  perthro, gebo, raidho, tiwaz, and  nauthiz; as well as a couple that don’t quite fit, as I said. You wanted to know what this means… anybody’s guess really. Each rune has many different meanings… best I have is: The seeker seeks atonement, receives an answer; the answer is justice; justice requires pain; or sacrifice or a gift maybe… or it could be about the harvest… wisdom to give to… whatever the mystery rune means, a god maybe, in return for a good harvest… or a gift or… well honour comes into it, but… well you get the picture. I hope that helps.”

Adrien mailed back ‘thanks,’ and sighed.

The Box was just sitting there, in all these years someone must have been tempted… anything of value… Don’t open the box, her aunt’s words came to her.

Adrien opened the Box.

It was a very long second: the crows came back to caw outside and Adrien half expected the London Philharmonic to play the theme from Omen from somewhere. The box of course was empty.

“It is a lovely box,” Adrien laughed and then she really cracked up. “Auntie, I opened the box.”

Her phone buzzed again and she read the new email. “Just to say, one of the mystery runes relates to Forseti, some kind of god of justice. He was supposed to be Baldur’s son in Norse mythology so I am supposing at one time he would have been a big deal. Oh and also I sent the pictures to a friend… he said the box, well it is either a very good fake or… well it is consistent with the early medieval period and if real we are talking some seriously heavy duty artefact here. I will let you know if anything else occurs to me.”

Adrien felt suddenly wary and there were butterflies hinting at taking flight in her tummy. She emailed back… “Not a cursed box then?”

The phone buzzed. “No, that is usually a Jewish thing, boxes among the Norse have highborn female associations… it was probably a jewel box. Again, I hope that helps.”

*

Adrien’s sense of foreboding did not leave her. She had no real idea why, but she wished she had not opened the Box. Logic said that once this jewel box had held valuable trinkets and family tradition was not to look… someone must have… helped themselves and hid the theft by way of the tradition. They may have even started it. Why was she not convinced?

London traffic was at a crawl and she was glad not to be driving. The rain pattered on the pavement and she could smell the richness of it. But the rain got heavier and for Adrien the tube beckoned.

Then she saw him. Handsome, dirty-blonde hair worn long and piecing blue eyes like her own. ‘Mummy like,’ she thought, but something was off. He was immobile in the middle of the road and none of the cars beeped him, in fact somehow every car ‘managed’ to drive around him without noticing. There was something else, although he was a good way down the street, not near at all, he was watching her. Then she realised, compared to the people walking near him… he was damn near seven feet tall.

Adrien decided that another girl could have him and scurried for Charring Cross tube station. She only glanced back once, but he was gone.

Two days later she awoke in the middle of night from a dream she could not remember. Her once familiar room transformed by endless grey, shapes and shades hid monsters in the closet not feared in 20 years. Even the noise was grey, an indistinguishable hush of non-silence and like the nine-year-old she once was she pulled the duvet over her head. A car passed by and somewhere a refugee from a nightclub yelled arcane words at an unknown companion; normal sounds she had long since ceased to hear. Feeling foolish she got out of bed and fumbled for the light.

The window beside her bed overlooked the street below and she glanced at the city lights carpeting the world as far as her eyes could see. She knew she was not thinking of the Box even as she went to the window. Just a normal cityscape, she told herself and it was true; she could even see the Shard and Canada One way off: just London.

She looked down, the man under the streetlight, no doubt the nightclub goer she had heard, had paused under her window. He held her attention until she realised that this tall long-haired man was looking up at her. She lunged for the light to find her phone, but when she looked back he was gone.

The dreams that night came fitfully, a fjord… a forest and even a moon raced across the sky… the man was there too… a giant, but never seen, but always present.

*

Nine days after she opened the Box she was at work, almost but not quite forgetting when she saw him again. The open plan, with desks and large pot plants, offered her an airy view of her colleagues chatting and moving around. He was standing by the door at the end of the office. Not half-seen and transient, but impossibly tall and stacked, dressed in a casual suit, blond hair unbound and his oh-so blue eyes staring straight at her.

It took a moment for Adrien to find her heart and when she did it far from stopped it was pounding. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

A passing Kate looked where Adrien was looking, “Who do you mean?”

“The fucking Viking,” Adrien rasped her eyes fixed on the giant.

“A Viking?” Kate looked confused.

“I’m not well, I have to go home,” Adrien blustered and hastily gathered her things and as she made for the opposite exit.

All through streets, bus and tube Adrien tried to remember what the runes had meant. “Don’t open the Box.” You had one job Adrien…

“Auntie please, what is it supposed to mean?” she babbled so that passers-by turned to look.

Safely home Adrien locked all the doors and secured the windows. Then she called her friend about the Box. There was no reply to either; phone, text or email. She looked up Forseti. The only images looked too much her stalker. “This is insane, this is too… ehh,” she slammed her laptop shut and decided to take a shower.

She felt better, well almost, and draped in just a towel she moved to the bedroom.

He was sitting on the bed. “’Atonement she seeks, and so Forseti brings justice; justice requires sacrifice,’ is a much better translation for you,” he said in a smooth calm voice. His perfect English with the softest Scandinavian accent was almost reassuring.

She was calm, a little underdressed, but calm. Questions crowded her head and instead of her bedroom carpet she knew without a doubt that she stood upon the edge of some great cliff.

“I’m sorry I opened the Box,” she feebly offered.

“That is not your regret, but your salvation, the Wyrd Sisters weaved it so.”

“Good for them,” Adrien said as if placating a deluded vagrant in the park.

“I fear I may be forgotten, so allow me to introduce myself, I am Forseti Baldursen,” he told her in the same reassuring tone.

“I… thought you might be;” she was a long way from shore in an uncertain sea.

“Then I am not forgotten,” Forseti stood and gave her a slight bow at the neck.

The man’s head, if indeed he was a man, was barely an inch or two form from the ceiling. Adrien caught her breath and took an involuntary step back. As she did so her towel dropped so that she was holding it loosely before her and all naked behind.

“What do you want?” she tried to sound calm.

“Want? This has nothing to do with desire, yours or mine,” he said, “That you would say such to me is perhaps why I am here.”

Pedantic much, she thought, “My apologies… I meant, what is your reason for being here? How can I help you?”

“My reason is to help you, you cannot aid me,” he said.

Adrien tried to readjust her towel but the risk of letting it slip further was too great she backed up a little more and prayed that he could not see her behind. She made to swallow and asked, “How can you help me?”

“You seek atonement,” he raised his arms in presentation as if that explained all.

“Atonement for what exactly?” she asked.

“That is for your journey.”

I open a Box, was her only desperate thought.

“Shall we begin?” He intoned and bowed again.

“B-begin wh-what…?”

Forseti swept her up like a doll and as he sat upon her bed he placed her face down across his lap. “Once before the Christians came a lost maiden would have been stripped and tied across a fallen yew tree. Then for nine days and nine nights she would be whipped with birch withes. Thereafter she was reborn,” he told her, “But the world turns and things change… already your risen civilisation seeks quick fixes and facile materialism. So we change…”

Adrien was naked across a huge man’s lap and the conversation was heading a direction she did not like. He can see my bottom, she thought as she began to protest.

“You…” he searched his head for a word, “consent.” Then his paddle of a hand slapped her bare bottom hard.

Adrien gasped and then hissed as she squirmed. “No I…”

“You opened the Box,” he said simply and then spanked her again.

She yelled and her squirming became more desperate. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know…” she wailed.

“Were you not told?” he said sharply, his voice scolding and no longer reassuring.

He spanked her again and she yowled angrily licking her legs in a futile escape.

“Were…” he spanked her, “You,” and again, “Not,” and again, “Told?” and again.

Adrien was gasping as she twisted and rocked in his lap. Her bottom burned as keenly as if she had sat on a stove.

“Were…” he spanked her again even harder.

“Yes,” she yelled an admission, “Not to open the Box.”

“So are you a petulant, disobedient child or are you a woman in search of redemption whose soul reached out to me through the Box?” he asked.

Adrien was panting and her bottom was on fire. “Neither,” she ventured hopefully.

He spanked her again hard and fast, his hand falling relentlessly on her behind for some minutes as she bucked and kicked as she yelled. The heat could have lit that stove she must have sat on and the red glow on her bottom could have been seen by ships at sea.

“Why did you open the Box?” he asked.

Adrien was trying not to cry. “I don’t know, truly… I dreamed of it… it…”

“It called to you?” he said, his smooth reassuring tones returning.

“Yes,” it came as a sob.

“There, you see, I know modern ways… you consent and now we can begin,” he told her.

“Begin?” she screeched as the spanking resumed even harder and faster than before, “No listen please, I have atoned I have I…” the rest was lost in incoherent babbling.

*

For however long it was, several, several minutes, an hour? She really did not think time now existed. But the spanking continued and all thoughts were drive from her head. There was only an unholy trinity of his hand, her bottom and the fire.

It took some time for her to realise that the spanking had stopped. She only knew that she was crying, no sobbing a cascade of tears; a flood to cleanse her.

“You will now go and contemplate your life,” he said as he set her upon her feet as easily as he had taken her up in the first place. “You will be unseated for a few days, but that is unimportant for now. You will go and face that wall as is the way of your people.”

She tried to control her sobbing as her hands clawed at her rump and considered telling him that a timeout was for little kids. But somehow she knew that here and now she was but a child in the face of a god.

“Do not move from there until the sun has fully set, if you do I will know,” he told her, “And stopped that undignified dancing. Put your arms folded behind your back.

She had lived, she had survived and she even felt better; even obeying him felt like the clean choice. “Yes… sir?” she did not know how to address a god.

“Think on, consider… I will return in nine days and we will continue this,” he said.

“Nine days,” she gasped, and half turned around. Not again she just couldn’t…

He was gone and panting again she began to massage her bottom.

“Face the wall,” a sharp voice commanded her.

She obeyed.

*

The night before Adrien has stayed facing the wall until it was full dark, probably at least an hour beyond his requirement. But she was absolutely not taking any chances. By then she was sore and totally exhausted. She fell face down onto her bed and slept.

She was awoken by the tight-to-bursting feeling in her bottom rounds. Hard muscle locked aches coated in what was left of her skin, more a membrane of sore rather than actual flesh. It hurt to move and walking required a comical exaggeration with every step. On inspection in the mirror she found now welts or bruises but an all over deep shiny red. He had been right to; she absolutely could not sit down.

If it hadn’t been for that impediment she might have taken it all for a dream, but she knew now it was all too real. She emailed her rune expert friend.

“What have you been reading?” he sent back, “Nothing like that I can see.”

She had sent him a small hint of the story He had told about women whipped bent over yew trees with birch twigs.

Her friend did know someone who wanted to see the Box.

Adrien agreed and then limping to the kitchen she gathered ice, wet flannels and some paracetamol. Nine days he had said, then it would happen again and there was not a damn thing she could do about it.

It took some gymnastics but she got ice and flannels to her hind end and then called the office to sign off work.

It was three days before she dared the journey to her aunt’s cottage and her bottom felt every inch of the seat for every minute of the drive.

Familiar streets flew by unseen, a world within reach but a million miles away. She had always believed, but belief wasn’t knowing, now she knew. The world of a million trees that race by was not what it seemed, nothing was. God… sorry, gods, how she wished there was a true heathen bible.

The drive down did give her a chance to think about her life. Was she happy, was there something she could change or that she just wasn’t seeing?

At Lansdown Cross she stopped to relieve the ache in her behind. There was a stone circle there, an ancient affair, pre-Norse, pre-Anglo Saxon even pre-Celtic. She knew that corresponding with the circle were energy fields measured by modern instruments; a coincidence or did ancient people have long lost talents?

The rough-hewn circle was not of her faith and she had no wish to appropriate it, but she paid her respects anyway. How often had she paused do such a thing, how long was it since her faith had been more than a trinket or a T-shirt?

*

The Box was where she had left it. She didn’t want to touch it, although she wondered if opening it again could reverse the curse or double it. If she were fool enough to experiment then she deserved that spanking. She blushed, what an uncomfortable thought.

Then it occurred to her, someone wanted to see it? Open it? What if it was a woman? She smirked and felt a mischievous something… it only happened to women, she was certain?

She needed to get busy, dust, vacuum, anything. She saw the condolence cards still left and some unopened. It was a place to start. She remembered and saw at the same time.

‘Adrien,’ in her Aunt’s handwriting; Frida Hanson had handed it to her on the day of the funeral.

She took a very deep breath and another. Then she opened it.

‘My dear Adrien,’ it read, ‘At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Do Not Open it!’ Adrien laughed and thought of recent departures and ships. ‘But I know that you will. I did.’

Adrien’s breath caught in her throat and she had to steady her breathing. ‘He will come and you will get what I got and what I truly deserved. If you have already opened the box then the years to come will be hard. Poor you. All things pass and I survived and so will you and be better for it. Open your heart, open your soul and embrace it. Blessings Be, your aunt Freya.’

“Shit,” Adrien said, “Years, is this a bloody riddle? What am I supposed to do to placate this bastard?”

I could run, I could live in the sea or… become an astronaut; I have a week, how hard could it be to retrain? She giggled inanely and sat down in dejection, only to jump to her feet again to rub her bottom.

*

The next day Adrien put the Box away under its glass and high on a shelf. Then emailed her friend and told him not to concern himself with it anymore and that there was no need for anyone to see it.

It was early and the crows cawed off somewhere, a warning or perhaps they mocked her? She had not slept well but after another fitful night she decided to greet the morning. The forest was cool and dark and long shadows on ground seem to point somewhere so she followed.

The path she found may just have been a deer track but she let it lead her through nettles and bracken to a stream. So close to the house she had come to so often, and now owned, and yet she had never seen this place. The carpet of ivy was only challenged by undisturbed flowers lying at the feet of the birch and elm. There was even a fallen tree trunk and she remembered His words.

There were also four stones that formed an altar, three upright and one great flat one balanced atop. A spent candle and some dried flowers lay upon this. Her aunt had prayed here, perhaps for years. She would bring fresh flowers and another candle she decided.

Adrien knelt and cleared her mind. The wind hushed in the trees and birds sang so she closed her eyes and allowed the world in. There was no great insight, no revelation, but she was calmed and when she opened her eyes there were two ravens sitting on the altar. They regarded each other for a long time, the ravens each claiming the hallowed stones.

“What must I do? What do I need to know?” she asked each in turn.

No answer came from either, not even a caw and after another infinite moment they flew off together through the trees.

*

The world was a sea of meaning but had nothing to say. One day in the lift at work Adrien knocked on the metal sides, reality, she thought, but reality was just an illusion. She would hear voices only to find people speaking at her and she to them.

“Are you okay?” Alison asked her, a colleague.

She smiled, her face a mask, “Of course,” she said.

Amid it all there were the days. Each morning she would awake and in head say day six or seven or…

On day nine she showered and then waited an age to enter the bedroom. He was not there.

Work went well, by lunchtime she wondered if everything had been a dream or even that she was mad. The glade, the altar… remembrances comforted her. Five came and went… she worked on.

“Are you leaving?” Alison asked her.

“Soon,” Adrien said with her mask on.

She stared at her screen and allowed words to scroll by; emails from clients and colleagues, everyone talking at her with nothing to say. She would stay until midnight… and the spell would be broken. “I learned my lesson,” she shouted to the empty office.

“Your lessons have not yet begun,” He said in that reassuring voice of his.

Forseti Baldursen was as large as ever sitting on a nearby desk wearing a T-shirt and cargo pants. His hair was long and blonde, but somehow modern and chic, like a movie Viking and not dirty rough out she had seen in a museum once.

Adrien froze at her desk, her eyes clamped shut as she counted to 10. Breathe, she told herself, in at the nose and out through the mouth. When she looked again he was still there smiling benignly.

“What must I do? How… my aunt, you knew her? What did she learn that made you go away?”

“Oh I never left,” he said, “You found the altar.”

“I will be better I will pray I will…” she told him sounding frantic even to her own ears.

“That is good, but that is for you and not for me, I will hear you,” he said, “What does it mean for you? What is your life?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“There, you already know part of the answer,” he said.

She wanted to protest his riddles, and then she did, what the hell, “You are such a fucking cliché,” she sneered.

“Denial, anger… progress, you see,” he shrugged.

She stood and tried to run but he strolled after her and swept her up. “Christ on a bike,” she swore, “You can’t do this, you…”

“Denial again,” he sighed and pinching her smart suit pants peeled them away like tissue, then as he sat on a desk and put her across his knee her underpants followed.

She was half naked at work, and she cursed her denial of reality. “Bastard this is…”

His hand struck her upturned bare bottom, it stung beyond anything and she growled, drumming his thigh with her fists, determined not to give him… he spanked her again and again rapidly testing any resolve.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she panted.

“That’s alright, I will not be insulted by your little words any more than I will be hurt by your punches,” he told her.

He was spanking her and again there was nothing she could do about it. “Someone might come was her last gambit.”

“It happens,” he shrugged.

The spanking continued, spank following spank until like before her bottom was fire red and twice as hot. By then Adrien was a sobbing snotty mess.

“Stop it, stop it,” she bawled, but he was truly relentless.

“In time there will be more, much more, you will learn,” he said and the spanking ceased.

Adrien dropped to her knees and sobbed for all England.

“Now stand and face that wall as before, do not move until midnight, your chosen hour,” he commanded her.

Adrien pulled herself together as she took careful and painful steps to obey. Then she saw her pants and trousers as rags upon the floor.

“How will I get home?” she sniffed.

“An object lesson for you, I suppose,” he said indifferently.

She rounded on him, her bottom blazing at the movement, but he was gone.

“Shit,” she sighed as she collapsed against the office wall to press her forehead into it. The cleaners might come, she didn’t know, but after… how was she going to get home? But her hot red bottom troubled her more for the moment.

*

Adrien had forgotten the possibility of late night cleaners. They were usually contractors who kept their own hours. Also she had no idea what time it was. Her heart began pounding harder than her bottom and startled at every sound. Was that the lift? Were the outer doors locked? What about security? How could she possibly explain?

Having risked a surreptitious rub of her bottom with no consequence she decided that Forseti had gone and was probably no longer closely watching her. He certainly hadn’t returned when she disobeyed him about her hand placement. A door or some other sound startled her again and she decided to cut her loses.

Breaking from the wall she gathered the shreds of clothing and stuffed them in her desk draw. Then grabbing her bag she considered what she could wear, a forgotten coat perhaps. The clock on the wall said 11.15, she grinned, having defied Him. The smile was wiped when she saw that there was nothing she could don.

“How the hell am I going to get out of here?” she groaned in frustration. She thought about who she could call, the tub was closing up soon and it was chocked full of staff and cameras. Even the bus was well lit and under surveillance. Who did she know with a car?

“I told you to face the wall until midnight,” said a weary voice.

Adrien winced and slowly turned to face him. “Have a heart… I… look at me… someone was coming…”

“There can be no compromises for atonement and sacrifice,” he said very sternly. Then he beckoned her with one finger.

“I’m sorry, I am really sorry…” she pleaded, “It won’t happen again.”

“I am quite certain of that,” he intoned like a black-clothed judge. “Now come here or I will consider it extra defiance.”

Adrien took a deep breath and trudged towards him; her head shaking in denial with every step.

Without resistance she bent across his tree-trunk thighs, her head low and her bottom presented meekly to his pleasure.

His hand rose and fell as before, exactly as before, he left her no quarter and she kicked and jerked in acknowledgement. This time she surrendered and wailed and wept from the start and for several minutes as her bottom, ached, burned, stung and rasped sorely all at once. “Your defiance has set us back,” he told her.

The door opened and a man and two women stood gaping. Obviously cleaners form their attire and the presence of an industrial vacuum.

“New HR disciplinary procedures,” he said in best prince charming. Then to Adrien, he said, “That is a thing right?”

Adrien just wanted to be swallowed whole.

“Oh… Okay,” the man said in an uncertain Eastern European accent. The two women were giggling. “We will do the other floors first.”

Forseti smiled and waved them away before resuming the spanking.

Adrien answered with a succession of wails and bawling for several long minutes. Then finally he ceased.

“Lesson learned I hope,” he sighed.

She nodded in short jagged nods and sniffed even as fresh tears trickled down her cheeks, nose and off her chin.

“Please return to the corner,” he extended his arm like a cinema usherette.

Sniffing and with very tender steps she obeyed and this time. “They will come back,” she sounded utterly miserable.

“Very probably,” he shrugged, “But they will accept my explanation. But you will remain here until midnight and then once home you will stand in the corner again until the sun is fully up.”

“How… How will I know?” she asked, thinking of the time.

“That is not my concern, but remember I am with you,” his reassuring tone had returned and she actually felt safe.

“Sir… How… how will I get home?” she asked, but he had gone.

There was no more rubbing of her bottom, her backside would have to shift for itself; she certainly wasn’t going to move her nose form the wall until she was sure midnight had come and gone. It had been 11.41 when he set her back on her feet; a little over a thousand elephants. Counting was excruciating and she was sure she was rushing it.

“Three hundred elephants, three hundred and one…” she felt an utter fool, each count in time to the pulsing of her bottom. She lost count several times and started again at the nearest 100.

A long while later she was still counting aloud when the doors opened, “Eh… Miss, can we…?”

Adrien closed her eyes and wished she were anywhere else. “Mmmm, what time is it?”

“A little after midnight Miss,” the man said.

“Okay, good night,” she answered him and head down she fled for the backstairs. The cleaners might not have seen her face but her bottom they would never forget.

‘Remember I am with you,’ he had said. No one was going to seriously mess with her or they would be contending with a seven feet god, but it was still embarrassing. Taking the backstreets and getting lost now and then she might get home in two hours… naked below the waist that was going to be a challenge.

Here and there she ducked behind a car or someone’s back garden; a few people did a double take but the streets weren’t busy and it was London. Cutting across the Heath was almost fun, it was certainly cool on her bottom. She made home by 2.37.

“I could sleep for a week,” she groaned as she stumbled through her front door. She considered a shower but he had said… She only paused to set an alarm and then went and stood in the corner. It was almost therapeutic it was certainly a relief. It was going to be a long night, what was left of it, three hours to sunrise.

Finally at day break she text her boss yet again, to tell her she was unwell, and then fell face down on the bed to sleep.

*

Adrien could take no more time off work and the day after it was an ordeal standing all the way to the office on the tube. Worse still, once she got there she ran out of excuses as to why she had to stand up. As before it was three days before she could sit down at all and five before she could with any comfort.

She was in no doubt now that he would be back and she knew there was no escape. She had learned two things, not to defy him as he was always watching and make sure she was at home when he was due.

In the remaining days she prayed and meditated. Also she read everything she could on the subtleties of the Norse religion, especially all about Forseti. She learned that he was usually considered a good guy and was all about honour and justice. In his eyes then she had failed or had transgressed. She only had to work out how.

On the ninth day she left work an hour early and went straight home. There she had the lightest of meals, showered and sat and waited for him in her bedroom her tummy beset with butterflies.

One minute she was alone and then he was there.

“You are learning,” he said pleasantly.

“Yes Sir,” she said; the butterflies became angry moths.

He beckoned to her as he sat on her laundry basket and she rose and dropped her towel. She was naked and didn’t hide it, a crude seduction perhaps, and a futile one, but a girl has got to try.

“Can I ask… how can I learn about my crimes?” she was stalling.

“Crimes? You misunderstand, no crimes just a misdirected life,” he reassured her.

“Then guide me,” she said her breath gained speed.

“I am,” he told her as she went across his knee.

The spanking was no easier to bear, nor the next, nor at any point over the years… but slowly she learned, and even more slowly she accepted. Every nine days he came and spanked her, and she could not sit down for two or three days. All else was sharp and real, all else was the slow birth of wisdom.