By Callipygian
Standing on top of Box Hill in Surrey Lori Tyler could see nothing but trees to a very obvious curved horizon. It might be the highest point within 30 miles of London and it always amazed her that in the panorama before her there was another city two large towns and a major international airport, none of which was visible from the top of the hill. It occurred to her that life was like that. Important things were within grasp but remained hidden.
It was standing here and now that Lori finally realised that she had no one and nothing. She took a deep breath and tried not to cry. It was possibly the worst week of her life; she laughed. Possibly, even that notion carried ridiculous hope. It was undoubtedly the worst week of her life.
The week had begun with her boyfriend dumping her. She shrugged. It had been coming from a long way off; he had never been the one, but still. It had been a miserable Monday morning already when she found the redundancy notice on her desk. Well at least it hadn’t been an email.
Then on Wednesday she had been still reeling when the nursing home called to say that her grandmother had passed away peacefully in the night. Her last living relative apart from a great aunt in Canada she had never actually met. Still she would have to be told. Lori wiped an unbidden tear and returned her attention to the trees. Autumn was coming, the view would be spectacular in a week; the view was the best she knew right now. Then in a month or two the leaves would fall and the towns and airport below would dominate the landscape.
“Is this the truth or the lie?” she asked aloud. Was the hidden the true one about to be revealed?
She smiled through red-rimmed eyes and sat down on the grass. This wouldn’t last long, it was getting cold, but she had to drink in the world as it was before it changed. There was her answer; it was true but it would change. The world did that. Then it changed back into something new.
Lori was 24 and had been an orphan since she was 10. She had lived with her grandmother until dementia had got her four years later. Then care and foster homes had taken her the rest of the way into adulthood.
Adulthood: the only thing she really knew about the concept was that there was no such thing. At 10 she had been convinced that one day she would wake up and finally receive the secret, the thing that only adults knew. Well in a sense it was true. At 19 one day she had woken up in a boy’s room at college and realised that there really was no secret.
Lori lay back and looked at the sky and sighed. She had three months to find a new job and joy of joys the landlady gave her three months’ notice that morning. She pulled a strand of auburn hair onto her face and began to chew it a little.
“Look out world, here I come,” she yelled at the clouds.
***
It started to rain and Lori scrambled to her feet and decided to head for railway station at the foot of the hill. Maybe she could ring a friend and go and get drunk later, but she couldn’t think of a single person to call. She laughed again, what else could she do? Maybe she would settle for a trashy novel where the heroine gets spanked until she couldn’t sit down and has to take it up the…
Lori startled and stumbled to a halt. She knew the path through the trees, she could hardly miss it. It was wide and well-travelled. There was even a quaint wooden signpost that said railway station to the right, vineyard to the left. No sign. There were trees, but mostly pine and oak, no box trees or birch. She turned around and looked. The sky was blue, not overcast and the rain had stopped.
“What the…?” she could not believe that she had managed to get lost a few hundred meters from the top of Box Hill and half a mile from the station. Lori doubled back but increasingly she did not recognise anything. Up, go up, she panicked. This was crazy, she was overreacting. She was a mile from a village in Surrey… there was a pub and a shop and… the top of the hill was not the same. No view just a gentle slope down dominated by trees.
Logic said she was safe and just daydreamed for too long and found the wrong way down… but her heart told her she was not on Box Hill or even in Surrey. A mile in any direction would take her to a house or farmland. Half the slopes were open vineyards for God’s sake.
“Hello,” she yelled. Then she ran. She picked the clearest route and fixed her gaze on a large oak. Then she ran towards it. At the tree she did the same, looking back to make sure she wasn’t making a curve. “Hello,” she yelled again in frustration. There were hundreds of people on the hill on any given day and she had just run nearly a mile.
Suddenly there was a break in the trees and a clear ridge where the land dropped away, just as she was expecting. Finally, she sighed and slowing her breath she strolled to the edge. It looked wrong still but she was obviously just lost. Yeah lost, that was it…
Lori gaped at the view: a huge valley vista with a wide river and a backdrop of high snow-capped mountains. She started humming the tune to the Twilight Zone; well it was that or get hysterical.
***
Lori had found a track off the ridge and down into the valley. There seemed to be a town of some sort down below, she could see slate rooves and smoking chimneys and as she got nearer she saw the river was wide and came up to the town where there was a kind of port with old-fashioned sailing ships.
Dominating the town was what appeared to be a Roman style temple with dirty white and grey columns and a pitched roof that had seen better days. For some reason Lori felt calm and comforted to see the building almost as if it was reaching out to talk to her. Before too long she could see people, both milling around the port, loading and unloading ships or promenading down what she could now see were cobbled streets.
It was with a growing sense of excitement that she hastened her pace and all but ran the last half mile. “Hello,” she said to a young man eating an apple.
He was a surly youth who glowered at her before taking a very deliberate defiant bite from the fruit.
“Sorry, but where am I?” she asked. Please say Surrey theme park, she thought, but she could still see the mountains that would have dwarfed the Scottish Highlands and give even the Alps a run for their money.
“It’s Tovey, where do you think?” the youth snorted.
“That would be the… town?” she asked hesitantly, grateful that he spoke English, although why that should surprise her was a thought she did not want to analyse.
“Of course the town, the valley is called Toveydale,” he supplied, realising that she was genuinely a stranger. “You’re dressed funny.”
The boy had baggy dungarees and a floppy hat, and the ensemble put her in mind of a picture she had seen of Billy the Kid. Her own tight jeans, close-fitting sweater and short cut leather jacket suddenly seemed revealing. She blushed.
“Oh I like it,” he added quickly and attempted an awkward smile.
“And Toveydale would be… Yorkshire?” she felt foolish.
“The Province of Balor in the Bastian Republic,” he told her, “And I am guessing you are an out-worlder.” He folded his arms and looked at her anew, “Never met one before.”
Lori was no longer listening. All her attention was now upon the mountains in the far distance. It was the moonrise, a moon that was almost definitely the one she was used to seeing only at least twice the size it should have been. “Oh go fuck a duck,” she cursed.
The boy laughed. “Don’t you let the priest or any adults hear you using language like that.”
“Sorry,” she muttered, half hearing him but still entranced by the moon, “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
He glanced and shrugged, “Yeah, ‘spose,” he said, “Go to the temple and declare yourself to the priest,” he pointed.
Lori nodded and walked on trance-like into town.
***
The boy hadn’t wanted to talk further so Lori did as he suggested. She drew some glances, but most ignored her, which she took as a good sign as she made her way to the temple.
The grey haired man sitting on the temple steps wore baggy trousers and a rough woollen hoodie. The battered book he read was leather bound and held all of his attention.
Lori coughed.
The old man continued to read, turning two pages before Lori tried to address him. He held up a single finger to silence her.
The out-worlder, as the boy had called her, looked up at the moon and waited for several long moments before trying again. “Look I think I…”
The man closed the book and gave her his full attention. His steel blue eyes seemed to appraise her as one might a painting in a gallery. “Welcome to Tovey,” he said at last.
“My name is Lori Tyler, I’m… I’m kind of lost and I don’t know how I got here,” she began.
“Hello Lori Tyler, and yes you are very, very lost. We have been expecting you,” he smiled.
“I am not sure you have been, I…” she gestured towards the forested hills.
“You are from another world, this morning you knew where you were and suddenly you did not,” he told her.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“My name is Venn Opic, I am a priest here. I sensed your arrival, we have been expecting you ever since,” he sighed and slowly gained his feet.
Both of the newly acquainted turned to regard the moon and stood in companionable silence for a moment. Lori also took a moment to look at the temple; it was like being in ancient Greece before their world was lost, like her own; it occurred to her.
“How did I get here?” Lori asked.
“You brought you here,” he shrugged, “It happens.”
“How do I get back?”
“Two very sound questions,” he acknowledged, “The answer in detail is I do not know. Not how or why you came; but I suspect you cannot return. Few ever do.”
Lori made to speak but closed her mouth again. They stood in silence for a time and then she made another attempt to ask questions she did not know to ask.
“This is your anchor world,” he said before she could ask, “You will be more bound to this than your own. Why and how that is…” he shrugged, “I cannot say, it is the will of the gods.”
“I see,” she said and wondered if he was just a religious nut and if there was anyone else she could talk to. “So you are saying I am stuck here?”
“No, not stuck, you are adrift, destined to move between worlds that call to you, but you will always return to this one,” he told her.
“Wonderful,” she countered with sarcasm.
“How old are you?”
“I’m 24, if that matters,” she was getting annoyed now.
“Married or have family… parents perhaps?”
“Not even on my own world,” she sighed.
“Then we will have to find you a family,” the priest said, “Women without husbands are the preserve of their father’s unless they are widows well over 30.”
“That sounds a bit sexist,” she snorted.
The priest laughed, “I have no idea what that means, but I suspect you are suggesting it is unfair,” he shrugged, “I have always thought so, but it is custom and the law. We do not make the world so it must be the will of the gods.”
“I don’t believe in god, any god, let alone yours,” she shot back and then suddenly thought that it was reckless thing to say.
However, he smiled benignly and tucked his book under his arm, “You know what I will say to that?”
She did. Her grandmother used to say it. She nodded. “But they believe in me?”
“You feel them don’t you, you are simpatico,” he said, “I think you are a seeker and the gods brought you here.”
“Remind me to say thank you,” Lori snorted.
***
The priest was not kidding about expecting her. Following their conversation he told her that he had already contact a family called Brooks, scions of the House Parlance, and they would take her in. She had no idea exactly what that meant, but given that she had nowhere else to go she agreed to meet them.
Part of her wanted to climb the hills above the valley and find the way home. Years later and when she was much more attuned to these events, she realised that had she done that it might have been possible for her to return at that time. The reason that she didn’t was not merely curiosity, but the will of the gods. By accepting what she did next had been when her life had really began.
She had expected Venn Opic to take her but he had merely given her suggestions of a route and wafted his hand at the town laid out below the temple which stood on a hill. She glanced at the temple and was drawn to go inside, but the priest waved her away.
The town was not that big, considered no more than a village in Surrey, but there were a dozen ships and smaller boats lined up along a quay with warehouses and three or four streets of three story houses running off them to the town square where a mighty oak stood amid the cobbles.
On the corner of the next set of streets was a large inn called the Kingfisher, a heavy four storey timber-framed affair that was all windows and tall chimneys with twisted ornate bricks. The tree-lined street to the right of this building was the direction Venn had suggested and followed it to the end past large windowed shops and another pub, a cute squat detached building with a sign depicting a single dagger.
The house she wanted was large villa-styled house of red rick with white stone edging. It was three storeys high like many of the other houses, but was somewhat grander, on the right side and to the rear there was a wall surrounding the garden.
The entrance was gained up five fairly steep steps that ran halfway across the front of the house and led to a terrace demarked by columns supporting a series of arches. The terrace floor a chequered pattern in black and white stone tiles. Embossed in brick next to the door were the words ‘Brooks’ and ‘Parlance.’ There was a brass handle like a doorknob, but the kind that you pulled to ring a bell somewhere; she did so.
For the longest time no one came and Lori strolled around the terrace sizing up the neighbours. Whoever these people were they were clearly the richest in the street, perhaps the whole town. The other houses immediately nearby were grand too though and she wondered what kind of society this was and why it was Venn had spoken English, perhaps…
The door opened to a small child-like woman no more than five-feet high. She was younger than Lori with wide innocent eyes and skirts that fell to just above the knee under an apron.
“Eh… my name is Lori Tyler… is Mr or Mrs Brooks at home?” Lori said after the girl failed to speak.
The looked her up and down with awe, her eyes particularly lingering on Lori’s legs. “You’re the out-worlder,” she said at last.
“Um… yes if you like,” Lori smiled.
***
Lori was led into a room near the front door with a passage way that was wide with high ceilings. There was a broad ornate staircase too leading to a wide area as big as room that merely served to facilitate the continuation of the stairs upwards. The wall above was dominated by a painting a ship at sea in a storm.
The man who greeted her might have been 40. He was tall with dark swept back hair that was grey at the temples. His build suggested rugby player but he was tall enough to carry it with elegance rather than brutality. But it was his eyes that held her, hard but friendly and deep, deep blue.
“I am Damon Brooks,” he said, “Cosal Brooks, to be exact, but that won’t mean anything to you yet, Cosal is a title you see. I am an elder in the House Parlance… does that make sense?” He extended his hand.
“Not really to be honest,” Lori said as she took it and shook his firm and authoritative grip. “I’m Lori Tyler, Lori Ann Tyler, to be exact, but I never use my middle name.”
“The priest said you would come and that you would be a young woman lost and in need of guidance,” Damon said.
“I am certainly lost, but the only guidance I need is the way home,” she countered, feeling slightly patronised.
“We will see,” Damon smiled reassuringly, “You must have a lot of questions.”
“The priest said people move between worlds, and that the gods will it so and have claimed me,” her smile was neutral and she shrugged.
“You are not a believer,” his smile was broad now and indulgent, “I had my doubts too as a young man, it really isn’t important, the world is what it is and all things become known if the gods will it.”
“So how do I get back?” Lori asked, sidestepping her discomfort.
“I gather you don’t… but it is not really my province,” Damon shrugged, “The law requires you have a sponsor leading to adoption into a house. The House Parlance has first claim on out-worlders and I am head of the leading family of House Parlance in town. I have to tell you that means everything here. This town is a long way from anywhere else; its months overland to the nearest sizable settlement and weeks by river via the sea… weather permitting.”
Lori studied the man’s sharp cut suit, long and sleek, not baggy like the attire of the townsfolk. Everything about him and the situation screamed that this conversation was a critical one. For a moment the sense of serenity and incredible acceptance she had felt since arriving was swept away and she had an overwhelming urge to run. Instead she focussed on his words.
“Adoption?” she said, seizing on the one word that seemed important.
“There are outlaws and there are citizens; outlaws are either a menace to be eradicated or they are slaves. We don’t have many of either, just to be clear, times have changed,” he smiled as if sensing that her attitudes would be troubled by such concepts. “Citizens are members of a house; a clan or tribe if you will… an adult man of standing may set up a household with permission of his house… sometimes anyway. A woman must be a member of a household, either her husbands or her father’s. There are exceptions but this does not apply to you.”
“I see,” Lori really didn’t.
“I am your legal sponsor, it is my job to find you a household… this one if you will have us,” he spoke very gently now.
Lori felt a knot in her stomach and thought of her grandmother. She was going to cry.
“I am not staying… I… have to go… surely…” Lori had never had a panic attack; this must be how they begin.
“You are a wanderer, a traveller between worlds, but you need an anchor or you will get lost. I do not know why, truly, but this world has claimed you and you cannot return to your own. You will however move to other worlds for a time…” he shrugged seemingly at a loss, “Again, not my province.”
Lori was feeling calm again. She would move on, the priest had said and Brooks agrees. Why not home, why not work out how to drift between worlds? “Okay but I am not a child, I don’t need adopting.”
“We are not a large household, very small considering my position and the size of my home. There is Lana, my wife; Mari, my daughter; Eleni, my ward, another adoptee; and Melt, our maid, you met her,” he explained. Then he crossed the room and reached for a bell. He rang it twice.
Lori turned to the door expecting the curiously named Melt to enter. Instead a taller elegant woman nearer Damon’s age came in. Her lovely warm smile put Lori in mind of someone auditioning for a stage part or turning up for a job interview. She wore a calf-length dress that clung to her astonishing curves like a catwalk model. Her blonde hair was elegantly piled up princess-style and her welcoming smile was enhanced by two deep-blue eyes.
“This is Lana my wife,” Damon said, and then to Lana he said, “This is Lori Ann Tyler.”
Lana glided across the room with an extended arm and said in warm fluid voice, “Hello and welcome.”
Lori shook her hand; her grip was light but confident. “Hello,” she suddenly felt shy.
“Now what has he been telling you?” the woman laughed, “Nothing too dire, Parlance is the foremost house in Bastian, you are honoured and could not do better,” she added in a mock male voice and made to punch her husband’s arm affectionately. “He is right of course.”
“Something like that,” Lori relaxed a little more.
Then Lana moved closer and became serious. She took both Lori’s hands and said, “Trust him,” she shot a look at Damon and then back to Lori, “You came here for a reason, you have no idea what that means… I don’t know what your world is like, but some are… troubled. You will see them if you are truly a wanderer.”
She said no more about that. Instead the conversation moved onto Surrey and London where Lori lived. They talked of English, which the Brooks had never heard of and yet spoke with a curious but clearly more or less English accent. Lori spoke about the moon and it being the same but much bigger.
Then Lana said, “Before dinner why don’t you take Lori to the Courthouse, I hear that wild one is to be sentenced… she can be saved I think… like Lori here.”
“I was of the same mind,” Damon agreed, “It might demonstrate the situation better than my words.”
***
The courthouse turned out to be off the town square and along at the end of what turned out to be the main street. There more shops here and Lori kept turning and looking in windows. The shops were positively Dickensian and reminded her of Bath or the Shambles in York.
Damon didn’t say much except answer her occasional question, but every time someone looked at them she caught him glancing at her clothes.
“I haven’t seen any women wearing trousers here,” she said as the penny dropped.
“Oh they do… to ride or sometimes work… not often and… well not quite so snugly,” he told her.
She was wearing practically spray on jeans and she blushed. Still no one had rounded up gangs of indignant moralists.
“This is a port town; we get all manner of strange outsiders here,” he said, “Even out-worlders.”
Lori nodded. Then to change the subject she asked, “What are we here for exactly?”
Damon didn’t answer, but instead gestured to the door of the courthouse. Lori shrugged and made her way into an inner courtyard where there were steps up and down and open area where several people were gathered. There were guards prevent egress either up or down at the stairs but the ignored Damon and Lori as he led her upwards to a gallery overlooking the open space below.
Lori stood next to the man as he looked down and followed his gaze.
The young woman secured over a trestle in the centre of the yard was naked. Her posture revealed not own her nude behind but much else she would wish kept secret and Lori gasped.
“Not something you see where you are from,” Damon said, “Or is it?”
“No,” Lori replied, she was blushing, “Not outside a BDSM party… not that I go to those,” she added quickly. She needn’t have bothered with the clarification, it was clear that Damon had no idea what she meant. “Who is she?” Lori asked as she strove to remain calm. The truth was she was shocked, apprehensive and little aroused by the scene all at once.
“She is an outlaw, a wild one,” Damon said, “She was living beyond the town out in the wilds. Living free, some claim, but she came to steal because she wasn’t doing so well out there.”
“She looks young,” Lori meant it as a criticism.
“Your age, perhaps a little younger, still a youth like you, not a juvenile… and certainly not a citizen,” he said.
“What is going to happen to her?”
“I think you know,” Damon said.
As Lori watched a man walked into the space behind the girl, a large man with a barrel chest and a leather singlet that his massive arms bared. He carried a multi-tailed whip of some kind and position himself behind the young woman.
Lori licked her lips and felt her belly tighten as she watched. She was intrigued and still a little aroused. She was ashamed too for enjoying the woman’s misery, even in a small way.
The lash fell across both the woman’s exposed buttocks and she screamed. Someone called out, “One.”
Lori jumped and felt her pulse race.
There was another lash and the woman screamed again.
“Two,” the loud clear voice announced.
After the next lash there were the signs of red wheals and welts across the girl’s bare bottom and she shook her backside vigorously as if to throw of the pain.
“Three.” There was another scream.
“What happens to her afterwards?” Lori could not take her eyes away.
“If she is wise she will be sent to the city and adopted by a family there. Then she can become a citizen,” Damon said.
“If not?” the next lash below made Lori light-headed. She was both scared and noticeably aroused now; her underwear was definitely compromised. This was a scene right out of her trashy books.
“If she resists,” Damon sighed, “She will be sent as a slave to the mines or a large farm, perhaps even the galleys.”
“And if I don’t accept your offer…” Lori finally got the point.
“I don’t know, but the priest says if you are not anchored here you will end up somewhere worse or nowhere… perhaps forever,” Damon told her. “Reject our offer, reject the gods and they will cut you adrift.
“An offer I can’t refuse eh?” Lori continued to watch the punishment and imagined what it would be like to the girl.
“It is what it is,” Damon shrugged, “but I don’t think you will share her fate if you truly don’t want to be here. I don’t think you would be here that long.”
“Nineteen,” someone yelled and the girl screamed yet again, this time without end and she was sobbing hard.
Lori tried to remember Surrey and London; even her grandmother, but they all seemed to be another life now, not merely this morning. “Alright, let us give it a go,” she said.
“A go?” he frowned.
“I mean yes, I will do it,” she agreed.
“Twenty,” the voice called out in a final count.
To be continued…
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