Scent of Ginger

Chapter 06: Cold Kisses

I expected him to punish me for my transgression. I had disobeyed his express command to not touch myself before his very eyes, using his own instrument. The corset he crafted to deny me pleasure granted me a satisfaction all the sweeter for long suppression. I flaunted that subversion before him. My defiance ruffled his feathers, showing me a peek of what lay beneath them: the desire he felt for me, revealed despite his efforts to hide it.

I couldn't believe he would allow me the upper hand for long. In fact, I was not only expecting punishment, I was counting on it. As my monthly flow trickled to a halt and my energies rose again, I found myself listening for his step in the hall. I breathed deep in hopes of catching the scent of ginger on the wind. However wrong it was, my chief emotion was anticipation.

'Surely,' I thought 'there will be consequences for my actions. I deserve to be punished. He will come for me.'

With such thoughts a-whirling in my brain, it's no wonder that when I was finally ordered to appear in his office, my heart was in my throat. I followed the Doorman down the long hallway to his office. The very same hallway I had dreaded to pass through before I now trod with guilty excitement. Glancing down it in the opposite direction, I could see the door that led to the steam-engine room, and the very memory of it set my nerves ringing. How angry would he be? Would he use the machine on me, or would he punish me some other way, through pain, humiliation, or further denial? Why did I want to see him so? I had to fight to still my shaking hand as I knocked on his door.

When I entered and curtseyed to him, however, I could detect not the slightest trace of anger or spite in his demeanor. He was cool, collected as always. He greeted me cordially. To my consternation, he held not a crop nor a corset, but a pair of sensible overshoes. Lying across the desk beside him were a long, narrow skirt and trim-cut jacket in olive-grey broadcloth, suitable for travel or exercise out of doors. With a terse nod he indicated that I was to don both in the adjoining room.

"Get dressed, Hannah, and let us walk out on the grounds. We have much to discuss."

***

How long had it been, since I had walked in the forest? Since I had left Ravenscourt? I was disoriented to find that the season was spring. The plane-trees dropped their balls of downy spines, the privet-hedges pushed out vivid emerald beads, and the air was thick with the scents of mud and new life. As I strode through it all my senses were dazzled with the discovery that such things as trees still existed.

"Yes, trees still exist," my strange unselfconscious voice murmured. "Birds exist!"

"Had you forgotten them?" said a sardonic voice at my back. I jumped and glanced back to see his faint, mocking smile. "Had you forgotten me?"

"Forgotten? Well. I have lost a great deal in my life. It is only natural for one such as I to remember less than others and lose herself in fantasy more." I replied, using generalities as a shield.

"Your papers suggest otherwise. For instance, you seem to remember Clara."

"Yes, of course. My young Lady Clara." The very name, so long unspoken, brought a bittersweet smile to my lips.

"Tell me about her."

"Why should I?"

"Because I ask it. Do you dispute my authority?"

"No, sir."

But I continued walking in silence, hesitating at the injustice of being made to speak the intimate details of my childhood while he refused to discuss his own motives and history, or even tell me his name. He stopped me with a warning hand on my arm and leveled his gaze at me.

"This is a therapeutic experiment, Hannah, and it will benefit you to cooperate. Unless you would rather try my second line of action, solitary confinement?"

At that I shook my head. I began to walk again as I spoke Clara's tale and mine.

"Lord Ravenscourt's only child Clara was born the same year I was abandoned at the manor. I was two or three years of age at the time. I was not the only one bereft: the Lord lost his Lady in her childbed, while the babe, a slip of a girl born too early, was sickly and not consolation enough for him.

"In consequence, she and I were raised together by a succession of wet-nurses and nannies. We grew together, 'Golden head by golden head / like two pigeons in one nest.' Or, golden and copper at least." I fingered my curly red hair, which Clara used to praise though the maids mocked it, then continued.

"Though I was of lower station, I was yet old enough to help in caring for her, and so I became her companion, friend, and servant in one. I was her protector; she, my patron. Whatever Clara wanted me to do was done. I made lessons in reading, writing, and feminine accomplishments a game for her, but learnt them in earnest myself."

"Ah, yes. This, then, is why your diction and written expression are more refined than the common servant," he mused aloud.

"Are they?" I asked in a remote voice. My mind was still on her.

"You were close to her."

"Yes."

"But she is gone now."

"Yes."

"And you are evading the memory of what happened."

After a long pause, I began again.

"No. This too I remember. I killed her."

He looked at me sharply, sucking in his breath.

"I am guilty, but it's not what you think. You see, I tried to protect her. Only, she was a willful, capricious girl. She loved adventure. And what she wanted to do, I did, always. So I agreed when, one warm day in early spring, just such as this, Clara said she wanted to go swimming. She claimed to know of a spring where Naiads bathed, and claimed that if we bathed there as well, we would keep the beauty of our youthful girls' bodies forever. Her very words."

"How old was she at this time?"

"Perhaps 10 or 11. And I, 13."

"Why would a lass of her tender years make such a remark about preserving your bodies?"

"I don't --yes, I do know. Being so close to me, she saw when my, my menses began, and observed the development of my figure. She saw how it hurt me, how it made me weep." My hand caressed my abdomen. "She sought to cure me of my womanhood."

"And you let her."

"I was touched by her childish, sisterly concern. And I wanted to believe I could be healed of my wound. So I went with her.

"Of course, in her impulsive way, Clara supposed that if we simply set out in any direction we were bound to encounter the Naiad's spring, like the heroes of ballads who find their way to Faerie and back with nary a map in sight. Life, however, is not so beautifully structured as literature. We wandered around the dun dull hills as the spring skies greyed and lowered. Cloud became fog. We could not find the spring, nor find our way back before nightfall. Still, we were not so afraid, at first: Clara saw it as an adventure and laughed at the darkness, until...well."

I struggled for the words to say what had happened next.

"In truth, the vigorous activity triggered my monthly flow, which was irregular and sometimes very heavy when I was young. Such inconvenient things never happened to Janet of Carterhaugh in 'Tam Lin,' did they? It was as if reality intruded on our game. She was distraught by the blood that stained my skirts, to the point of tears. She insisted on giving me her fine wool cloak to cover and warm me. Whatever she insisted on, I did, always. But in her summer dress, she was soaked through to the bone by the heavy mist. She caught a chill which moved into her chest. From this illness, she died."

So raw, even after all these years. My throat closed painfully. Some figure of speech was needed to soften the hurt.

"To this day," I managed, "she remains, just as she promised we would, young for all eternity in her Naiad's body. I kissed her cold lips once on her death-bed in farewell, then never again. I have not kissed another since."

There was a long, thoughtful silence.

"This explains many things about your dysfunction." The Doctor finally concluded.

"No." A swift revolt rose up in me. "It is not an explanation for me. It proves nothing, except that you want a narrative, a cause, a traumatic origin for everything. Clara is a part of me, but she is not the cause of my 'dysfunction,' as you put it. I am who I am! Can't you see me here before you?!"

My final words echoed loud in the forest around us, much louder than I'd intended. I was shouting at him. I bit my tongue as his eyes refocused on me like a hawk's. Only then did I see the trap, the way he maneuvered me into the vulnerability of confession. I had laid myself open to him, and he was now the one to judge me. The rising tilt of his chin and the gleam of satisfaction in his dark eyes told me that he once again had the upper hand. He drew closer.

"Everything has a cause." He murmured to me, almost whispering in my ear. "Your sexual dysfunction has a cause. You are inhibited due to the early trauma you experienced around your bodily functions. And that inhibition can only be overcome by returning to the source of the trauma and transforming it into a proper social behaviour."

"Transforming behaviour? How shall I—?"

"Kiss me. Now."

My heart constricted as if I stood at the edge of a cliff and stepped one foot into the empty air. I balked.

"No, I don't—"

Before I could say another word, he pulled me close and kissed my lips. I shuddered in his arms, tasting hot iron in my mouth.

"On your knees, Hannah. I will teach you how to kiss a man."

"Should I not learn how to kiss a woman?" I exclaimed, trying to work through his logic of cause and repetition.

"Certainly not. Kneel."

His hands were rushed as he pushed me to my knees, nearly frantic as he undid his trousers. He did not pull up his shirt-tail, but I saw outlined against it the same bulge I had seen when he cut me from my corset.

"A woman's kisses must be sweet and gentle, Hannah. Begin at the tip and work down, to start."

"Please, I don't know how, I can't!" I begged. At that, he seized a fistful of my hair and brought my face to his crotch. He twitched the shirt aside. I could barely comprehend what was before my eyes, it was so close, but I could feel it on my lips, and taste it, strange and salt, so unlike the scent of my own wetness. Despite myself, my mouth opened so that my lips brushed his flesh in the faintest kiss. At that, his whole body jerked.

"Kiss me there and learn," he commanded.

So compelled, I moved my mouth more avidly on him, eyes closed, discovering with my tongue what shape he had. The shape of a stripped branch, I said once of the shaft of ginger he had carved in his own image, but it was hotter and more alive than that. It moved. I was intrigued --and, I realized, aroused, as my own hips began to shift in response. Instinctively, as if seeking the comparison between us, my hand fell to the cleft of my thighs. But to my annoyance I discovered that I was kneeling on my long, tight hiking skirt, and could not lift it or nor press my fingers deeply into myself through the thick broadcloth.

"Mmm—Doctor, sir, I can't reach—I want to—"

The Doctor's head, haloed in the bright sun piercing through the trees, tilted down to me so that his face became visible, shadowing my own. A colder, more beautiful expression of triumph I have never seen.

"You thought I wouldn't punish your disobedience, Hannah? You still have not earned your release. You may not touch yourself, and you may not come. Your lesson today is to please me, nothing more."

I opened my mouth to respond, but as soon as I did, he thrust his cock into it and filled it utterly, pressing rhythmically. My tongue worked around, trying to find a way out, stroking and lapping at him all the while. In a flash I became vividly aware of my entire body, kneeling on the rough leafy clutter of the forest floor with my back arched and straining, his hand entwined in my copper curls, my own sex slick and throbbing with a need I could not satisfy. His cock pressed so deeply into my mouth, even my throat, that I felt I might suffocate, and yet the choking sensation only increased my helpless arousal, the heat rising in me like ginger's burn. I clutched at his hips, his bottom, pulling him forward even as I struggled, legs clenched, to maintain control of myself. His breath came fast, fast, gasping out, a growl growing in him like a bear's and his body heaving, spasming, suddenly—oh! I choked in earnest on what came next, tears filling my eyes. But I swallowed deep and felt my body twist and fall as he pulled out to stagger back against the bole of a plane-tree.

I crouched in the leaf mulch on my hands and knees for a long time. My heaving breath eventually slowed. Nothing stirred but the wind. When something soft touched my hair I thought at first that it was a plane's falling seed-pod. But it was his hand, brushing my curls. I looked up, and he reached down to caress my wet cheek, wiping away my tears.

"That was good, Hannah. Very good. I believe, at last, that we are beginning to make progress."

A single gentle touch was all it took. I began to cry as I had not since Clara's death. I cried out my loss and frustration and fear. And though I knew it only made me more vulnerable, when he put his arms around me I leaned into him as he stroked my back and tilted my face up to his lips. The trace of his kisses on my eyelids and cheeks stood out cool in the chilling air. Cold kisses they may have been, but comfort all the same.

This time, I knew the way back to the clinic, whatever awaited me there.