by John Benson
Tamara sat with her elbows on the window sill and her chin in her hands with her nose pressed to the window pane and watched the manicured front garden, the topiary shrubbery, the flowering trees, the crooked cobbled path.
"At least the shaman will be here soon," her father said.
Tamara pretended not to hear him. She watched instead as a small thrush walked on the lawn of grass and cocked its head to one side, listening, then stabbed its beak quickly into the soil and came up with a fat earthworm.
"Bad enough if you were a boy," her father said. "At least then you'd become a shaman's apprentice, rather than a shaman's whore."
Tamara sighed. Tears blurred her sight, spoiling the view she soon would lose forever. One small part of her almost wondered how it would be to suddenly have her life turned upside down, be obligated to be naughty instead of forced to be good. A part of her almost wanted to find out. And suddenly she realized that for the first time in many weeks, she was alone with her own thoughts. The fucking ghosts were silent.
"She sees ghosts," Tamara's father said. "Hears spirit voices in the night."
Tamara watched the shaman's craggy face. His hair was set in thin long braids all tinged in gray. An old man. Was that for the better, or for the worse? Would he be kind, or cruel?
"Which is it?" the shaman asked, "ghosts, or spirits?"
His voice was strong for an old man, a singer's voice. She could imagine it raised up in sacred song, a voice even the Otherworld must heed. On her arms the little hairs rose up. She shivered though the room was cozy warm. "Both," she said, "I think. What would I know? But some of them seem dressed in elder clothes, and others look like nothing this world has ever seen. So I guess both."
"She couldn't just pretend not to see them, no," her father said. "She wakes up screaming. Talks about them, won't shut up. She's either mind-sick or Shaman cursed, and frankly I don't care which. She's useless as a noble's wife, so take her. Do with her as you will."
A sentence of slavery. A tear ran down Tamara's cheek.
"What do they tell you, girl?" the shaman asked. He was treating her with politeness, as if she mattered. Mere courtesy in public, or something more? She couldn't really tell.
"Papa says not to listen, sir."
"Nevertheless, child. What do they say?"
Memory brought heat and rush of blood. "That I am naughty, sir. That I need a long, hard spanking."
"Ah. And did you tell your father?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"He called for a shaman."
"Ah."
"Are we about done, here?" her father asked. Was he truly so eager to see her go, or was this difficult for him, so that he hated to prolong it? She could not read him well enough. It could be either, could be both.
"Quite nearly," the shaman said. "But I'm a stickler for formality. I have a contract we three must sign." He removed a scroll from the folds of his robe and handed it to her father, who took it, head cocked slightly to one side, a thin frown on his face.
"A contract for concubinage?" her father asked. "Is not a handshake usually enough?"
"Indulge me," the shaman said.
Her father called for his ink stick and his brush, unrolled the scroll only to find the bottom, did not read. His mouth was set in one straight line. He hated things which did not go his way, Tamara knew, and recognized herself. The shaman bowed and took the brush and drew precisely, quickly, a man used to composition.
Tamara's turn. What if she didn't sign? Why must she, anyway? She unrolled the document, curious. What were the terms of formal concubinage, anyway? At the bottom were her father's sign, thin and wavy as the grass, and the shaman's perfect calligraphy, bone if she'd ever seen it. But the text above ... "This isn't a concubine's indenture, it's ..."
"Just sign," the shaman said.
She took the brush and added her name. She felt her world changing beneath her. The spirits were coming back. "A standard seven year indenture of apprenticeship," she finished.
"What?" her father snapped. He made a grab for the document, but the shaman had already taken it and tucked it away in his robe. "How dare you?" her father raged. "I forbid ..."
"Art thou a man of thy word, Noble Sir?" the shaman asked in the formal mode of absolute politeness laced about with a seditious irony. The room grew very still, so that Tamara could hear the beating of her heart. The emptiness was filling up with spirits, she felt a pressure ...
"One dares to doubt?" her father answered, a challenge to his challenge.
"Have I misunderstood, Noble One? Did I not hear 'do with her as you will?' Well, what I will is to make an apprentice of her."
"I forbid," her father said.
She smelled the smoke, detected power and purpose. "He is a threat to you, Papa," Tamara said. "I'd give him what he wants, since all he seems to want is me."
"Say good bye," the shaman said. "Your daughter will change beyond your imagining, or die trying."
"I have no daughter," her father said. He turned his back.
She walked with the shaman down the twisted cobbled path, saying goodbye to the beauty and serenity of her ancestral home. "My favorite pony," Tamara said. "My tack. I want to take them. He said they're mine."
"They were yours when you were his," the shaman said. "Take nothing but your memories."
"And the clothes on my back," the poor girl said. Was it true that shamans lived in squalor?
"We'll burn those when we get home," the shaman said. And all along the pretty path, the leering ghosts were rising.
He lived in squalor beside a stream within a little wood, a cottage of wattle and daub with a roof of thatch, like poor folks do. Here was all the verdant life of her father's garden without the symmetry, without the taming hand of man. Spirits belonged in a place like this, shamans did. The daughter of a noble house did not. They stood beside an outdoor fire pit as pine knots snapped and spewed forth sparks and the shaman took off all her clothes piece by piece and fed them to the flames while singing little prayers and she shivered in her greater and greater nakedness and spirits gawped and muttered.
"You like it, don't you?" Tamara said. She shivered as the very last piece of silk came off her and entered the cleansing fire. "You like making me all bare and helpless, and then you're going to like hurting me, and then you're going to rape me, aren't you?" And part of her almost wanted. She'd learn what it was like to be a woman, sooner than good girls ever do.
"When the spirits told you you needed a spanking, how did that make you feel?" the shaman asked.
"Naughty and helpless and sexy," Tamara answered. It didn't seem wise to lie about the spirits with so many of them watching. Nakedness was giving her those feelings, too, naughty and helpless and very girly.
"I won't lie to you, child," the shaman said. "Punishing pretty, helpless girl flesh is a thing I truly like to do. But I would not if it were not good for you. So yes, I'm going to hurt you, but no, I will not rape you. Sexual frustration is part of your discipline. Now find a whippy stick for me to hurt you with."
A cold breeze teased her nakedness. "Why?" she asked. "Why do the spirits want me to get it?"
"More to the point, why do you want it?" the shaman said. "Now do as you are told."
She found him a stick and he made her embrace a tree and he thrashed her hips and thighs. He wasn't going to rape her. But Tamara had half wanted to be raped, and that was very naughty. Which meant this whipping was deserved. It hurt, it hurt and Tamara howled in horny unrequited pain while all around her spirits howled in triumph.
The fire snapped and sparks rose up. She sat in a clearing in a piney wood on moonless night in a land where ghost things wailed, and beside her sat a woman who wore a short sword at her side and a long sword behind her back. A woman trained in war, as unlikely in the outer world as a woman trained in magic.
"Sexual frustration and physical discipline will keep drawing you back into your body," the sword chyck said. "Otherwise you could get lost in the land of spirits, in which case anything you learned would do no good in the outer world."
It made sense, within the context of the dream. "So he isn't doing it because he's a pervert?" Tamara asked.
The spirit laughed. "Of course he's a pervert," she said. "He has a lot to lose. If you fail, he'll be disgraced. So why would he risk defying convention? Because hurting you pleases him. Destiny's little in-joke, giving you complementary perversions. Making you fit for each other's company."
Her thoughts swam into unfamiliar territory. She heard dark laughter from things unseen. "Are you telling me I'm a pervert, too?"
"Well, think about it," the spirit said. "Why does the thought of a whipping draw you toward your body, when another might be repelled? Of course you are a pervert. Destiny. Like I said."
She woke, sweating, shaking, needing to be raped. Across the room she heard the shaman's quiet snore. She longed to wake him and get him to fuck away her virginity, make her a helpless slave. But if he was strong she would just frustrate them both, and if he was weak, they both would lose. The world was just not fair. The sword woman stood beside her bed, glowing slightly in the utter blackness. "Are you just going to stand there and watch me all night?" Tamara asked in a hoarse whisper.
"I am your guardian ghost," the spirit said. "We are a team."
It made sense, in the way that dreams make sense, and let her get to sleep.
She wore a dress made from used grain sacks just like poor folk and ate a breakfast of rice and vegetables and a surprisingly good green tea, and the shaman showed her courtesy. Tamara felt the coarse weave and was reminded she wore only one layer. How easily it could be removed to give him a bare girl to hit. She wanted, didn't want.
"So what's her name?" the shaman asked.
Tamara jerked out of daydream. The inner and the outer world were blurred, she felt adrift. "Who?" she asked.
"Your guardian ghost," the shaman said. "You won't get far without her. So what's her name?"
She finished her meal, wishing there was more. She sipped her tea. "Don't know," she said. "That's not what we talked about."
"What did you talk about?"
"You," Tamara said. Part true, part being bratty. She wanted to throw the man off balance. It worked. She saw his answering frown.
"You need to be able to invoke her," the shaman said. "Tell you what. Close your eyes and think of her and say the first name that comes into your mind."
She closed her eyes but naughty thoughts came calling, thoughts of whips and nakedness and girly secrets. She tried to picture the sword chyck, pretty yet dangerous, female but not weak. She heard her own breathing, birds twittering outside the window of the hut.
"Anna," she said. Her eyes flew open and there she was, so bright that she was visible in the light of day, pretty and dangerous and serene, and maybe a little impish.
"I am deeply honored," the shaman said.
The spirit bowed to him in the mode of equals. "Thou must be hard on her," she said. "There is too much at stake."
Tamara shuddered, and felt little, and horny, and afraid.
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