by Tara Black
The hissing swish of the birch through the air seemed to fill the space between the whitewashed stone walls. It was a room devoid of furniture save for the large wooden block over which was bent the figure of a woman. Her knees were secured by a broad leather belt to a ledge while her arms were pulled forward, thrusting the bared buttocks into prominence. The rod in use was no untidy collection of twigs that might do duty as a broom, but a choice selection of slender switches reinforced with thin hazel wands and bound tight into a handle.
While the body jerked in response to each cut, there had been no sound beyond the sharp intake of breath when the lithe tips worried at spots of especially tenderised flesh. Before long, however, the instrument was used up in a mess of ragged ends with broken fragments scattered around the site of the action. Thus the chastiser put it to one side and reached for a replacement that had been pickling in a tub of brine and vinegar. When those substances found their way into raw abraded flash it would be with notably sharp effects. The birching was about to be taken to a new level.
What was happening on that July afternoon could not in any strict sense be described as punishment. That is what takes place when an offence is committed, the guilt of an individual is established and sentence is carried out. But this event was no sentence. Wrong doing was involved, certainly, in past thoughts and actions that had been admitted. The point of the exercise, though, was not in delivering retribution but to purge and absolve and move on. All through the cleansing power of ritual pain.
As an agent of such, there seemed to the community that had adopted it something peculiarly appropriate about the birch. Without the bruising power of cane or whip, its action felt to the recipient like a no less fearsome kind of flaying. As if the skin was being stripped away - agonisingly - to take with it the sins of a former life.
But the woman on the block was in no state to appreciate the finer points of her treatment. As stroke after stroke of the limber stems lashed their stinging wetness into raw flesh, stoicism was abandoned. Cynthia moaned, whimpered and shrieked by turns as the young Andrea strained to keep her grip fast on the victim's wrists.
At last it was over and the second tattered bundle cast aside. Andrea helped the birched woman to her feet where she faced her tormentor. The official of the remote community, duty done, touched her shoulder and Cynthia managed to bow her head in submission to it.
"Thank you, councillor."
"You did well. And welcome to your place with us, sensei. You will go forth and teach what you know." She bowed her head too then took her leave. "You are in the good hands of our member."
She let the olive-skinned beauty strip her of the shift, bloodied at its tail, and guide her to the shower cubicle next door. Deliciously cool water eased the smart, washing away the salt sweat of the ordeal. Cynthia felt drained in body but curiously refreshed in spirit. When Andrea wrapped her in a bathrobe and fitted sandals to her feet, she was happy to lean on her helper to be escorted to the house they now shared as equals.
Little more than a fortnight before she had arrived in the company of two others, seeking somewhere they could make lives for themselves. In the great urban walled enclosures women had been relegated to the production of children and the servicing of man and home. Take that man away and the position of his partner became untenable, as had Cynthia's at the point she found herself approaching thirty years of age.
There was no solution in the decaying remains of towns and villages that covered most of the land. There a woman's place was at best insecure, while in the badlands in between she was at the mercy of any wandering set of desperados. But there were tales of communities in the far north-west where women were in control of their own destinies.
Thus the journey had been made and was now over. It was time for a new life to begin.
Two days later found her lying face down on the bed, bottom raised for Andrea's inspection. "Healing well," she pronounced. "You are ready for the oil I save from my own treatment." She took the top from the tube and squeezed some out into her palm. "Now my lover, enjoy."
The cool fingers began their soothing work and she tried to give herself up to the experience. But the erotic charge usually generated by the aftercare of chastised buttocks was sadly lacking. The initiation over, Cynthia was preoccupied with what was to come. Her erstwhile travelling companions had settled into work: on the one hand inshore fishing and on the other the development of a tidal energy system. She herself was lined up to go out and give instruction in karate, a variety of martial art she had studied for no more than two years. The prospect was a daunting one.
"Oh Andrea, I'm just not sure I can do this." The hands stopped their massage and gave a sharp little smack to each thigh in turn. "Ow. Ow!"
"Cynthia, you make me cross. What do you mean, I? We will make a success of it."
The scolded partner raised herself on one elbow and stared back. "You're serious, aren't you, darling? You would leave your lovely garden plot and head off into the unknown with me."
"If you think I am good enough to be your assistant."
"Of course you are. A natural. But you only know what I know. And is that enough?"
"Listen to me." The olive-skinned face with its full red lips was furrowed in thought. "Your old friend Charlotte. Charlie you call her. She has skills in the art, yes? And maybe she knows things you don't know so well."
Suddenly Cynthia saw what her lover was driving at. "Yes. I bet she does. And you think we should get together and up our game." She rolled over and got up off the bed, giving Andrea a kiss. "Brilliant. You can tend my bum at bedtime, OK? Now I'm going to find Charlie and see what she says."
The younger woman kissed her back. "And I am coming with you. We are in this together, yes?"
They closed the door on Andrea's small wood-frame house with its corrugated-iron roof and wandered through the cluster of dwellings in the direction of the harbour. A couple of dozen lined each side of a track that led from the communal buildings to the shore, mostly of a similar construction. But around these, stretching to the limits of the flat area that jutted into the sea were twice the number, many stone built with some even reed or heather thatched as had once been the norm.
Other women were out in the late-afternoon sunshine, some busy on bits of repair work to their homes. "Make do and mend," said Andrea. "Is that the expression?"
"Indeed so."
"Sometimes materials come, sometimes they do not. Sometimes we have fuel for the generators. We must hope so when the weather is cold. I think those two are wise," she pointed out a couple building a peat stack beside their stone dwelling. "Wiser than I am."
Cynthia thought of their house with no fireplace and a single small electric heater. "But you have lots of fleeces. It'll be early to a cosy bed on dark winter nights. Mmmm." She squeezed her lover's arm who squeezed her back.
"But you forget. We shall not be here but out teaching the skills. And I think I see your friend just coming off that boat at the jetty. Let's see what she will say."
The approach was well received, especially since work on the tidal energy scheme was stalled waiting for components - or approximations to them - to arrive. Salvaged from an island system since abandoned, it had the possibility of providing a much-needed boost to the erratically fuelled generators.
So there began a series of encounters in which the mechanic became a sparring partner to hone and refine the techniques of both. Andrea, too, joined them with a pair of new trainees after work in the vegetable plot. After the first day the two leaders were quietly pleased with themselves.
"I know we were told often enough but I hadn't grasped what Oji-sensei called kata, the flow. When you get it a block can smoothly become an attack."
"That's it, Cynth. And then you can put together whole sequences. So tomorrow let's get to it for real."
Three days passed in concentrated activity leaving Cynthia stretched but with a new confidence. So when Charlie went to meet the old puffer that had docked with a heap of bits and pieces, the two would-be trainers took a positive frame of mind to their meeting with the councillor.
They found her in an office in the long building known as the concourse. The grey hair down from the severe bun worn in her role of chastiser made her face look softer. "I do hope you are quite recovered from your initiation."
The question was a bit rich thought Cynthia, recalling with a wince the systematic shredding of two rods across her bare backside. But she confined herself to a "Yes, thank you," with as much good grace as she could muster.
"I see you are both here again this morning." There was a hint of disapproval so Cynthia decided to cut to the chase.
"We have become a team, councillor. And we wish to travel out as one." There was a silence while the older woman looked at them. Then when she spoke she kept her eyes on the papers in front of her.
"There are some - even many - here who would reject such an idea tout court. Such relationships, in their view, work against our community. They threaten to fragment it into a set of couples who put loyalty to each other above the whole. While I generally take that view myself, I believe we have here a special case." For the first time she looked up with a tight little smile.
"So the teacher will have a back up from the start, without waiting for a leader to emerge from the ranks. It is as well, given the difficult material you may find to work with. Especially where we would like you to begin."
She explained that some ten miles to the south, beyond a group linked to their own, was a sizeable troupe very much a law to themselves. While they were headed by a single matriarch who ran the show there were men too and children. The councillor paused, eyes on the trainer-to-be.
"I sense you are curious about what happens here."
"Well, I see no men. But children?
"We have a small settlement nearby where children are being raised. In the early days we were newly safe and content to be small. Some women came to us pregnant so births took place and over the years there were boys who stayed and assimilated as men. A few women have joined the group over time in order to have children. But there is no set policy and the future is unclear."
She glanced from one to the other standing before her desk. "Neither of you are thinking of such a thing?"
"I can't. Well couldn't. And now I'm not interested." It was a matter-of-fact statement reflecting how Cynthia felt.
"Nor I." Andrea shook her head. "I do not rule that out. But now there is work to do."
"Good. I'm glad to hear it. You are going to need focus. Let me be blunt - the southern women are hard cases - rough and tough. Equipped with some martial arts skills they will be formidable defenders of the boundary in that direction. If we can keep them onside. But they are not likely to welcome you with open arms."
She stood up and extended a hand to each of her visitors. "Go out as sensai and senpai. Good luck. You will need it."
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