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Marched back into school with Jane’s grip firmly on her ear, Storm is entirely compliant for the first time in her life. The pain of walking with her sore bottom flexing and moving is quite intense, but she finds she is somehow separate from it. She is aware of the fact that quite literally everybody is staring at her too, but she doesn’t feel their gazes either. She’s somewhere deep inside herself, somewhere the pain can’t reach.
Jane leads her into the headmistress’ office and puts her into the corner.
“Stay there,” Jane says. “Don’t move an inch, or I will repeat the process from the beginning.”
Storm does as she is told, for once, without a word. She is in a kind of shock, too much having happened too quickly for her to process it all at once.
“A fine performance, Miss Strict,” the headmistress says, her voice seeming to come from very far away. “And a good lesson to all concerned that behavior of that kind will not be tolerated at this institution.”
They continue to talk about something or other. Storm is not listening. She is staring at the corner of the wall, and the little bits of wall are sort of expanding out around in front of her and drawing her in. There’s one little dark spot that particularly seems to call her, like a burrow she could crawl into. She focuses on that and lets her attention flow away from this room and this place and these people and this pain.
“Storm.”
“Storm.”
“Storm!”
The third time she hears her name spoken, it occurs to her she should respond to it, but the signals that go from one part of her body to the other feel very sluggish.
* * *
Is the girl being deliberately obstinate after that much punishment? Surely not.
When Storm fails to respond, Jane reaches out and turns her by the shoulder. Storm does not resist. What exactly is she playing at?
Jane looks into Storm’s eyes and sees that the girl is not quite there. Sometimes during and after a punishment there is an effect due to endorphins and such that creates a trance-like state — but this is not that. This is straight up dissociation.
Sighing inwardly, Jane realizes things have gone too far. She had planned to continue to address the matter with a stern lecture in front of the headmistress, but she now realizes that is not going to be appropriate. Storm isn’t going to take a thing in right now.
“Frau Lotte, I’m afraid she’s had enough for the moment.”
“But she is yet to be punished for yesterday’s sins,” the headmistress immediately counters. She has the air of a woman who has had partial satisfaction but is still waiting to be fully appeased.
“That will have to take place another day,” Jane says firmly, hoping that the woman does not attempt to override her.
For a moment, Frau Lotte does a very good impression of an old lioness being denied her prey. Majestic, ferocious, and hungry. To her credit, she shakes those impulses away and nods curtly.
“You are dismissed.”
Jane takes Storm back to her office, or the punishment room as it is often referred to. It is now empty, as she dismissed Penners when she came back for the birch earlier.
With her charge safely inside the room, and with some privacy at last, Jane stands Storm in front of her, putting her hands on either side of the girl’s arms to center her.
“Storm, look at me.”
Storm looks at her with that faintly disconnected expression. There’s nobody at home right now. Only a faint quiver of her lower lip suggests she’s feeling the effects of a very thorough punishment.
“Come here,” she says, slightly softer in tone, leading Storm to the couch that sits along one wall of the room. “Sit down, as well as you can without sitting on those welts. Curl up on your side. Kick off those shoes, they’re covered in pond water. There you go.”
She takes a blanket from one of the cupboards, and also takes a cookie from a little stash she keeps for rare occasions like these. Storm is shaking from head to toe ever so slightly, indicating low blood sugar.
“I wouldn’t normally reward the kind of behavior you displayed today with cookies, but you need to eat something,” she says, first unfolding the blanket over her troublesome student, then giving her the snack. Storm takes the cookie in both hands, a tremor very obvious in her fingers.
Finally, Jane gets her some water, then leaves her snuggled up on the couch to recover a little. She retreats to her desk, ostensibly to work, but in actuality, to think.
* * *
With her cookie and her blanket comforting her, Storm slowly slides back into her body over a period of several minutes. She’s not in any hurry. It hurts there. Her bottom feels as though it has been stung by a hundred hornets. The more she comes back to herself, the more that pain starts to intensify.
