Oleander Tea by Jackie.Hikaru
I want to give thanks to the wonderfully talented PygmyCoho and onehitwanda for beta-reading and proofreading my story.
This story was inspired by the movie ‘The Handmaiden’ and was born from an authors hangout writing exercise hosted by nice90sguy.
Enjoy!
Oleander TeaI should have slept. Instead, I spent the night watching the moon traverse the sky- Akazome Emon
There’s not much joy to be had in being a handmaiden. The life is as grey as the East Sea. It is endless, flat, and full of dull chores. It is soul-sucking. It is often terrifying and by all accounts, all I should expect to have until I am met with death.
There is one joy, however, in my otherwise pitiful existence, one beautiful light upon my endless grey sea to keep me ambling along, that is, undressing Lady Evelyn every evening after supper, and in particular, removing her stockings from her perfectly sculpted legs.
Oh, how utterly delightful to curl my fingers into the tight welt and tug on on the delicate fabric, to watch her creamy thighs bloom out of blackness, to have my fingers rake across her soft skin, to hear the sifting sound of silk sliding over skin like a hiss of a smooth wave over sand, and of course (the crème de la crème!) to watch the particular way she stretches out and curls her dainty toes as I set them free from their cosy cloister. There is nothing quite like setting Lady Evelyn’s feet free. It exhilarates me. It fills me with knee-weakening thoughts (like, might she enjoy my tongue between her toes?). Oh, how it makes my blood hot. How profoundly wonderful it makes me feel inside.
I should be deathly ashamed of myself for having such naughty thoughts, of course, and for allowing myself to feel such pleasure. I am supposed to always be pure and innocent, in mind, body, and soul. Yet I keep this fantasy alive. Why? Because I must, I suppose. Because it keeps me alive, or at least it’s how I know I still have blood running through my veins. Because it is the only light I have in my otherwise morose existence. What is the harm, after all, if I can keep my naughty thoughts to myself? But therein lies the rub. Naughty thoughts are liable to be rooted out, and Lady Evelyn has a knack for rooting out naughty thoughts. Such is how I discovered that, just like the East Sea, my grey life can be subject to tremendous turmoil.
It happened one summer night when the heavy afternoon rain came down to wash away the heat of the baking day, drowning us in a thunderous noise and a blanketing darkness that made the world seem small.
Lady Evelyn had just come from another upsetting fight with her husband, Lord Sasaki. I was not there to see it, but I could see it in the way her face blushed red as if she had stayed too long out in a biting cold, but it wasn’t cold that had bit her. It was his hand. I could smell the sweet liquor. She had had too much to drink. She often had too much to drink these days. If I ever felt I could speak freely, I’d tell her she ought to lessen the drinking, but I didn’t. In any case, there she was, cheek bitten, full of liquor, pouting with the silence of a dead ingot of lead while I undressed her.
I thought the silence meant she was stewing about the fight. It didn’t occur to me that she could have something else on her mind. Until she spoke up, that is.
“Why do you do that?” She asked, her voice pointed, but only a whisper, barely audible above the din of the rain that rumbled outside. I was in the process of removing her stocking from her left leg. I had just started to slide the welt down over her knee.
My heart jumped. “Madame?”
“You make a funny face whenever you take off my stockings.”
My face went hot. I averted my eyes to the parquet pattern of the varnished oak floor, trying to not let my embarrassment override the sensibility I had left to say what I should say in response.
“I’m very sorry, madame. I’ll refrain from making a funny face from now on.”
“Look at me, Niko.”
I looked at her. Her eyes were narrowed. Her lips were smirking in a crooked puffy way. Lady Evelyn was from England, and if it weren’t for her moon white skin, or the golden colour of her hair (the colour of a rice field just before the threshing), it would be the way her smirk puffed up her lips that gave away her English origin.
“Continue doffing my stockings,” she ordered. “Make whatever face comes naturally.”
“Y-yes, madame,” I said, and, burning with embarrassment and fear, turned my eyes back down to her bent leg, the black knit silk stocking a tauntingly tight veil across the pale moon milkiness of her skin, the oleander flowers that patterned the stocking, the symbol of her husband’s clan, stretching to conform to the elegant shape of her leg. They say that the oleander symbolised the courage of a warrior and fearlessness of death. In my village, it is known to be deadly poison.
I curled my fingers into the top of the stocking welt and I pulled it down over her knee, trying my best to not feel even an inkling of the pleasure that could have resulted in my ‘funny face’ despite her insistence that I do otherwise.
“Slower, Niko,” she said. “Or you’ll tear it.”
“Sorry, madame.”
I had been rolling the stocking off as swiftly as I could to get through whatever conniving test she was subjecting me to. But I needed to obey my lady, so I went more slowly, and suffered as a consequence. Oh, how soft, how warm her skin. How sensual the sound of the silk sliding across that skin. I held my breath as I pulled the stocking around her ankle, and off her lovely foot. As her foot came free, she curled her toes. I shut my eyes so as to not delight in their nakedness, but, of course, I couldn’t help but paint a picture of them in my mind anyways. I did everything to keep my face as stony as possible, fully aware that Lady Evelyn, as inebriated as she might have been, was watching me very intently, looking for the furnace glow of my heart through the shuttered windows of my eyes, waiting for me to betray my singular secret that I was, at this very moment… exceptionally aroused.
After getting through the task of pulling off her first stocking, I braced myself to do the next, as if to brace against a large wave about to pummel me. The rain came down more heavily now, for which I was happy, because I’m sure that if it hadn’t, Lady Evelyn would have heard my heart pounding against my chest. Not that it mattered. Nor did it matter that my face did not show even the slightest tinge of ‘funniness.’ As soon as I finished removing the stocking, she chuckled and said, through her chuckling, “You find it pleasurable, don’t you? Removing my stockings from my legs.”
I panicked. Fear spidered through my whole being. My face spoke of nothing!
“Madame, I find pleasure in serving you. That is all!” My voice cracked treacherously.
In response to my feeble dissent, she leaned forward to give me more of her sly English smirk. Her eyes glanced downward, and my eyes followed them down to find her hands resting on the top of her naked thighs. I drew a sharp breath.