The Fickle Winds of Autumn

5. A Badly Behaved Stomach

The dark carriage rattled hard through the morning as it picked up speed on the tracks away from the convent. Kira's insides protested vigorously about its unruly motions, and her classmates also argued with their chaperone about the ill-effects of the journey.

"But Sister, please, I don't feel well," said Hettie.

"Yes, Sister, we really must stop," echoed Sara.

Next to Kira, Meg bent over double with her arms wrapped around her abdomen.

"I can feel my tummy tying itself into knots," she said in a low groan.

But the heavy queasy stirrings deep within her own stomach left Kira in no doubt that she must have been far sicker than any of the others; cramped into an uncomfortable corner of the bouncing, juddering vehicle; every stone or hole on the journey seemed to jerk her confused insides to some new depths of despair. She was glad she had missed breakfast, for she felt certain she could never have held it down under these trying conditions.

"Travel sickness is all part of the Great Surrounder's good plan for us." Sister Maud informed them in a hollow, unfeeling tone. "It is His way of ensuring that nobody ever strays too far from their rightful place."

Long experience had taught Kira that complaining would be to no avail, so she suffered in an acutely disagreeable nauseous silence, and tried to console herself with the knowledge that this disturbing, unpleasant sensation was all somehow good for her and a valuable character-forming lesson on her station in life.

She held her agitated stomach tightly with both hands, hoping to secure it in one place; she forced her mouth to close and breathed steadily and deeply through her nose, in an effort to keep her wilful intestines from escaping; she bit down on her lips, to stop herself from retching, determined not to give Sister Maud, or the other girls, the satisfaction of seeing how ill she really was: and certainly they all stopped groaning and fussing about it and began to chatter amongst themselves, long before Kira's tense digestive system had grown accustomed to its new surroundings and had time to catch up to the rest of her body.

A small meshed opening in the carriage door was securely covered by a heavy black curtain. It was not much bigger than the Sacristy window of the convent chapel, and through the testing stabs of her nausea, Kira noticed Sister Maud's fingers twitching towards it. She pulled lightly at the thick drape, as if by accident, exposing some of the fine screening grill-work behind it, and then allowed her eyes to flicker toward the shallow morning light that crept its way into the sombre carriage.

But hadn't Sister Amelia Constance explicitly warned them not to look out at such profane seductions? Hadn't she lectured them these last few days, in her sternest, darkest tones, never to stare at the wicked corrupting vanities of the outside world? How could Sister Maud place herself in such mortal jeopardy? What would possess her to risk such a thing? And how could it be fair for the Sister to do this, when Kira and her classmates were strictly forbidden from such activity?

Kira felt the uneasy prickle of her troubled conscience. She had learned all about the iniquitous lure of the outside world and its empty vanities, and knew how wrong it would be for her to look out of the window as Sister Maud was doing; but she had never realised until now just how strong the enticing pull of its temptation could be, and how difficult it was to resist.

She was nearest to the grill, sitting opposite the worthy Sister, so it would be all too easy for her to succumb to such corrosive vice.

But she would not yield to its dangerous allure. She was determined to preserve the purity of her uncorrupted sanity, as Sister Amelia had urged.