The Cultivated Girl

Chapter 2 - A Strange New World

For @LifeIsAMaze-ing; my first reader on Wattpad :-)

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The story so far...

A storm is raging outside Simone Kjallman's London apartment where she is waiting for her diplomat mom to finally come home and spend some time with her. Simone walks into the kitchen to discover her feminist au pair, Amira whipping up a batch of flying ointment. Or so she says. Not that Simone cares once she spots her mom on TV, clearly still in Washington and not in Britain. She loses her temper and yells at Amira who reacts by chanting and waving her arms around. When the storm blows out both Simone and Amira have disappeared.

Read on to discover where they went...

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Simone had been drunk and hungover only once in her life, in Jordan. It was a clear and awful memory, made worse by the fact she felt like that now. Her amber eyes were sticky, like insects were well on the way to being fossilised under her lids. She was parched. There was a bright humming in her head like a fluorescent light and the cave around her was spinning.

The cave? She must be drunk again. Did she drink some of that brew of Amira's? Simone closed her eyes and took a big deep breath just like Amira had shown her in Jordan.

Her mum had been furious. It was probably one of the only times she'd heard Elizabeth raise her voice. Behind sealed doors she'd yelled and yelled.

"Don't you know how dangerous this is? Alcohol is forbidden here. By the goddess, you're a female! Female! Do you know what they would do to you child? Just when we're so close."

She'd even thrown out a swear word or two before hugging her desperately, so tightly that Simone started crying that she couldn't breathe.

"Promise me you'll never do that again. Promise me," said Elizabeth.

She'd promised, with the world spinning and the desert sand beating against the window. The hangover the next day sealed that promise. Her head was so sore she couldn't remember half the strange things Elizabeth ranted about.

She didn't dare blame Amira, in case she was fired for giving her young charge alcohol. Instead, Simone had told her mother that she'd found the liquor in a cabinet. She bet this was something Amira had done.

"Amira?" There was no answer. Just that humming. She slowly levered her eyes open, willing the pressed white ceiling and black chandelier of her bedroom to hover into view. It didn't.

Instead, she opened her eyes to what was definitely the roof of a cave. It was hard to miss, considering she was suspended right underneath it in a silken hammock. Far from a dank hole in the ground, this room was carved out of what appeared to be black marble with white streaks and the faintest of hues running through it.

Simone swayed, just her head and feet sticking out of the hammock, the veins and swirls of muted colour in the roof making her nauseous.

What in the hell is going on, she thought. Have I been kidnapped? Did I drink some of that flying ointment? She gently probed her aching head. She didn't remember drinking anything. What she wanted most of all was to get down from the nausea machine.

As if thought triggered action the hammock shot down in a streak of silken gold, stopping an instant before it reached the floor. It tilted, spilling her onto a rich, burgundy tapestry, then stretched out gracefully as if invisible fingers were drawing each end apart. Mostly flat, the hammock then hovered back up, joining the other delicate drapes softening the rough ceiling.