My mother bought me a book when I was very young. I wasn't even a teenager yet if memory serves me correctly. She found a hardback in the discount book bin at one of the large bookstores. Mom knew I loved fantasy and sci-fi genre books; I read them incessantly since my father died. They made a great form of escape for a child like me. I was soft and sweet and broken by tragedy- hiding from the rigors of the outside world was a salvation.
This particular book was by an author I'd never heard of before and there was the glaring ugly clearance sticker on the front. Mom's a sucker for a clearance sticker, but I read everything put in front of me. My imagination flew and I learned faster that any of my peers, reading books far above my age.
As I delved into the thick and cumbersome novel, I became instantly intrigued with magic, mystery, and well written characters. The story fascinated me and kept my attention for hours. There were medieval style battles and villains and heroes, wizards and strange creatures and castles. The burden of living with too big of a heart, too much feeling, too much pain could slide away along the paragraphs and pages.
And then it happened. For the first time in my life, through a work of fantasy fiction, a league of women, clad head to toe in molded leather made themselves known to me. The concept of women so strong and brutal that their entire existence evolved for the sole purpose of capturing and torturing men, to my little mind, dazzled me and made me feel... something I couldn't quite grasp. I was aroused and amazed following the story of how one twisted and seductive woman tortured a man so much he fell completely in love with her.
Her backstory unraveled throughout descriptions erotic torture, the story of how she came to be the way she was. Chosen as a child for her overly kind and sensitive nature, she was forced to endure torture herself until she broke. Then her torturer took her as his own and forced her to watch him break her mother as he had her. The evil man broke the girl a third time by forcing her to torture her own father. In this world, only the gentlest and most empathetic of women survived immense trauma to arrive as Mistresses.
At the time I read this story, I had no idea what a Dominatrix was. Far too young to understand the implication of the molded red leather or the reasons I felt so connected to a character with such tragedy. It turned me on, especially when she took her captive as her mate, and they shared the pain together. I clearly remember this moment in my childhood as an awakening, even when I didn't quite understand of what.
Some many years later, after many more curious tales and personal experiences, I picked up a book by the same author. I had read everything of his, even followed him on Facebook. I kept reading his books even after they became tired and overused. I loved his characters and the legion of women in molded leather, so I kept reading. Most of the books had a headshot of the author so I knew what the man looked like. But this one book, on this one day, had a different portrait.
Terry Goodkind. The Author's name was Terry Goodkind. I remember being sad when he passed away. And I remember seeing this photo and instantly, like a bolt of lightning, understanding who and what the Mord Sith were. This man, the way he dressed, screamed to me "Oh my gods, he's kinky!". I never met the man to know that for sure, but it truly felt that something clicked, and his writing all made sense to me in a new way.
Wizards First Rule was the name of the book my mother found for me in the discount bin. Hard cover. First edition. One of those childhood experiences that stick with you, form and shape your life for years to come. And not just me, but many others over the years have confessed to me that the novel did something for them also. We shared the bond in kink as well as fantasy literature and the desire to experience and create the things we dreamed.
Mistress Denna. Tight red leather and a long blonde braid with a brilliantly creative and sadistic mind to match. Eventually, someone decided to produce a horrendous television version of Wizard's First Rule (I didn't even make it through one episode and felt heart sick they butchered the story so badly). The redeeming quality is that obviously someone on production was also kinky and did the Mord Sith some justice.
