Ascent of Woman

The car drifted to an agonisingly near-silent halt, engine quiet, brakes noiseless, and even the gearbox making no more sound than a breathless hiss of slowing mechanical motion. The tyres created the only real noise, crunching through the light gravel as the vehicle came to rest.

Alone in the normally reliable old Rover, Abigail Worthington closed her eyes and tired her hardest not to scream with rage. That she succeeded in repressing the building clamour deep inside her spoke more of her self-knowledge at her culpability in this disaster than of her self-control. Of course she had seen the petrol gauge reading -- shouting -- 'near empty' at her a few miles back as she passed the BP station and of course she knew that electronic needle was occasionally far from accurate... but surely, it had only been a few miles more? Surely she had enough fuel to last until the service station near her local supermarket -- which offered a saving of almost 2p for every litre?

She opened her eyes and pointlessly looked down at the softly glowing lights along her dashboard, her focus coming to rest on the fuel gauge blinking redly in the mid-morning sunlight.

"You are one stupid, stupid, stupid woman!"

She shrugged, accepting her own blame and her own accusation. She could hardly deny it, after all.

Abigail Worthington was a resourceful woman, though, this bout of stupidity notwithstanding, and she turned her mind away from the cause of the calamity towards the solution that she now needed. Turning awkwardly in her seat, she reached across to the empty passenger foot-well and retrieved the Gucci handbag that had caused such a pleasant furore when she had swung it through her office that very morning. It was a deliberate move to cause deliberate jealousy among her co-workers, and she would chalk up her success with a most un-Abigail-like smile of contempt.

Now she delved into its luxurious depths to retrieve her mobile phone -- the latest Samsung model, of course -- and pulled it free with a smile of control and triumph. The mid-morning sunlight sparkled in multiple reflections from her polished lips, and from the artificially whitened teeth that flashed briefly behind the scarlet shimmer.

But then Abigail Worthington snarled a curse. "No fucking signal?"

She shook the small device in what she already knew to be a pointless, fruitless exercise designed to somehow appease the god of small electronic gadgets. This could not, she thought, be happening.

All she needed to do, her solutionising brain had already decided, was call her local mechanic and tell him to bring more petrol for her. To tell him that the gauge must, of course, have developed a fault -- she would find the offending fuse later and ensure that by breaking it then, it would certainly appear that she was a victim in this disaster and not the stupid cause. But if there was no phone signal, there would be no simple call.

Abigail's head snapped up and she peered through the windshield at the view before her.

The car had come to its premature halt on the gravel at the edge of a rural road that was both remote and seldom-travelled. She, herself, had never ventured this way before and now that she came to think of it, she didn't recall its presence on any of the electronic maps she often consulted when searching for the shortest passes between her destinations. It had seemed so convenient, though. Clearly a track that must curve around the busy town she had been approaching, a route designed to simplify an often hectic journey through the small metropolis. It had seemed ideal.

Now she was faced with terrain that was as alien to her as any vista she might have stared upon from the summit of a Martian peak.

And she did appear to be on some peak or another, vast forest stretching out in all four directions at the foot of her current path. Surely being so high above the trees ensured that she was exposed to a microwave signal? Surely her fucking telephone shouldn't be showing no reception?

Abigail Worthington released the door-locks and slid gracefully from driver's seat to standing in a motion so fluid that a supermodel would have cried with envy to have witnessed it. Out of pure habit, she patted the tight bun of her hair, smoothed the creases in her short business skirt and straightened her blouse, fingers skipping on auto-pilot across its many buttons to ensure that everything was secure and well-ordered. To ensure, in fact, that she was as composed and controlled as she could possibly be.

No matter that she was starting to feel like the most pathetic and chaotic example of female humanity.

She held the telephone in front of her and cursed when it still glowed a smug 'no reception' message in her direction. She held it above her head then, trying her hardest not to acknowledge the stupidity of the hope that an extra two feet of elevation when she was clearly already two hundred feet above the treeline would make any difference. It did not, of course, and the message now hung in the air like her personal halo of inanity.

With a gesture that would have surprised those of her colleagues who had only ever witnessed Ms Worthington's cold control she threw the gadget into the Rover's interior, her swearing covering the noise of plastic fracturing in a copious and expensive shower of shards.

She turned away from the stricken vehicle, taking deep, calming breaths, fighting to regain her centre and her image. She stood as still as a store-front mannequin, letting the summer sun bathe her and warm her, permitting it to highlight the smartness of her blouse and skirt, and granting it this one rare chance to toy with her blonde tresses.

Abigail Worthington gradually reasserted herself, and slowly became, once again, the epitome of control and power.

That woman, a director of her own legal company, no less, stood no more than five feet four inches tall in her bare -- more often, stockinged -- feet, but of course she was seldom seen without the precipitous heels that she wore right then. The extra four inches seemed to bring an extra megaton of power with them, and her slight, spare frame wore it well.

A surgeon with a magical touch and an endless supply of plastic and botulinum toxin had ensured that the image was near-perfect, but no one would ever find out that her breasts remained untouched from her pre-surgery days -- the one and only one of her womanly wiles that had ever pleased her with their earlier perfection. But lips, nose, cheeks, chin, arms, thighs, buttocks, fingers and even toes had flourished at the surgeon's plastic touch. Abigail Worthington was truly a new woman for a new age.

Nothing of which seemed to help her now, though. Control once more firmly in place, she scanned the forest below her from both sides of the narrow lane, walking precisely and neatly both backwards and forwards to gentle bends in the tarmac where she could see behind her and ahead as well. She could see nothing but trees. Not even a glimmer or hint of a pathway, let alone another road.

She wasn't scared -- she never allowed that, of course -- but she became less comfortable with her plight. In the few minutes she had been stranded there, she had yet to hear even the most distant rumble of a passing engine, and now that she strained her ears for the mechanical comforts of civilisation, she realised that there was nothing but birdsong for company. It began to grate on her auditory nerves.

Abigail Worthington looked down at her shadow, stretching starkly and blackly along the tarmac ahead of her -- she was no country girl, and she was stupid when it came to fuel, but she wasn't stupid enough to look up at the brilliant sun to determine which way she faced.

In truth, her shadow wasn't long -- shapely, certainly, but not long. While no rustic maid, her education -- private, of course -- had taught her well enough to understand that this indicated that midday loomed, and that she was facing almost directly west, her destination surely no more than a handful of miles in front of her.

Beyond the trees.

Although it was only June, many of the leaves down below her were dappling towards the golds oranges and browns she might have expected a few months hence -- an early autumnal show. But the trees were thick with cover and the wretched wildlife seemed copious as well as ear-gratingly loud.

Looking directly down the side of the old road, Abigail could make out a rough-hewn pathway meandering steeply into the arboreal cover. She looked then to the roadway and walked once more to the bend in front of her to see it stretch away into the far distance -- a direction that was surely far removed from the one she craved?

Without much in the way of conscious thought, she had already agreed with herself that waiting there would be pointless -- the road was clearly seldom used, and who was to say that any passing motorist would offer assistance in any case? They might even view a woman -- a strikingly attractive woman, she amended -- as a lone target for their own nefarious use. She couldn't, she had decided, stay where she was. Abigail Worthington would never offer such an opportunity.

That, though, left the biggest question scrum and one that her conscious mind was called upon to consider. If she needed to find her own way out of the mess caused by her car's mistaken fuel gauge -- the blame was already shifting in her mind -- then she needed to assess firstly whether it was physically possible, and if so, then secondly, just what route should she take?

Abigail Worthington looked down at her lithe legs. She was not quite three decades old as yet -- if she calculated things according to her 'official' records -- but even at a real age of thirty-four, she retained the fitness of her youth. She hitched the skirt a little higher and nodded in satisfaction at the gentle muscle of her thigh that the move revealed. She took a deep, even, breath, her chest inflating to gently stretch the elastic of a bra that she still wore more for dignity than a need for support. Abigail Worthington nodded. She was as fit as she needed to be for any trek.

That brought her to the second question and she looked first along the lane and then down onto the path that meandered into the forest. The lane option was clearly the most even, no matter that the road had not seen repair in many a year, but it, at least at first, headed off in entirely the wrong direction. Who was to say that it didn't meander along in such a way that added many miles to her intended journey? Since she was clearly fit in more than one sense of the word, then surely it would be much quicker to head through the trees? She would almost certainly be able to check her direction from time-to-time, and in any case, she was a level-headed and determined young woman. Abigail Worthington was not a woman who wandered from a path once her mind was set upon it.

Decided now, she once again straightened her business skirt and blouse, neat fingers skipping on auto-pilot across her many buttons to ensure modesty and elegance.

Before setting out down the slope Abigail Worthington returned to her Gucci bag and liberated items that would, of course, be essential for her journey. The lip-gloss barely made a dent in the outline of her skirt pocket and the eye-liner was similarly inconspicuous in the tiny flap of material the purported to function for the same purpose in her neat, white blouse. The small bottle of Evian water was more problematic despite it being fashioned "specifically for the professional person 'on-the-go'", and rather than spoil her elegant lines, Abigail drained it in four ladylike swallows before discarding the empty plastic container in a neatly available swathe of grass.

Prepared for her ordeal after that, she crossed to the side of the road and took her first tentative steps on the steep downward path.

The first problem -- issue, always issue -- the first issue occurred when she was no more than ten steps into her descent. The pathway was overgrown with grasses and low weeds in many places, but was essentially fit for purpose -- easily followed and clearly defined. But her precipitous heels were another matter entirely. Abigail had never been an athlete as such, but gymnastics were a compulsory lesson back in her schooldays -- and she had excelled with those just as she excelled within the confines of a classroom. She possessed an uncannily proficient sense of balance -- enough for one of her classmates to suggest that perchance there was a little of the feline somewhere in Abigail's distant bloodline.

She had accepted this is a compliment at first -- the prerequisite beating of the unfortunately inconsiderate and loquacious girl had been administered later -- but in any case, merely accepted it as another sharp talent to add to an already overflowing quiver. Now, though, a combination of the steepness of the path and the even steeper incline of her expensive heels were combining to rob her of that innate, gyroscopic, talent.

Abigail Worthington stared hard at the grassy, leafy, path and then at her patent leather shoes. The former, she was sure, although clearly of poor design was an insurmountable issue insofar as she was, for once, powerless to alter things now. The gorgeous heels, though... well, perhaps they were not entirely ideal for terrain such as this. There was a softness to the soil beneath the foliage that somehow belied the now strongly-beating sun's ability to harden it and were she being honest with herself, he couldn't imagine that the situation would even improve much once she reached the presumably more level floor of the forest itself.

Her stockings were clearly not going to provide much, if any, protection against a hard surface beneath her feet, but on the other hand, the going was currently soft and leafy -- and there was no one around to see her reduced stature.

With an uncharacteristic sigh, Abigail Worthington bent and unbuckled the straps of the heels, slipping them from her feet before fashion sense got the better of her. She stood then, testing the ground around her, satisfying herself that the drastic move was both necessary and not about to induce a painful response. She cast her gaze back up to the roadway, the slightest bit surprised then that her short passage had already brought her below the level of the road. Returning back to the vehicle to deposit the shoes safely was far too onerous a task given the plight that she no doubt still had to face, so a second sigh saw her launch first one then the other shoe in throws that would have embarrassed her greatly were anyone there to witness the efforts.

One shoe had made it just a few feet back along the pathway but was buried in a clump of some leafy weed or another, while the other shoe had completely disappeared from sight somewhere to Abigail's right.

She pointlessly, but automatically, checked to ensure there was no audience before turning back to her destination with a mental curse, and the mollifying thought that at least the heels had cost no more than a couple of hundred pounds. They were, in her mind, already mere casualties of war; cheap cannon-fodder.

Abigail's first few shoeless steps were cautious affairs but ultimately rewarding. The terrain remained soft for her stockinged soles and her sense of equilibrium returned with a rapidity that would have raised a Jamaican eyebrow at a sprint-meet. Abigail Worthington's pace increased as her confidence grew ever more clearly defined.

She had established a target tree at the edge of the forest proper to ensure that she did not deviate from her path in any way, and was pleasantly surprised that despite its kinks and curves, the path took her ever closer and with a rapidity that brought her a sense of accomplishment far beyond that which she knew she deserved. No country girl, for sure, but a woman of the City who was adapting with her normal rapid brilliance to the demands of this new and treacherous terrain.

Within half an hour of perilous descent, the sun had moved relentlessly and was now pretty much directly over her head -- and beating down on her with a molten fury that brought rivulets of perspiration to her un-furrowed brow, and to the cleft between her shoulder blades. Air conditioning in her home, office and even the ancient Rover, left her unprepared for the savagery of exposure to such brilliant sunlight, but Abigail Worthington was nothing if not determined and fastidious. She picked her way onwards, feet darting from tussock to mound as her shortened form descended towards welcome shade.

Her figure was level with the tops of the tallest trees when she encountered a second issue -- still issue -- and it was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Three times within the space of seven hops and steps, the ever-thickening shrubbery snagged at her ultra-sheer denier stockings, until a fourth snag parted the material at her heel.

She stopped and stared down at her feet, choking back a gasp of something approaching horror when she realised that the leafy descent had brought a terribly dark green hue to her lower appendages. The stockings were ruined, no matter the tear, and the heart-wrenchingly awful staining would surely only get worse once she entered the undoubtedly damper territory beneath the tree canopy.

Abigail's skirt and blouse were still every inch the professional woman, but she had already lost her precious heels and now her stockings were little more than tattered, stained disasters. She turned her eyes upwards and cursed whatever gods might be listening.

But she did not cry.

The stockings were offering nothing by way of protection for her delicate skin, and in the past few steps had become little more than trip hazards. The last thing Abigail Worthington needed was the humiliation of a fall, no matter that no audience beyond some noisy, feathered fiends would ever witness her shame.

But this was still Abigail Worthington, the epitome of control and style, and a woman facing a most desperate challenge. There was every chance that she would meet someone among the trees, another desperate traveller, maybe, but in any case she would soon enough reach the civilisation of her destination. There was not a single chance on this planet that she would be seen as in any way unkempt.

Abigail Worthington checked the surrounding landscape for non-existent witnesses before hitching up her skirt and proceeding to unclip her stockings from the lacy suspender belt that held them to her legs. An unwanted and completely uncalled for vision of eyes greedily taking in the glimpse of stocking top and bared thigh flashed through her mind before she shook her loosening tresses and re-focused on the task in hand.

Unclipped at last, she drew the stockings rapidly down her legs and, utilising her immaculate sense of balance, plucked them from her feet. Quickly, so as not to let her mind dwell on the stickiness of the green stains, she bundled the garments into a lightweight ball and hurled it deep into the foliage behind her.

Bare-legged now, she quickly descended the last fifty feet, surprised at how her feet seemed to relax somehow, rather than be horrified by the touch of the plants on the rough path. It was, as she knew it always must be, a successful descent, no matter that she was less well-covered, less elegant, than when she had set out.

The only issue that remained was the suspender belt itself. It, of course, served no purpose now, and the straps chafed against the delicate flesh of her upper thighs. She looked firstly up at the tall, leafy trees and then ahead at the gloomy path that led into the depths of the forest proper. The descent had been an unqualified success, but she realised that it only represented a small portion of the overall trek -- and that if she were to succeed with her task... no, when she succeeded... then she would need as much comfort as her predicament allowed.