CHAPTER 4.
Here the little redhead's voice became tremulous and her eyes again filled
with tears. For several moments all that could be heard was the muffled
sound of the engine, the slap of the waves against the hull and the thin
cry of seabirds too high in the air to be seen. At last she resumed her
story.
"The first rays of the sun shot across the surface of the sea. The temple,
situated on the island's highest elevation, caught the sun soonest. Because
of the depth of the cella and the need for the rays to pass the narrow
antechamber first, the mirror could only be illuminated directly for no
more than a minute before the sun was too high.....
"As the golden sunrays struck the mirror, the chamber became suffused with
a brilliant rose-colored mist. Unlike the foul smoke of the previous
evening, this mist was sweet and fragrant, like jasmine and honeysuckle
combined. I cannot speak for the others, of course (although, later on,
when we compared stories, we all pretty much felt the same thing), but for
myself, my nipples began to swell; I felt odd stirrings deep in my belly, a
shrinking of my body and a sensation of somehow getting softer - not
altogether unpleasant. Suddenly I was conscious of a tingling down there,
then a terrible pain, a fine tearing sensation down there, like the
incision of a scalpel blade, as if I were being sliced open. It was the
worst pain I had ever felt, and I screamed.... By then we were all
screaming. The only thing worse than the pain was hearing those screams -
for they were all girls' screams - long, high and shrill. Then I passed
out."
The girl paused again. Tears streamed down her face and she wiped them away
so that she could see to steer. Justin, still hunched over, was convulsed
with sobbing.
After several minutes, the redhead resumed her tale.
"When I awoke, I found myself lying with my head in a strange girl's lap.
She was soft and full-figured... and completely nude. She was crying
quietly and was stroking my hair - as she did so, I was aware that it was
now quite long. I was terribly groggy, as if drugged. I tried to sit up.
'Don't' said the girl, 'just lie back a while.' She gently pushed me back
down into her lap.
"'You're Colin, right?' she asked, looking down at me with limpid brown
eyes. I nodded. 'I knew it had to be you by your red hair. You're the only
redhead here...' This was no news to me, so I wondered why she had brought
it up. I didn't have to wonder long.
"She resumed stroking my hair and remained silent for a few moments. The
she blurted out, 'We've all been changed into girls, Colin! Every one of
us, even the Greeks! I'm Neal, but my own mother wouldn't recognize me!'
"'You mean... I'm a girl, too?' I asked, hearing my light soprano for the
first time..
"'Fraid so, Colin. And a very lovely one,' she replied.
"My hands immediately shot downwards to corroborate what I had just heard.
To my horror, they encountered a pair of firm, young breasts, on which they
lingered but a moment before descending further, over a smooth and hairless
belly, until they reached... a woman's mound... mine!!! I paused for an
agonizing second or two, then extended my fingers. I gasped to feel a soft
vacancy between my legs. I withdrew my hand in a flash and sat bolt
upright. My long hair brushed my shoulders and I felt the tug of my
breasts. I was, indeed, female! I stared in amazement at my delicate hands,
turning them over and back. I glanced down at my broad, white womanbelly. I
thought I'd faint when I saw I indeed had love-mound, one covered with fine
red hair not thick enough to conceal my female cleft, dipping down to
disappear between my plump thighs.
"I looked about in panic. Lying or half-sitting up on the dais were eleven
other nude girls - all quite young, none of them over twenty-two or twenty
three. A few looked no more than teenagers - like Justin here, who was
lying next to me. He was still unconscious, lying peacefully as if he were
posing for a classic 'sleeping nude' painting. Of course, I had no idea yet
that he was Justin - he was simply a pretty, sleeping girl.... Nor did I
have any idea who the other sleeping girls were.
"The ones who were awake were touching themselves in alarm and disbelief-
running their hands all over their bodies and faces and doing all those
things young men would normally do upon waking up to discover that they had
been changed into girls. They were either whimpering softly, sobbing
outright, or, like Neal, were tending to the girls who were just waking up.
The Greeks had all woken up; it was easy to tell them apart because of
their olive skin and thick, black hair, braided and put up in classical
style around their temples. I could see that two of the Greek girls were
quite well-built, like rural laundry-maids, but the other four were slight.
"Quite soon, all the girls were awake and stirring, and the temple with
filled with feminine sobbing. I was no different from the others.... I was
crying, too and touching myself all over, amazed and dismayed at feeling my
soft skin and the gentle curves of my body, the fullness of my breasts, the
silkiness of the hair on my love mound. But none of us was bold enough to
explore any further .... not then, and not in front of other girls anyway.
Of course, as the week progressed, we lost much of our shyness.... but more
of that later.
"Within a few minutes we all identified ourselves to the others. Martin,now
a slim brunette, resembled a wood-nymph; when he found that he had shocking
carrot-red hair on his love-mound, he began to sob piteously. Justin, as
you can see, turned out to be high-waisted and rather broad- hipped, with
an endearing pouty face and thick auburn hair. Steven was rather small
breasted, but he had a protuberant tummy, which gave him a nice fecund
appearance, as if he were four or five months pregnant. His brown hair was
tied up in a bun. Brad had dark blonde locks and a graceful, sylph-like
figure. All in all, we looked rather like a convention of half-dazed,
classical pre-Raphaelite artists' models.
"As for Circe and her gang, they were nowhere to be seen. Naturally, we
assumed they had simply gone to another part of the temple and would soon
return to mete out some additional punishment. Were we to be slaves and
concubines? Were we sacrificial maidens, to be slaughtered like Iphigenia,
to propitiate some angry god? These horrible possibilities- and others -
swirled through every girl's mind. So our first order of business was not
to start "discovering" ourselves, but to assure our physical safety: we are
sorely afraid for our lives. By now, we felt steady enough to get to our
feet, so we stood and hovered together in a trembling group, holding hands
or embracing in fear. As soon as I could think clearly, I said that we
should seek out Circe and her army, and not wait for them to come find us.
But Brad, Martin and Justin were afraid, and wanted to stay put. The four
little Greek girls also wanted to remain. So that left me, Neal, Steve and
the two big Greeks - who turned out to be Stavros, the foreman, and
Dimitios, the cook - to be the search party.
"Can you imagine four frightened women - completely nude - setting out in
search of an armed enemy? The four of us set out on our expedition in a
tight group, half-crouching, trying to cover our breasts and our private
parts with our little hands, and exchanging surprised looks as we felt, for
the first time, the sway of our womanly hips, the swing and jounce of our
breasts, the soft brush of our hair on our bare shoulders. It was terribly
unnerving - and frightening - suddenly to find yourself turned into a
naked, defenseless girl and face a possible deadly assault at any moment.
We left the main temple chamber by a small doorway set into one wall; now
that we were out of range of the other girls' sobbing and lamentations
(Martin kept up a dirge about his red public hair), all became so still
that we could hear our own hearts beating.
"We soon found that the rear of the temple was devoted to elegant living
quarters, with comfortable furniture of olive wood and fragrant cedar.
There must have been fifteen bedrooms, some of them small, some with single
beds and other with doubles. Some had spectacular views of the sea from
their balconies. Neal saw a spider and screamed. Then I saw a different
spider, and I screamed. Finally, all of us saw a spider together, and we
all screamed. But no Circe! Of course, there were chests and cabinets and
large standing jars of all sorts, and it didn't take us long to discover
clothing - of a kind. We found many long, diaphanous body scarves, like
saris, and long dresses, of the same almost transparent material, with
bright sashes of silk. There were caskets with bracelets, necklaces and
amulets, and sandals in many sizes as well.
"We four quickly dressed ourselves in what was at hand, with no regard to
color or style, of course, then scooped up armloads of garments and sandals
and scurried back to the main chamber to give them to the other girls. Upon
seeing the brightly colored fabrics - and feeling their sensuous textures -
most of the girls (except Martin, who was inconsolable) stopped crying. By
the time we left them again, they were chattering gaily. One could hear,
'How does this look on me?' or, 'Is my sash straight in back?' Instead of
sobs, tears and lamentations, there were giggles, and 'Ooo's' and 'Ahhs' as
they tried on their new finery. Even poor Martin finally succumbed, and
clad himself in a transparent azure shift that was very becoming, though it
failed to conceal the carrot-red bush he was so ashamed of.
"The temple turned out to be a complex structure, with several levels,
which you will be very interested to visit, Professor. But the main thing
was this: there was no trace of Circe or her band. And the sanded footpaths
leading away from the temple had not been disturbed, save in the direction
of our capture. Nevertheless, we felt it necessary to scour the whole
island, but as we were afraid to spread out, and mainly stayed together,
timorously holding hands, it took us the rest of the day. The only thing
worse than the tension of suddenly coming across Circe was our need to seek
out, from time to time, some shrub to squat behind when each of us needed
to pee. When you're a girl, it's just not as simple to accomplish, you
know. One of us would suddenly say, "O! I thought I saw something move
behind that bush over there! I think I am going to have a look behind it
right now!" and we all understood that he meant he had to pee, but was too
mortified to be seen by the others squatting down like a girl in order to
do it. Then he'd come back looking relieved, but blushing nonetheless
because he knew that all the rest of us knew what he was really doing
behind that bush. When you're a guy, of course, you just whip it out and do
it, without interrupting the flow of conversation. It's quite different
when you're a girl, Professor, believe me!
"The last place we looked was our base camp. Nothing had been touched,
apart from the obvious damage caused during the capture of the main group.
As this was the last place we looked, and we found no one there, we
gathered up enough foodstuffs and necessaries, like soap, towels and wash
cloths, to last us at least a day, and headed back to the temple as dusk
was falling. We also brought with us all the knives in the camp, as well as
all the flashlights. We concluded that Circe had vanished with her crowd by
the same sort of magic with which she had effected their appearance, but we
were not taking any chances.
"By the time we returned, the other girls had done their own exploring and
had found a great deal of clothing. They had changed their outfits many
times over, and were decked out in jewelry and had baubles in their hair.
They had all acquired hand mirrors as well, and were busy admiring
themselves and worrying about minuscule blemishes and whether their teeth
were straight enough. The little Greeks had discovered some lip paint and
kohl, and had made up their faces, with middling results.
"But, in the end, each girl dealt with his femininity a little bit
differently.... Later on, I'll tell you about it in detail. It was a
terribly trying week for all of us. Stavros and Dimitrios soon returned to
the camp, dressed themselves in their old masculine clothes and stayed
apart from the rest of us, smoking up their cigarettes and drinking retsina
and ouzo, just as they had always done. But we others really did try very
hard to come to terms with our transmutation as best we could. The general
consensus was that we'd be girls for a good, long while, if not forever, so
we'd better make the most of it. Of course, when I went off to Empoulis
last week to send the cable, and when Justin and I came to collect you
today, we put on our old khakis, mainly to avoid attracting attention,
though another reason was that those long dresses are a hazard on a boat.
But all the rest of the time we went about flitting hither and yon like
ethereal nymphs and fairies, dressed in our gay, transparent garments,
striking classical poses, making flower garlands for our hair, and feeling
quite feminine indeed, thank you very much. But my guess is that when we
arrive at the dock, the girls will feel embarrassed to be seen dressed like
that in front of a man. I know Justin and I would be. So I bet they'll all
be wearing their old work clothes when we tie up."
Speculation about what the all-female welcoming committee might or might
not be wearing was irrelevant, as the launch was now only a few minutes
away from its destination. The ten or so figures excitedly milling about on
the dock in anticipation of the professor's arrival were all wearing...
khaki.
