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.