Korperstieb

Another of the stories and images (rebuilt of course) from that old archive.

Anniana was out foraging.  Most of the women were, of course, in the shellfish beds just off the shore of the village of Fingalfin. Those beds were becoming played out.  They really needed to find a new source and let those ones recover.  That was a bigger problem than might first seem though.  Their oral histories told of the fall of sky rocks that had destroyed the evil wasters of the past nearly 400 years ago.  It told how the gods, angered by the arrogance of the people of that time, threw down a handful of stones that fell everywhere, wiping them out and leaving only a few of the real people to repopulate the world.  The truth, hardly less fantastic, was that a comet had been disrupted into literally thousands of pieces by a near pass around Jupiter and had smacked into Earth over a 48 hour period leaving no place unscathed.  Though the impacters were small, mostly less than a few hundred tonnes each, the sheer number had destroyed the infrastructure of civilization and badly damaged the ecosystem.  The paucity of harvestable shellfish was a side-effect of the ecological damage wrought by the rain of cometary debris.  The oceans, though first to recover, still hadn’t the exuberance of the pre impact days and seafood was hard to come by.

Anniana, one of the villages better divers, had decided that fighting ever deeper to harvest smaller and smaller returns was ridiculous.  Somewhere along the coast there had to be unharvested shellfish, unclaimed by another village.  She’d packed her knife and a few belongings and set out at dawn.  The other women had scoffed, of course.  They were afraid to go beyond the safety of the tiny valley they lived in.  She would return within the moon, of course, and hoped there would be good news for everyone.  

The ground was rough. The sharp teeth of the mountain tore at her clothing and her shoes.  She kept a careful weather eye on the sea to her right.  This time of year was usually fairly calm but storms could blow up without warning.  After fighting through brush and trees along the coast, she discovered a small cove.  Deciding that a test dive would tell more than any amount of staring at the waves with a hand at her brow, she stripped to her diving kit and waded into the water.  The bottom proved shallow and sandy for many hundreds of meters and then suddenly dropped off.   Hardly ideal for the shellfish they harvested.  Those preferred slightly deeper water and required hard rock scoured by ocean currents.  After nearly an hour int the water, she returned to where she’d hidden her travel clothes, made a quick meal, and packed to continue her southward trek.

This was repeated twice more that day until it was time to set camp for the night.  Though the coves were interesting and held as many shellfish and other food fish as the village cove, Anniana wanted more.  Just as good was not good enough.  The night was uneventful and the pre-dawn light awakened Anniana rested for another day’s trek and swimming.  This repeated for the next week.  By her reckoning, she was now easily 90 km south of the village and there was nothing suitable.  Soon, it would be time to turn about and head home.  The full moon was less than four days off and she’d promised to return by then.

The next day, as she packed camp to start back home, she caught sight of a strange glint on the water.  Not the usual glint of a large fish leaping or a whale breaching, this was shiny, metallic.  Metal was not unknown to her people, of course.  Most of their tools had been harvested from the wreckage of a nearby ruin.  Most was rusted into uselessness.  Only certain metals were still usable after four centuries.  No one had ever gathered enough usable metal to build a boat.  Boats, like those of the natives for millennia, were made from wood and hide.  They definitely did not glint in the sun.  Anniana paused and shielded her eyes to get a better look.  This boat was large.  No canoe or fishing boat, this ship was easily 100 meters long and stood out of the water as tall as any of the village houses.  She was torn between trying to contact them or hiding.  As a child, she’d been raised with stories of the Korpersteib that carried people who ventured too far from home away and changed them into monsters.  As an adult, she realized those were stories to keep the young safe.  But now, she was not so sure.  She hid in the brush, carefully concealing herself.  The strange vessel continued north for several minutes and then swung about.  Clearly not a sailing ship, it was now going directly against the wind and did not seem to be inconvenienced in the slightest by the stiff breeze from the south.

Anniana withdrew from the coast and sought shelter in one of the caves.  She decided that these people, even if they weren’t the mythical Korpersteib, were clearly unknown to her people.  As unknowns, they could be slavers or cannibals (yes, those rumors had reached even her remote village)  Anniana simply didn’t want to risk it.  In the cave, with the light of her fire shielded from the sea, she could be warm and be safe from whoever these people were.

The next morning the ship had gone.  Anniana continued her northward trek.  About two hours later, though, a number of smaller shiny metal craft appeared.  Close to the coast, they were clearly hunting for something or someone.  Anniana felt uneasy and retreated to a cave back from the shore.  A few hours later, though, she heard the sound of something large searching through the trees not too distant.  It didn’t sound like any animal she was familiar with though.  Most animals made some sound as they moved about: snuffles, grunts or whatever.  This one (or perhaps it was more than one) hunted in silence.  She worried whether the cave was as safe as she’d first assumed and moved farther back from the entrance.  She found a small rock and began to scratch arrows into the rock to help her find her way out.  She also took one of the larger branches from her fire as a torch.  All her preparations were a waste of time and the searching noises were soon just outside the cave.  Anniana retreated back into the cave, terrified at whatever was clearly hunting her.

Only a few minutes later she found out.  They had been tracking her.  A trio of men and a woman with the oddest tracking dog she’d ever seen.  In the flickering  light of the torch, the dog looked less like a dog and more like a woman on all fours.  The creature, half woman and half dog, was clearly searching by scent and Anniana was her quarry.  Anniana tried to stifle her scream at the discovery but the sound carried and the group of four were soon on her.  Within minutes, Anniana was trussed in a net and being carried over the shoulder of one of the men.

It didn’t take long for Anniana to be deposited in a metal cage on the search ship.  The dog-woman was ensconced in a second cage.  As the sun rose higher, it penetrated the hold of the ship and Annians got her first clear look at the creature that had tracked her down.  A woman with a dog’s ears.  Instead of hands, a dog’s front legs and paws started at the middle of her forearms.  Her hips and legs, too, were that of a dog.  Three pairs of furred breasts hung from beneath her body, smaller than normal human breasts but larger than the teats on a dog.  Anniana collapsed in the corner of her cage sobbing.  Clearly these were the not-so-mythical Korpersteib and the tracking dog (woman?) one of their victims.  Anniana knew she’d end up one of their creations very soon.  Her village needed her diving skills but now, they would be denied them.  She regretted the decision to explore and wished she’d stayed, harvesting ever deeper, along the shelf.  At least she’d still be with her people and safe.

After sobbing herself to sleep, her dreams were filled with monsters and being chased.  She slept poorly and awoke exhausted.  A bowl of some kind of food had been left inside her cage.  She worried whether the food would make her change (that came from her dream) or whether it didn’t matter.  In the end, hunger drove her to at least taste the food.  It wasn’t what she was used to but it didn’t taste too terrible.  Deciding that starvation wasn’t going to keep them from changing her even if the food was their method, she ate the rest of the meal.  She looked around the enclosure.  There were several cages with normal men and women in them.  Only a few contained transformed people and most of them seemed to be canine.

She liked dogs but didn’t want to end up one.  Her cage was far too small to pace so she curled up in a corner, her arms hugging her legs, and waited.  She didn’t have to wait long.  A man in a strange, brightly coloured robe approached her cage and stood for several moments.  He said something in a strange language and waved towards another man at the front of the room.  This second man wandered over, fumbled a few moments with a ring of keys and then opened the cage door.

“Come you will,” he said in a distorted version of the trade language.
“Where?”
“Come.  Now!”
“I won’t unless you tell me where.”
“Now!” he frowned.

Anniana merely stayed hugging her legs.  ‘Let him come in and get me,’ she thought.  

“Come!  Now!” he ordered again.  

Anniana smiled at him and ignored the order.  He frowned and said something to the first man, who just shrugged.  The second man walked to his original station and picked up some kind of strange device.  When he returned, the first man frowned at Anniana, pointed to an archway on the far side of the enclosure and repeated his “Come! Now!”.  Anniana responded with the rudest gesture she could think of.  The man merely gave a quick nod of his head, the second man point his device at her and, with a sharp click from the device, Anniana’s world faded. Her head was pinging when she awoke.  She could barely focus her eyes.  She found herself shackled to a strange table.  Only one hand was free.

“I am Herianak of the South Fork Village.  You shouldn’t have irritated the Menagerie Master,” a woman’s voice said quietly.  “It is he who decides what you will become in the King’s Zoo.”
“King’s Zoo?” asked Anniana through her paid.
“The King is a tyrant.  He rules the three lands.  He also has strange tastes and desires.”
“I don’t ...”  

The woman poked her at the approach of one of the robed people.  When the person was safely away, she spoke again.

“They are the wardens.  You must not irritate them either.  For other reasons ...”
“What kind of strange tastes?”
“He desires his harem to have unique forms to give him pleasure.  It is said that they become nothing more than vessels for his pleasure.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have heard rumours of women with their womb entrance on their face.  Women with many more breasts or much large breasts than normal.  Women who are nought but sculptures with appropriate openings.”
“This cannot be,” Anniana frowned.  “Surely the gods ...”
“Gods visit this place very little, it seems.  They catch whom they will from wherever they will.  They make them into whatever they want by magics unknown.  You will become such.”  

Anniana’s horrified look brought a wan smile to the woman’s face.  

“You’re not for the harem.  Who knows why one is chosen for the harem, another for the zoo and yet another for another place?”
“But you?”
“I too am for the zoo, or so ...” she paused as another of the guards walked by.  “Another, who was taken to the Change said.  She was told by one before her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure?  No.  None who go to the Change ever return here.  But none here are beautiful.  We are normal folk.  Perhaps it is better that way.”
“Better?”
“Than being the King’s plaything?”
“I see the truth of it.  But what ...” the guard had returned.  “What do they do with all their creations?”
“I have heard there is an island of enclosures.  The King and his court are supposed to tour there on occasion.  It’s the Keeper’s head if his creations don’t please the court.”
“Wonderful,” Anniana’s held more than a note of sarcasm.
“What creations?”
“None knows.  After the Change, they don’t return.”
“What of those like her?” Anniana indicated the dog woman.
“Some are made into working things.  I have seen many dogs, some cats, one elephant.”
“Elephant?”
“They are working elephants.  Logging mostly.  One came in injured some weeks ago.”
“How can they join a person with such a huge beast?”
“He was the creature’s forehead.  His legs were tusks and the trunk came out between them.”

Anniana fell silent.  If Herianak was correct, she would soon be some strange mix of herself and an animal.  Not all animals were desirable.  Some were unclean according to the shaman.  She had classified all animals into useful, wild and unclean.  She hoped she would not end up a rat or a fly or something equally filthy.

“How long have you been here?”
“Nearly four moons.”
“That long?  Do all wait that long?”
“Some do, some don’t.  There were twins some weeks back who were taken the next day.  I am the last of my group.”
“Of how many?”
“Six others besides myself.  Four men and three women.  Three others were brought in with you.”
“That many?  I had thought that stretch of coast was nearly deserted.”
“A new group shows up every few weeks.  A group of the wardens disappeared several days ago and have just returned with you four.  Perhaps the others have been captured many days.”
“Perhaps.”

Anniana tried to talk to the dog-woman in the other cage but all she got for her troubles was bared teeth, growling and snarling.  The dog-woman was either more dog than woman or had been so long in her current form that she no longer remembered being a woman at all.  Either prospect terrified Anniana.  She didn’t want to forget herself for whatever reason.

The next day, one of the Wardens approached her cage.

“Out!  Lie here!” he indicated a relatively clean patch of ground.  

At first Anniana thought to protest but protest would be futile.  The energy it wasted might be needed later to escape.  She lay down as requested.  The Warder took out a knotted cord and measured her arm and leg circumferences, her height and a number of other measures.  These he wrote on a tablet of wax with a heated stylus that he periodically touched to the tip of a small lamp at the top of the tablet.  He seemed satisfied with the values.  

“Follow!” he ordered.

Anniana was led down a number of rock corridors into a strangely different area.  Here the rooms had shiny walls.  Metal maybe.  She surreptitiously tapped one when the warden was talking to someone at a desk in the room.  Not metal.  Like a fired clay pot, maybe.  But shiny.  Strange.  The woman behind the desk placed a tag on a chain around Anniana’s neck.  She ordered Anniana to strip and when she was slow to comply, touched her with some device that left Anniana paralyzed.  She methodically disrobed Anniana, cutting her ties rather than unloosing them.  Once Anniana was naked, she beckoned to someone in the corridor.  The creature that appeared was half-deer and half-man.  It listened to the orders from the woman in the strange tongue and waited while Anniana was shackled to a saddle on his back.  The deer centaur quickly trotted down several corridors until Anniana was completely lost.  All these shiny corridors looked the same.  Finally, the creature, without saying a word, arrived at a pair of large doors.  They were met by someone in a completely white robe who unshackled Anniana and motioned her to follow.  She was led onto a mirror finish metal platform roughly 2 meters on a side. 

“Stay!” was his only command as he left her standing on the shiny surface.  

She looked around her and nearly fainted.  The platform was nearly 15 meters up and there were three great circles of metal some distance away.  Once her shock had worn off, she thought to run but discovered that option was no longer a possibility.  The platform had begun to move and was moving towards the centre of the three rings.  The rings began to move about her, playing strange bluish beams over her body.  She began to feel something twisting in her feet.  When she looked down, the skin on her feet was turning a spotted green and becoming shiny.  When she bent to touch it, it felt cold and wet like some kind of amphibian or fish.  Her toes began to fuse and grow until her feet had become webbed feet like those on a frog.  She carefully shifted towards the edge of the platform, looking over the edge and wondering whether she’d be killed if she jumped.  She didn’t want to be some kind of frog.  Even though frogs were ‘wild’ and not unclean, she still didn’t want to be a frog.  While she stood their deciding, the beams continued their work.<

Soon the slimy blotched skin covered her halfway up her thighs and the rest of the skin on her body was becoming slimy as well.  She was feeling cold, too.  The change soon extended to her waist and she had slimy skin over her whole body.  Her legs continued to lengthen and change and were soon more frog than human.  When they were no longer able to support her, Anniana collapsed to her stomach.  It seemed forever but the beams finally stopped and Anniana pushed herself into a comfortable position: that of a huge frog! The great circles shift back to the position they’d originally been in and the platform began to move towards  the side she'd originally boarded it.  She tried to say something but it felt as if there was something stuck in her mouth.  She tried to move her tongue and discovered her tongue was now had a bulbous tip and a thin muscular shaft that attached it to the floor of her mouth.  It had been the oversized tongue she felt in her mouth.  She looked down at the image in the mirror floor and got another shock.  Her eyes were huge and coloured like those of a frog.

Within minutes, the woman again reappeared and motioned towards a door in the side of the room.  Anniana tried to get up to walk and found that her new body simply didn’t allow it.  She tried crawling but that too was difficult.  Still it was all she could manage.  Slowly she made her way across the room to the doors.  The woman pushed the doors and Anniana crawled out through them.  On the other side, a pair of men grabbed her and stuffed her in a cage on some kind of cart.  Another centaur, this time a bull centaur, was hitched to the cart and given directions.  The centaur, like the deer-centaur before it, said nothing, merely followed the directions, pulling the cart along a smooth pathway for nearly an hour.  Soon, they were at an ornate gate in a wall.  A rap on the door brought someone familiar to Anniana, the Menagerie Master!  He seemed pleased with her new form and beckoned the centaur pull the cart inside.  She was led down a pathway to a simple locked gate in an inside wall.  The Menagerie Master pulled a key from a ring of keys and opened the lock, motioning the centaur inside.  He unlocked her cage, looked at her and ordered “Out!” in the trade tongue.  Anniana struggled out of the cramped cage and half slipped, half fell to the dirt behind the cart.  The Menagerie Master signalled the centaur, who turned the cart about pulling it from the enclosure.  He looked Anniana over, nodded and left the enclosure, too.

Anniana found herself along in some kind of forest enclosure.  Trees, grass, stones, bushes -- all reminded her somehow of home.  She began to cry.  After several long minutes, her sobs stopped.  She decided that even if they’d made her a frog she’d escape and go home.  She wouldn’t stay here as some kind of plaything for the demented royalty of this kingdom’s pleasure.  Crawling, though, was too slow and she decided that frogs really didn’t move that way over much.  It took many attempts and what felt like bruises on her breasts and arms before she learned to make short controlled hops.  She used these to explore her enclosure, to find it’s limits and look for places she could dig her way to freedom.  Past that initial goal, she decided she would think of nothing further.  She wasn’t even sure where in the world she was.  After several days, she noticed they hadn’t fed her anything.  ‘Did they mean for her to starve?’ she became angry.  As each day went by without food, she became weaker.  She began to notice with interest the over-sized bugs flying about her enclosure.  She couldn’t help it.  It was as if these moving things demanded her attention.  Flies the size of her hand, moths the size of a plate, wasps the size of a small bird.  Surely they couldn’t mean for her to eat those!  But as she became hungrier and hungrier, they began to look better and better.  Finally she could stand it no longer and tried to catch one.  Her hands were too slow.  Even a leap could not land one.  She wasn’t doing this right.

It came to her in a flash.  Frogs used their tongues.  It took many attempts, more unsuccessful than successful, but she was soon able to land any insect in her line of fire.  It gave her a perverse satisfaction to be able to accomplish this feat even though the thought of such a thing only days before would have disgusted her.  What’s more, the bugs didn’t taste too bad.  Wasps and bees, though, she decided to leave alone.  Stings on her tongue was something she just didn’t think she could face right now.

Weeks and months went by.  The sun, which was never far from the zenith at noon was moving slowly northward.  It would be spring back home.  The villages would gather soon for the Parlay only this year, Anniana would not be with them.  For women her age, this was a chance to size up the potential mates (and rivals).  But she’d not be there.  She was stuck here.  Her self-pity was interrupted by a huge deep croak from behind her.  She turned to discover another such as she only a male.  He looked strange, somehow, as if he were about to attack or something.  He croaked again and Anniana felt something awaken.  She found herself facing away from him, wondering what was to happen next.  Her question was soon answered by his weight on her back and the feeling of something liquid being forced into her only remaining opening between her legs.  For several seconds, nothing more happened, then the male frog-person slid off and hopped off, obviously hunting for another female.  She wondered why he’d jumped on her and what the strange fluid was at first.  After a short while, she realized she’d seen frogs do exactly that when mating.  At first apprehensive, and then anticipatory feelings seared her psyche.  Was she pregnant?  Would she now have a child?  Would it be a frog, too?  How could she care for a normal baby as a frog?  Would she even have milk?

A few days later she learned there was another question she should have asked as she found herself squatting over a small pond, pushing out egg after egg in a mass of jelly.  But these eggs were huge!  The size of watermelons at least and each was an effort to expel.  When all had been laid, she turned and counted them.  Ten, all told.  Ten?  Ten children?  Twins were bad enough and triplets required help from the village!  Ten babies at once?  She’d go crazy!!

She stood guard over her pond, keeping anything away that would eat her eggs.  After twenty weeks, three of them hatched into tadpoles with human heads.  No arms, no legs, just heads, bodies and a fish tails.  But they were hers, or hers and the unknown male frog that had helped anyway.  But would they let her keep them or make them into some other strange creatures?