# Naantam, Naantam

Author: Aux Chiens
Tags: Attempted Rape, Colonial, Cum, Curse, Horror, Hybrid, Jamestown, Knot, Lycanthropy, Powhatan, Revenge, Sheath, Transformation, Werewolf, indian, native, scary, semen, spooky, virginia, weird, witch

They have supposed that there is something in the soil, climate
and other circumstances of America, which occasions animal nature to degenerate,
not excepting the man, native or adoptive, physical or moral._________ 
Thomas
Jefferson, Notes On the State of
Virginia
            In the meridian years of the Seventeenth Century, before
Cromwell rose in wrath against his sovereign Charles the First, in the wild New
Lands across the Atlantic, there lived in what Raleigh had called Virginia in honor of his Queen whose
successor would murder him, a vast race of Indians who were doomed to suffer at
the hands of white-skinned folk from faraway England. To them the English
language owes the words that mean the creatures of the wood and the wood itself:
skunk and possum and raccoon and hickory and others; the strangers from
Europe called them Powhatan, after
their great chief whose daughter, Pocahontas, has since passed into legend.
            Amongst the people of what the English then called the
Shire of Warrosquyoake there was reputed to have lived a most beautiful witch,
as fearful with power as she was sublime with beauty. She had dealt with the
settlers behind the scenes, so much as historians can tell, for Opechancanough
- Spelman tells the story at least partially in his Relation - during the uneasy years when that great king of his
people was warring with whom he saw as stranger invaders in tall wooden ships.
            She was prim, tall for a woman, with long black glistening
hair that fell to her waist, the color of jet, it truly shimmered in the
looming Tidewater sun. She had almond-shaped eyes set in a comely, symmetrical
face, and a small, witty mouth that gave away nothing when she spoke. Her
voice was cool and commanding but in private it was soothing and reassuring,
but never did she lose her nerve; she knew her station as a woman was different
amongst her people than it was to the English, still, she never, to either,
wavered, nor showed weakness.
            She impressed all who knew her, white and native, with her
knowledge of the world and its workings: it was her to whom the court of Opechancanough
consulted for help with herbs and plants, and the movement of the stars and
what they meant, and she was wise in this, much wiser than her fellows who were
wise already, much wiser than the English. She knew the language of birds and
could speak to them and ask where they found fish and where the berries were
ripest; she knew which mushrooms could be eaten for taste and which could cause
visions and which were dangerous to eat too.
            But apart from her naturalism, which was respected, she was
feared also, for all the strange and hidden things were her domain as well,
gifted in their knowledge since she was a girl, in the unremembered days before
the English came.
            She knew the ghosts that lived amongst the cypress and
would call on them when there was a problem even she could not solve; she was
well-versed in the esoteric lore of her region, like the mysterious people,
there before her own were, into the mountains far to the west, that worshipped
the dog descended from the wolf, and knew of their strange and alien ways, and
those too of they who were antlered like a deer, in the south and to the west,
who burned hazelnuts in their Autumn fires for queer and inscrutable rituals.
            There were skunks that sprayed their noxious musk about her
well-appointed wigwam to ward off trespassers that she commanded, or so the
tale was spun, and too, a brigand of raccoons that would offer her nuts and
fruit. Sometimes there were long, lonesome howls of a wolf - again, so the
story went - far away from their homes in the more distant forests and hills, and
more than once a reliable witness had seen a great grey wolf offer her a kill
for cooking. 
            About these, all of these, were persistent whispers amongst
the Powhatan who never fully trusted or accepted her - repeated back as hearsay
to the English who had, on a vast new continent, rather good reason to be
gullible - that none of these furry creatures had been born that way, no, that
once they were men and women who had crossed her, or done her a wrong.
            She had a name that was older than Powhatan himself, before
that great monarch passed into a demonym for his people, but that had been lost
to time. So the people called her Ohawas, which in the breathless, hypnotic
language of the Powhatan meant crow,
for like the crow she was intelligent, like the crow she was spiteful. 
            And like the crow she was always beautiful, like the crow
she never seemed to age. 
            For how long she lived and for how long she had dwelt there
in that part of Virginia, history will never know, but certainly she had been
there for longer than most could remember and far antedating the colonists.
            She lived peaceably enough, isolated, along the body of
water that her people called Warraskoyak, which
bristled at the time with fat, handsome pecan trees - undisturbed by the feuds
of the Powhatan with the subjects of Charles Stuart, King of France, England,
Scotland and Ireland, meditating and exploring the unseen realms amongst the
black clouds of aromatic tobacco.
            One
dusk in the equinoctial days of Springtime, when the dogwoods were blooming and
the pecans too though it was harder to tell, with sounds of bees buzzing about
once again, a young huntsman came across her wigwam. He had gotten hopelessly
turned around looking for the settlement which, a century hence, would be
called Smithfield.
            His
name was Edward Tucker, and his lot was a mercenary, now a gatherer of game,
who came to this continent seeking that ineffable life's meaning that would not
be found on the one he came from. He would not be here, either in this
darkening forest or in Virginia Colony either one, were it not for his brother
Nicholas, smarter than he no doubt, better sense of direction most certainly. It
was by his encouragement that he came from Chichester; they lived together, with
their small little hound, Boy, in their mud-and-stud house they had built
together, but he was nothing without him, as tonight surely proved. His brother
was not an honest man, and in fact could be said to be a very bad man, whose
dealings with the natives had been dishonest and sometimes violent, but at his
heart he was still his brother, at his heart he was still family, and he was,
in any case, a better man, a more skilled one, a smarter one.
            Now,
a slain turkey over his shoulder, slim pickings, hanging, he was alone - he was
lost, and though he did not know where he was, he was certain where he had
ended up.
            He
approached the dwelling, lonesome amidst the thick pecan trees and the dogwoods
that slumbered aneath them, the rank smell of skunk lingering - he approached
it warily, for even he had heard the rumors of the powerful witch-woman, and
believed him, he of near-pure stock from the race of Alfred the Great, who had
lived near his whole life in a country which still had as point-of-fact a
monarchy of fairies, dangerous sorcerers amidst the nobility, black dogs that
foretold death.
            His, and his countrymen's, whole world was haunted - but he
was about to enter her world, for
hunger, worry, and the approaching night got the better of his superstition.
            He
approached the door, covered by a hung buckskin, and asked in a loud, clear
voice if he could enter, he had lost his way and needed shelter for the night.
            He
was answered, to his surprise, in his native tongue - to be bade enter.
            He
knelt to enter, pushing aside the buckskin, at once coughing and waving his
hand before his face at the voluptuous miasma of tobacco smoke - he heard a
voice, again in the language that he himself spoke, accented, apologizing,
suggesting they exit for the moment so that they could speak while her wigwam
would air out.
            Into
the dusk they both stepped - and he was stunned by what he saw.
            Still coughing, squinting, still, by the light of the setting Sun that plunged out into the
west he beheld her, her beauty he thought was exaggerated was in fact woefully
understated - by the light of the setting Sun she was the most beautiful
creature he had ever laid eyes on. What little breath he could draw, by and by,
had been taken away.
            She,
for her part, was of the same mind - this man was rugged, fit, handsome, hardened
Sussex iron, a full blondish beard with premature wisps of grey, and his
demeanour was rather quite unlike the other English that she had met, he
carried with him an endearing fear, a wariness, a sense that he did not belong
here, so unlike the arrogance and the imperiousness of his brethren...at least
not what she could see.
            When
she inquired what brought him out here, he hesitated, he even stuttered - how embarrassing
that so like a foreigner, stranger in a strange land so went the saying, that
he did not know, simply, he did not know how
he got out here and how he had gotten lost. 
            She
waved her hand and asked him to be silent - it was not uncommon for travelers out
from the path back to the settlement to lose their way, would he not stay the
night? The forest could be - unsafe.
            Surely
I must not impose, inferred he.
            And
she rejoined that, nay, for while my abode is humble, yet - I see, there, a
turkey you've caught already, how fortunate, come behind my dwelling, we will eat
well this night.
            Edward
could scarcely believe his luck - that such a beautiful woman would be so
generous. As they moved to where she cooked her food, a great open-air hearth
with a fire beneath it, he took the turkey off his shoulder and dressed and cleaned with
some tools she provided, with some berries, she insisted, knowing that no scout
went ahead without them, for taste and texture.
            It
took an hour, perhaps two, for the meat to become done. He watched her all the
while, they spoke of generalities but as the dusk grew dark and the faint trill
of the first crickets of the year began singing their own names they turned to
personal things.
            Family?
No family had she - long dead, but, she said with a smile that foretold
something, something he dismissed internally as heathen spirit nonsense no
matter how pretty and no matter how good a hostess she was, they were still
here, and she spoke to them when she could.
            Feeble-minded
heresy of the unbaptized - yet still her words charmed him, for they came from
a comely face.
            Was there not a wolf that lived round these
parts?
            She
smiled again, that smile that hid some basic broader truth to her answer: Aye, a strong one, but he is gone now.
            And
so it was! How unfounded the rumors were! No cruel witch, no foul sorceress,
but a charming, misunderstood young woman - perhaps some personal conflict had
arisen in her village and she was driven out here, or perhaps some misfortune
had befallen a relative who had lived there previously.
            They
supped together on the turkey, roast on her hearth.
            She
was so charmed by this man, this bearded man with the kind green eyes, that her
natural defenses had been, as the hours wore on, lessened and lightened - not all
of the whiteskins were bad, some of them, she told him, quite lovely, the
mothers doting on their children and the husbands grieving those they lost,
which was often, but such is the lot of man, isn't it so, to lose as well as
gain? 
            He
agreed - there was much to gain here, much to gain indeed, if one knew were to
look, and where to look hard enough.
            There
was an incredulity to his words that she did not detect, that she would have
known had she not, for the first night in too many nights to count, actually
trusted a stranger. 
            Edward
could have been said to have been the most thoughtful man, unlike his brother
who carefully calculated all he did, and rarely did anything without planning -
it had gotten Edward into trouble before, after all, part of the reason he had
to depart Chichester was a nasty business involving wanting a certain baker
wanting to duel him because he had, so as was accused, partook of carnal
knowledge with his daughter in a forceful way.
            But
here in the New Lands such a thing would be much harder to prove - and indeed,
with this woman, who would think to wonder at all? She lived alone, this squaw,
so isolated from either her own people or his - and it had been so long, too
long, since had such a rare and gorgeous prize.
            Moment
by moment his temptation grew. He was said to be the most well-endowed man in
the settlement by the bawdy gossips - he would not deny it, nor would he deny
the violent splashing passion that now submerged him.
            Tonight,
in fact, he should prove it, and claim this woman as he and his brother claimed
already much of the Virgin Land.
            Is
it minded if he removed his clothes? All day he has been travelling and hunting,
and now I will spend the night as you wished me to.
            She
made no objection, and to the contrary, the river was not far, there they could
be washed come daybreak.
            The
trap was set.
            Would you partake of this pipe with me, traveler?
It is not much but the most I can offer afore we go to bed.
            And
he readily agreed.
            He
would have her. What of it? A mere squaw - no great witch she, a mere squaw.
This would be easy.
            And
so as she knelt, back turned, sitting upon the ground to light the pipe, the
crickets chirping and the stars bright and oceanic above them - as she knelt, he
grabbed her, roughly, hands on her shoulders, gripping them to pull her up, turn
her around.
            She
cried out in her own tongue in shock and surprise - he smiled at her, a finger
to his lips.
            Shhh.
            She
glanced down, his virile member at the ready - large, very large, rather larger
than any she had seen amongst those she lain with, peeking out of the foreskin,
plump and insistent. It had risen, hard, a sword to pierce and wound her -
perhaps, to slay her.
            But
never - she was nobody's prey, she was nobody's meat, she was not a turkey-bird
that could be shot and consumed, to be forgotten.
            Her
eyes narrowed, and shoved him back, with a preternatural strength that belied
her waifish form, that stunned him as he fell backward on his rear.
            All you whiteskins are the same, I was wrong,
so very wrong, for since you have come here you have taken what is not yours, you
hunger and ravish - as a wolf!            While
he was on the ground he struggled to stand up - furious that a puny squaw would
deny him.
            She spat on the ground. That would you be
this monstrous in the face of my hospitality! But no monster yet - monster soon
enough!
            A
small  puff on her long clay pipe still
in her hand - and a spew of smoke into his face.
            Your amercement would be great, your penalty
shall be forever.
            For
the second time that night he wheezed with the acrid cloud of the tobacco-weed,
but this was harsher, this struck and burnt his lungs in his ribcage, he found
himself out of breath and out of vision, blurred immediately, so that the only
sense he could trust was his hearing.
            And
so heard he: Begone from my house!
            Off
he ran, he tore from that accursed wigwam where dwelt that awful temptress,
submerged at once in the fetid wind of the skunk, the quavering trill of the crickets,
the crawling shadows that swam in the forest of the pecan trees, losing his
footing, half-naked, sliding into the grass.
            The
blood that pulsed in his temples pounded, pounded like a cannonade that was
shot off every second, and in the space between he heard that woman's voice,
soft but assured, gentle but malicious: for
you hunger and ravish - as a wolf.
            At
once he felt it - his whole body was a consumed ember, so hot and so ablaze
with fever he felt as though his insides were cooking, roasting, like a turkey
on a hearth. He cried out to God Almighty, but the heat would not abate, no, in
fact it grew worse, and worser still, until he could not bear it any longer and
he put his whole arm in his mouth to try and tear the skin off, for with the heat
had come a madness that shouted in his head and screamed in his mind.
            He
lost his balance in this awkward position and toppled over, his back into the
grass that was bathed in the inkiness of the night that his now febrile consciousness
was certain was going to devour him whole.
            His
eyes swam in his skull - down he looked, all the way to the riverbank that
choked by those infernal pecan trees and the flowering dogwoods that phosphoresced
hideously in the moon, down, to his own flesh...
            ...flesh
that was not his own flesh.
            He
saw erupt from it, every pore, fine hairs, a bloom of carpeted fur, down his
chiseled form, down to his member, which even in the moonlight had become red
and enflamed as though swollen from some nameless malady.
            He
watched it, his senses returning just briefly enough to let him into the Hell
that he was soon descending. He watched it change.
            What
had been his pride, when he could be ribald and vulgar amongst his
fellow-soldiers in England and the sailors on the way here, so much larger and
easier to please a woman than anyone he had met, was becoming, as he watched,
something vile, something monstrous.
            It
was stiff and ready as it was before when he had attempted to ravish the woman,
but overly so, bloated, obscenely full, uncomfortable to a special pain - the
head, familiar rounded shape, began to taper, like the end of a spear, moment
by moment, until it was sharpened and pointed. His foreskin bloomed in the same
fur, his testicles, a hot itch that he could not scratch as every muscle in his
body convulsively cramped at once.
            His
legs had burst from foot to waist with still more of the fur - blondish-grey,
as his beard, as his coarse bodyhair already - but it was not uniform, but in
patches, long stretches of fur with streaks of still-smooth skin. So it was
with his hands: his left spasmed and twitched but his right did not, the palm
of his left darkened and then hardened, leathery, in oblong splotches to make pawpads
whilst his right remained as he was born - human,
yet still.
            He
felt a pressure, ambient, then mild, then unbearable, at his seat - his
tailbone had descended and ripped out from his skin, a spray of blood that
coated the soon-meated bone with more fur, fur that erupted out of his ears
which twisted and point up, up into points, both sides of his head.
            His
hands went to his face, where inside his mouth he could feel his teeth grow,
and grow again, until against his lips were pressed fangs, fangs stretched his face even as he felt the bones in his
skull pop, and reshape, to give him a nauseating near-muzzle.
            And
finally, in his deepest humiliation - naked, deformed - he felt his member grow
and swell once more, at the base, a firm new muscle swollen and hot, bulging
out from the foreskin that had thickened into a fat sheath.
            His
body was revolting against him - he felt his penis engorge and become corpulent
with a pleasure he did not wish to have, but it built and built until he was
helpless to it, the seed bursting forth, spraying his own body, fur and skin,
up to his muzzle and into his eyes, a gush, a wave, of sticky fluid that reeked
of animal, a pack of unwashed dogs diseased with mange...
            ...not
dogs, not dogs, no, but wolves, for
he had ravished as one, and would live as one - incomplete, not to be given the
beautiful grey shape, but only there at the halfway, imperfect and unwanted by
nature and by man.
            The
last thing he would ever recollect with a conscious human mind was a cackle
coming from somewhere near him, and then all around him, an unending cacophony
in his ears - a laughter, a high mocking laughter, a woman's laughter, yes, that
passed into the japing, amelodic call of a crow, dozens, scores, great hundreds
of crows all cawing in awful, awful unison.
            He
screamed for the sound to stop - but all that emerged from that misshapen face
was a long, lonesome, baleful howl...
            ...a
howl that a man with a torch searching for him with a little dog by his side
heard at once.
            Where
could his brother have gone? Was not the path back to the settlement clear
enough? Ah, his older brother would surely be the death of him - thinking only
with his flintlock and his prick, it was a marvel he had survived and prospered
with him in this wilderness.
            Nicholas
had known his brother Edward to be clumsy, to be reckless, but never to be
actually lost, never to be so inept
as to not find his way home.
            Where
could he be? This was far from the fort, where could he have gone wrong with
his sense of direction?
            Out
with Boy by his side, he was determined to find him, even all the way out here,
a sense of unease he could not place rising inside him.
            He
heard the howl but it was Boy who caught his attention, running ahead, giving
tongue to whatever it was that was ahead of him - Nicholas hustled, torch in
hand, flintlock in the other, to catch up, but he had only a small distance to
go before Boy came bounding back...his little canine voice a flurry of panicked
whimpers.
            Alarmed
at his dog's own alarm, Nicholas
trekked forward still, that same uneasiness, however irrational, however
unfounded, making him almost want to turn tail himself.
            There
in the ghastly admixture of Moon and torchlight, he beheld it - an eldritch
thing, not quite wolf but not quite man, tortured and twisted and loping about
as though in an agony that would never abate.
            Boy
growled, then bayed, but then whined, and then cowered behind him - his fear  palpable to his master, unnerved by this usually
foolhardy-brave dog's act of real terror.
            What
was there, writhing in the grass, was an incomplete, deformed mass of fur and
flesh - it was an asymmetric monstrosity, a wolf denuded, a man made furry -
there was a tail, there were paws, but there were hands, there were feet...there
was a muzzle, but there were eyes.
            He
could scarcely believe it - was this a new creature, a strange new thing that
dwelt here in these parts, unrecorded by wiser men? A nocturnal beast that only
came out at night?
            But
then the thing crawled nearer, a living cloud of gurgling whines - a strangled,
desperate keening - and the torchlight through upon its face an awful truth.
            Nicholas
cried out in stark, dread horror. 
            The eyes - those green eyes that he also shared.
            He
choked out the first syllable of his brother's name before it was dead on his
lips.
            His
eyes rose slowly - over the unyielding mournful cries of the beast before him,
and the cowardly yips of his hound aneath him, he could see, into the forest of
pecan trees that danced in the shadows over clusters of leprous dogwoods, he
could see it, just barely, a solitary wigwam, the still-stoked fire of a hearth
behind it, homey clouds of smoke rising, up, up, into the treetops, the spirits
of the past communing with the astral fantasies of the future.
            And
he knew what had happened.
            He
had been warned of the woman whose name meant crow, he had been warned not to stray too far near the pecan forest
where lay thick and noxious the smell of the polecats - did not the Powhatan
call them skunks? - for there dwelt
someone who was a great sorceress, who communed with birds and who knew the
secrets of the land that his countrymen, by hubris and folly, had tried to
claim as theirs.
            Edward
had wandered too far - he had gotten lost - and by his own poor judgment and
mistakes, had been turned into the craven monster before him.
            He
was crushed by grief, immediate, needling, he was swallowed by a sorrow that he
had never before felt in his life, not when they had buried their mother far
away across the ocean, not when they left England together to die, ignobly,
here.
            The
thing made sounds at him - guttural noises that may have been human speech, may
have been trying to tell him something - a furry forearm rose, the hand was
padded at the bottom like the paw of a great beast, claws shone luridly in the torchlight.

            He
swallowed - hard - and hesitated, tried to make sense of this, this tragedy
that defied words and logic. 
            And
then - with a steadiness he did not feel - he raised his gun. 
            The
thing that had been his brother would not, could not, should not, suffer to
live as he was.
            A
shot was fired, a bloody mess made of the chest cavity of the creature that had
been his brother, Edward Tucker.
            It
was done.
            Boy
came forward, tentatively, his little black nose twitching in the air at the
mangled corpse - he growled again, then back to Nicholas' heels.
            In
his infinite despair, awash with a misery he could barely understand, his
thoughts blank with the blackest sadness, Nicholas did his brother one last
favor - he threw his torch down onto his crumpled form, where he caught alight,
and there in the grass of Virginia would he be cremated and laid rest.
            He
bid Boy to come, sobbing into his sleeve as he walked. 
            When
he returned to the settlement, the night-watch was there to greet him outside
the wooden gate.            The leader, a handsome fellow with blackish hair
named Maximilian, who would disappear strangely himself in the next decade
after joining some privateers and battling the Great Gasparilla off the Spanish
Main, came out to greet him:
            Found you your brother, Tucker? Your brother
who went out hunting and never returned?
            He
shook his head, his voice choked with emotion, but for why, they would never
know, nor why also was his torch missing, or why his hound dog shivered, as though
in fright, for two days after.
            No, sirrah, I found him not - looked all over I
did, looked high and low I did, but my brother has vanished, he is no more, he
sleeps now in Shepherd Jesus' tender arms.
            That
should have been the final word, but Nicholas Tucker was not an honest man, he
had lied before and stolen from the natives and expanded his lands by devious
means so perhaps, went the whispers, he would not even stop at killing his own
kin.
            There
was no proof, of course, and the controversy grew.
            News
of Edward Tucker's disappearance lit Jamestown and Neweportes Newes afire with
rumor and speculation - weeks passed, and then at last it became apparent that
some grave ill had indeed befallen him while he was along the banks of that
river, near where the witch-woman was reputed to live.
            It
took not long at all for the people come to a leap of logic: Edward Tucker had
been slain, and slain deliberately, his body never found, not by the oily
Nicholas Tucker of Chichester, but by arcane and occult skill of the native
savage.
            Nicholas
Tucker did his best to dismiss this, to explain that surely he had fallen into
the swamp and drowned, gotten lost and eaten by a wild beast...
            ...all
the while remembering his brother's misshapen, warped, half-canid half-human
face, chest bloodied by musket-shot.
            Surely
his brother should do something to avenge his fallen kin! Done in, treacherous
murder, by the evil designs of the heathen magic of the savage witch-woman!
Would not the man defend his family honor - indeed, the honor of England - by doing
unto her as she had done to his brother?
            Yet...Nicholas
did nothing. And was hated for it.
            Some
say that his foresight was the better part of a stronger valor, for there would
have been, undoubtedly, strong and immediate reprisals by the Powhatan against
the English should their beloved woman-magician be killed, even in vengeance,
by a whiteskin - already there was nervous talk in James Cittie of a coming
conflict, which a decade hence would prove prophetic.
            But
others say that this was Nicholas at his most self-serving and self-preserving -
perish the thought of the whole colony under attack from the invaders, it was
only he, lowly planter, that he was ever concerned
with.
            Nicholas
never - not once - told a soul what he saw that night. He thought the matter
would die, unlike his brother, in peace, but two full months passed before folk
began demanding he do something about what had transpired so vociferously he
was left with no other choice. 
            He
was overcome - he sold his holdings, his slaves, and he fled west, never
looking back, perfectly content to be alone and perhaps even die alone, if only
he never heard his brother's name again.
            The
witch-woman was left alone, and many years later when Middle Plantation was
given the task of being the heart of the Virginia colony and then the name of
King William, she was not recorded as being where her wigwam is supposed to
have stood - she, like Edward Tucker, simply vanished, leaving no certainties
to history.
            When
Harvey, the governor against whom the wrath of his countrymen was freshly
roiling, heard of Nicholas Tucker's cowardice into the west, he sneered that
though Tucker had not a heavy heart of iron he had at least had a swift, light
foot - and much to his despair this was a moniker Nicholas Tucker could never
shake off. 
            But
when his son, also named Nicholas, moved with General Wood out past the New
River, into the land of the phantom Azgens and the supposed race of natives who
had whites of their eyes that glowed like the full Moon, he would take the affixed
title and reclaim it, to save his new American family face. 
            When
he reached the Greenbrier Valley with his freedman, Turner Jack, and there
settled, he was not Nicholas Tucker II - but rather Nicholas Lightfoot.

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/857502