Pansexuality Chapter 3
Story by PenDarke on SoFurry
Kleanthes's transformation threatens to engulf his entire life -- will he find a cure before it's too late?
Pansexuality - An Abyssus Abbey Story Chapter 3
Traveling home from the clearing took longer than Kleanthes expected, and not because of the fading light. In fact, as the sunset faded and the stars appeared, night never truly seemed to set in. There was barely any moon, and yet the island never bathed itself in shadow, but instead took on an odd luster, gleaming to Kleanthes’s eyes in shades of black and silver, and leaving him well able to pick his way along the winding paths home.
No, what slowed him was the discomfort of walking the trails themselves. Far from smooth, they were mostly dirt paths overgrown with weeds and littered with stones–and now that his weight had increased so dramatically, walking them barefoot was a painful and arduous process. He’d tried leaning on his crook to take some of the weight off his feet, but that had almost immediately snapped in half. He wondered uneasily if his father would even be able to find a pair of sandals large enough for his now overgrown feet, which nearly covered the path with each step. He would probably have to have them made by a master cobbler, and that would no doubt carry a high price. Still, there was no delaying it any further. Kleanthes would have to show his parents what had happened to him. And hope that his changes had reached their end.
Upon arriving home, he was shocked to see just how small everything appeared. He hadn’t noticed before because he’d been crouched to avoid being seen, but now, standing at his new height, he towered over everything. The sheep paddock’s fence barely reached his waist, and his thick fingers fumbled with the latch as he fastened it behind the flock. As he approached the house, he realized that he could now see the top of the roof without even craning his neck. The whole building looked like it had shrunk. He got to his knees and peered with some dismay at the window he and Tychon had always used to sneak in and out of their bedroom. He could poke his head in, but it bumped at his ears, and he could barely reach all of one arm inside before the width of his shoulder stopped it. Somewhat miserably, he realized that even if he could somehow sneak inside unnoticed, he would be far too large to fit into his kline.
At least the sky was clear and the temperature was comfortable. The gentle breeze off the sea was cool, tugging at the hair covering him–which now he realized must have spread more than he knew, for when it blew, it tickled the backs of his shoulders, his neck, and down the middle of his back. Uneasily, he wondered how far the changes had spread. He reached up to tug at his horns. Were they thicker? Longer? He couldn’t tell.
But, exhausted after a very long and very confusing day, he found a patch of softer grass under a tree and settled down to go to sleep.
He awoke several hours later, ears twitching toward the sounds of his parents inside the house, rather audibly making love. He smiled through his drowsiness; they hadn’t sounded so energetic since he was a young boy. The sheep, too, had not settled; he could hear their amorous bleating even from here. He shifted in his position. Lying on his back had been uncomfortable; the way the thick muscle humped across his back and neck had left his head dangling backward until his horns pressed into the dirt. So he’d settled prone, his arms crossed in front of his thick chest, his head resting amid hills of warm, fuzzy muscle. Although, somewhat embarrassingly, he had drooled on it a little in his sleep.
Soft footsteps from the house made his ears twitch again. He wiped the drool from his chest and pushed himself upright. It was strange to feel the impossible weight of his body and yet to have so little difficulty moving it. A sharp gasp of breath came from the side of the house and he sat up all the way. Tychon was there, blinking in the feeble moonlight. He was naked, holding only a pillow before him, squinting.
“What–what is that?”
Kleanthes puzzled for a moment, wondering why his brother couldn’t see him. “It’s me, Tychon,” he rumbled, standing, and flattened his ears at the sound of his own voice. It sounded nearly as deep and thunderous as that of the creature who had visited him two days prior. Tychon, too, seemed alarmed, shrinking back against the wall of the house. “It’s Kleanthes,” he said, stepping forward.
Tychon stared for a moment longer, then shuffled closer, peering. It was odd how small and fragile his brother appeared now. “Kle…?” he said tremulously. “Come… come into the light.” And he stepped away from the house into a silvery patch of moonlight, out of the shadows.
Kleanthes followed, realizing that his eyesight must be blessed, now. Tychon took a long breath as the feeble moonlight limned Kleanthes’s form, his arms falling to his sides, the pillow dropping to the ground. He was very obviously erect, but the manhood he bore was dramatically larger than. Kleanthes stared. “What happened to you?” he finally managed.
“Me? What happened to you? You barely look human anymore.”
Kleanthes dropped his eyes. “I know. Something has… taken over me. It’s more than just the shape. And the wine. Today I was playing my pipes without playing them. And Artemon, he came to me like he was ensorceled and–”
“Artemon? Kle, tell me you didn’t do anything with him.”
Kleanthes shifted uncomfortably.
Tychon shook his head and turned, his unflagging erection bobbing in the air. “I think you might have done this to me,” he said with a groan. “Look at it! What is Sappho going to say when she sees me like this?”
“Hooray?” Kleanthes managed with a weak smile.
Tychon snorted, then gave a little shrug. “Well. Perhaps. It is pretty impressive. And incredible to touch.”
“You, er, you might want to leave it alone, though.”
Tychon turned back to him with a frown. “Why is that?”
“Only… only every time I’m… satisfied… it seems like my changes… advance. When I started out yesterday morning, I was bigger too. And then…” He gestured up and down his own massive, shaggy body meaningfully.
His brother took a startled step back. From the way his balls bounced against his thighs, it looked like they, too, were bigger. “You think if I come, that’s going to happen to me, too?”
Kleanthes shrugged.
“So what, I simply never have sex or come ever again? How could I even stand that? I mean, look at this thing!”
Kleanthes shook his head, his mane tickling his shoulders. “I don’t know, Tychon. It’s not as though I’m in control of what’s happening. And do you think I would have— Hey!”
Tychon had set his hand on his own enlarged shaft and begun to stroke it slowly. He groaned and jerked his fingers away. “Right, right… leave it alone. Ugh, but it’s so hard.” He gazed up at Kleanthes. “And you’re so enthralling. A big, horned god in the night.” He breathed in deep, and then his shaft flexed on its own, sending precome spattering across the ground.
“Tychon!” Kleanthes hissed.
His brother took a step forward, as though led by his dick. “I didn’t touch it. You saw.”
“We need to figure out what we’re going to do,” Kleanthes said, trying to fold his arms across his chest and struggling with the breadth of muscle. “What if Miter and Pater came out here?”
Tychon snickered. “They sound pretty busy right now. Is that because of you, too? I mean the sheep are restless, and I’m fighting not to irrigate the garden right now. It has to be you.”
Kleanthes wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “In any case, unless you want to disappear and never see them again, we have to show them what’s happened. I can’t imagine that will go well.”
“Not at first,” Tychon admitted, stepping closer. “But they’ve always believed in the gods, you know. Even with the Reman religion becoming so popular. And they know all the stories. They know the world is full of magic.” He brightened. “Perhaps they’ll even know what to do! Perhaps they’ve heard of something like this before!”
“But they’ll want to know how it happened,” Kleanthes pointed out. “What would you even say?”
Tychon stepped closer again. Kleanthes’s shaft hadn’t ever fully softened since his encounter with Artemon, and Tychon’s gaze was fixed on the enormous, bobbing head. He huffed twice, deep, his nostrils flaring. “We don’t have to tell them everything,” he murmured, sounding almost drunken. “We can–we can tell them we ate some… unusual fruit we found.”
Kleanthes snorted at that, and the hair across his back prickled–the sound had been oddly animalistic. “And what fruit would that be?”
“Oh… you know…” Tychon put both his hands on Kleanthes’s shaft, just behind the head. He couldn’t reach all the way around it. “The unusual kind.” He leaned down to lick across the tip, half as big as his own head. Kleanthes’s knees almost buckled at the sensation. He knew he should tell Tychon to stop, but the words couldn’t find his lips. He was made for this purpose: to be a creature of virility and pleasure, of inebriation and reproduction. He tried to form the word: “Stop.” But somewhere between his mind and his mouth, it changed, just as he had: “More.”
It should have felt like a betrayal, both of himself and of his brother, but it didn’t. It felt right, an alignment of the stars into their tracks in the heavens. Tychon needed no further encouragement; he slid his tongue deep into Kleanthes’s slit, forcing it into the slippery channel and licking, and Kleanthes rewarded him with a torrent of precome, which he gamely gulped down. Though his cheeks bulged and clear fluid trickled from his nose, he spilled not a drop. Instead he began to work his hands, hugging Kleanthes’s shaft to his chest and stroking.
The hair prickled again across Kleanthes’s neck and shoulders; there was an electricity in the night air. With a lusty groan, he ran his thick-fingered hand through his older brother’s curly black hair, his thumb rolling over a hard little nub on his brother’s forehead. He rubbed his thumb again, feeling the sharp tip of a budding goat horn. It grew with the motion of his thumb, rising and thickening. He put his other hand to Tychon’s head, clasping it between them, his hands now so large that he could have engulfed it in one palm. A nub of a horn protruded from the other side as well. He stroked them both with his thumbs and they rose, jutting upward from Tychon’s skull, nudging aside his dark ringlets. Tychon let out a shuddering gasp at that, clinging to Kleanthes’s shaft. Hair tickled against Kleanthes’s palms as his brother’s beard grew out, curly, against them.
Arousal overtook him–there was no sin here, no wrong, just two lusty creatures in the darkness, no sound but their hungry panting in the night breeze and the chorus of night life around them. Again he rubbed with his thumbs, coaxing the horns out, curling them backward and upward as though they were clay to be shaped by his hands. Tychon moaned again, lowering his head to slide his mouth around Kleanthes’s tip, and as he did, his jaw stretched. A full hand’s length of Kleanthes’s shaft slid into his older brother’s throat, and Tychon swallowed, tongue massaging delightfully against Kleanthes’s erection, which felt iron-hard and hot as a stove.
Kleanthes’s lips tingled with desire; his breath felt like lightning. He lifted his brother up in both arms. His tip slid along a chest and belly softly matted with hair, obscuring Tychon’s own erection. Tychon gripped either side of Kleanthes’s shaft with his legs, curling his hips upwards. “Do it,” he whispered. “Fuck me.”
“It won’t fit,” Kleanthes protested, but Tychon only shook his newly horned head.
“The gods will make it fit.”
Overcome, Kleanthes lifted his brother higher; surely he was right. The magic was already changing him, and there was no going back now. There was no reason to stop. He gazed into Tychon’s eyes. His brother’s pupils were large and dark in the night. And then they… stretched, growing into horizontal bars. A goat’s eyes.
Startled, Kleanthes stumbled backward, letting go and dropping Tychon to the ground, but his brother landed nimbly on both feet, cocking his head as he looked up at Kleanthes. His shoulders were shaggy with fur, and his ears were visibly growing longer in the starlight. “What’s the matter?” he asked in a teasing voice. He turned and dropped his hands to the ground, keeping his hairy rump raised high. “Don’t you want me?” Something at the base of his spine moved, and then a short, furred tail sprouted. It wiggled back and forth invitingly.
Kleanthes paused, letting the meager light play over his brother’s broad back, muscled from months working on a boat, his buttocks and thighs equally well-built. The impish smile on Tychon’s face looking back over one shoulder.
He could deny the arousal no longer.
And it turned out that Tychon had been right after all. The gods did make it fit.
A gasp. The melodic clatter of a pot dropped, breaking. Kleanthes opened his eyes blearily. The ground was far below him. Something was gripping him, digging into his arms, his back, his legs. He shook his head and felt his horns knocking against something solid and wooden. It took him several moments to work out that he had somehow become entangled in the branches of a fig tree. The smell of ripe figs was all around him. That, and the smell of sex. Tychon’s smaller body was beneath him, pressed against his own. Pressed around him; his semi-hard shaft was still buried inside his older brother’s rump.
He tried to ease backward but the tree’s limbs gripped him firmly.
“What is that?” his mother’s voice came from below. “Who could have done this?”
Squirming, Kleanthes found an angle that allowed him to withdraw his hips slowly, eliciting a sleepy groan of protest from Tychon. Kleanthes clamped a hand over his brother’s mouth and hissed a warning to be still.
“Who are you talking to?” Their father’s voice, from inside.
“You! Come out here! There’s a tree! And there’s–” their mother’s voice lowered to a whisper that was still quite audible. “There’s something in it. An animal.”
Footsteps. “Theos moi! What is it? A lion?”
“It’s too big to be a lion. Look. There are horns.”
A pause. “I will get my fishing spear. Go inside with the boys.”
“They’re not there.” Panic rose into their mother’s voice. “Kleanthes’s kline was neat. I don’t think he came home yesterday. Supposing that thing got him?”
Kleanthes sighed. There was no avoiding it. He moved, trying to free himself and clamber down off of Tychon. It was not easy. The limbs of the tree gripped him tightly; it must have grown around them as they slept. Fortunately, this new body had a lot of strength to offer. Straining his muscles, he forced his limbs away from himself, the branches of the tree groaning as they bent before his prowess.
“Skata!” their father shouted as leaves rustled. “It’s moving! Get inside!” Ripe figs dropped to the soil beneath the tree in a patter of soft thuds. Several burst, releasing their nectar-like scent to the morning air.
“What’s happening?” Tychon slurred sleepily. He turned to look up at Kleanthes and then down toward the ground below. “Oh. Ohhhhh.”
“Tychon, is that you? Does that thing have you? Can you get free?” their mother whisper-called.
Kleanthes was having difficulty extricating himself. Bending the branches of the tree aside was one thing, but disentangling his limbs and torso from their grip was another altogether.
Tychon, however, smaller and less encaged by the arboreal prison, had less trouble. “It’s all right, Miter, don’t worry,” he said. He squirmed out of the bottom branches and dropped toward the ground headfirst, but righted himself mid-fall and landed on his toes, agile as a goat.
Both their parents screamed at that–not loud, terrified screams, but the startled yelps of people feeling a lot of different emotions at once and unable to make words of them. There was a long silence.
“I am going to sit down,” their father said.
“Soooooo I was changed into a satyr.”
“You–you look like him, a bit. You sound like him.” Their mother’s voice was disbelieving, faint.
“It’s me, Miter.”
“But how did this happen? Who could have done this to my boy?”
“Your boys. That’s Kleanthes up in the tree, there. It’s his fault, really. He wished for this. And then I suppose… it got passed on to me.”
Their mother began reciting a prayer to Athena in a strangled voice.
“If it is really you, son,” their father called weakly. “Come down from the… from the… where did the tree come from again?”
Kleanthes, feeling ever more claustrophobic in the grip of the branches, bucked and thrashed. Limbs whipped around him, figs raining to the earth below, and then there was a crack as the trunk split down the middle, halfway to the ground. Grumbling, scraped and bruised, Kleanthes managed to pull free and lower himself to the ground. “Hello, Pater,” he mumbled, rubbing at his arm and trying to keep his endowments angled away. His face was flushed with embarrassment.
Tychon, too, was shame-faced, and had clad himself in a clean exomis. It still fit him well–he had not grown muscled like Kleanthes. He did appear to be taller, but that might be due to the hooved legs that now bore him, covered in a light tan, shaggy fur. His horns were large and curled backward like a ram’s, but his ears were goatlike, and there was a strange, bestial cast to his face now. His nose looked wider, his mouth broader, his beard thicker.
Their father rubbed at his own face with both hands and then held them upward as if in supplication toward the gods. “Kleanthes, my youngest, my joy? It scarcely looks like him! It barely sounds like him! How am I supposed to believe that this… creature is my son?”
Their mother stumbled to the water trough and splashed her face.
Kleanthes sighed. This moment had been inevitable, after all. And so, after his parents provided plenty of fresh linen for modesty, he and Tychon explained, awkwardly, what had happened, doing their best to leave out any mention of sex. Kleanthes told of the strange creature that had visited him on Falakros Hill, and of his wish to be a satyr. And then he told of the changes, the strange powers that had blossomed in him. They were disbelieving at first, but astonished when he showed how any water he touched became wine. And, grudgingly, he admitted that it seemed he had been given certain powers of virility and fertility, which explained the growth of the trees, and the friskiness of his flock. He did not miss the bashful look his parents shared with each other at this part. He told them that he thought he had been blessed in some way by Pan, and that this change was contagious in a way.
At that, the two of them shifted, trying to discreetly edge away from Kleanthes and Tychon. “And you–you caused this… curse to be passed on to your brother, Kleanthes?”
“Not intentionally,” Kleanthes said, and then, desperate to turn the talk away from how this change might have been passed on, added quickly, “but I will stay outside for now.”
“Stay outside, theos moi,” his mother groaned. “Of course you will! How do you expect to fit inside? You would ruin the building just trying to get in! No, no, you will stay well away. I will make you a new kline to sleep on outside. Your pater can string up one of his sails between the trees for shelter. And how do you expect us to feed you, grown twice the size, no, three times the size, of a normal boy?”
Kleanthes looked down around his bare feet. “Well, there’s plenty of fruit,” he joked weakly. “And–and I can make as much wine as anyone could want! Pater could take it to the cities and sell it!”
“And when these city people drink your magical wine and it changes them into satyrs, what are we to say to them?”
The wine, Kleanthes thought. Could that have been the source of the change? He’d assumed it was the sex, but… no. “Pater drank the wine too,” he pointed out. “Yesterday morning. And he is fine.”
“Is he fine, indeed! He had the appetites of a satyr last night, I can tell you that much!”
Their father cleared his throat. “As I recall, it was not I who was waking in the middle of the night with burning loins, my nymph.”
Their mother’s face reddened so fast it was as though someone had thrown wine into it. “Well. Whatever the case, we will find out what has happened to you both and we will make it right. I will say prayers to the gods, and your father will sacrifice one of our best ewes. This will be cured. The satyrs left this island once, long ago, and they will do so again.” She nodded firmly, as though the idea was settled. “And you two, you are to keep to yourselves. Don’t get close to anyone else. And no sharing any more of that wine.”
“Don’t worry, Miter,” Kleanthes assured her. “The only ones who’ve had any are me and Pater and Tychon.”
He felt the blood drain from his face. And Artemon. “I, uh, just remembered I… left some of it somewhere,” he lied. “I should go and get it. I’m sorry! Goodbye!”
And before they could protest or ask any further questions, he turned and ran, clutching the bundle of linens before him as he loped up the path to Falakros Hill.
The path was no less painful on Kleanthes’s feet this morning than it had been the previous night, but still he ran. Rocks and weeds jabbed into his heels, his toes. He tried to keep his thoughts away from the discomfort, but that strategy only led to his worries for Artemon. He’d considered trying to run to Artemon’s house first, but the distance was far greater, and besides, if the boy had changed from his contact with Kleanthes, he would almost certainly return to the place where they’d met. Certainly confused. Probably frightened. Possibly angry.
One uncomfortable morning confession had been more than enough for Kleanthes, but Artemon deserved to hear the truth. And to know what they thought would make it worse.
Kleanthes could tell he had changed further after his tryst with Tychon. No longer hairy from his waist down, his legs were now wild and shaggy with what could only be called fur, dark brown in places, light in others. It was not so thick that it concealed his cock, which hung halfway to his knees and slapped at his meaty thighs as he ran. His orbs were as big as his fist and jounced heavily. And something twitching at the base of his spine was surely a tail. From waist to shoulders, he looked like a human man, albeit a very hirsute and impossibly muscular one. His beard was thicker, blending with his hair, which grew down the middle of his back and across his shoulders like a mane. And his horns were now thick and long, the weight of them noticeable even with his wide neck.
Awareness of his body sent an erotic energy thrumming through him. He flicked his ears, trying to ignore that, trying to turn his thoughts elsewhere. It was useless. Everything in his life had been altered or subsumed by the changes. His cock was already rising again, beginning to bounce painfully as it stiffened. His lust was, seemingly, endless.
As his heat rose, so did the day’s. The sun blazed down on his matted shoulders; the sensation of the heat baking into his horns an odd, though not unpleasant, sensation. And his throat was dry from a long night of running. He turned off the path, making his way toward the stream where often he watered the sheep, walking gingerly through the bristly grass, all dead in this area during the summer. His balls bounced against his thighs, and his arousal spiked. He just couldn’t continue this way–too many distractions–so he paused, curling his toes, and tugged at his erection with both hands. It was already slippery with his precome, and it took him only a few moments of pleasure to send him erupting across the ground, painting it with splashes of white that soaked into the earth.
He stood panting for a moment, watching green begin to tinge the grass again, little yellow flowers sprouting as the dead, dry grass renewed itself, spreading out from the splashes of his seed. He stumbled backward as the green stretch toward his feet, little flowers and saplings bursting out of the verdant patch. It was still spreading outward as he staggered away, newly mindful of his flagging cock dripping between his legs. How far could this go?
He was nearly to the stream when he felt the change seize him. His lower legs and feet stretched oddly, and he lost his balance, dropping to the ground on hands and knees. Over one shaggy, burly shoulder, he caught a glimpse of his foot stretching outward. Bones and muscles twisted–the sensation should have been uncomfortable, but instead felt right somehow, like a stretch after a long stiffness, like his back popping back into place after carrying a heavy burden. He hunched his back, fingers digging into the ground as his feet stretched and a pressure in his skull told him his horns were growing thicker and longer. Just as it subsided, the pressure moved to his face. He could see his nose nudging slightly more into his vision, spreading wider; could feel the stretching of his jaw. In a panic, he wondered if he were about to develop a full snout, his head transforming fully into that of a goat’s, but then, abruptly, the feeling of changes ebbed, leaving him crouched, panting, in the grass.
Slowly, carefully, he attempted to get to his feet. He felt not the touch of his toes against the grass, but a bluntness where his toes ought to be. He put one foot beneath him and stood upright. His balance was different, as though he were standing on the very tips of his toes, his weight extending from his knees, through his calves and down his feet. Peering over the breadth of his shaggy chest, he was unsurprised to see that he now stood on cloven hooves. What did surprise him was how natural and easy it felt. He had expected to stagger and stumble, but after the discomfort of picking his way along the paths on tender feet, the protection of his new hooves seemed a blessing.
He took a few tentative steps and had no trouble balancing; on the contrary, he felt more nimble than before. Finding no difficulty, he hopped around in a few quick steps and then sprang to the top of a nearby boulder, balancing atop its round surface as easily as standing on flat ground.
A flood of relief washed through him. Not only had climax eased his arousal, and the growth of his hooves the pains of his feet, but a nagging tension had left him, a feeling like he’d been always on the verge of yawning, but had finally done so. His body felt whole and right, in a way it hadn’t since that first morning two days prior. He reached up to brush at his face with thick, stubby fingers, and found a broader nose and chin, pushed out just slightly, giving his features a caprine aspect. His ears, too, were long, furred, and jutted out to the sides. They swiveled when he touched them.
So this is me now, he thought. This is what I will be until my parents find a way to break the curse and change me back. He tried to imagine returning to his small, human form with its lean, hairless body, a height that would scarcely reach his navel, and could not envision cramming all that he was now back into that tiny frame. He stretched out his broad shoulders, feeling the muscle roll, enjoying the pops in his neck and back and, reminding himself why he had come, continued on his way toward Falakros Hill, his hooves hopping along the path in an energetic dance the entire way.
“Lord Pan!” Relief wrung in the voice that echoed across the hilltop as Kleanthes mounted the crest. Artemon stood on tiptoe near the broken stone chair, waving one arm eagerly. No, not on tiptoe. On slender hooves. “I feared I wouldn’t see you again!” he cried out, almost in tears, and then he ran to Kleanthes’s side, every bit as surefooted on his hooves as Kleanthes was. Though his feet had changed, much of the rest of him had not; shaggy white fur ran down the back of his neck, and two-inch horns protruded from his hair, but other than that he seemed the same.
“I–I couldn’t get my father to understand what was happening! He said I was bewitched! He told me I had to leave! And then–and then I kept changing and I kept thinking about… about being with men, with you… and then you weren’t here and I didn’t know what to do.”
Guilt twisted Kleanthes’s stomach. He’d done this to Artemon. He’d been so careless. And he’d misled him as well. “I must tell you, I’m not truly Pan. I’m Kleanthes. It’s just… whatever has changed you also changed me. But I am no more Pan than you are.”
Artemon blinked up at him in surprise. Were his pupils stretching into bars even now? Perhaps a trick of the light. “You are a great deal more Pan than I am, surely. I am no giant.”
“Pan wasn’t a–”
“And I cannot do the magic you can, changing water into wine, playing music with no flute, and, and… that.” He pointed at the ground.
Kleanthes turned his gaze, puzzled, and could not see what he was talking about. All was as it was before, there was nothing but the pathway that led up the hill through the gorse bushes, and… and it was grassier than before, wasn’t it? The fresh young grass of spring here and there, speckled with tiny wildflowers, pink and yellow. But it wasn’t growing evenly, just in small patches, little circles of new grass, alternating, leading right up to…
Kleanthes lifted one hoof. New grass and flowers sprouted there, uncrushed by his weight, growing before his eyes in his hoofprint. “Oh,” he said stupidly, and stumbled aside a few steps, then leaned against the broken half of the tree, watching as new life sprung forth from the places his hooves had touched the ground. “Oh.”
Artemon turned his awed eyes to Kleanthes. “And you called to me. You chose me. And you came back to me. So it doesn’t matter what my father says. This is a gift. And I want more.” He put his hand on Kleanthes’s side. His arm had changed; the dark hair that had curled across it the day before was turning white, strand by strand. Or perhaps new white hair was growing thicker to engulf what was there before. His eyes shone with desire. “Do you want to give me more?”
Kleanthes discovered that he did.
Early morning birdsong and the pale light of sunrise did not rouse Kleanthes from his slumber, but the sound of hoofbeats on the hillside did. Kleanthes lay with his back against a quince tree. Artemon lay nestled against his side, his white-furred face pressed under Kleanthes’s arm, sharp little horns pushing into Kleanthes’s side. He had turned out small for a satyr, slender, but quick and mischievous. And adoring of Kleanthes, whom he only referred to as Pan. Kleanthes had tried to explain what had happened to him, but the arguments that he was not a god had grown more difficult to support.
Gently, he dislodged Artemon from his side and nestled the little sleeping satyr in the roots of the quince tree. He stood and stretched, catching his own masculine, caprine scent mixed with the nectar of the fruit trees. Falakros Hill was hardly recognizable now–where once it had been a craggy hilltop with only sparse underbrush surrounded by a thicket of gorse, now it was forested thicker than an orchard, the sun blotted out by leaves of orange, cherry, peach, lemon, fig and apple trees. The sourness of fermenting fallen fruit tinged the air. The gorse blanketing the sides of the hill had not wilted, but now was overrun by blooming hyacinth, narcissus, gladiolus, and anemone, perfuming the air with a heady fragrance.
Kleanthes picked his way through the branches, pushing some aside with his arms, occasionally stooping so that his horns would not catch among others. He stepped out into the open sunlight and breathed deep of the morning air. It would be a fine, clear day, he thought. He was pleased to see that he had correctly identified the sound of the hooves on the path – they belonged to his brother, who stood with his hands planted on his shaggy black knees as he panted from his run up the trail.
“I wasn’t expecting you this early. Have Pater and Miter finally relented about you visiting me?”
Tychon shook his head, his ears flicking. “Not exactly. They still are afraid of what you might do to me.”
“And to them.”
“Maybe,” Tychon agreed reluctantly. Then his ears perked upright. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve done it, Kleanthes! We’ve found a way to change us back!”
Kleanthes allowed his gaze to trail questioningly down his brother’s still quite animalistic frame. “You’re being satyrical.”
Tychon groaned. “Every day that malaka joke. Just come! Come and see!”
“Should I bring Artemon?” Kleanthes looked over his shoulder. “He’s… still asleep.” Kleanthes was, in fact, rather looking forward to tiring him out again.
“No. Miter will go to tell his father of the cure. Just come!” And Tychon turned and darted down the path with goatlike nimbleness.
Curious, Kleanthes loped after him, having to moderate his pace so as not to overtake him. It had been three days since he’d left his home to stay atop Falakros Hill. Certainly there had been low moments, as he’d asked himself what would happen to his life. By the end of the first day he’d already deeply missed the warmth of his home, the comfort of his kline, and above all the companionship of his family. His mother had sent food with Tychon up the hill, but neither she nor his father came up themselves, and they stayed hidden away when Kleanthes made his way down every morning to collect the sheep.
Tychon had called from a distance that he wasn’t permitted to venture too close, lest he become “more corrupted,” even though apart from the differences in size, he was every bit as much a satyr as Kleanthes.
So, Artemon had been Kleanthes’s only constant companion, and together they had tended their flocks, each of them returning to their respective paddocks in the morning to fetch the sheep and bringing them to graze. The sheep never strayed too far from the two of them, eager as they were to browse on the fresh grasses and flowers that sprouted eternally from Kleanthes’s hoofprints. The two of them coupled eagerly throughout the days while the flocks grazed. No predators encroached on their flocks, but they did not go unvisited–the news of their changes had spread across the island, and frequently they found themselves peeped upon by onlookers, though whatever curiosity had brought them to go and see the new satyrs of Satyros Isle did not overcome their fear at drawing too close.
Once, when Kleanthes was playing his pipes, three came from different directions at almost the same time, and he didn’t think to stop playing until Artemon put one hand on his arm and asked, “Why are you calling them? Will you invite them into your flock?” Startled at the question, Kleanthes had put the pipes away, and the visitors had milled around in apparent confusion for a while before wandering off again.
He watched his brother dart down the path. Tychon was clad in an exomis, but each surefooted step revealed the twitch of his short tail beneath it, the taut muscles of his rump, the sway of his broad shoulders, and forbidden desire rose in Kleanthes again. They’d not coupled since before his final change, and he wondered how Tychon was managing the enduring lust of a satyr without him. Perhaps he’d found some other islander to seduce. If there truly were a way to reverse these changes, why had Tychon not used it? Why did he remain a satyr?
And a deeper, more nagging question: Why would he not?
As they ran down the slope toward their home, something seemed amiss to Kleanthes. The place looked different, somehow. Smaller, of course, in comparison to his new size, and there was that new fig tree. But something more, or, no… something less. He couldn’t decide what was wrong. He expected Tychon to announce him at the front door, but his brother continued on, past the paddock and down toward the pier where their father moored his boat. The sheep crowded the paddock gates hopefully as Kleanthes passed, eager for a day of fresh grazing. He’d have to tend them later.
His steps faltered as he neared the pier. Their father’s boat was rigged for sailing–but not for fishing. Cargo was roped down in the back–not simply goods for trading, but family possessions. Tychon’s kline was strapped to the stern, as was that of his parents. Cooking gear was strung to the sides, and his father had his arms full with a basket with clothing poking out the sides. He disappeared from view as he stored it below deck.
“What is happening?” Kleanthes asked uneasily. That was what had been strange about his home. It had looked abandoned, like the owners had taken their things and gone away.
Tychon returned to him, carrying a linen sheet. “Here. So Miter and Pater don’t see you naked.”
“Why is Pater putting all our things on the boat?”
Tychon took a deep breath and looked away. “This morning I went out early with Pater. He wanted to take me to the oracle at Agkistri to see if a cure could be found. But when the boat went out over the water, I… I began to change back. My feet first, then the hair on my legs. And then I was myself again. Pater wept with joy, and I was… I was so relieved, you know? To be myself again. That I could marry, and… and think normally.”
Kleanthes scowled. “I don’t understand.” I don’t want to understand.
“Klean. The magic isn’t in you. It’s here. It’s in this place.” Tychon came forward, his hooves clicking on the stone path. He took Kleanthes’s hands in his own. “We just have to leave.”
Dumbfounded, Kleanthes allowed himself to be pulled along, down to the pier. The old, wooden boards creaked alarmingly under his hooves. His father looked up, his face an unreadable mix of emotions. “Son,” he said. “We’ve done it, we’ve found a way to save both of you.” His weather-cracked face creased in a hopeful smile. “I know… I know you love this place, but look what it’s done to you! Now we can to to Athina, and you will see all the world you’ve never had a chance to. Art, music, mathematics, philosophy! The greatest food and wine, the plays, the women! And your old pater can relax a little, and Tychon can teach you how to be a master fisherman. You will be so wonderful at it! Or–or,” he added hastily, catching the reddening of Kleanthes’s face, “They have sheep there too, you know. If you wish to spend your days roaming the hills as a shepherd, if that is what truly makes your heart sing, then they have flocks in Athina that need tending, too. But once you see, boy, once you see what the world has to offer you, you will not regret leaving. I promise you that.”
Dizzied, Kleanthes followed his brother down the pier. The fishing boat creaked in the lapping water. Gulls cried overhead. He could feel the heat of the morning sun in his fur, the cool wind off the sea against his horns. “But I love it here.”
He saw the hope in his father’s eyes falter, and saw him rebuild it with a great effort. “I know, son. But it does not love you. It’s taking you from us. Come with us. Come out to sea, and feel what it is to be yourself again. Do not let this curse speak through you.”
Kleanthes looked back along the docks. Grass sprouted in hoofprints all the way back. “Artemon…” he began.
“Your brother has told us. Your miter is staying to pack away the rest of the household. She will tell the others on Falakros what has happened. Artemon can be healed too. Perhaps you will even meet him in Athina someday, if you find that you… still miss him once you are yourself again.”
Kleanthes lifted one leg to step into the boat, then hesitated. “I don’t–”
His father reached up to take his hand. It was like a child grasping his hand, the fingers barely able to curl around one pinky. “Please, son. Trust your pater.”
Kleanthes looked down. His father’s eyes brimmed with tears. He teetered on an edge between hope and despair. “All right.”
Kleanthes stepped down into the fishing boat. The craft rocked mightily, laden as it was by the family possessions and his own prodigious weight, but he did not lose his balance. He never seemed to lose his balance these days. Tychon leapt into the boat after him, nimble as a kid.
Their father let out a long, slow breath. “Good, good. Thank you, son.” He began casting off mooring lines, and he and Tychon oared out away from the pier. “This is the right thing to do. You will see.”
Kleanthes sat. He lifted one hoof and inspected the deck below. No grass sprouted there. The boat creaked in the water as they left the pier behind. The sun was rising in Kleanthes’s eyes, dazzling him. He squinted, shielding his eyes with one hand, and noticed that the hair on his arm was shifting and twitching. Hairs were vanishing, one by one, as though they’d never been.
Tychon stowed his oar and came to Kleanthes’s side. “You can feel it already, can’t you?” His horns were shrinking, bit by bit, pulling back into his skull, and his beard was thinning.
“I–I can.” Every now and then, Kleanthes had had wonderful dreams–of flying, or of walking among the gods, or of killing a lion threatening his flock and being celebrated by everyone. And at some point, the magic in the dream would start to fade; he would desperately try to cling to it, some part of his mind aware it was only a dream and he was about to lose the joy. He would drift toward the ground, the gods were only plaster, the lion had survived and fled to attack again. That was what this felt like: a beautiful dream fading, the wonder ebbing away, the miracle countered by the cold light of dawn.
The wood of the boat kept tugging against his rump where he sat; he was shrinking, his eyeline sinking lower and lower.
His father crowed with joyous laughter. “It’s working! It’s working, son!” He ran over to Kleanthes, seeming to stretch larger and larger in his vision. He clapped Kleanthes on both shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. “You’re coming back to us, my boy!”
Kleanthes gave him an uneasy smile and stood to hug him back, then nearly pitched over as the boat rocked beneath him.
“There you go, never fear, you’ll get those sea legs soon enough.” His father held him at arm's length, staring into his face. “There they are. My boy’s eyes. Your miter’s eyes.”
Kleanthes sat and turned to look back. Their little house was already small beyond the waves, glowing a dazzling yellow in the dawn’s rays. The smell of the grass and earth was gone. Salt and the odor of fish stung his nostrils. “Who will look after the sheep?” he asked. “The lambing season will be busy this year.”
“Your miter will sell the sheep. It will be enough for a new boat, new nets, enough for a little house in Athina. And of course when both you and your brother are fishing, there will be enough for a bigger house! We will need one for all the grandchildren! Eh, Tychon?”
“Yeah.” Tychon’s horns and hair were gone now; his bare feet tanned and weathered, planted against the wood. “But don’t count on any from Klean.” He snickered. “He’s as bent as his crook.”
Kleanthes sat in a puddle of linens. “I don’t know,” he said, half to himself. “Suddenly I feel as though I might never want sex again.” He gathered up the linens about his waist, hitching them so he could stand upright. He felt very small and very weak as he made his way to the edge of the boat. With one hand he felt the last of his horns recede through his hair.
Satyros Isle, the only home he’d ever known, diminished in the distance. From here he could make out the features of the island: Falakros Hill, and the three Old Men–proper mountains–rising behind it; the anemone beds in the north; the vineyards, the clay beds, the meadows, the wide run of the Dio river sparkling in the sunlight. A tightness gripped his chest, he felt as though every breath were shallower than the one before, as though at each moment there was less of him to hold breath.
“Can I–” Kleanthes began, and his words came out as a croak. “Can I have some water?”
“Pfft, you want to be a fisherman, get it yourself,” Tychon, now taller than him once more, thumped him on the shoulder, and pointed toward the water casks. “May as well start your education early, eh?”
Kleanthes stared at him. It was as though Tychon didn’t remember, as though nothing had ever changed. He was back to his casual, brusque bluster. Kleanthes made his way, wobbling with the pitch of the deck, over to the casks, prised up a lid, and lifted a dipper of water to his lips. It was cold, and clear, and his throat was soothed in a way it had not been in days. He drank deep, filling his belly, tasting its sweetness, swallowing the clear, refreshing rainwater in eager gulps.
He looked up. “Pater,” he said. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
His father looked bemused. “There is no need to apologize, Klean. You did not mean for this thing to happen to you. You are not to blame.”
“No, I mean… I love you and Miter and Tychon very much. I would never wish to lose you.” He drank again, the last taste of water he would ever know. “But I understand now. Satyros is more than my home. More than where I belong. It’s part of me. And I can never, ever leave it behind.”
Tychon rolled his eyes. “Ugh. I told you, Pater.”
His father’s face went pale. “Wait. Wait, Klean, just listen to me.”
Kleanthes stepped up onto the railing, holding his linen in both hands. The wind flapped it out behind him like a sail, and he let it go into the breeze, standing naked in the morning sun. “Come and see me whenever you like.” He flashed a grin at Tychon. “Your family will love it here.” He dived over the edge into the ocean.
He swam for shore, ignoring his father’s protests behind him, the splashing as they struggled to turn the boat against the wind and row after him. At first his strokes were small and frail, but, as though the island itself were welcoming him back, he felt strength fill his limbs again. He kicked his hooves against the water, shaking the cool droplets from his horns, the taste of nectar from his lips as he headed home, home for good, carving his way through the wine-dark sea.
Kleanthes shifted in comfortable drowse, riding that delightful edge of sleep where he knew he could choose not to wake. Satyr tongues bathed his erection, those of Artemon and Menander, if his nose did not deceive him. Another mouth suckled at his balls. He relaxed in the golden ease of morning, shifting his lips, and let his satyrs tend to him until he released, rewarding them with his nectar. Pleased, he rose, stretching, and made to thank his tenders, but they had already become distracted with each other, and were now writhing with each other in sensual delight.
He left them behind, ambling contentedly through the verdant meadow and looking out over his island. Five years ago, Falakros had been dryer, dustier, with short trees and scraggly brush. Now it was carpeted with greenery: meadows of high reeds, beds of soft-petaled wildflowers that grew as high as a man’s shoulders, cypress trees that towered far overhead, even dwarfing Kleanthes’s own height. The air was a bouquet of green and fruit, flower and wine. Kleanthes plucked a fat, firm apple from a nearby tree and savored its flavor as he walked down the hillside. Here, a dam had been fashioned to collect spring waters into a pool, and about it lay nymphs and satyrs, some dozing in each other’s arms (or other body parts), others lying in the soft beds of thick moss and ferns that blanketed the area. Kleanthes took a moment to walk through the spring, letting the water renew itself into a wine, rich and dark red. He cupped it in his hands and drank deep of it, then stepped up, shaking the wine from his hooves, and carried on. Atop the next rise, he could see all the way down to the harbor. A small town had been built around his old family home, where Tychon and his wife Phillipa now lived (the marriage with Sappho had not ever been consummated). They had four children already, and another on the way.
The town was named Tegea, founded primarily by supplicants and worshipers who believed the god Pan reborn here, on this isle. It was widely known that those who wished for children but were unable to conceive could stay one night in Tegea and the next morning, they would be with child. Men told that when age had sapped virility from limb and from rod, a short stay on Satyros would restore it for many years. Even, it was rumored, an amphora of barren soil could be revitalized by burying it in the earth of the island for the cycle of a moon, and then that same amphora could be sprinkled across an entire field to guarantee a good harvest. Great naval battles had been fought over the right to control the harbor.
But reports had traveled, too, of the tales that satyrs and nymphs had returned to Satyros Isle, transformed from their human forms by the resurrected god, Pan. And that supplicants might wander out into the lush island of gardens and orchards, and that they might hear the entrancing tones of the Pan-pipes. Those who followed the music might be lost forever, or they might find their way to Olympos, or even be transformed by the gods into a nymph or satyr.
Many came to the island in curious hopes, but few dared venture out into its entrancing depths for long. Some who did never returned.
Kleanthes shook his head, enjoying the weight of his horns, and gazed out toward the rising sun. A ship was anchored offshore, and already a smaller boat cut its way through the water toward the harbor. He could not make out the boat from this distance, but hoped that his mother and father would be on this one. It had been nearly a year since they visited, but with money Tychon made from the exports of fruit, wine, lumber, and olive oil, they had made a fine life for themselves in Athina. And they had their daughter to care for, too young to make the trip across the sea. Still. It had been far too long.
The little boat was already nearing the harbor. There would be supplicants wishing the blessings of fertility or virility. The work of a god was never done.
Kleanthes whistled through his teeth, and eagerly his flock bounded up to follow him.
He licked his lips and tasted wine.