Chapter Three: Punishment

We 'rode' at closer to eleven thirty. Cassie and I tied our bedsheets together, secured the first sheet with quadruple-knots against my bedpost, and climbed right out the window.

The window was about ten feet up from ground level and locked on our side. But I'd managed to smuggle a butter knife out of the dining hall, and between the two of us, we jimmied the lock open and cracked the window as quietly as possible. Then we tossed the sheets out the window, weighted by Cassie's 'Prim and Proper' book, turned off the lights, climbed down, and then tossed the book back up through the window, getting the whole sheet back inside on our third try. We didn't want anybody to pass by our room and notice the lights on and bedsheets dangling down conspicuously. From ground level, you could barely tell that the window was open, so we hoped nobody would notice. I gave Cassie a thumbs-up: we were good to go.

This close to midnight, the campus was dark and deserted. There were no path lights and no streets anywhere nearby. The buildings were dark and empty, save for the errant reading light or two in the dormitories past curfew (against the rules, I would later discover, but not rigorously enforced), and beyond feeble starlight, the only illumination was that ghostly shimmer in the southern sky. The two of us crept along, clad in our gym uniforms, which we deemed more conducive to sneaking about than the school uniforms or pajamas - a pair of dark green athletic shorts with white piping, a green heather t-shirt with the school's crest, and white sneakers. Not camouflage, but comfortable and non-restricting. We crept on through the darkness, toward the center of campus.

"You said you took a cab here from the train station," I asked. "Where did it drop you off?"

"The train? In Lexington. Um... you know, Lexington, Kentucky."

"I mean where on campus. We can follow the spot out to the main road."

"Oh!" Cassie let out a nervous giggle. "Oh, right. Um... it wasn't far from the administration building. Over by the tennis courts."

We made our way to the courts and found the road in short order, a smallish cobblestone thing wending into the distance. The only vehicles the school owned looked to be little canvas-topped golf carts with the school's crest… those and a battered pickup truck for the maintenance women. There were no cars, no parking lots, and no road signage anywhere.

"The cab dropped me off here," Cassie tapped her foot along the little roundabout between the administration building and what I took to be a gymnasium.

Little gravel and stone-paved paths branched off toward various buildings from the roundabout, but there was only one direction that led away from everything, so we took that. We continued in the dark for a while, barely able to make out the lighter color of the road against the grass, walking in the strange starlight. We passed a Tudor-style building labeled 'Advanced Girls' Dormitory'. It was still active, well lit inside and out, with the pulse of thumping music and the sounds of merriment inside - laughter, conversation, and the clinking of glass. Some of the voices were male.

"I think they're having an party in there," I said, my comment footnoted by an aroused groan from within the building.

"Ew!" Cassie grimaced.

My reaction had been the opposite - I very much wanted to creep off and have a look. But Cassie grabbed the collar of my shirt and reined me in, shaking her head with a terse-lipped frown. She wouldn't be party to peeping in on an orgiastic party tonight, no matter how titillating it might seem. But she was right: it wasn't worth the risk of discovery. We had more important matters to attend - escaping St. Circe's and the forces that sought to change us, body, mind, and soul. We crept along for another few minutes, my eyes adjusting to the light until the vague and fuzzy landscape became well-defined.

I could see clearly enough that the road ended. The cobblestones petered out, terminating in a small meadow, and beyond that I saw ranks of pines and poplars lining the edge of a dark forest. The tops of the trees were strangely silhouetted against the glow in the southern sky.

"What the fuck, Cassie?" I said. "You said the cabbie drove you in on this road..."

"She did!" she hissed. For some reason, we were whispering, even though there couldn't be anybody listening for a hundred yards or more. Not unless they were lying in wait in the dark.

"Well? Did you drive through a forest?"

"Of course not. We were on the interstate, and then a little backroad or two, and then... then I remember cobblestones. I don't remember when the switch happened. But we definitely stopped at that circle I showed you, so I'm positive we're on the right road… or ninety-five percent. I'm almost positive."

I shrugged. "Then I guess we should keep going."

"Into the forest? Are you crazy, Natalie? What if there's... I dunno... bears or coyotes or something?"

"We're in Kentucky, not Yellowstone. It's ten to one odds we run into a backwoods meth lab before we find dangerous animals."

"I don't want to stumble across one of those, either."

"Me either," I agreed. "But I'm getting the fuck out of here… by myself if I have to. Are you coming or not?"

Cassie pouted for a moment and then set her jaw, her hazel eyes steely in their determination. "Yeah, I'm still in. Let's go."

We continued past the end of the road, wading through the meadow, night dew wetting my socks and brushing damp against my smooth legs up to my knees. We passed a long line of stones, smooth and gray and the size of a footstool, they seemed to be holding the forest back.  And then we passed their threshold and into the forest. It was almost too dark to see and, no sooner had we started to crack through the undergrowth, we heard a hunting horn echoing from behind us in the direction of the school.

"That can't be good," Cassie said.

"I agree. Let's book it."

+++++

I'm not sure what I was expecting after the horn. An organized search party, maybe - the nighttime staff of St. Circe's rousing the students and directing whoever woke up, still in their pajamas, on a nighttime search of the woods. They'd march out and sweep through the woods, looking for us. And the two of us would press on ahead of them, on toward whatever lay beyond that wood, and we'd be free well before they had a chance to come across us. Easy and totally reasonable to expect. That's not what happened, though.

The woods were black with little blots of violet sky showing through the canopy. We heard another blast from the horn, and we were perhaps fifteen yards into the woods when we heard whinnying and the pounding of distant horse hooves against the cobblestones.

"Run!" Cassie hissed.

It was a good idea. She bolted into the woods, the lemon yellow of her gym clothes barely visible in the dark, her pale skin even fainter. I followed after her and overtook her when she stumbled on a log. I ran past briars and branches, scratching myself and wavering from the impact of branchlets and clumps of nettles. My body moved in unaccustomed ways, my slightly-wider hips thrusting with each steps, small breasts shuddering beneath my gym shirt, hair flailing about and catching against little branches. Cassie tripped behind me, crashing through the underbrush, and I sprinted back to pull her back up. She nodded her thanks, and we were off again.

The hoofbeats were closer. I might have expected the cracking of branches, the crunching of leaves and twigs underfoot, but there was none of that. Just hoofbeats and the panting snorts of the horses. I dodged a branch and heard Cassie gasp behind me, failing to duck in time. She must have had got the wind knocked out of her because I heard a little 'oof' of breath and heard her fall. And this time, I left her behind. At least one of us had to escape to alert the authorities…

I heard Cassie scream well behind me. Moments later, something galloped ten or so yards to my right. I threw myself to the ground and crawled along, moving as quietly as I could, hoping the breeze would mask the sound of leaves and branches sliding past me. The gallop of hooves became a pace - two horses and their riders scanning nearby in search. Then I heard Cassie's voice.

"Natalie! Help! Help me, Natalie!" she called. The voice was strangely unemotional, not at all like a girl crying out for her life. "Natalie, they're killing me! Help me! Help!" she cried. Only, I knew it wasn't her. My pursuers were mimicking her voice.

I army crawled through the underbrush, scratching my smooth arms and legs against pine needles and rocks, until I heard a horse draw close. I froze. It paced. I turned my head and saw it through the cover of a fern I'd conveniently stopped under. All I could see was its great black silhouette and a tall, black, gangling rider mounted upon it. Then I heard Natalie call out again, but the sound was coming from the rider.

"Help me! Help me, Natalie! They're killing me," the rider cried out in a perfect mimic of Cassie's voice - only, again, the cries were without audible emotion. A girl mildly inconvenienced at being murdered by dark riders in the night.

The rider paused. The horse snorted. And then they turned away and paced off. As soon as the nearest rider was ten or so yards off, I resumed my crawling. I climbed up a hill, scrambled over a small rise, and saw light just beyond the bottom of the hill. A moving light - squinting, I could make out a tractor trailer truck driving along a country road, barely visible through heavy tree cover. Realizing how close I was to an actual road, I started sprinting - instinctively, I knew that the riders couldn't pursue me past the line of stones I spotted by the roadside.

I ran toward the road, my breaths deafening in my ears, my hair stick-strewn and messy, my limbs bleeding from a dozen tiny cuts. I wasn't being pursued, either - I heard no pounding of hooves, no strange cries behind me. I reached the road and stopped, and everything was dead silent, but the rustle of leaves under some gentle hush of wind. In the distance, I saw lights approaching along the road. I waited by the underbrush, ready to step out and signal for help. I listened for the riders and heard nothing. I saw headlights peek above a not-so-distant hill on the road, and a car eased over and into view. I moved to step past the stones and out onto the road...

A cold and sinewy hand grabbed me from behind and lifted me bodily. I cried out, a shrill and distinctly girlish shriek, and I flailed against what felt like a flock of empty rags. Not once did I hit anything substantial. Then I felt myself being swaddled by those same rags, and then bound, such that I could neither move nor see nor scream. Then I felt the horse turn around and begin a relaxed canter out of the forest. I cried silently, my tears wetting the cloths, wet and warm against my sobbing face.

+++++

We finally returned to St. Circe's after what felt like hours. The horses clopped down the cobblestone, stopped, and suddenly I felt myself unspun from dozens of yards of night-black cloth and deposited upon the ground. I looked up to find a trio of women frowning at me, all of them in dark dresses that would have been well-suited for a period drama about a century ago.

"There's always one," the silver-haired woman said.

"In this case, two,"  the gray-haired one replied.

"They're beginner girls, so they're mine," the dark-haired one said. "I'm their Night Matron. They'll come with me."

"Agreed," the other two said.

"Riders, you may go," our Night Matron said - and, just like that, the horses and their riders were gone, a thousand dark rags scattering into the night like a wreath of spectral birds. "As for you two, given that you haven't got your behavior plans on you, I'll leave it to Headmistress Lily to discipline you in the morning. Follow me."

"No," I said.

The Night Matron looked more amused than anything. "Is this really a fight you want to be having, Miss... Bryce, is it? You can come willingly, or I can make you. Which will it be?"

"Fine," I grumbled. She'd already had us scooped up from the woods in the dead of night by spectral riders. She could probably make things pretty unpleasant if I was difficult.

As she marched us to the administration building, I noted with some chagrin that the Junior Girls had caught wind of our nighttime shenanigans. We passed their dorm, and the lights flicked on in rapid succession, the heads of the junior girls popping up to watch our walk of shame. I'd be very surprised if every last one of them hadn't been awoken to witness the excitement of we two truants brought to justice.

The Night Matron pulled an ancient, black iron key chain from her skirts and unlocked the administration building. Then she marched us to within a few doors of the headmistress's office, unlocked a small hallway door, and indicated that we ought to go inside.

"This is a janitor's closet," Cassie observed.

"So it is," the matron said. "And if so much of a bristle on the push broom is out of place, I'll petition for even more punishment. Get in, ladies, and prepare to answer for your misdeeds."

Cassie and I piled into the closet, sweaty and awkwardly squished against one another, stuck behind the ventilation ducts on the near wall and the smelly mop on the other end. We were right up against one another in the cramped space, Cassie's damp, dirty, stick-strewn body hot against mine. She turned to me in the near-pitch darkness.

"Well... fuck," she muttered.

+++++

Well fuck, indeed. We sat in that cramped, dark closed for perhaps ten minutes, each of us too afraid to broach further conversation. What if somebody was just outside the door waiting? As crowded as it was, I couldn't bend down to check for feet through the little ventilation slats at the bottom of the door. Those slats and a tiny crevasse of hallway light along the top of the door were the only illumination we got.

"My legs are cramping up," Cassie whispered.

She wiggled around and leaned back into me, her butt pressing right into my belly and then, as she settled down, my crotch. I was suddenly aware of her presence, of her heat against my body. Of her smell. Obviously, she was way too young for me and I would have been verboten to do anything even if she was a 22 year-old nymphomaniac porn star... but having a cute girl wiggling up against me in a dark closet had its predictable effect. Soon, I was supporting half an erection and growing.

Cassie felt it - she felt something. She wiggled again and turned her head back, though she probably couldn't see any better than I could. She wiggled again, and that friction was doing me no favors.

"Hey, stop poking me," she said. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry... maybe if I crouch a little lower..."

Without warning, her hand snaked between us and grabbed my engorged cock through the athletic shorts. I gasped. Cassie quickly intuited what she'd just grabbed and gasped as well.

"Ew! What the fuck?" she hissed. "You have a dick!"

"I'm not allowed to talk about it," I said lamely.

"You're a boy?"

"Just down there... sorry. It was the friction, you know?"

"Ew! Are you, like, turned on?"

"No!" I lied. "Please don't tell anybody, okay? Headmistress Lily said I couldn't tell anybody. It's not my fault!"

"I..." Cassie moved as far away from me as she could - there was still plenty of body contact. It was a small closet. "You used to be a grown-up man, didn't you? Somebody changed you and sent you here?"

"I'm not allowed to talk about it," I said again - that was the next best thing to an admission of the affirmative.

Cassie sighed. "I'm sorry you went through that. But maybe it's better that we didn't escape?"

"The fuck it isn't," I said. "But, out of curiosity, why do you say that?"

"Where are you gonna find somebody out in the regular world to turn you back? You might be stuck like that forever."

"Yeah," I admitted. I brought myself down to a crouch, my shoulders pressing against Cassie's knees. I could finally see out the slats down there - judging by the shoes and little white socks, a girl in a school uniform was standing guard outside, but she didn't seem to be concerned about our talking. "On the other hand, maybe it would be better to escape looking like I do than be punished by sadistic witches intent on changing me more."

"Wow... they must think you did something really shitty."

"Yeah."

"Did you do it?"

"No," I said.

"Well... fuck," she said.

+++++

We talked some more and, thankfully, had no further erection situations. Cassie took the incident in stride, and didn't mention anything beyond that. Instead, she told me a bit about her own situation - which she *wasn't* prohibited to talk about.

Cassie's father was a geologist who, with her Uncle Ferris (a chemical engineer who happened to be her father's childhood friend), dreamed up a new method of extracting rare earth metals from ores. She described the basics of the process to me, and I'd be lying if I told you I understood more than the basics of those basics. I understood, though, that it had made them reasonably wealthy... which I already knew they must have been, given the million dollar tuition at St. Circe's. Not Bryce family wealthy, but vacation ranch in Montana wealthy… comfortably upper crust.

Since Uncle Ferris had no offspring, it was decided that the Petersen siblings ought to inherit the reins of their mining company some day. That was Cassie and her brother Artemis. The only problem was that, while they both had the smarts to do it, Cassie was too shy, introverted, and generally timid to be a company leader. But old Lyle Petersen knew people who knew people, and they knew of a school that, for a price, could guarantee results. If he wanted a daughter worthy of being the next great industry leader in rare earth metal extraction, he'd get just that. Cassie certainly wasn't pathologically introverted or anything, but I couldn't help but think her old man had a point. Who wouldn't rather be a charismatic visionary, if given the choice?

"That wouldn't be so bad, would it?" I said. "Being bold and confident and expressive?"

"But that's not who I am," she said in a small voice. "What if somebody told you that you could be perfect - and you just had to agree to completely change who you were. Would that strike you as appealing?"

"No, I guess not," I admitted.

"I guess not, either."

Presently, there was a rapping on the door to the closet and Headmistress Lily called in to us, her voice muffled through the door: "If you two chatterboxes are quite finished, I've got some punishment to mete out."

She unlocked the door and the two of us tumbled out, stretching our limbs and squinting in the light. There she was, Headmistress Lily in her black silk and patent leather and gunmetal chrome, looking mildly bemused. Behind her was Doctor Sauvage, who just looked tired, and beyond them were a dozen girls from the Junior Girls group crowded around the hallway window, looking in on the action. Beyond them, the sky was aflame and the sun was just beginning to rise.

"Doctor, please deal with Cassandra," Lily said. "I'd like to deal with Natalie myself."

Sauvage nodded. "You heard the headmistress, Petersen. Chop chop. To my office, now." She turned and stalked off, Cassie following behind her as quickly-but-innocuously as she could.

Lily turned to face the girls peeping through the window. "Since you're up already... no breakfast until you do thirty minutes of calisthenics. Thirty minutes!" she snapped. Then she turned back to me. "As for you... really, Miss Bryce! Less than a day and here we are. Not a good start, Natalie. Let's go."

We took the short trek down to the administration area, through the little secretarial area and waiting room (still empty at the early hour) and into the dim, wood-paneled enclosure of the headmistress's office. She strode behind her desk, removed a flat lacquered box from a drawer, and carefully placed it upon the desk's polished surface. She unlocked it with a small key and produced what I would learn was a magical torc - essentially, metal collar with a small gap at the front, glinting smooth and chrome in the same gunmetal sheen as the headmistress's wardrobe accents. The surface was etched with slightly shinier silver symbols almost too light to see. The gap of the torc glittered with amethyst gems.

"Please put this on," Lily said, sliding the torc across her desk.

"What is it?"

"That is called the Collar of Contrition - it's been some time since I had to employ it, but I brought it out of the archives because I suspected that I might require it. It will assist me in your disciplining."

I snorted. "Why would I assist you in your disciplining me?"

Lily sighed. "I know your type. I'm sure you were used to taking the easy way out in your old life, Miss Bryce, but in the real world, sometimes we have to do a thing whether or not we'd like to. Contrary to what you might imagine, I do not relish disciplining my students - I'd much rather they comported themselves well from the get-go, that we got along as a great, big, happy family. But, alas, there is a reason why you're here: your diseased attitude has hurt others, and so it must change. And so I must discipline you… and if I have to take you downstairs and do it the hard way, I will… so please put on the collar. It simply lowers what is an apparently-innate resistance to my techniques so that you may be disciplined like any other student. Now... please put it on."

I did so, finding that, despite its solid metal appearance, the torc was slightly pliable in my hands, bending like a strong rubber. It fit around my neck and then, with a pulse of cold energy, seemed to stiffen. The amethyst gems flashed an intense purple, and I found the collar suddenly quite firmly situated, a solid metal loop around my neck. There was no way to get it off short of a powerful circular saw (or, I suppose, magic).

"Good," Lily said. She paced back to the front of the desk and patted its glossy surface with her fingers. In her other hand, she held an ornate wood-and-metal object that was clearly some sort of paddle. "Now... drop your shorts and bend over my desk."

I laughed. "You're going to spank me?"

Lily sighed. "Not our usual method, but your father insisted upon this as your method of punishment, for whatever reason. He thought you needed a little humility, I suppose. In fact, he wanted it to be bare-bottom, but I refused to debase myself in such a way. Paddling and spanking are enough..."

"Rowan Bryce is not my fucking father," I said. "And, appearances to the contrary, I'm a grown-ass man. I'm not going to let you spank me."

"Insolent girl!" Lily snapped.

A strange inner light flashed in her eyes and, against my will, my body bent over, my cheek and my palms flat against the cool of the desk, small breasts pressed into the wood. The headmistress pulled my gym shorts down, exposing my cotton-clad ass. I tried to struggle free, but it was as if I was welded to the desk.

"Now I see why Rowan so desperately wanted you brought low," she said, raising the paddle.

"No! Wait!" I cried out, still struggling in vain to raise myself from my stance of submission. "Bryce hates me because he thinks I raped his daughter! He sent me here for revenge! I don't belong here! Please stop!"

"You aren't Rowan Bryce's illegitimate son?" Lily said quietly, her paddle stayed for the moment.

"No. My name is Martin Warner. Look me up online!"

In the corner of my vision, I could see the headmistress puzzling over that, chewing at her lip. She nodded slowly. "Believe me, I will look it up. But, alas, that won't forestall your punishment, Natalie Bryce. A contract was signed and I'm bound to its strictures. You won't tell a soul about this conversation or it will be more disciplinary action for you."

With that, she swatted my bottom with the paddle. She smacked my pert, girlish butt four times - thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack! It hurt a bit, but no worse than a casual smack of the hand, the sound of the paddle whistling through the air somehow worse than the feeling of impact. And each time the paddle hit home against my rear, I felt a pulse of shame… and a pulse of something else - something within me rushing out to counter some magical power within the paddle. I realized that Lily was muttering something under her breath as she meted out punishment. She muttered and the paddle hit home, releasing some magical energy. And, though my body tried to resist its force, the Collar of Contrition kept my defenses in check, so the strange energies pulsed and tingled through my body. Four humiliating smacks on the ass, and then it was done.

"If you try to escape again, Miss Bryce, you can expect more of the same," the headmistress said. "You're filthy... go shower and then back to your room. You'll have to hurry if you want breakfast - we wouldn't want you to be filthy and late on your first day of classes."

I found that I could move once again. Slightly stunned, I backed away from the desk, hands trembling slightly. I bent down and pulled the gym shorts up, only to realize that they were strangely loose. All of my clothes were loose, even my sneakers. I was smaller! It wasn't a drastic change - perhaps three inches shorter and slightly more slender - but I'd gone from slightly above-average size (for a girl of my apparent age) to slightly below.

"We'll have fitting clothes delivered to your room within the hour. Now... off you go, Natalie. No more poor behavior."

+++++

First, I showered - an interesting experience in of itself if you've never changed into a body of (mostly) the opposite sex. I was smooth, slender, and surprisingly sensitive to touch, the nubbins of my nipples jolting my attention whenever I brushed across them. Then I returned to the dormitory room I shared with Cassie. The whole time, I was hyper-aware of the changes I'd just undergone, my too-loose shirt sliding around my torso and my even more-slender hand grasping at the band of my shorts to keep them from sliding down my girlish hips. In the hallway, all eyes were upon me - word of our punishment had gotten out, apparently. But, mercifully, I was the only one there in the shower that morning, soaping up my slim, smooth body as my mind battled between shame, arousal, and righteous anger at what emotion I ought to be feeling. Interestingly, the magical energies of my most recent punishment had mostly healed over the myriad cuts and scrapes I'd suffered in the woods, leaving little pink marks behind, but no blood or bruises.

I discarded my gym clothes, dirty, torn, slightly-bloody, and now-too-loose, into a common-use hamper. I swaddled myself in a terrycloth robe and padded back to my room. Cassie was already there, sorting through the bundle of new uniforms a student messenger working for administration had just dropped off.

"They took away all of our old clothes. I had them leave your new ones on your bed," Cassie said absently, not bothering to face me. From the strain in her voice, she'd obviously been crying.

She was about done dressing herself. I caught a glimpse of a blue bra over visibly-larger breasts before she finished buttoning her blouse. While she was still recognizably herself, Cassie had been transformed in essentially the opposite direction from my own transformation - it was as if somebody had rewound her body's clock by a few years and then implemented a much more charitable version of puberty for her - taller, slimmer, and more athletic in frame, her hair thicker and more lustrous.

Cassie sighed. "This blouse is too tight. I... oh..." she paused as she glimpsed me. "I guess we know which one of us is the little."

"Yeah," I muttered.

I glimpsed at myself in the mirror, curious over my appearance. True, it wasn't my body and I was committed to turning back ASAP, but I didn't want to regress to childish immaturity nor become an ugly duckling. Either would likely make things harder for me, regardless of what happened. I needn't have worried - Headmistress Lily was an aesthete who would never betray beauty just to mete out punishment. Quite the opposite. Cassie was more mature and hotter than before. As for myself? I still looked sixteen-ish, but I was a less mature and cuter sixteen - more delicate features, my eyes more innocent and even deeper emerald than before. I looked cuter rather than hotter, perhaps less mature, but neither did I look like a little kid. My breasts were about the same relative size against my slightly-smaller torso. My waist was narrow and, as I pulled up my skirt, my hips still had a bit of flare to them.

"That thing looks even more ridiculous on you," Cassie said.

I blushed - she'd caught a glimpse of my manhood despite my attempts at modesty. She wasn't wrong - Mr. Warner was the same size as ever, a bit above average for a guy and absurd on a girl who was maybe 5'3" tall and under 110 pounds. I was buttoning up my blouse when two sheets of paper slid underneath the door.

"What's that?" I asked absently.

I started combing the tangles out of my fiery hair. I'd had a girlfriend once who got a weird thrill out of my working with her long, golden locks, and I'd always been happy to oblige her. Not my kink, but I got it. So I knew a bit about maintaining long hair, though hers had never been as vibrant or lustrous.

"It's our class schedules," Cassie said. "They start in an hour - we'd better grab breakfast while we can."