Alysson deMerel's Fiction

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The Cave of the Transformed

Jarrow woke to pain. His body reported aches in abundance. His head felt as though his skull had been opened and his brains filled with burning irons.

Gods, how his hips ached. Something lay heavy on his chest.

He passed once more into blessed unconsciousness.

He began to wake once more and, thankfully, the pain was lessened. Someone was bathing his brow with a cool cloth.

Wincing with the pain of the unaccustomed light, he opened his eyes and saw, in the torchlight, a handsome young man.

"Relax, don’t say anything. You’ve been through a lot, and we need to concentrate on getting you well again."

He lay back and drifted once more into a healing sleep.

The next time Jarrow woke, his pain had subsided almost completely. The weight still lay on his chest and he felt terribly, terribly weak.

He opened his eyes and looked at the dark ceiling, natural grey stone regarded him impassively, a few stalactites of some multi-coloured mineral growth enlivened the dull roof. Jarrow assumed that he lay in a cave somewhere below the castle. He remembered the battle with the sorcerer. He remembered the insane mage throwing a curse which had hit Jarrow in the chest. Then blackness.

He moved slightly and groaned. The young man returned.

"Good morning. I assume that you feel better now. Please don’t move yet because you are still very weak from your battle."

Yarrow tried to speak, but only a few gasps escaped his lips. His mouth and throat felt like they belonged to someone else.

"No, don’t try to speak yet. Please try to conserve your strength. Sleep if you will."

Obediently, Jarrow closed his eyes and tried to relax. As a warrior used to suffering injury, he knew that the healer knew what he was about. He felt too drained to do anything but trust his saviour.

Jarrow slept.

He woke once more. His body was still numb and weak. The young man was sat on his bedside.

He helped Jarrow to sit, and spooned some kind of broth into his mouth. After, Jarrow lay back exhausted.

The young man spoke once more.

"I am Cynwulf. I have to explain a few things to you about what has happened while you slept."

Jarrow steeled himself to hear what dreadful maiming he had suffered. Was his back shattered, had his head been broken, leaving him a cripple? Had the sorcerer’s curse removed his strength forever? Were his bones turned to water?

"The sorcerer’s curse has left you transformed. It is the same as has been laid upon all who are cast into this pit. We are well fed, and are free to leave after a year and a day, but must remain forever transformed. I fear that you will not take kindly to the change that has been wrought on you. Nor did I when I discovered what had been done to me. I swore, then, to help any who followed me into this place, to try to help them to come to terms with what had been done to them."

Jarrow managed to whisper, "but you don’t appear as one transformed." His voice was hoarse.

"Thank you, but I assure you that I am, and most thoroughly, too.

"I must warn you that should you decide to leave after your time, then you may not return to the sanctuary of this place.

"There is no easy way of breaking the evil news to you, so, before you are strong enough to do yourself any damage, I must show you your new self."

He reached down and drew aloft a mirror. Jarrow closed his eyes, delaying the sight of whatever monster he had been transformed into. Steeling himself, he opened his eyes and beheld the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

He stared uncomprehending. He felt his strength returning completely. Then understanding dawned, flowing from the enchantment of the mirror.

In wonder Jarrow raised her hand and stared in wonder at its fluid beauty.

She swung her legs from the low bed, putting them to the floor with a dancer’s grace. She stood, finding herself to have been dressed in an outsized, man’s tunic. Her every movement, now, seemed imbued with a feline beauty. She felt the weight of her breasts shift with each small movement of her body, the lithe play of muscles beneath her flesh, the powerful force of life welling up through her very being.

With joy she realised that she was Woman. Hers was the power of life. For the first time, she knew what it was to be complete.

Enraptured, she asked, "what transformation, Sir, was wrought upon you?"

Jarrow heard her own voice, delighted by the husky contralto.

The young man smiled. "I was named Cynwedd the fair, the sorcerer Galthion is my father. I displeased him by refusing to wed his choice of husband. Now, fair lady, what name do you choose, for all here chose a new name, at least, those to whom remains the power of human speech."

"My name was Jarrow, Sir. I suppose I would choose Jennedd, the name my mother chose should I have been born a girl."

"Then welcome, Jennedd, to the Cave of the Transformed. I must say that you seem less disturbed by your appearance than I would expect. I am curious as to why?"

"That, sir, shall remain my secret until I leave this place, and perhaps thereafter."

She smiled warmly.

Suitable clothes were found for her, worn but clean. She fitted into the strange society of beings in the cave with ease. She took her turn at caring for the occasionally sick and wounded, and for the newly arrived transformed, of whom there was a steady flow.

Jennedd spent her free time with Cynwulf, and the two of them grew close.

Jennedd learned from experience what it was to be a woman. As Jarrow, he had tried to treat women with dignity and honour, now she learned the less savoury aspects of womanhood. She learned to care for her new body, which she had loved from the time of her discovery of its change.

As Jarrow, he had been, perhaps, an ineffectual knight adventurer, as Jennedd, she felt a rightness in her being.

Time passed, and Jennedd’s year and a day were long passed. She had come to love the handsome healer, accepting her new form’s desires and instincts. She was saddened by Cynwulf’s refusal to consider her as anything but a friend.

At last, unable to take it any more, she tackled him.

"Cynwulf, why do you refuse me. Am I not attractive to you?"

"Yes Jennedd, you are most beautiful, but I am a woman, and not a lover of women."

"Cynwulf, what do you keep in your breeches?"

"What do you suppose. I am not inclined to lay with women."

"Unnatural man!"

Jennedd seized the enchanted mirror, and turned it toward Cynwulf.

"Is this a woman or a man you see in this mirror? Tell me!"

Cynwulf’s eyes were dragged to the glass.

"I see a man, handsome and young."

"Who is that man, Cynwulf?"

"It is myself."

The fragile spell of denial was shattered. He collapsed and began weeping, shedding the last of Cynwedd’s femininity. Jennedd sat and held him, speaking quiet words of love in his ear. At last he stood, drawing her up to him. He was easily taller and stronger than Jennedd.

His arms wrapped around her waist. She felt her breast crushed gently to his chest. She extended her arms around his neck, and they kissed.

They kissed long and deeply. They caressed each other, each exploring the mysteries of the other. Slowly, gently, lovingly they undressed each other in the privacy of their alcove.

Cynwulf laid his lady on his bed, and together they made the sweetest of loving either had known.

In that place and at that time, they made their wedding vows, unheard by mortal ears, but in the sight of the gods of their world.

In time, Jennedd’s waist began to swell with the burgeoning life inside her. Like generations of women before her, she blossomed. Unlike many women less fortunate, every moment of her pregnancy was a joy to her very soul.

As her time came near, two guards entered the dungeon, and fetched her before their master.

When she stood before the sorcerer, she threw herself upon him. Before his guards could react, she was smothering him in kisses.

At last, he was able to recover his dignity.

"Child, why do you thank me for your downfall? You could have left this place, and have been wed to any lord in any land, yet you continue to live in squalor in my deepest dungeon."

"Lord, my downfall has been my greatest triumph. As a woman I am complete, I am wed to your son who was your daughter, I am content to live and toil by his side, and to love him as he loves me, and in proof I bear the fruit of your son’s love, your grandchild who grows within me."

The sorcerer laughed and clapped his hands.

Cynwulf appeared by her side.

"Well, boy, it seems as though you have finally found your bride. Therefore, I give you leave to depart this castle, though be warned that you will only retain your current forms as far as the outer gate, then you two will revert to your true selves. Beyond that place you may not return."

They were returned to the dungeon

They remained, determining that the child in Jennedd’s womb would be brought forth before they were able to leave.

The food ceased to be provided. Many of the transformed departed in order to make lives as best they could. Jennedd and Cynwulf saw them go, and fail to transform as they crossed the limits of the sorcerer’s domain.

The winter came bleak and cold. Jennedd was becoming weak with hunger.

"My love, I fear that we must leave this place, even though this may unmake the life that grows within your body. I pray to the powers who dictate the bounds of sorcerous magic that this will not be. I cannot believe that my father could be so cruel."

They wrapped themselves as warmly as possible, binding layers of cloth over their boots in order to keep the cold from their feet. At last, with little in the way of provisions, they set out for the gates of the castle.

A guard, less hardened than the others, gave them a knife, tinder-pouch and some dry food for their way.

"May the God and Goddess bless you on your way," he said.

Another guard gave them a small cooking pot, a small bow and a quiver of hunting arrows.

"May the powers above and below bless you on your way," he said.

At the gate, a third guard gave them each an amulet and a warm cloak.

"May the powers that underlie the word bless you on your way," he said.

As they crossed the bridge upon which the gate stood, they prayed to all of the unseen powers that their baby would live. Eyes closed in prayer, they hardly noticed that they had left the stone bridge and were on the packed dirt of the road.

There was a distant tinkle as of a mirror being broken.

There was a hail, and a sleigh stood on the road. They hurried over to it.

"Good morning, Highnesses. I am not a minute too soon, if you will climb aboard?"

Cynwulf helped his pregnant wife into the sleigh, and holding her tight, wrapped the fur blankets around the both of them.

The coachman found a box and handed it to Cynwulf.

"There is food in here, My Lady. We will be at the palace before nightfall."

Cynwulf was confused.

"My Love, what is this about? What did my father mean about our forms changing?"

Jennedd laughed, a chiming, liquid sound in the icy wilderness. She indicated to him the clothes they now wore, no longer the dungeon rags, but rich clothes embroidered with silver and gold. They were laden with rich gifts in place of the hurried supplies of the guards.

Cynwulf had to laugh, too.

"We didn’t want to marry, remember? My parents are King Leofric and Queen Gwynnedd. Prince Caels? Princess Caelswr now, I suppose."

"But you told me you were Jarrow. Jennedd. Uh?"

"I was, we don’t use our public names in private where I come from. I think that both of our parents have played us for fools, but I don’t care. I love you."

Holding his radiant wife close, he murmured, "I love you, too."

In the hollow, grey mountains behind them, joyous laughter echoed around the ramparts of a sorcerous citadel, and a panoply of strange, magical creatures gambolled and frolicked around their benign master’s throne.