The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1

This is a story of two sisters who were human, but not fully, and a story of the Folk of the Sun, and of the Folk of the Moon, who never meet without something strange and terrible occurring. Their realms and their powers are and have always been not only in opposition, but each is anathema, destruction, obliteration for the other, and their battlegrounds are not countries or mountainsides or fields, but human souls.

Very well, then: Two sisters there were, the younger Laurie, the elder (by three months—I told you they were not fully human) Elisabeth, called “Lizzie” by her family and, when she was older, “Lezzie” by some of the more spiteful boys in the village, derisively. Laurie would always give a body a smile and a kind word, while the village boys claimed Lizzie’s answers were always short and her looks were ever cold. The girls lived, at first, with their father in a house (more than cottage, less than manor) beside a wood through which a silvery secret river ran; and their father, who was himself half-human, his mother having been a maiden of the Sun Folk, worked wonders in the way of healing and helping, so the human people from the village and from all around thought well of him and of his family.

Now, the sisters knew their mother, but they did not, properly speaking, remember her, for when they were young, during the hours of day she was out in the world, though her body, made all of light, was invisible to ordinary people (not, though, to her adoring husband, not to her cherished daughters). And when she came inside as she had to with the fall of twilight (for twilight was the time of transition to the rule of the Star Folk), she faded as Folk of the Sun will at night, to transparency, and her skin became a dark mist, like the midnight sky, and in it you saw gleams like distant stars. And night took all her strength and much of her being from her, so her voice was soft as the murmur of a brook, quiet as the whisper of a spring breeze, and her touch felt as insubstantial as the brush of a down-feather. Therefore, while Laurie and Lizzie felt comfort from their mother and heard her songs as if from far away, her mothering was all done by night, and in the morning such things seemed and felt like the cobweb-wisps of dreams.

But when the girls were fifteen years and fifteen years and three months old, their mother went out with the dawn one morning and did not return at sunset, for the first time ever. Their father, who was much devoted to his uncanny mate, worried and studied and used spells and scrying-glasses to no avail. So far as he could determine, his beloved no longer stepped upon the face of the Earth; but then Folk of the Sun could go betwixt and between the light and the shadow, and he felt sure that somewhere and somehow she still lived, for they were so close that he would have felt the release of her spirit had she died. Yet she never came home again, and he knew (because he had half-Sun blood in his veins) that for a Woman of the Sun not to return to her children meant something dire had happened, loss or capture or utter despair. For three years their father studied and searched for the proper spell to lead him to where she was, and for three springs and summers the creepers grew up the colonnades of the house, as though trying to draw it beneath the ground, and the mosses grew thick on the gray walls, as though trying to make them part of the earth, and the grass in the yard grew taller and ranker, as if trying to hide them all away from human sight.

And then one midsummer’s day, their father spoke to the girls: “I am going betwixt and between, my loves, and I hope to return in a day or in a thousand years with your mother. Be good while I am gone, keep to yourselves, go out not by darkness, and fear no man, for this house has strong enchantments about it. But be wary of the Folk of the Night, for they bear me ill-will for having married a Princess of the Day, and they call me “Half-Dawn” because my mother was likewise a Princess of the Day, and they will hurt you if they can. Do not listen to them, and do not take what they offer!”

And Laurie promised and Lizzie promised, and that even, as the first star unveiled itself in the purple east of the sky just as the sun set in the rosy west, their father went betwixt and between and vanished from the world of men as though he had never been there at all, as though he were merely a mistaken memory in the minds of two beautiful young women.

And when other stars had joined the single jewel of the Evenstar, for the first time the two sisters heard the chants of the Folk of the Stars, whom men misname the Goblins.

2

The fire in the great room burned immediately when Lizzie or Laurie said “burn” and extinguished himself at once when they were not there. The same six logs burned eternally, now glowing red-hot and the seat of bright flames, now cold and gray as ash, but never consumed. When alight, the fire was a great roaring joy of yellow and orange, the flames not only dancing but rushing up the chimney, like a waterfall turned backwards: a fire-rise, call it. It cast a gleaming golden delicious light, making candles unnecessary, and making both girls lovely beyond all imagining. And wonder of wonders, on a summer’s night the fire cast only light, or mostly light, and little heat into the room. Still, it made the evening so warm that little in the way of clothing was required.

See them on this first night of their father’s absence: Laurie, hair golden as the sunshine in spring, full, soft, and glossy, eyes the deep color of a summer sky, her face pale with two crimson blushes ready in her cheeks, her lips cherry-red quite naturally, and she is dressed in gossamer, in a white (or is it golden? In firelight it is impossible to tell) flowing dress so thin that it is easily seen through, and she wears nothing underneath. Her face has a childlike expression, but her bosom is womanly, opulent, her breasts swelling like fruit ripe but untasted, crowned with pink rosebud nipples, always a little erect; her stomach swelling gently, down to the golden triangle low beneath her navel, and then her long shapely legs, her beautiful feet trim and bare. Next to her reclines Lizzie, hair paler and shining like platinum, eyes disturbingly light blue, their irises so very pale that they seem scarcely darker than the whites. Her lovely face is calm and contemplative, and she wears a sort of robe that hangs from her shoulders and covers her back but is unbelted and open in front, so her breasts, smaller than her sister’s but shapely and looking quite firm, part the robe and feel the open air; and her stomach is a little flatter than Laurie’s, and the triangle at the juncture of her thighs is platinum like her hair, gleaming in firelight, and her legs are just as long and just as alluring as her sister’s, her small feet just as trim.

Laurie lies on her left side before the fire, on a rug made from the pale brown pelt of some terrible beast, much larger than a bear’s skin, much softer than a sheep’s wool. Her cheek rests on her sister’s thigh, and Lizzie is brushing her sister’s fair hair and is crooning a wordless tune as the fire rushes and crackles.

Laurie sits of a sudden, her light blue eyes wide. “Listen! What’s that?”

Lizzie holds the brush as if distracted. “I hear the roar of the fire, the crackle of the wood, the calling of the cricket.”

“No,” insists Laurie. “Something else, far in the distance and low. Listen! Hear it!”

And Lizzie tilted her head, the way listeners will, and she heard:

An owl floating over their house, wings spread in the night sky.

A fox creeping through their garden, belly low to the ground, tail swishing the tall grass of midsummer.

A mouse quivering in fear behind a turnip-top, hoping to hide from the hungry fox.

A mushroom pressing up through the leafmould beside the house, its impudent phallic head pressing and probing.

A fly droning and humming in the third stall of the barn, where the old white horse grumbled softly as he stood in sleep.

And….something else.

Something rhythmic, swelling, falling, like a chant. She had never heard it before.

“Come and buy,” the chant seemed to say in words softer than a spider’s indrawn breath. “Oranges and lemons, apples and quinces, peaches and pears, raspberries, strawberries, cherries and grapes, pineapples, crabapples, apricots, oranges, come buy, come buy, come buy.”

But the voices were soft and the voices were distant, so Lizzie was sure of not even one word. Still she shivered and gasped and she gripped Laurie’s hand, for such as voice as these voices she never had heard. “It’s the Star Folk,” she said, her own voice as quiet as fear.

Laurie moved, standing, pulling her hand free, her flowing gown swaying in the flicker of firelight, the soft blonde fall of her hair keeping time. She walked toward the window, the firelight making two glowing golden globes of her buttocks, seen through the haze of her gown.

“No!” Quick as a panther, Lizzie sprang up, and before her sister could touch the curtain over the window, she threw herself there, blocking her way. “Don’t look, sister Laurie, don’t look at the Star Folk! You heard our father. Come, sleep in my bed. I’ll hold you safe, and they’ll be gone with the day.”

And in Lizzie’s bed they lay that night, beneath the lightest of their comforters (the night was warm, but they needed comfort). “I hear them still,” Laurie murmured.

Her sister held her tight, felt the stir of blood and life and muscle as Laurie moved restlessly, sleeplessly. “Don’t think of them,” Lizzie said, and she kissed her sister’s red, red lips. “They’re goblins, the folk of the village say.”

“Pomegranates,” whispered Laurie, “greengages and damsons! Bilberries and gooseberries! Figs so big they fill your mouth!”

And Lizzie shut her lips with kisses and murmured, “Don’t think of fruit the Star Folk bring. You must not hear them chant. Who knows what soil their roots have fed upon, their thirsty, hungry, probing roots? Lie quiet, sister. Sleep.”

Breast to soft breast they lay, each breathing in the other’s outbreathed air, heads inclined, foreheads touching. Strange dreams Lizzie had that night, of her sister swarmed over by the Folk of the Stars (she had never seen them but imagined them as dwarf-like, two or three feet tall, misshapen and ugly: and they had enormous members, all out of proportion to their height, and these all stood erect, grossly veined and throbbing as they climbed Laurie’s legs, sat on her shoulders, nuzzled her breasts). Lizzie saw the golden-haired Laurie struggle—a little—at first—and then lie down willingly, and open her legs to the misshapen invaders. She saw the hideous men thrust their phalluses between Lizzie’s legs, saw their grotesque swollen heads part the secret slit beneath its yellow crown of curled hair, and heard her sister moan and plead, “Oh, yes! Deeper, deeper!” And in the dream Laurie took other swollen members into her mouth and sucked greedily, and rubbed others with her hands until they shot jets of fluid over her body until she glistened from head to toe, and little man after little man took his turn pumping her. And still greedy Laurie moaned for more and laughed and let the juices of the men trickle from her mouth, rubbed it into her skin. And she gleamed and glowed. And then one of the men, the one with the biggest cock of all, crept up the swell of her stomach and knelt on her chest and pressed her fair breasts together, making a warm tunnel of flesh to receive him, and he thrust and thrust and thrust his member between her breasts until he squirted so copiously that the white flood gushed and gushed, covering Laurie’s face, covering her neck, thick and ropy. And from beneath that pearly liquid, muffled and gurgling Lizzie heard Laurie’s cries of abandoned delight.

3

Night after night the sisters heard the voices of the Men of the Stars, always faint, so faint that ordinary ears would have missed them. Never did the voices go on for very long: the scant hour of twilight seemed their limit, and when the stars shone clear and the land lay dark, the voices faded to ordinary night sounds.

Now, you must not imagine that Laurie and Lizzie remained within doors from the time of their father’s going onward. Far from it. They had no fears during the hours of sunlight, and they walked hand in hand to the village almost every day, not clad as they were when they were alone in the warm house before the fire, of course, but modestly and well. And though their skills did not match their father’s, they had some knowledge of healing herbs and comforting spells, and they did what they could to make the lives of the villagers easier and more bearable. Many a baby did they help into the world, and many a farmer did they advise on curing a sick calf, or on increasing the yield of a field. Summer grew senile, muttering inanities in the voices of cicadas, and fields grew golden, and the golden time of harvest approached.

Let us follow Laurie and Lizzie to the village on such a day in early fall, just before the time of the sickles and the stacking of grain. Trees show their muted golds and scarlets along the pathway. Laurie wears a demure gown, soft and flowing, of white muslin, sprigged with lilac. A matching bonnet covers her head, and her soft blonde hair escapes from it, curling along her cheeks, falling bewitchingly along the sides of her long neck. Lizzie wears a more severe frock of crimson wool lightly woven, and her platinum hair is gathered beneath a soft crimson cap.

They walk holding hands down a winding lane toward the village, past fields of golden, nodding, ripened wheat. It has been a good year, a very good year: the grain stands so high that if the girls had turned aside and into a field, the bearded heads of wheat would have stood more than bosom-high. Young men are already at work in some of the fields, bare-chested (for the fall day still holds warmth) and swinging sickles. See one of them broad-shouldered, red in the face with exertion, standing suddenly, his sickle idle as he sees the sisters. He wipes sweat from his face, flicks his hand, and moans softly, his head filled with an image of the two unclothed, pressing him down with their hands, down to the warm autumn earth, and then wantonly tearing at his blouse and breeches. . . and his father speaks a sharp word to him, and he turns away and swings his sickle, bending low so his father will not see the swelling of his breeches-front that his lascivious thoughts have provoked.

In town the girls visit the minister’s wife, ill with a swelling in her arm where she has scraped herself. They poultice the wound and the pain recedes, and the minister thanks them. They visit others, and then, as girls will, they idle for a while in the shops, purchasing little things and odds and ends (their father has left them a more than ample supply of gold, silver, copper). And as evening draws on, they walk back again, and in the field where the young man was working he stands still, having helped his father and brothers gather in the gleaned wheat already, and he speaks shyly to Laurie: “Give you good day, Miss.”

And Laurie would stand and talk with him, but Lizzie seizes her hand, and with a curt “Good day, sir,” leads her on. They hurry the last few hundred yards, for they had spent a little too much time in the village, and ahead they see a strange figure beckoning them urgently: a Man of the Sun.

They recognize him because his naked body glows with a fierce light, and his hair billows like yellow flame. “Hurry! Hurry!” he says, glancing to the west, where the horizon has half-swallowed the sun. They know him for their uncle, and they run, holding up the skirts of their dresses. “Come inside for the night,” Lizzie urges him.

“Nay,” the other replies. “My sister’s children, you must be more careful.” He laughs. ”I have no fears of the Folk of the Stars. My power is such that they fear me, even at full midnight. But you are part human. In with you, and be safe!”

And they close the door just as the last sliver of sun vanishes, and softly come the voices of the Folk of the Stars, and again Lizzie holds and comforts Laurie, whose very mouth has begun to water at the thought of the Men of the Stars and the forbidden fruit they offer a maiden.

4

If summer passed like a golden dream, and autumn like a peaceful slumber, winter that year was a howling nightmare. For three months, icy wind slashed at the house and screamed in the chimneys, and pelting sleet blinded the windows. Snowfall deeper than any in memory covered and quieted the house, so that when they opened the door, they found the way impassible, the snow more than waist-deep. Indeed, it was all the two girls could do to dig a path between house and barn, so they could attend to their old horse and to their brindled cow (food the animals had in plenty: the grateful villagers had given oats and grain, hay and straw for bedding). Whole weeks together were so raw, so cold, that Laurie and Lizzie dared not venture out to the village, and so they had only each other’s company. But the magical fire kept them warm, and the house was cozy (their father’s enchantments made it proof against weather as well as against the charms of the Folk of the Stars), and they played games or spoke of dreams, prepared their medicines against the time the villagers would make their way to the house, desperate for remedies that might cure coughs and wheezes or restore life to frostbitten fingers.

One relief: since the first fly of snow, the voices at twilight had hushed, and through the whole dreary season they did not murmur again. The only stirrings Lizzie now heard were those of the mice that had crept into the walls for warmth through the bitter weather. Their father had always casually killed such vermin, killed or transformed them into amusing things like a pair of gloves that squeaked and twitched. Lizzie and Laurie felt too tender-hearted to destroy the poor things, so they only cast a spell that made it impossible for them to breed, and so mice and girls lived in a certain balance and harmony.

But a time came when the sun warmed the crusted snow, and rivulets of water began to flow over it and beneath it. Trees burdened by ice of a sudden dropped their crystal freight, which shattered with a clatter and a crackling. Day by day the snow dwindled, until at last the brown grass showed through, and the next day a few green shoots reached toward the sun.

Spring seemed determined to make amends for the fierce winter. It was warm as a maiden’s blush, soft as her hair. On the first day of May, Laurie and Lizzie woke especially early. “I wonder if the pool is warm enough to bathe in?” Laurie said, and Lizzie suddenly felt a consuming wish to go with her sister and stand waist-deep in the clear silvery river and scrub Laurie’s smooth, pale back with fine sand. The wish was so keen that perhaps she willfully misjudged the time. “Let’s go see. The sun is coming up.”

But dawn was still half an hour away. The morning glow in the east gave a fair light, though, and the two girls easily made their way down the crooked path that led through high bushes and down to the mossy green banks of the brook, at a place where the stream pooled before purling on its way to the great river. “Oh!” gasped Laurie, who was in front, and an instant later Lizzie had seen them too and had tugged her sister into the brush.

A dozen men stood in the clearing. Ugly? Dwarfish? No! But uncanny and inhuman they were. Each was slender, so slender that he seemed tall, though Lizzie judged them all no taller than she, and so in fact rather short for a human male.

But they were clearly not human. They all stood casually naked, and their skins had the silver-soft color of shafts of moonlight slanting through the canopy of an ancient oak at midnight. Their hair was the precise shade of the full moon, and glowed: head hair and hair above their phalluses, which to Lizzie looked monstrously large, even though none stood erect.

And their faces were lovely to look at, and starlight gleamed in their eyes, whose whites were blacks. The men seemed unaware of their presence. Each of them carried a basket or held a golden dish, and each basket or dish held a heavy load of fruit. “Look,” whispered Laurie. “Their vineyards must be fair, to bring forth such luscious grapes!”

“No,” whispered Lizzie. “Their gifts are cunning traps, their fruits are charms to lure us. Don’t look.”

The men began to croon softly and weirdly, and in the wordless murmur Lizzie fancied she heard the men enticing them to come and buy, come and buy, come and buy the fruits they bore. Laurie stirred and half rose up as though in response to the invitation, but Lizzie put her hands over her sister’s shell-like ears and pressed her down again. The men formed up in single-file line and walked up the same path that had taken Laurie and Lizzie down to the pool; and as they passed, Laurie caught her breath. Lizzie stared as they all walked by, none more than an arm’s reach away. Laurie might have stared at the fruits, but Lizzie stared at the sex of each of the Men of the Stars, curved downward over the swollen sac beneath it, and she shuddered as she imagined the members swelling and importuning and penetrating. Oh, it would have been better, she thought, had the uncanny creatures been ugly and dwarfish! To have them look so handsome, to have them stride so insolently, was almost more than even she could bear.

The sun’s rim broke the eastern horizon, and the passing Men of the Stars faded until even to the half-human eyes of Lizzie they looked like so many drifting puffs of spring mist, vanishing up the trail. When at last they had gone, the two girls, all thoughts of bathing gone, hurried back home. “We mustn’t ever be caught like that again,” Lizzie groaned.

“Oh,” Laurie said, her eyes dreamy. “Such fruit, such wonderful fruit!”

5

Who can unravel the tangled skeins of the heart? The days warmed, life resumed its usual pattern, Lizzie thanked her luck that the men of the glen had not seen them that morning. . . and Laurie pined for a taste of the fruit, for one grape, for one drop of juice from a glowing orange.

And so. . . .

Oh, it was wrong! But early one morning Laurie slipped from bed, quieter than any mouse could dream of being, and faded from her sister’s room without waking Lizzie. And she dressed with trembling fingers, and she slipped out-of-doors while overhead the stars still shone.

And alone she took the path to the pool and the glen. And this time she stepped out from the bushes and stood on the moss, and they noticed her.

They came toward her smiling, chanting, and in her ears the sound said “Come buy, come buy,” though she was equally sure their lips formed no words. They crowded around her, set down their golden plates and their rush-woven baskets. One of them carelessly plucked from a bay tree some willowy branches and with deft fingers wove them into a crown. He stepped close, placed it on Laurie’s head—she blushed—and he kissed her softly on the cheeks, left and right. “Come buy,” he said as he pulled away, and his very breath was sweet.

Laurie looked longingly at a basket crowded, crammed, with unbruised peaches and nectarines and ripe burst-open medlars, with strange salmon-pink pears, their upper part shaped impudently like a man’s erect sex, the swollen base of each like the sac holding his twin stones. She felt her tongue licking her lips, and sadly she said, “Good folk, I came without coin.”

They laughed at that, with a sound like distant thunder on a summer midnight. One of them, the one who had woven the crown, said, “Your hair is gold. Give us but one curl of that, and you may buy as much as you wish.”

Laurie reached toward her locks, but he shook his head with a smile. He reached to her and began to pull up the hem of her dress. Laurie felt hot and cold all at the same time. The dress came up, revealing her calves, and higher, to her knees, and then halfway up her thighs.

“One curl,” the man said, and somehow his lips were at Laurie’s ears. “You will say yes, will you not?”

“Yes,” Laurie breathed, helpless to say no.

It was soon done. The dress came up as high as her navel, one of the men somehow snipped off a single golden curl (so close to her nether lips that she quivered at the man’s feather-light touch), and then the Man of the Stars who pressed against her let her dress fall back again.

One of the others gave Laurie a pear, the strangely shaped fruit that looked like a man eager for congress with a woman. “Suck it,” he whispered.

Laurie’s lips parted, and she took the end of the fruit into her mouth, and she squeezed the swollen base. Over her tongue squirted a jet of juice sweeter than any honey she had ever tasted. She felt it flow down her throat, into her stomach, and into her very veins: and the stars overhead suddenly became glories of light, and all the secrets of night seemed to lie open before her. Her heart beat fast.

They pressed more and different fruits upon her, and Laurie ate and ate, ate carelessly, felt the juice running down her chin, over her neck. She tossed the empty rinds aside and sucked and sucked, sucked until her lips were sore. At some point she dropped to her knees and still she took fruit after fruit from the Men of the Stars, and her head reeled, and somehow she knew she had become their creature, that the glorious juice had remade her inside, had made her utterly unable to refuse them anything. . . so long as they would offer more fruit, she was theirs, their slave, their minion.

They crushed in all around her. Some lay on the moss and had tugged her dress off, and she knelt naked. Staring at her, touching her, some of them had become stiff with excitement and pushed forward, but their leader, the weaver of the garland, waved them off. “She has paid this time,” he said. “Next time, brothers, we will ask a different price.”

Laurie, her eyes half-closed, her senses reeling, bit into a peach and felt the juice squirt, dribbling down her chin, splashing her breasts, dripping in a maddening slow creep across her belly and down into the golden curls above her sex. “Such beautiful round, full orbs,” one of the men said, and he began to flick his tongue over her left breast, licking up the spilled juice, and she knew that if he ordered her, she would do anything he commanded.

“Dawn comes,” the leader said. He leaned over—somehow Laurie was lying back now, cool moss on her back, juice all over her, knees bent, legs spread—and kissed her once on the lips. “Tonight at twilight,” he said.

“Yes,” Laurie answered, her head spinning.

“You will be our bride and our mistress. You will take us in every way, and you will do our every bidding.”

“…yes.”

And then, like magic, they had gone. Laurie groaned and shielded her eyes as daylight invaded the sky. Then, reeling to her feet, she realized she stood naked, covered with sticky-sweet drying juices. She wanted more even now: she bent her head and tried to lick her own breasts clean. At last, though, sorrowfully, she waded into the water and rinsed the remnants from breasts and belly, and then struggled back into her moss-stained dress. She staggered up the path, toward the house, as though gripped by fever and delirium.

Platinum-haired Lizzie woke immediately at the sound of her sister’s coming in, and she rushed to the door to help support her. “What happened?” she asked.

“Oh, Lizzie,” moaned Laurie, “I have been with the men of the stars! The fruit they offer is wonderful!” But despite her words, she wept like a child, shoulders heaving, in a way that chilled Lizzie to the very heart of her.

“You must never go again!” she cried, falling on her knees and clutching her sister about the waist. “Oh, Laurie, you must never go!”

“Yes, I must,” she replied, and haltingly, sobbingly, she told the story of the strange men and their fruit, of the forbidden tastes and textures and scents that had weakened her will, and of her obligation to return at twilight to offer her body to the strange, dark men.

“No,” said Lizzie firmly. “You shall not go.”

6

Nor did she. Lizzie bound her sister, bound her by silky ropes woven of the threads of ten thousand spiders, soft and light but unimaginably strong. Laurie lay tied to her bed, arms bound at wrists to the bedposts, spread legs bound to the lower posts. She screamed, she felt fire in her belly, she writhed and moaned and begged, but implacable Lizzie refused to undo the knots that held her. Laurie babbled, promising Lizzie the most lewd surrender if she would only let her go to meet the men in the clearing by the river, swore she would serve her sister evermore as slave, promised to delight her in every way that fingers and tongue could devise; and still Lizzie forbade her and prevented her.

At midnight the crisis came, with Laurie shrieking pitiably, her pale clammy skin wet with sweat and gleaming. She fainted dead away and was quiet until morning. With the sun well above the horizon, Lizzie at last unbound her sister. “What will you have for breakfast?” she asked kindly.

“Nothing,” said Laurie. “Nor will I ever eat again, since the fruit of the Folk of the Stars is denied me.”

Lizzie teased and cajoled and begged, but all she could get her sister to swallow was a few sips of water. By noon Laurie’s eyes seemed sunken, her cheek pale. Just before sunset, Laurie pretended to lie quiet while Lizzie went to fetch the ropes again, but when Lizzie returned to her sister’s room, she found the window open and Laurie fled.

Running for all she was worth, Lizzie hurtled after her sister down the crooked path through the brush, down the hill and toward the glade. She heard music before she arrived there, and when she broke into the open, the men of the stars did not even deign to notice her. They played rustic flutes, a lyre, and a tambour, and they danced in solemn fashion; and amid them, her clothes ripped to shreds, staring and clutching her hands to her blonde hair, stood Laurie. “Come away from them!” urged Lizzie as she hurried forward.

“I cannot see them!” wailed Laurie. “They hide themselves from me!”

“They are all around us,” gasped Lizzie, holding her sister close. “There, and there, and there, do you see?”

“No!”

“What have you done to my sister?” Lizzie asked heatedly. The creature she asked stared at her with green slitted cat’s eyes and did not answer. The dance continued.

Lizzie led the stumbling Laurie back up the path to their house, with Laurie moaning “Lost, I’m lost!” She fell into bed like one stunned and cuddled her pillow as hot tears ran down her face. “Alas, I am lost! I kept not my bargain with the Folk of the Stars, and now they reject me! Lizzie, I must die!”

“You shall not die!” Lizzie told her fiercely.

All that night, as Laurie tossed and groaned in troubled sleep, Lizzie studied her father’s books of lore, searching for some cure. She read with growing dread of the peculiar spells cast by the Folk of the Stars, spells of binding and of command that weakened the will of the victim, made him or her little more than a mindless puppet blindly following the orders given by the aloof, cruel masters. And the key to control, she read, lay in the uncanny fruit the Goblins (for by that name did the human writer of the book call them) offered their victims: when mingled with the bodily fluids of the giver, the fruit created that strong binding spell; but it took twice for the spell to gain full strength, and if the Goblins found a victim who did not obey their command to return, they would reveal themselves to that person no more; and the poor victim inevitably weakened and died, for he or she could not muster the will to eat anything but Goblin-fruit. In the midst of plenty would the poor wretches fade and fall away, and nothing could pull them back from the edge of death.

Or could it?

Lizzie brewed a powerful sleeping draught and forced it between Laurie’s lips. She gagged and choked but swallowed enough; and when her sleep had become a little more natural, Lizzie hurried out of the house and down the dark lane, well before sunrise, to the glade near the river.

Otters there were at play, splashing and streaming through the water, and a hunting owl passed overhead, but no sign of the Men of the Stars did she see. To the shivering Lizzie it seemed that the wind in the trees whispered “Beware,” and that the very frogs on the banks croaked “Go away!” Still she waited, crouched at the base of a gnarled oak, and intently she watched.

In that strange lightening that men call the False Dawn she heard the tread of feet and the sound of music; and a moment later, six of the tall, well-built men, each bearing two baskets, marched into the clearing.

Lizzie stepped boldly forth. “Good sirs,” said she, “I would buy your fruit.”

They laughed. “Here is one whose hair shines brighter than the other’s,” one said. “Fine silver to the other’s fine gold. A toothsome prize!”

“Have you gold?” asked the leader, mockingly.

She could not help staring with apprehension at his member, not erect but still thick and long, threatening.

“I have silver,” she said, and undid her dress.

She stood before them as nude as they, and they whispered among themselves, came and surrounded her, pressed close. She closed her eyes and felt their hands on her buttocks, following the sweet curves, on her stomach, on her breasts; and she felt the nudges of their growing members against her thighs, for the phalluses of all stood stiff and erect.

“Here,” one said, pressing a plum against her lips. “Take. Eat.”

But Lizzie pressed her lips more tightly shut, and the insistent, uncanny man pressed the plum harder, and suddenly it burst and she felt the juice and the pulp gush over cheeks and chin, dribbling down over her breasts. And another offered grapes, and another a peach, and they grew angry as Lizzie writhed and turned, and the fruit burst against her fair, fair skin, and the sticky juice covered her. A medlar burst its sweetly rotten flesh against her chin, and a salmon-pink pear was crushed to pulp against her mouth, bruising her closed lips. She took more fruit from their hands, crushed it herself against her body, until she wore a garment all of juice and of the sweet untasted pulp of dozens of kinds of Goblin-fruit, and the clamor of the strange men grew furious.

And then the cock crowed, and behold! All six of the men vanished away as puffs of mist. Lizzie scrambled on hands and knees, gathering as much of the fallen fruit as she could carry in her two arms. Thus laden, bruised and aching, she stumbled back to the house and inside. “Laurie!” she cried. “Laurie, see what I have brought you!”

Laurie stirred and came forth from her room, blinking in the early light of day.

“See!” the battered Lizzie gasped. “I am covered head to toe in the food you need. Oh, Laurie, eat me, drink me, love me, suck my juices! For your sake have I been among the Goblin men.”

They fell into bed together, and Lizzie felt Laurie’s soft lips on her lips, then her neck. Laurie gagged as she lapped the sticky juices, retched as her questing tongue found fragments of fruit, but compulsively she licked and suckled, moving lower, lower, until finally Lizzie whimpered and spread her legs wide, feeling Laurie’s tongue lapping and licking at her most private parts. Laurie moaned, her cries muffled, and hungrily, thirstily she licked and sucked, licked and lapped, and Lizzie felt the hot rush of release building, building inside her. “Yes!” she cried. “Yes, sister, eat me!” With no conscious thought, her hips began to move and thrust, and she reached down sticky hands to caress Laurie’s hair and her cheeks. She felt her own juices mingling with those of the fruit, and she felt her sister’s tongue penetrating the salmon-pink folds of her secret place.

Tongue and lips and teeth, teasing and tugging and taunting, and then with a gush Lizzie’s juices erupted, flooded, ran into her sister’s open mouth. Lizzie’s hips bucked and her passage clenched and she bit her lip, holding back, but barely, a squeal of utter joy and delight.

Later she led Laurie to the glade, and together, naked, they bathed in the pool. Laurie obeyed every command that Lizzie gave her, and she expressed no regret, offered no resistance, and showed no surprise. Lizzie cried out once, in dismay and consternation, when she caught sight of her own reflection. She had changed.

Her white hair was now as dark as midnight, gleaming as if stars were caught in its coils, and her pale blue eyes had become a disturbingly vivid violet. Somewhat of the Night had entered her soul, and she felt the strange edge of cruelty that had come with her sacrifice.

Back to the cottage, and Lizzie told Laurie, “You will eat now and grow strong again.”

“Yes, Mistress,” murmured her sister, and she did eat whatever Lizzie gave her, without complaint. And then, overcome with a curious and callous lust, Lizzie led Laurie to bed. Naked they climbed in together, and this time Lizzie adored Laurie’s body, her tongue busy at Laurie’s pulsing neck, then suckling, worshiping the pink nipples, teasing them to sharp hardness. And when Laurie was tossing and moaning, “Yes, yes, please, oh, please, Mistress, please,” then Lizzie slipped lower, her tongue now at work on Laurie’s pink slit, sucking at the little swollen trigger of her sex, plunging itself into the heated, wet, salty depths of her, until Laurie screamed and thrashed; and then still later they lay together, head to groin and lips to pussy, and they pleasured each other slowly, deliberately, deliciously, madly all the night long.

7

People in the village did love to talk, and they talked on and on about the change in Lizzie’s appearance, of her new dark hair, her terrifying violet eyes, and her strange new sultry manner. At last she realized that to still the gossip, one of them would have to take a husband from the village, and that one would have to be the obedient Laurie. Lizzie made the choice: a handsome, strong young man whose parents were dead. He had hired out as a farmhand, and with his skills he would surely be capable of being useful around the house. Lizzie bewitched him, and he married Laurie on a Sunday in September; and that night Lizzie seduced him and he licked her, taking in her juices and the juice of the strange fruit (for Lizzie now could walk boldly among the Men of the Stars whenever she wished—they did not see her, although she saw them—and filch things from their baskets). And in the morning he did it again, with a placid Laurie merely looking on with a kind of dull interest, and as Lizzie tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him close, wincing at the prickle of his stubble against her delicate labia, he fell completely under her spell.

In what she left him of his mind, he thought he lived a life as good as any yeoman farmer’s. In his imagination, his lovely blonde wife made passionate love to him every night, and he worked like a horse for her and her strange sister, growing food, gathering it in, repairing the house, telling the people in town what a clever and good wife he had. But in truth, come nightfall Lizzie would order him to lie on the floor before the fire and dream of making love to Laurie, whom her husband never once actually touched. Instead, Laurie and Lizzie made the nights passionate with their lewd enjoyment of each other’s young bodies, never tiring of that sweet forbidden wicked pleasure. And four nights a year, when a full moon rode high overhead, the black-haired Lizzie would lead her sister-slave-slut Laurie down to the glade, and they sported with the strange Men of the Stars—not allowing penetration, but servicing them with hands and silky fingers, with hot lashing tongues and sucking lips. Lizzie even enjoys it, feeling the huge, thick, throbbing members swell and become heated, lowering her naughty lips to take in the swollen head, sweeping her slick wet tongue over the smooth, plum-like helmet, tongue-tip-probing the salty slit, eventually to be rewarded with scalding jets of glowing semen and with bushels of strange fruit.

And Lizzie’s command of Laurie grew ever stronger, and Laurie under her tutelage grew ever more wanton and wicked and lusty. By now their sport must be intense indeed, but we will never see it, you and I. And perhaps that is best, for they say that of all fates, the worst is to fall into the thralldom of one of the Folk of the Stars.

And of that uncanny fellowship is ebon-haired Lizzie now, both heart and soul and glorious, luscious, insatiable body.