The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

TRINKETS

Codes: mc, fd, nc, ff

Disclaimers (if you scroll past, you’ve still read ‘em—don’t blame me):

  • This author is not the same trilby who dwells on AOL; thus, Trilby on AOL should not be held responsible for anything that follows.
  • This work is copyright the author, © 2000. Kindly do not repost or otherwise use without permission and credit.
  • This is adult fiction with nonconsensual sex, mind control, and other immoral and illegal acts both explicit and implied. In real life this would all be very bad. All characters, events, and places are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, events or places is coincidental, etc. All characters are of legal age in all jurisdictions, not that it’s done them much good so far. References like “boy”, “girl”, or “child” are rhetorical, not technical.
  • If you’re underage, stop reading and get out. (The average fashion magazine these days is probably enough.) If it’s just flat illegal there, ditto (and I’m very sorry.) If you find this sort of thing offensive in general, ditto (and why are you here?)
  • It’s more about mind control than sex. I’m a fetishist: point isn’t using MC to get sex, it’s sex being something interesting to do with MC. So if you only want short zap/long fuckfest . . . see ya. Also, I consider this literature, i.e. with redeeming artistic content, i.e. not “obscene” in the legal definition. (Argue that if you will, but it’s my story, so to speak, and I’m sticking to it.)
  • I disparage no lifestyle. If characters are forced into one, it’s the force that degrades, not the lifestyle.
* * *

6.

In the firelit clearing, Kerry swayed hypnotized, with the other nude women who’d been drawn there from the compound.

The dancers writhed under the close line of torches, and Kerry felt her thighs quiver as she stared at them, unable to tell whether it was the erotic way their sweat-slick bodies undulated, or the fact that they seemed completely under the drums’ control, that was making her so, so wet.

Her awareness was dim and blunted, and buffeted by the drumbeat and the way the flicker of the torches was an almost palpable impact on her brain through her wide eyes.

She couldn’t orgasm, now, as she stared transfixed at the dancers. She didn’t know why not but lacked the will to wonder, and so she accepted the need and stood, her body vibrating with it as well as with the rhythms of the ceremony.

There were questions in her mind, a strange image of someone—Marilyn?—swiinging a pretty bright whistle in front of her eyes and making her sleepy . . . but everything just floated. She couldn’t remember why all this should be strange, or cause her fear though the daze.

And the arousal.

She tried, but there was nothing to tie it to.

To the left of the new arrivals, in a row before the shadowy huts, a line of women suddenly rose. Kerry hadn’t seen them, and with every other newcomer she swung to face them, and their united sigh of surprise—and a dazed new pleasure they didn’t question—filled a pause in the piping and a quiet passage of the drums.

The women stared at them, and Kerry suddenly felt more naked, and warmer, then she already had as she sleepwalked through the tropical night. She peered at them.

They stood straight and expressionless, and they wore clothing. Bikini tops and some sort of sarong. Next to each knelt a pair of equally-impassive women, but while the standing ones conveyed self-control, the blank stares of those on their knees—who wore no clothes—bespoke helplessness, openness. Kerry vaguely realized that she’d seen the same emptiness on participants in Circe’s (rituals) performances. That she must have looked the same when Circe had her gentle hooks into Kerry’s own mind when it was her turn to (sleep and obey) perform.

Kerry still needed to come. She still couldn’t. She whimpered and didn’t hear it.

The vague unhappiness seemed to open a gap for the doubts. She thought about a desk, folders, responsibilities . . . but it was like voices while she went under anesthesia, more meaningless the more she tried to hear them, fading into darkness.

Trying to cling to the idea, she thought of folders, accounts—deadlines, stress, pressure . . .

I would take it back if I could just— The depth of the sorrow startled her, and frightened her. She fled it, finding the many colors of paper in the image were pretty and distracting.

Then the drumming stopped, and the impact of the silence drove Kerry and the other collared women to their knees. The clearing filled with their panting until, hearing it, they subsided.

The grass felt good under Kerry’s knees.

Her mind was empty of whatever had troubled it just now.

Her heartbeat rose as one of the women stepped forward.

“Be welcome.” Her voice was gentle and implacable. Kerry’s back arched in pleasure, and soft sounds around her told her the others were equally taken.

“We are the Priestesses of the Tribe.

“You are of the Tribe, now.” The word thrummed through Kerry’s head and down her body. “You are Tribe. There are no tests, no ordeals. All are welcome here. All belong.

“You belong.”

“I belong.” It was out of Kerry’s mouth before she could think, and she heard every other woman around her whisper it with her. With her. It flowed over her like a warm wave as she knelt.

She came—slowly, softly. Weeping. The others cried too.

“You are Tribe.

“You are one with Tribe.

“You accept what Tribe ordains.

“You are one with Tribe. Your minds and bodies are Tribe’s.”

Kerry became aware that her mouth was hanging open as she gaped at the magnificent Priestess, who reminded her so much of Circe.

Beautiful, hypnotic Circe. Just remembering the magi . . . the sorceress . . . she closed her mouth slowly.

“We are the Priestesses of the Tribe.

“We teach, so that you may learn.

“We ordain, so that you may accept.

“We know, so that you may believe.

“We think, so that you may sleep.

“We command, so that you may obey.”

“We obey,” Kerry murmured urgently with the others. She wondered why her mouth was open again and then forgot to wonder.

When the High Priestess paused, Kerry found herself shaking, wanting the almost-chanting instruction to continue. Being inducted into Tribe was so pleasurable, so soothing. So hot.

The High Priestess spoke more gently now, but her voice still carried across the kneeling women, who stared raptly up at her. “Some among you already belong even more deeply to Tribe, and they will guide the rest of you. You will believe and obey the Tribeswomen set over you as you would a Priestess, and obedience will give you equal pleasure.”

She smiled in the firelight at the soft chorus that reached her as she said obedience.

Her voice dropped lower. “Listen to them and accept what they tell you. You will learn of skills each Tribeswoman needs, of dangers that each Tribeswoman faces.

“You will hear and believe Tribal lore.”

Kerry closed her eyes, opening her mind. She knew how to do that so easily, to focus her attention and listen, and sleep. When she awakened the certainties had always been in her mind. Now it would be the Tribe that put them there, after putting her to sleep.

“You will learn to perform Tribal rituals.”

Rituals.

This time Kerry felt her thighs loosen, and she almost fell over, as she thought of the dancers. There was the barest flicker of curiosity—when the drumming stopped she’d dropped to kneel and completely forgotten the writhing women who’d so captivated her gaze when she’d . . . come to the clearing . . .

But curiosity was about standing, and thinking. It had no meaning for Kerry on her knees in the warm humid night, her mind steeping in the wild light of moon and fire, still numb from the drums and raw from the teasing pipes.

Rituals.

She remembered the dancers, and forgot why.

“You will learn to obey Tribal customs.”

Suddenly it was a command, and Kerry found herself kneeling erect, her body taut and her nipples stiff.

Obey Tribal customs. She shook with the need to comply, to submit her own will and desires to Tribe . . . to enforce Tribe . . . All must obey Tribal customs!

As she stared forward, she saw the women kneeling by the other Priestesses had knelt up taut as well, as though triggered, their eyes glittering intensely. Their obedience deepened hers.

“Yes.” The High Priestess smiled at the rigid new Tribeswomen.

“To be fully Tribe, you will be named. You have no name now.”

“I have no name now,” Kerry recited with the others, realizing how true it was. She was a little sad, but it was nothing to being part of . . . to being Tribe.

The High Priestess raised her arm slowly, and like Circe’s gesture it leashed and drew Kerry’s gaze and mind instantly. “Look now at the Flame of Teaching.” Faintly Kerry heard everyone else turn to follow the pointing finger to a taller, unlit torch.

As they watched, purplish flame licked up out of it, its strange color compelling against the now-friendly orange of the dance torches, its shape unnaturally straight. Like the Priestesses when they’d stood, its stillness mesmerized Kerry. She felt things being seared away by its passionless brightness, remembered a precious ritual buried deep in her mind, forgot it again.

She watched the flame, letting it suck away her thoughts like warm air, feeding on her.

When it flickered out, so did her mind.

She awakened what felt like only seconds later, and found herself sitting back on her heels, her hands crossed reverently before her in a way she associated with Circe, the . . . Priestess? yes . . . but only vaguely. She was calm, and knew the women around her, kneeling and hands crossed, were calm also.

One by one, certain women were rising and walking to stand before the Priestesses, and turning, to stare out at the rest. In front of Kerry, Liz came to her feet and went to the nearest Priestess. Kerry saw her touch Liz on the forehead and Liz’s whole body drooped, but she stayed upright and then straightened to face them.

The women began to call out.

Liz said, “I am Tribe. I am called Warmth.”

Kerry blinked, and looked at Warmth. She focused on her, realizing Warmth was one of the senior women who would teach her. She thought about listening to Warmth and obeying her, and felt her thighs quiver again.

Other women went up as Warmth pointed to them. Kerry watched Andrea go up, her pretty face empty and dazed. She turned and told them all, “I am Tribe. I am called Feather.”

Kerry dampened.

Warmth pointed at her, and she rose, feeling eyes on her, feeling more than that, the warm grip of being Tribe.

She faced the others, feeling her nipples rising, feeling open and proud. Her mouth said “I am Tribe. I am called Dove’s Cry.” Its truth hummed across her nerve endings.

She had to close her eyes, and relaxed against the need that suddenly peaked in her to orgasm in front of them all. Now the block in her mind and body that kept her from coming was like a leash she could strain comfortably against.

Kneeling among the others again, she watched as the rest of the women spoke the names that Tribe itself must have placed in their minds for them to know and say and remember, as they’d stared mindlessly into the Flame.

The High Priestess stepped forward, and the urge was in Dove’s Cry to bend forward and touch her forehead to the ground. Skin rustled sweetly around her as the other Tribeswomen obeyed the same urge. She moaned with them as they tasted the obedience yet to come.

“You are of the Tribe, now.” Dove’s Cry felt the High Priestess’ truth in her heartbeat. “You are Tribe. All belong.

“You belong.”

“We belong!” Dove’s Cry cried with the others, and the tribal joy of we jolted the next orgasm through her.

7.

They knelt attentively. The High Priestess instructed them.

“You are submissive to the will of Tribe and receptive to its wisdom. Your souls are already bound up in the drums and you will feel no desire to think or question. But you will drink the extract that will remove memories of your past life, so your little minds will not be confused.”

Dove’s Cry waited quietly for this gift of Tribe.

Here and there among the kneeling Tribeswomen, others, nude and collared but adorned with bits of jewelry, acolytes serving the ceremony, moved with small flasks, giving one to each newly-named woman. Dove’s Cry stared at hers for less than a second and then drained it, her head swimming in the heady taste. As she lowered her head and passed the empty flask back, she started to feel her thoughts of job and home grow fainter, less important. Just as the High Priestess had said, her mind was calmer now. There were only this place, and these Priestesses, and Dove’s Cry was a loyal Tribeswoman ready to obey.

As the new women drank the extract and knelt looking as tranquilized as Dove’s Cry felt, the nearby Priestess spoke to Warmth.

“You did well to bring them to us and to Tribe, Warmth. You will train them as you were trained and set them to work.” She gestured. Dove’s Cry was dimly aware of similar rituals down the line of Priestesses as the new Tribeswomen were divided, but ignored them to rise and follow Warmth. She held someone’s hand as they went to the hut where they’d be kept; it might have been Feather, but both of them were looking at Warmth.

Inside they knelt to her, and Warmth looked at them. “I obey the Priestesses and worship the will of the Tribe. They will that you obey me. If you remain unsuitable for service to Tribe, your mind will be purified again. You will still obey, but you will no longer know it.”

Closing her mind to that horror, Dove’s Cry crawled forward on her hands and knees, feeling the self-abasement like a warm sticky bath. She looked up at Warmth before kissing her thigh. “I will work hard and obey. Thank you for teaching me to be a good woman of Tribe!”

Warmth looked down, and when she smiled, Dove’s Cry came.

“Your attitude will please the Tribe,” she said. “They have trained me well, and I will train you well to serve Tribe. Remember to think only of serving Tribe. Also, remember that the Priestesses care about and know each of us, and they can hypnotize us with a glance. They can reach in to examine your soul whenever they wish.”

“My soul is theirs already,” Feather said in a husky voice, and Dove’s Cry looked over her shoulder to beam admiringly at her friend. She didn’t come then, hearing Feather grovel, but she was close, and she thought Feather sensed it.

Warmth put her hand on Dove’s Cry’s head. “Tonight you will rest, and tomorrow you will begin learning to serve Tribe.” She smiled as the shudder passed through them, already all but unnoticed.

“But some things you must remember now, and know always.” Her tone softened, and Dove’s Cry warmed to hear how much their teacher cared. She blinked—this was real, though most of her Tribal mind no longer knew what that meant.

“There are . . . things that every woman of Tribe must beware of. There are tree spirits in the woods. They take the unwary and the weak-minded. A girl whose mind wanders, who thinks of things other than Tribe, may fall into their snares.

“Sometimes they even come to the edge of the village at night, hoping to take someone half-asleep. The Tribe puts out women to watch over the sleep of the rest.”

Dove shivered, knowing what she would say next, feeling herself getting wet again to hear it.

“Sometimes when we wake up a watcher is gone. Lulled to sleep or enticed away.

“Even here in the village, in daylight, some women hear their call and fall under its spell.”

Warmth swallowed. “It is impossible to resist being . . . called. When they know your Tribal name—and they know all—they can put you in their power and then you think only of going to them and listening to their strange voices.

“No Tribeswoman they have taken, or . . . called . . . has ever been seen again.”

Dove’s Cry blinked again. Something about real.

“Warmth?” she asked in a small voice, looking up.

Warmth’s glance was noncommittal. “Yes, Dove?”

“You speak as though . . . did they try to take you?

“No.” Warmth looked at her, and Dove didn’t know whether she was angry at being asked, or glad to tell.

“I saw my own teacher taken. When I was here . . . before . . . the others with me held me back—held me down. I wanted to try going after her.”

Dove looked up at her, saw the familiar-but-alien light in (Liz’s) Warmth ‘s eyes, and could picture it happening. She . . . Warmth would have tried. Dove’s Cry thought of the frightened women—fledgling Tribeswomen like her—trying to keep from losing another of their own.

Closing her eyes, she leaned forward and kissed the cool, scented skin of Warmth’s thigh again. “I will listen to your teaching and obey, Warmth.”

Warmth looked down at her with an expression she couldn’t read.

“What do the tree spirits do with the women they take?” It was another girl, Palmfrond, who had been set under Warmth with them. Dove’s Cry saw a fleeting image behind her eyes, Palmfrond in a royal-blue top at a dining table, or someone who looked like her but was canny, fast-talking: the word stockbroker appeared in Dove’s head and vanished. She blinked.

She leaned back, confused, as she saw Warmth smile, welcoming this easier sort of fear.

“There is nothing in the Tribal lore,” the senior woman told Palmfrond. “Some girls speak of strange mines, or farms up in the trees where the captives are set to work after their minds are hypnotized into a dream.

“It is said they can make you forget everything. Even Tribe.”

A different kind of shudder rippled through the women in the hut.

“There are also the Others.”

They looked at her.

“There are Others on the island. They sometimes abduct Tribeswomen to keep as slaves. A few escape, but most remain. They, too, sometimes are taught to forget Tribe.”

Dove was confused. What Tribe needed were warriors, someone strong to defend the others. That made her think of someone she knew, someone . . . Jen? Jennifer? She tried to think of when she’d last seen . . .

The ideas blurred uncomfortably. Jennifer was not a Tribe name, and she’d known K—no . . .

“The Others seem like Tribe, though their clothing is strange. They cannot cast spells just by speaking, or put a mist over a girl’s mind with magic. But beware of them in the jungle, because they know a weakness Tribe has.”

As they all leaned forward, and Dove’s Cry looked up numbly, Warmth smiled almost in embarrassment. “We—our minds are easily distracted by certain lights, certain patterns. If we are shown them, they snare our thoughts and make us open to the voices of others. Willing to believe.

“They offer us trinkets, pretty baubles. Toys. Useless to Tribe, but they can capture our minds.

“In the end, perhaps after all it’s the kind of slave-dream the tree spirits use to make our lost sisters stay with them and do their bidding. They can make us accept lies as lore.” Her look was bleak, now.

“They can make us obedient.”

Palmfrond spoke softly. “Obedient—as we are to Priestesses?’

Everyone gasped. They gasped again when Warmth nodded. “Be very, very wary.”

Dove closed her eyes, feeling the question Why are there no warriors if that threatens us? fade away. It still seemed like something she could run from if she had to.

The mysterious tree spirits were scarier, but couldn’t the Priestesses . . . ? She thought they might at least be able to deal with spirits.

She shifted as she knelt and opened her thighs, and the new air against her pussy made her head swim. As her mind floated, a new thought slipped into it.

She saw Priestesses, with a warrior escort, penetrating the woods, seeking the tree spirits.

Finding them.

Hearing them.

Staring into space, enslaved. Stripping as their trances deepened, obeying the evil mystery.

Priestesses, mindless and tethered by ghostly magic. Nude women vanishing into the trees forever.

Forgetting Tribe.

Dove found she was leaning forward to nuzzle Warmth’s leg again, as much for comfort as for pleasure. A thought slid across her awareness: A resort with demons and slavers? It slid out again, faster than others, for want of anything else in her mind to connect to.

She breathed, enjoying the warmth of Warmth.

“Time to sleep,” Warmth told them, and as soon as she said it Dove’s Cry felt her limbs go limp and her mind grow dark, her last thought the smoothness of Warmth’s calf as her face slid down it.

8.

Warmth woke them at dawn and coached them through a quick morning routine. As the day brightened and warmed they coated themselves with sunscreen and Dove’s Cry almost felt her mind growing fuzzy again after the half-clarity of late last night, as Warmth had described the hazards of the island.

An odd feeling of been-there-before came to her when they slipped on the bikini bottoms—all of them blue, the color of Tribe.

All the same. It excited Dove’s Cry a lot, as she realized that not only in Warmth’s hut but all across the village, every Tribeswoman was slipping on an identical scrap of deep blue fabric. The odd thought came to her of wearing a top, but she could only focus on the Priestesses wearing them at the ceremony. It seemed—above her to wear more than the tiny triangles around her loins.

She wondered if the tree spirits or the slave-takers attacked large groups. Then she told herself, Tribe has not commanded me to think of this. A pleasant feeling deep in her belly rewarded her, and she recited it another time or two until her mind was empty of everything but the present awareness of Warmth and the other Tribeswomen.

They found their tasks, and Dove’s Cry became absorbed in the mesmerizing simplicity of responding to Warmth’s commands.

She carried baskets to other girls working on some kind of crop and brought back what they gave her.

She brought water to some women who seemed to be carrying rocks slowly and sleepily from one small pile to another a few yards away.

She bore some burdens on her head, enjoying how her body felt to balance them.

When Warmth told her to join the party moving the rocks, she discovered they were now moving them back to the first pile. She didn’t know why, but as she realized that, she came again, so hard that one of the other women had to hold her up. She wanted to lean against the Tribeswoman after they’d kissed, just to enjoy the touch after her climax, but the deeper compulsion to fetch and carry took control, and she went off to serve Tribe.

After she began work, she passed Feather going the other way carrying a basket of some kind of leaves balanced on her head, and she couldn’t decide which turned her on more: the sinuous way Feather moved under her load, or the utter blankness of her eyes.

Warmth rested them in some shade, and some of the jewelled Tribeswomen brought them water and fruit. A black-haired, wiry girl settled next to Dove’s Cry, and Dove relaxed against her. She realized she didn’t know whether sex was allowed now, but before she could go ask Warmth’s permission the other woman whispered “Quiet!” with the force of a Priestess, and Dove’s Cry obeyed, making a small sound at how good it felt.

“Sorry,” the other Tribeswoman whispered. “I hate doing that, but I’ve got very little time before my work-group goes back to ‘work’. Know what we’re doing? Building a dam on a stream. We fetch sticks and stones and barrows of dirt, and when we’re done a Priestess puts us into a trance and we break it up again.

“Listen. I’ve seen you—Kerry? I’m Sue—and you’re not as far under as the others. Are you on—?”

She stopped at Dove’s alarmed look. Dove quickly said, “I am not—I am Dove’s Cry!”

“Wh—?” The other woman let her face go blank and and looked around. “Right. I’m cool. Sorry—it’s just I haven’t talked to a sane person who wasn’t trying to mindfuck me for a while.”

Her smile was warm, and so was she against Dove’s skin, and the Tribal custom response that coiled blackly inside Dove’s Cry at using non-Tribe names melted and softened in that heat. When the other girl said, “OK—um, I am Tribe. I am called Duneleaf,” Dove could smile back at her.

“We’ve got to do something. I don’t think QLR has the whole island, and I think there’s some kind of mineral company at one end. Something—I couldn’ t see it really well from the ship. But if we run, we can find them and get help.”

“Help?” Dove’s Cry wasn’t sure how to respond.

Sue looked at her sharply before shifting her expression to the drowsy bliss everyone else reflected. “Oh, boy. Listen: we’re not some kind of Tribe. Not yet, anyway. QLR has been drugging us since we got on their damn ship—the sunscreen’s a topical sedative or something—and those ‘magic shows’ were to index everyone’s hypnotic susceptibility and then put us all into a trance, one way or another. After that they just hammered conditioning into our heads to make us buy all this.”

She leaned back, squinting at nothing, as if she’d just heard herself say that aloud for the first time.

“The damn Shadow Queen is just a factory ship: passengers in, brainwashed puppets out. This is the next stage, I guess, conditioning us to consciously enjoy being—well, slaves.

“Most of us will go back. They can’t have everyone disappear, not all at once. But the ones who go back—you had a friend who recommended the cruise, right? Kept after you until you agreed to come?”

Dove’s Cry nodded, the uneasiness stirring in her lower belly. It was hard to remember Warmth wearing clothes. Remembering before she became part of Tribe was difficult, not so much blocked as—irrelevant.

“Yeah. They’ll probably go back too, then disappear after a while, one by one. And it’ll be you that starts seducing your cubicle mates and gym partners into coming.” She darted a venomous glacne at Warmth. “And that gets to be princess-bitch for a day ‘training’ them.”

She looked deep into Dove’s Cry’s eyes. “If they programmed you the way they tried to do me, let me tell you—this isn’t some neat kinky way to relieve stress by letting you kick back as a Tribeswoman. That’s the second layer they put in your mind in case the Tribe programming falls through. Heard it in a Circe show.”

Dove’s Cry blinked. “How can you know all this if we’re . . . brainwashed?”

Duneleaf (Sue)’s mouth quirked into a grin for a moment. “Medication. I ‘m hypertense, it’s what the fucking vacation was for, and what I’m taking negates whatever they’re using. Of course, it’s probably neutralizing my med, too, so I’ll probably have a stroke at the dockside, but I’d be better off.”

She smiled. “Smuggled it ashore the old-fashioned way—and they said only sluts carry condoms.” Her expression darkened again. “Knew I’d have to do that when I realized we’d be nude when they unloaded us like livestock.

“Never mind. I just didn’t want to leave someone—screw that, actually. I just need help and you look less fucked-up than anyone else who isn’t playing offense. Are you with me?”

Dove’s Cry looked at her, and wanted to have sex with her right there. “Yes,” she said, to make Duneleaf (Sue) smile, and it worked. Such a pretty smile, too.

Yes!

“OK. I’ll come find you. They let us mill around at the evening feed and I think they’ll even let us, uh, pair off . . .” The skin under her tan turned crimson, and Dove’s Cry was bemused to see that Duneleaf (Sue) didn ‘t seem interested in sex with women after all. She didn’t let it bother her. She nodded as Duneleaf (Sue) left to rejoin the dam builders.

As she tried to think about what to do, she found her mind drifting again, and in the pleasant blankness the only thing in it was the reassuring certainty that when Warmth commanded her she could return to moving the rocks to . . . wherever she was told to.

Her pussy grew warmer and warmer.

9.

As Dove’s Cry woke she thought about Duneleaf . . . (Sue?). She hadn’t seen the vibrant brunette for a while; it might have been last night that Duneleaf (S—) had meant to meet her but didn’t appear, but Dove’s Cry felt sort of sure that several days had passed since the other woman had spoken to her.

There had been more rituals, more women welcomed to Tribe as the drums pulled them into trance and away from the buildings by the beach that were already hard to remember. Dove thought about the dazed streams of newcomers, arms extended, eyes empty.

She’d missed one completely, she thought, because that time she was pretty sure she’d been . . . a dancer . . .

Dove shook her head before the memory put her under. She tried to remember what Duneleaf had told her, but all she could think of was how good Duneleaf ‘s warm, sunscreen-slick skin had felt up against her as they leaned naked against the tree.

And Duneleaf had been so firm, so . . . dominant. Dove’s Cry realized she was especially drawn to stronger-willed women. That started something in her mind, a movement in the mists that shrouded her thoughts: she wanted to please Duneleaf, but she couldn’t remember what Duneleaf wanted, so she couldn’t do it to please her . . .

It faded, as everything was fading in Dove’s Cry’s mind that did not have to do with serving Tribe. Dove’s Cry let the mists thicken behind her eyes, and reflection ended as she followed the others out of the hut to work.

Today she began in the field. She squatted by a tuft of long grass, one of a row of them in a broad patch of rows, and began to pull it out, setting the grass in a basket another woman brought to her without speaking.

Dove’s Cry didn’t try to speak; it was so restful just to work. For a moment there was another thought: this was . . . grass, not anything useful, not a crop of any kind. It had been carefully planted, but she didn ‘t know why. Other Tribeswomen must have knelt as she did, to plant it, and water it, or something. Because they’d been told to. It made no sense. She was just doing it because she had to. Because she’d been told to.

Because she’d been told to.

Falling to her knees and crying out softly, pitching forward, Dove’s Cry had another orgasm. Her forehead still against the warm earth, she said quietly, resolutely, “Yes. I obey.”

She curled upright again, blinked her eyes dry and bent to her task, feeling a light aftershock bewteen her thighs with each tuft that came loose in her grip. She saw Warmth walking the rows, tapping a girl now and then on the butt with her long waving switch, and when Warmth looked her way, Dove’s Cry smiled deeply and nodded. Warmth smiled back. Dove’s Cry returned happily to her work.

Later, in the afternoon, she found Feather standing behind their hut, and stopped to enjoy the way the other girl looked, the sun burnishing her bronze curls, her creamy skin gleaming safe under the sunscreen. Feather was looking at a low building, a longer hut, set back toward the trees, in shade now.

She blinked at Dove’s Cry. “I thought I saw someone—there.” Looking back at the building, she frowned.

“Jennifer,” she whispered, and the name made them both afraid.

They were both walking toward the building without really thinking about it, but it wasn’t the pleasant automatism of obeying Tribe, where the Tribal thought was there in the mind whether it was thought or not.

This felt—free.

Part of Dove’s Cry wanted to run back to the field and get off on pulling more grass.

She found Feather reaching for her hand just as she reached for Feather’s. Dove remembered being back on the ship, holding Feather, worrying about Jennifer. It might not be good to find her, but, as her mind emerged into relative clarity, she realized this wasn’t what they’d expected. Maybe they needed a warrior . . .

They were at the building, and saw a pair of Tribeswomen placidly sweeping a paved area in front of it. It didn’t look like someplace a pack of amazons would want to live. They walked around to the far side, and the women ignored them. Dove’s Cry kept looking at them as they worked, feeling a growing urge to stop walking and stop thinking and join them in their mindless task until someone gave her a new mindless task.

But Feather kept walking.

On the other side of the building were carts, little chariot-like ones glistening in black lacquer with seats, and plainer ones that looked like they were for small loads.

A girl was standing on front of one, between the struts or whatever they were called. For a moment Dove’s mind just jammed, processing only what it wanted: a rickshaw. But it was too open to shut anything out without a Priestess command.

The girl was Shannon, one of the jocks from Shadow Queen.

She was in some kind of bondage, strapped to the long struts, even taller in odd boots that looked like . . .

. . . hooves . . .

As they came closer, they saw the tail that flared gracefully up from her muscular butt, a streaked blond that matched the braid hanging down her back. She was slowly swiveling her hips, working the plug the tail hung from, smiling deeply and staring forward past the blinkers fitted to her head. Her hands were chained in front of her in the reverence position they ‘d all learned from Circe.

Inside they found stalls, racks of leather and brass. A girl in one of the stalls, whom she didn’t recognize, pranced over to the front of it, hoof-boots clicking on the concrete floor, and looked at them with naive directness.

“Not Tribe,” Feather murmured. Dove’s Cry had no idea what to say. She stepped over to the stall and the girl dropped to her knees, staring at Dove ‘s crotch. She licked her lips and made a small huffing sound, her nostrils dilating as she sought Dove’s scent.

She wanted a treat.

Dove’s Cry thought about stepping forward and out of her bikini and then bracing her legs against the kneeling ponygirl while the ponygirl placidly lapped her honey.

She was backing away and reaching for Feather’s hand before she could even wonder why.

One of the stablehands came in and went into a closed room at the far end of the stalls, and again ignored the two of them, seeing only her task as if she’d been fitted with blinkers for her mind.

She must be so happy . . .

Feather squeezed her hand and brought her out of the reverie she’d started to fall into, and they watched as the stablehand came back out, holding a small covered bowl with oversized work gloves. She bent and set it before the ponygirl, who looked up at her brightly and made a sound that wasn’t a whinny but that didn’t seem quite human, either.

Kneeling beside her charge, the stablehand uncovered the bowl and stroked her hair.

“Mmm. Yes, it’s good today, isn’t it, Five? Pretty Fivelet.”

Her voice was so soft and gentle that Dove’s Cry almost wept. Nuzzling Five as Five blissfully lowered her face to eat from the bowl, the stablehand seemed to waver, and then settled back on her heels, trying to clear her head.

“Told you,” said the other stablehand, coming in and walking past Dove and Feather. “Don’t even breath it too deeply.”

The first stablehand looked up, dragging her eyelids up by sheer resolve. “Yes . . . but it smells sooooo good . . .” She let the other pull her to her feet and leaned on her as they went outside for air.

Dove sniffed. There was something now, like a rich, hot vegetable stew with imaginative spices, but there was something sweeter as well.

She listened to the happy little slurping noises Five, the ponygirl, was making as she ate. Filling herself with whatever had dazed the stablehand just to breathe it.

“Let’s go.” It might have been her mind speaking, but it was Feather. They left.

10.

They walked back along behind the huts, not speaking, sometimes holding hands, sometimes stopping to look at something interesting . . . a flower in front of the treeline, the light on the hills in the distance. Dove’s Cry had just started to realize that they’d been close to the trees and that there was no one else around when Feather stopped again.

She turned to ask, but Feather was staring wide-eyed into the jungle.

Dove heard it, faintly. “Feeeeeathhhherrrrr . . .”

She stepped back and put her hand lightly on Feather’s shoulder, feeling the petite woman startle out of her dream. Feather turned to her and blinked slowly, looking as stunned as the stablehand had been, breathing the drugged steam of the ponygirl’s gruel.

“Feeeeeathhhherrrrr . . .” It beckoned out of the trees.

“I need to,” she whispered desperately, and her eyes grew frighteningly faraway. Dove’s Cry felt light pressure as Feather started to move against her hand, to begin walking slowly toward the whisper on the wind.

Dove squeezed back and pulled, and Feather’s eyes widened. She was helpless now, subject to the call and to Dove’s touch, and Dove gently pulled her closer before the balance could shift.

I must save her—for Tribe, she told herself, and remembered (Liz) Warmth and the teacher she’d lost.

Feather looked up at her, and she felt Feather’s pert breasts slide gently under her own, under their layers of sunscreen. “Need to,” she begged.

Holding her tight with one arm, Dove’s Cry covered her ear with the other hand and pulled her head to her shoulder, and felt Feather bend to rest there. The shorter woman relaxed in her hold, her ears covered by various parts of Dove.

“Feeeeeathhhherrrrr . . .” She tried not to shake, and realized Feather hadn’t. She held her more tightly, feeling the other girl’s crotch warm on her thigh.

But as she enjoyed that and the knowledge that she was protecting Feather from the tree spirits’ spell, a new thought made her blood run cold.

What if the next whisper was “Dooooove . . .”?

As if sensing her fear, Feather put her other arm around Dove’s Cry too. Dove nuzzled the copper hair, loving the coconut and (Andr—) Feather-scent.

After a while she knew there’d been only the breeze for some time, and gingerly released Feather’s head from its shelter against her.

“Feather,” she said, as though to exorcise the name by letting Feather hear a Tribeswoman speak it.

Feather kissed her.

They started back to the village area, and were between a pair of huts when they heard shouting. They trotted toward a cluster of Tribeswomen by one of the torch poles.

“I didn’t mean it!” one woman said, running her hands through her long black hair. Dove’s Cry wondered what had happened, hearing guilt in the woman’s tone and wondering why they were badgering her.

The blonde facing her said, “You used—a name—that is not—Tribe. That is forbidden.”

Something tightened in Dove’s Cry. An iron voice spoke pitilessly inside her mind: All must obey Tribal customs!

She stepped forward, her sympathy for the black-haired woman gone like spit on a fire.

Dove thought briefly about a woman doing the same, using a forbidden name . . . Duneleaf, Sss—her mind veered from it, guilty at having been too vulnerable then, not instantly denouncing the other girl.

Something stopped her from pursuing that, from seeking Warmth or a Priestess and confessing now. The urge spilled over onto the black-haired woman now, and Dove’s Cry felt the anger of Tribe filing her.

Inside, someone who wasn’t Dove said softly, sadly, It’s too late for her anyway.

She felt an almost sexual rush as she pointed her finger at the woman, making her visibly flinch. “You will be punished. Submit to Tribe!”

The other woman around her looked admiringly at Dove’s Cry for her ardor and they pointed too.

“Submit to Tribe! Submit to Tribe! Submit to Tribe!

The chant picked up, and Dove felt the power of Tribe on her and her sisters, saw it bludgeon the black-haired woman to her knees with just the sound of the chant. The woman was crying, and nodding, and she was clumsily trying to cross her hands in front of her in the reverence gesture.

Dove saw her lips moving.

She was chanting too.

Then there was a Priestess among them, and the chanting faded to a murmuring of “Tribe . . . Tribe . . .”

They lowered their accusing arms and stared, and when the Priestess turned and swept them all with a cool glance, Dove’s Cry and the others fell to their knees like a row of mown grain, their throats silent now. Dove thought about grain and working the field and almost had to squeeze her thighs together as she knelt.

There was nothing to hear but the black-haired woman sobbing and trying to say “Submit to Tribe.”

The Priestess looked down at her. She looked up at the Priestess, and she, too, fell silent.

Then, lost in the Priestess’ stare, she said in a dreamlike voice, “I have transgressed against Tribe. I must be punished.”

The Priestess looked at the rest of them, and said, “Think only of the Flame of Teaching.”

Dove’s Cry moaned with the intensity of the shift in consciousness—and with the sounds of the other Tribeswoman likewise obeying the Priestess—and closed her eyes. When she opened them, everyone but the Priestess was still kneeling, but there was something brimming in her mind . . .

“What is the will of Tribe?” the Priestess asked.

“She must be sacrificed.”

Dove orgasmed at the horribly merciless sound of the women’s voices intoning sentence, and then she almost fell in a second climax as she tasted her own words, and knew her brimming mind had spilled.

She had said it too.

The black-haired woman stared at them, her eyes wild in a blank face. Tears returned and she slowly bent forward, a bow turning to a kowtow and beyond until she rolled fetally into herself, turning to fall on one side.

Everyone bent their heads to the ground, dazed and honored at becoming the instruments of Tribe’s judgment, and when Dove and the others raised their eyes again the transgressor and the Priestess had gone.

They rose to their feet and blinked at each other, and Dove’s Cry looked around to see how Feather felt about it. Part of her hoped Feather had just gone to the hut to rest after her close call with the tree spirits. She somehow felt Feather might have been unhappy about how fiercely she’d invoked Tribe and joined in (terrorizing) correcting and (breaking) helping purify the woman she didn’t know.

Sacrifice.

As her blood cooled and the thought of Feather made her want to heal and protect again, Dove’s Cry wondered what she’d just sentenced the other Tribeswoman to undergo.

That distant voice inside her, that didn’t own Dove’s Cry as its name, had become rarer in her head as the days passed, and it helped that it was so disconnected from the Tribe feelings that ruled her heart that anything it tried to say in her mind meant nothing.

Now it asked, This is a vacation. What does that have to do with “sacrifice”?

But again, it meant nothing.

Her ass began clenching with some of the images that sacrifice started to conjure in her thoughts.

Feather was not in the hut.

Dove’s Cry walked back and looked behind it, out to the trees, but there was nothing.

She wandered back to the open space, but most of the Tribeswomen she met had been with her, in the trance of judgment.

Dove didn’t know when it was that she started to panic.

Fortunately or not, the next woman she met nodded at her query.

“Yes, Feather was walking to the trees. I saw her picking a flower.” She smiled, and Dove realized she was savoring the memory of Feather walking gracefully to bend for a flower as pretty as she was.

Memories.

She thanked the woman without really knowing it and walked back out to the edge of the woods.

Something royal-blue winked in the nearer branches, and she ran to it like a deer, too frantic to be surprised at the energy.

It was only a bikini panty, hung on a branch, moving when the breeze moved the small bush. It wasn’t ripped or even rolled up. It hadn’t been torn off or dropped, but carefully removed and set there, which actually frightened Dove’s Cry more. She knew. She raised it to her nose anyway.

She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. She waited, dry-eyed, and wanted to call to them, beg, demand, scream. She couldn’t.

Feather. Forgive me. Please.

If you can still remember me—

She still couldn’t cry, and it was starting to hurt. She waited. No one came.

Nothing whispered to her.

11.

There was a ritual that night, and Dove’s Cry knelt and swayed with the others, gazing at the beautiful dancers as they moved in the torchlight. Dove’s Cry had seen the Priestesses moving among the women, looking longingly as they chose the ones to dance, seeing each girl look up in surprise and then lose expression as the Priestess’ spell sucked her in. Dove’s Cry had envied them then, and later as she saw them standing in a group, still lost in trance, waiting for the music to claim them.

She hadn’t cried when she’d gone to Warmth to tell her what had happened. There had been a moment when their eyes had met and her head had spun and she thought about an office and laughing over coffee and Andr— Andrea Andrea their . . . friend.

Warmth had stared into her eyes and said, “I will tell the Priestess of this. Tribe will continue.”

“We will serve Tribe,” Dove’s Cry had responded, and the sheer fucking weirdness of that was shelter enough from the terrible sadness. She sank into it.

She’d stepped forward and embraced Warmth and kissed her. “Yes, my teacher. Tribe will continue. There is nothing but Tribe.” She believed.

She served Tribe.

She was here tonight to lose herself in ritual.

Now, even as she heard something different in the piping, a girl next to her moaned and began to swivel, still on her knees, and spread her arms, almost touching Dove’s Cry as she waved them. Then she was standing, rising on tiptoe and then stepping in an almost birdlike way. Dove’s Cry saw other eyes as glazed as her own turn to follow the women as the music possessed her. In a moment her body was lost among the rest of the dancers. Dove’s Cry still swayed, almost ready to cry for wanting to be taken the same way.

She was calmer as the music ended and the dancers, more awake now and sweet ly disoriented, were led away. She looked up and the Priestesses began leading the chant. Dove’s Cry had no idea what the words meant—they were in no language she could remember hearing. But the syllables began echoing inside her head, numbing her thinking even as she began to feel turned on.

Dove was no longer thinking but feeling the awareness that she and the others were chanting together, surrendering themselves together to something more powerful, something that would take and own them, and return them bliss for their obedience. The chanting brought flashes of memory, each one funneled from her pussy to her hindbrain: the throb of the dance, the aching beauty of the mindless dancers, the slow, soothing rhythm of her work in the field . . .

. . . the breathtakingly hot feeling of seeing the futility of her work . . . the delight of obeying commands from a woman as submissive as she was . . .

. . . Dove’s Cry was standing now. Most of the tribeswomen were still kneeling; some had their heads bowed and their smooth upturned asses shone in the firelight. She was nodding. Her mind’s small dimness was lit by the Priestesses’ command that she join other selected girls to keep watch as the others slept.

Then the command to sleep, and a light twinge of envy as she knew this time she was spared its power—but she forgot that, in the orgasm that rocked her as she saw the others in their dozens fall as if slain, crumpling in instant submission to the voice. Their own voices joined in a soft compliant sigh that raised gooseflesh on Dove’s Cry’s skin. She wanted to kneel again, to touch one of her sleeping sisters and kiss her tenderly, but there were too many.

And she was commanded to watch.

She stood as everything faded to silence, the women slept in the open, and the fires grew low in the torches. The Priestesses were gone, some followed to their huts by one or two blank-eyed Tribeswomen, some attended by their jewelled acolytes.

Dove’s Cry looked around and saw the other watchers, but the urge to speak to them disappeared. It would be too easy to join one, and hold each other, and shelter from the warm dangerous dark instead of watching it.

Is Feather sleeping too? Do they let her sleep? Dove couldn’t defend herself from the thoughts inside. Or do they keep her asleep all the time?

She started to walk, stepping carefully among the sleepers, but seeing their helplessness was too much for her, and she stayed back toward the huts and a stand of larger trees that were at one end of the open space, toward the work areas.

When they came she felt them before she saw them, ghostly in the moonlight. In the split second before fear, Dove’s Cry felt an unsettling memory of her first sight of the Priestesses that first night of drumbeat-trance and ritual—they’d looked like this.

The figures were on the far side, and she flicked a glance to see what her fellow-watchers were doing. Some started to move, to head for the Priestesses’ huts, but near each of these a figure appeared out of the shadows and the Tribeswoman would falter, stop, and stand. Others, frozen like Dove’s Cry, stood still on their own.

Sometimes when we wake up a watcher is gone. Lulled to sleep or enticed away.

Oh no. Was this something even worse? Were they all—?

Please not on my watch.

Dove watched a girl across the space from her nodding at the silhouette that faced her and raise her arms, as though she were obeying a hypnotic summons. But she only turned and braced herself against a tree. She let the figure stand beside her, touch her, stroke her hair.

Dove was shaking. She wanted to be that woman, listening as the intruder charmed her to sleep, to forget her duty, maybe to become fascinated with the bark of a tree in the moonlight.

But she was suddenly hurting too much. Everyone was disappearing. The tall girl . . Dove struggled to remember, thought of red clothing, fear about hypnosis, a vision of a spear—Jen . . . Duneleaf, so strange and frantic but so warm and vibrant—Dove was so lonely for her that she forgave her the un-Tribe names she’d uttered . . .

Feather . . .

She must stop this. She must summon the Priestesses, she must awaken the Tribe, she must . . .

“Look up at the moon.” She was transfixed on it before she could think, before the shape beside her was more than a flicker in the corner of her eye.

“So restful,” the voice went on. “So calming. Like a cool stone to wrap your heated mind around.”

The voice was warm, soothing, female, but Dove’s weak efforts to analyze it faded before the soft, irresistible compulsion to obey it.

“No need to think now. Your mind is too sleepy, your body too sluggish to serve your will.” The truth of it slid into Dove’s brain like an oiled finger up her ass. She sank to her knees, still staring up at the moon.

“And you have no will. So all is well.”

It wasn’t like the hypnosis of Tribe ritual. Dove’s Cry felt no need to respond. In fact, she felt like a dumb animal being handled by something smarter, and she thought of the ponygirls, one standing ecstatically in harness and the other kneeling to slurp something to blank her mind further.

“We will harvest what we will and you will not stop us. You will sleep with yout eyes open until dawn rouses you. You will forget.”

Something briefly eclipsed her view of the moon, but the image glowed in her mind and held her spellbound until she could see it again.

Someone had moved in front of her. She felt warm hands on her breasts, and whimpered. She heard soft laughter.

“So ripe,” said a different but equally seductive voice, “but not for plucking yet.”

“Soon,” the first voice said, the one that had chained Dove’s Cry’s mind and denied her will. “Soon.”

In her openness, she wanted to beg them to take her too, feeling then that it might be the only way she could find Feather. But something stilled her voice, and she just knelt and stared at the moon and let her mind go blank.

She heard more whispering—purposeful commands, and sleepy pledges of obedience, and people walked past her.

But she slept with her eyes open. As she’d been told.

12.

No one blamed them.

In the morning, Dove’s Cry knelt with the other watchers as the High Priestess spoke quietly to each, and looked into the Priestess’s eyes when she took Dove’s head in her hands and looked deeply into her eyes.

“Be at peace, child. There was no defense.”

“I obey,” she whispered, and closed her eyes when the Priestess touched her delicately between them.

She went out with the others to work, and for long stretches lost herself in the orgasmic blankness of tilling and fetching and carrying for Tribe. When something like grief or guilt found her she just looked around. Certain women were gone but Tribe remained, more beautiful obedient women, just as she was. Sometimes, she touched or kissed another of the women to press this onto herself.

As she walked back from emptying a basket of leaves onto a cart without even glancing at the docile ponygirl harnessed to the front of it, another woman took hold of her. She recognized the watcher who’d been entranced near the tree, and saw the urgency in her eyes.

Dove’s Cry let the other woman’s need carry them both and settled to the ground as the other took her right there before the cart. The other Tribeswomen continued their work, just stepping around Dove and her lover as they thrashed.

Only the ponygirl responded to them, excited by the smell of their lust but too well-trained to do more than make small needful sounds.

Later, Dove was resting when someone else touched her. The gentleness surprised her, and she turned to see someone familiar. Duneleaf blinked at her and smiled tentatively, and Dove’s Cry was so glad to see her that she hugged her. Only when she released her did she see how odd Duneleaf’s eyes looked.

“Dove’s Cry. Hello. I . . .” She closed her eyes. “Sorry I missed you before. It got . . .” She took a deep sobbing breath and held herself, as if afraid to grab Dove.

“My medication. I lost it. I had to toss it when they moved us from the hut for a new shipment. I’m starting to fade. The sunscreen . . . I’m forgetting.”

She looked down, blushing. “With that stuff soaking into my head I can’t resist it, the hypnosis and all the rest. The ceremony last night put me completely under. I woke up whispering the chant.” When she looked up her eyes were very old.

“It was noon before I remembered my fucking name.”

Dove’s Cry looked at her.

“Kerry. Please help me.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, please god—still be Kerry . . .”

She looked at the other woman, and felt Tribal custom racing through her. But she remembered the smell of her friend’s pussy on a bit of cloth she’d given to the Priestess, the last time Tribal custom had taken her over.

The sheer pressure was hard and part of her wanted to cry out and denounce this bitch and hear her howl as the Tribe corrected her. She thought of being allowed to eat the High Priestess’ pussy in front of everyone at ritual. If she just waited until tonight, another ceremony would put her under the spell and she wouldn’t be able to help herself. Blurred under the chanting and drums and the mesmeric dancing, she would betray without even knowing it, an orgasm among orgasms.

The other woman might even beg for it herself, with her cheating medications no longer blocking the supremacy of Tribe over her soul.

She saw herself twisting through that mental groveling. It made her sick.

She saw Sue—Duneleaf—groveling beside her, her intelligent face warped into a simpering ecstasy. She saw Duneleaf thanking her in tears.

I won’t do that.

She remembered Feather kissing her.

She reached for the brunette and pulled her close.

“Yes, Sue,” Kerry said. “I’ll help you.”

TO BE CONTINUED