The Hermaphrodite's Curse

Author's Note: "The Hermaphrodite's Curse" is an adventure/mystery novella with a transgender erotic theme. The main plot is a Da Vinci Code style quest to solve an ancient mystery and a modern murder. There is not erotic content to every part of the story, however it is certainly part of what drives it forward. If you are looking for a simple, short sex story then there are plenty to be found on this site. If you want a different kind of mystery with something of an erotic edge, then this is the story for you. - Cleophila.

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PROLOGUE - CYPRUS

"Cupid, however, was not the only child born to the goddess of love at this time. Venus lay with Mercury, the fleet footed messenger of the gods, and bore him a son who was among the fairest and most beautiful of all men. The goddess had such affection for this son and his beauty seemed to reflect so much that of his divine parents that the boy also took their names and so was called Hermaphroditus (Hermes and Aphrodite being the names by which Mercury and Venus were known amongst the ancient Greeks). The young Hermaphroditus was taken away and raised by nymphs, spirits of the wood and water, on Mount Ida. The boy loved nothing so much as to swim and bathe his body in the clear crystal lakes and springs of the mountain and, as he grew into manhood, it was hard for his guardian nymphs to resist the urges that the sight of his innocently seductive nakedness brought in them.

"On reaching adulthood, Hermaphroditus desired to leave behind this sheltered upbringing. His clear-minded innocence of the ways of the wider world was reflected in the unspoilt beauty of his body. He wished to travel, to see and understand what the world was like beyond the mountain. All around seemed new and wondrous to the naïve, inexperienced boy. Although he travelled great distances, his keen enthusiasm at each new land and each new forest made light of any of the weariness of his wanderings. Most of all, he experienced the wonders of all the mighty rivers, pools and lakes of Asia, where he would delight in stripping off his well worn clothes and relaxing his well travelled body in the cool waters.

"Travelling through Lycia to Caria, Hermaphroditus discovered a brook of fresh running water of uncommon beauty. The water was as clear as fresh mountain air right down to its very depths, with each stone on the riverbed as visible as if it was on the bank. The banks themselves were made up of the freshest green grass, a wonderfully soft turf with no marsh reeds, barren weeds or spiky rushes. On seeing these crystal waters, cleaner and clearer than any he had yet seen, Hermaphroditus was instantly seized with a desire to dive into the pool and cleanse his body.

"However, the young son of love was not alone. He was watched by a naiad, a water spirit, who dwelt here beside the pool. Salmacis, however, was not like other naiads, virginal spirits who served the goddess Diana. While the other naiads were swift-footed huntresses, skilled at the chase and shooting a bow, Salmacis was idle and vain. She was proud of her shapely feminine beauty that was the envy and desire of the very gods themselves. While her sisters hunted, Salmacis would bathe her sensuous curves in the stream or comb her lush, long dark hair. She had a great and superficial appreciation of beauty and would love to gather flowers or lie in the soft grass and watch the world. This was how she first observed Hermaphroditus and instantly she perceived his beauty and wanted to have him.

"Salmacis was dressed in a thin veil that did little to cover her shapely body. She had garlanded herself with white flowers and vines that she had gathered. She spent a minute composing herself, making sure she presented the greatest specimen of lascivious attraction she could. Then she stepped forward and spoke to the boy, saying that his attractions were such that he must be Cupid himself or, if he were a mortal, he was one worthy to be called a god. She begged him to accept her as his lover, his wife, the other half to make him whole.

"Hermaphroditus blushed at the sight and sound of this beautiful nymph appearing from the grass. In his innocence of the world, he knew nothing of love or lust and the naiad's offer frightened him. The red glow that the blush gave to his cheeks, however, was even more becoming and only served to increase Salmacis' desire. She begged him at least to let her take a sister's kiss from his soft lips. Hermaphroditus, however, pushed her away as she tried to throw her arms around his ivory neck, telling her that if she persisted he would leave her and her stream for good.

"At this, Salmacis was afraid she would never see the fair youth again and so agreed to leave him, saying that she surrendered the pool to him. However, she could not resist secreting herself in the grass to watch even as she pretended to leave him alone.

"Relaxing, Hermaphroditus dipped his feet in the cold, clear brook and was captured by the call of the water. Throwing his soft clothes from his slender body, he dived into the flowing water.

"Seeing thus his naked form, Salmacis was completely overcome with lust and desire. She longed to have him, to hold him as she watched his white body cut through the clear water. She flung aside her thin garment and dived into the pool after the object of her eager desire.

"Before Hermaphroditus was aware of what the beautiful naiad did, she had him held in her arms, snatching kisses from him as he struggled to break free. She entwined her body with his, coiling her legs around him like ivy lacing up around a tree trunk. She held fast to him, tightening her embrace like a snake even as he fought more to escape.

"Still, however, Hermaphroditus denied the nymphs desired pleasure and writhed unwillingly in her embrace. Feeling him struggle, Salmacis offered up a prayer to the gods. She made a wish that they would never be sundered, that there would be no day that would come to separate her from him or him from her.

"Her prayer was heard and her wish granted. The two entwined bodies merged to become one, a strange two-fold form that was neither male nor female but with the traits and aspects of both. Hermaphroditus, the beautiful youth had dived into the water a man, but emerged with the curved breast and softened limbs of a woman.

"Realising he was transformed thus, the twin-bodied beauty offered up a curse. He made a wish to the love goddess that the pool in which his transformation had taken place would forever leave those who drank or bathed in its waters as half a man. Seeing her beloved son so distraught, Venus readily granted his wish and contaminated the water.

"Ever since this day the clear waters of the Fountain of Salmacis have carried this curse and any man foolish enough to bathe there or drink from it has found himself transformed into a more feminine body. Hermaphroditus, meanwhile, continued to wander the earth, a doubly beautiful creature who spread love but was always isolated from other men by his feminine delicacy and from women by his still masculine vigour."

Gabriel Herrison turned the page of the book back to the previous one and began to re-read the story once more, leaving the continuation of the book that little bit longer. The story was barely two pages long, it was really more of an aside in a broader narrative, but young Gabe found himself more fascinated by it than by all the other wonders of the book combined.

All his surroundings blurred into the background as he completely immersed himself in the story. The sun beating down on his head, the warm sand beneath his body, the slow but constant wash of the waves lapping against the shore with the rising tide. All of these things were transformed in his head to the soft grass and running water of Salmacis' enchanted stream.

A little way up the beach, his parents lay sunbathing, occasionally glancing across at Gabe to see if his nose was still in the book. They were not exactly thrilled that he was using all his holiday time just reading the same thing over and over again, that wasn't what they had shelled out so much to take him to Cyprus for. There was sun, sand and sea and he was off in a different world. But then again, maybe they shouldn't have bought the book for him.

Gabe had known that he wanted the book from the instant that he saw it, it seemed to call to him. It was second hand and a little dusty from sitting on the shelf for so long, the date inside the cover read 1975. However, as soon as they had entered the shop, Gabe had gone straight for it, which came as a little bit of a surprise for his parents.

Maybe it was the cover image that drew him in. It was a painting of the most beautiful woman Gabe had ever seen. She was standing completely naked on a seashell floating on the points of waves in a deep blue ocean against an equally blue sky. Her body was slender yet feminine with a long, elegant neck and cascades of golden hair that fell to her waist. In the painting, everyone around her seemed drawn to her beauty and Gabe was too.

In his young life, Gabe had seen few naked women and this one seemed to him like something from another world, a world of greater beauty, and he knew that if that beauty was contained within the book then he had to get a better look at it.

His parents hadn't been too keen on buying the book and had looked especially disapprovingly at the naked woman painted on the cover beneath the book's title, Love's Children by Robert White. However, Gabe had begged and pleaded and finally they had given in to paying the mere £2 charge that the shop demanded for the out of print book.

They had been quite surprised by how keen Gabe had been to have the book and were even more surprised to see their son actually reading it avidly on the whole of the flight to Cyprus and for most of the holiday too. Gabe wasn't really sure what it was he had expected to find in the book or what had drawn him in about it but he couldn't stop looking now.

He soon discovered that the woman on the cover was none other than Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, and that the book, Love's Children, was a collection of myths and legends about her and her many children, mostly focusing on their own tragic love stories.

The principle stories in the book concerned Venus' two most famous children, the god Cupid, and his doomed love for Psyche, and the mortal Aeneas, and his affair with Dido, Queen of Carthage. However, on getting about a third of the way through the book, Gabe had come across the story that he could not stop reading, the story of Hermaphroditus and his transformation into a person between the two sexes.

The idea that someone born a man could be magically transformed to have a womanly body fascinated Gabe in a way that nothing ever had before. It was new, it was strange and it was somehow wonderful. It was the opening into a different world that the book had always promised to his subconscious mind. As he read it and re-read it, he imagined Hermaphroditus, a young man finding his masculine body suddenly turn into one of beautiful feminine curves. How must he have felt as he changed? Gabe asked himself. How would it be to be a man one moment and half woman the next?

He imagined the shock of it but also how good it might seem to be suddenly given such a beautiful body. At his age, Gabe was just entering puberty and was feeling distinctly dubious about his own body and how it would develop. If only there were a way he could magically be transformed into a beautiful creature as Hermaphroditus had been. He began to daydream about how maybe as he went through his adolescent years his body would not become a flabby, hairy manly one, but would grow out into sensual soft curves.

Gabe knew that these were daydreams that would always remain just that, the magic of ancient mythology had no place in this real world where the sun beat down on the hot white sand. Besides, they were dreams that he would have to keep to himself. He knew that it was not normal for a boy to think about becoming more like a woman, he was supposed to be into football and cars, his parents could not know how this book had affected him. He may well grow out of this insecurity in his body as he grew into the man he would become.

Still, he couldn't help but wonder. What about that enchanted pool whose waters would turn men to women? Could it perhaps be that the legend was based in truth and that someone, one day, could find the location of it? Could there come a time when someone like him could dive into the waters a man and emerge as something else?

That night, Gabe dreamed of ancient Greece, of the crystal clear waters and soft green grass of the Fountain of Salmacis. In the dream, he walked barefoot across the grass and dipped his foot into the water, as transparent as a pane of glass. He prepared himself to leap into the waters when he stopped. He was not alone.

In the dream, Gabe turned to see a figure emerging up from out of the stream, the clear droplets of water running from her long golden hair and over her tall, long necked naked body. Gabe recognised her instantly as Venus herself and was completely struck dumb and motionless by her incredible, indescribable beauty. Indeed, when he came later to try to recall the dream, he could remember nothing of the goddess beyond her golden hair and the strange feelings she stirred inside him. She turned to him, smiled with warmth and spoke in a rich, musical voice that made Gabe's hair stand on end.

"Not yet, my son, not yet," she said, "Your time will come."