LADY ANN'S FOLLY: Chapter Seven - Part Five

Hattie pulled away, breaking contact with the maid, Nellie, the moment she felt the esoteric sensation pass between them, lurching back several steps and darting her eyes downward as though the change might be instantaneous. But there was no instant transformation at all. Her curled fingers were still her fingers. Her palms and stomach and bosom were still what she recognised.

A memory shimmered up, returning her to a deep gulley in Mossgrove Forest from when she was a little girl with Ann. A rope swing had been made that swung out across the gulley and she was sitting on the little branch tied round the bottom of the rope, about to swing free for the first time, feeling that fear again; knowing that once she pushed off there would be no turning back.

She’d pushed off here and now. She was swinging free across the depth before her and it was already impossible to regain her original footing. All she could do now was let the ride take her where it would.

A tingling sensation like pins and needles started in her calves and rose to the backs of her knees; to her thighs and buttocks.

“Oooh miss,” said Nellie, from several yards away. “I don’t arf feel queer.”

Hattie ignored her, intent only on herself. She went to the mirror and put her hands flat on the cool surface, gazing into and through the glass at the Hattie looking back at her: a Hattie who already showed signs of change.

Her eyes weren’t normal. They weren’t... No. They weren’t her eyes anymore. But it was so subtle she couldn’t have listed the differences in words.  Were they smaller? More widely spaced? They were paler; that was certain. And then what amounted to a physical movement caught her eyes as her nose seemed to shift on her face, actually just lengthening and narrowing.

Like the other changing people before her, Hattie felt a moment of acute panic and regret, the certain knowledge that a mistake had been made, then the wonderment came back and she simply stared as it played out before her: her hair appearing to fall and lengthen as the waves fell out of it and its colour went from dark brown to a light, mousy, non-descript fawn.

“Good God,” she whispered, going to touch her face and then pulling back her hand in alarm before she could to look at it. Her own hand was meant to be slender and soft, very feminine and smooth. Not anymore. This new hand was more rectangle than oval, the ends of the fingers square, the knuckles more prominent, slightly mannish in cast. The nails weren’t opalescent things of beauty. They were cut straight and short: the no-nonsense practical necessity of a domestic servant. Hattie had always prised her beautiful hands and the loss of them in trade with these homely flippers hurt her to her core.

She stared down at them for a long time until another sensation came to her from her chest and she touched her breasts, feeling the difference instantly; the diminution and withdrawal, the separation they had undergone. This was awful. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. It wasn’t right. She hadn’t realised how important the normal physical sensations feeding back from her body parts had been to her to set her calmly in a state of contentment. Wrapped in these unfamiliar clothes and seeing her form shifting before her eyes was profoundly unsettling. She had underestimated it completely.

But she had forgotten her face. She was looking down. She was missing it!

Hattie darted her eyes up to her reflection and her mouth fell open in shock.

That wasn’t her looking back anymore. It really wasn’t. It was Nellie’s face returning her gaze now, staring back in wretched hopelessness: the nose that was too big for the face, the thin cheeks. It was her chin that receded, blending into her neck; her teeth that were a little too large, a little too prominent.

There was still some faint shifting down the length of her body but the transformation was already all but complete. Hattie’s limbs had become skinny, her arms longer, and her stomach now carried a little paunch. With her narrow shoulders and undersized bosom, the maid’s uniform now fit her perfectly.

She touched her inwardly slanting, poorly-defined cheeks, her squishy nose, the upper lip curving out further than it should have. Her fingertips felt rougher; signs of a life of long hard work. She looked at them again.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered, hearing for the first time, the thinner voice coming from her throat. “It worked. I’ve really turned into you.”

She was Nellie. She was the maid.

She was the maid!

She turned to face the other girl, her face a picture of awe and fear, but she froze as soon as she turned, because Nellie was gone. Entirely. In her place stood a woman who was undeniably Lady Harriet.

And it was only then that Hattie comprehended how far abroad her mischievous adventure had already carried her.