Chapter Nine

Inside the Hall of Justice Culture and Peace, the council of Goh Lap village sat at a battered deal table facing bowls of long since cooled tea with worried expressions. Drawn from the important business of storing the rice harvest, they were considering the requirements of the tax and the expected shortfall on this year’s tax.

“Chairman Hwa-” the presiding member said unhappily, “-will come down hard upon us. If we have to meet the tax he has set, we are all likely to have empty bellies before next harvest. There are plenty of candidates eager to take our places too.”

“The other villages will be short as well,” the old man next to him reminded them all. “Yet there are more fields to be cleared for the refugees to resettle, clerks and such are to be fed and the militia guard to be maintained. Chairman Hwa is not likely to be easy upon any of us! Here, he is like one of those old mandarins of the old days!” he cackled, sucking noisily at his tea.

“Could we find some way of pleasing Chairman Hwa then?” The presiding member looked crafty. “We could pick out an assistant for him. Other villages have done that. You know that both his second and third wives were sent by their villages under colour of being assistants.”

“Three wives should be enough for any man!” the woman secretary snorted disapprovingly.

“Not for Chairman Hwa!” the old man sniggered. “Many a pretty girl has been thrust into his bed for a night by their village.”

“That’s only good for a night.” The presiding member was dismissive. “They say his three wives are firm friends and have set their faces against any more rivals. We shall have to cut down consumption. Cut the rations to inessential workers.”

“Then why not get rid of that great white creature of the Widow Feng?” the secretary suggested. “She eats like a horse and she won’t really be needed after the harvest is in.”

“We can’t just set the savage free. She will be a danger to our children!” the rest of the women members protested.

“Take her out and drown her!”

“She is public property! The Chairman would find out! You know he has spies everywhere.” The Widow Feng spoke up for the first time. “I have taken a lot of trouble to train the creature to pull a cart. She should be kept to expiate her evil deeds, whatever they were; as an example to the people!”

“Chairman Hwa could afford to keep a horse if there were any to be had!” the secretary returned relentlessly to her point. “She is female after all, he can add her to his collection.”

There was a thoughtful silence for a moment.

“Chairman Hwa has a taste for show,” the presiding member said, looking round. “The She-devil is a trained cart puller. We can please him with a gift and rid ourselves of a mouth to feed at the same time.”

Next day in the yard behind the Hall of Justice Culture and Peace, Nicola waited for her supervisor to return. She had been left there with her reins looped around the railing that fenced off the hall. There was nothing to prevent her from unhitching herself and running away, except that she had nowhere to go and no means of concealing herself. So she stood there obediently tethered like any other animal.

Her driver presently returned along with the rest of the committee, from the unexpected direction of the almond grove. They were towing behind them a spindly looking, vintage rickshaw, the sort of thing Nicola knew only from ancient photographs of Shanghai.

Someone had remembered the old rickshaw lying in the almond grove behind the rice barns. It had been left behind by one of the last of the old travelling agit- prop groups. “Apparently the wicked Imperialists used to harness people to such things and have themselves pulled about the countryside. It will be an appropriate way for Chairman Hwa to use the foreign devil!”

Self-importantly, the Widow Feng unhitched the creature from her rail and backed her up into the rickshaw’s long shafts using the bamboo cane in her accustomed manner, like one directing a recalcitrant bullock. Respectful of the cane, Nicola moved obediently and then stood grasping the shafts while her busy proprietors with much laughter and argument, fitted her with makeshift harness. She wore the same kind of chest harness she had used to haul her cart and in addition her wrists were secured to the shafts. The widow reached up on her toes to flip Nicola’s long russet mane behind her and then to take the ends of the rope reins back with her to the rickshaw. Through the rickshaw shafts, Nicola felt the sudden lurch of added weight.

“Yee-uh!” The reins flipped, but Nicola needed no extra admonishment. She had taken a grip on the rope bit as soon as she felt her driver mount up and the now familiar command set her at once in motion. The pressure of the rope reins forced her to hold her head erect, white teeth gripping firmly upon the bit. The harness made her arch her back, thrusting her breasts forward, nipples prickling as they jutted into prominence.

The rickshaw was lightly built of cane and basketwork with bicycle type wheels designed to be easily drawn by a trotting coolie. To a large bodied Western female, trained as Nicola now was to the hauling of heavy loads, the Widow Feng was only a lightweight. Directed by the shrill commands, sounds that she had painfully learnt to respond to, Nicola wheeled her new vehicle in a wide circle without difficulty and at the sort of brisk jog that had hitherto been her fastest pace. Intimation that more would now be expected of her came when she saw, with quaking flesh, one of the committee passing up a long-lashed carter’s whip to the Widow Feng.

“Haw! Haw!” Nicola squealed from behind her gagging bit as the whip thong snapped across her naked rump. Accustomed to the cane and goad, she recognised the whip as another thing entirely. She made the response that any work beast would have found advisable, surging forward and spurting hard. The familiar feel of the dead weight of a vehicle responding readily to her effort steadied Nicola, but a noisy crack and a second application of the whip reminded her that this was neither shit cart, nor plough. Speed was what was now required of her!

The voices following them crying “Haw! Haw, dwindled rapidly behind as Nicola lengthened her stride, fearing the renewed descent of the whip. To really push the rickshaw along she was forced to thrust her backside out and it felt very vulnerable, already decorated as it was with two throbbing wheals. Thankful for the vehicle’s lightness she trotted at a good lick circling round the hall and back into the village street.

It was empty at this time of day and, as she feared, invited a long hard run. Sure enough the reins flipped and the whip flicked the moment she attempted to ease off. She sped on at a steady trot, beginning to breathe hard. They passed the little group of committee members again, who had emerged to applaud the success of their device. The rickshaw bounced along at a good pace and another sharp flick warned her not to falter as they passed the nursery school from which the fat little children tumbled out to giggle and point.

The reins, quite cleverly handled and, upon Nicola’s part, anxiously heeded, guided the equipage out of the main street and into a side lane where feathery bamboo cast a cool shade. The whip cracked with more purpose now, drawing yet another line of fire across Nicola’s innocently bobbing rear. Responding with a shrill whinny from between gritted teeth and drawn lips, she accelerated. With nostrils flared and lungs heaving, breasts bouncing wildly, nipples prodding at wide angles, red gold hair streaming behind her, she broke into a full gallop. Leaning hard into the harness, her knees rising high and long white legs pumping, she clung to the shafts like grim death feeling the body of the rickshaw behind her bouncing wildly over the ruts.

Only a few hundred yards and they emerged into the fields. Nicola felt the tug of the reins with gratitude, being almost on the point of foundering. Head up and leaning back, she brought the wild career of the rickshaw to a halt, sobbing with relief. Breathless and panting she was allowed to proceed at a sedate walk, sweat pouring off her despite her nakedness.

With Nicola alternately trotting and walking they wound a tortuous course following the earth bunds out among the harvest fields where busy peasants stopped to call after the widow. Frequently when accosted by friends, she would rein Nicola to a stop, allowing the curious to inspect the white she-devil in her new role. Near the outer dyke before they turned back, the cool breeze off the mud banks came as a relief to Nicola’s heated skin.

Here there were refugees’ shacks, huts of sticks and mud, where the inhabitants lived by fishing in the lagoons and fossicking for useful debris in the mud. As Nicola trotted past, their pot-bellied children ran out to gape and shout, daring the Widow Feng’s flourished whip to fling a pebble or two at the strange white she- devil who ate children. Passing over a plank bridge, Nicola glimpsed beneath her flying feet a family of boat dwellers gaping up at the passing show.

By the time that Goh Lap’s strange beast of burden drew up, exhausted and drooping, at the door of the Hall of Justice Culture and Peace, her fate was sealed. Nicola’s performance had settled her usefulness as a present to appeal to the Chairman’s vanity while retaining the appearance of practicality.

A week later, a large crowd of all ages and both sexes filled the roadway before the hall in Goh Lap attired in their best with the small children carrying red paper flags and streamers. Within the hall, Chairman Hwa was making his long expected visit to discuss with the council the level of tax assessment for the recent harvest. Outside the crowd formed a half circle around the foot of the steps to the front door. There waited the cleverly designed appeal to the Chairman’s taste for the bizarre.

The rickshaw had been spruced up, re-painted bright red and provided with a canopy of fringed white cotton. Standing between its slender shafts, Nicola had been scrubbed and combed like a prize filly, her red hair tied back to spill down her back almost to her waist. Her wrists were fastened to the shafts by metal cuffs and short chains, but a new leather harness allowed her to bend forward and take the weight upon its shoulder straps to get maximum pull. The bit, held between her teeth by the bridle was now a piece of hollow bamboo perforated for easier breathing, to which the scarlet ribbon reins were attached.

The harness ended with the waist belt and below it she was wholly naked. Long legs, well muscled, were unhindered in their action, her bare feet, comically large to the audience’s eyes, were efficiently hard-soled. Between her strong thighs a densely luxuriant pubic bush formed a curly V, a shade darker than her russet tresses.

The comments of the villagers came to Nicola as unintelligible gabble but she couldn’t be indifferent to the attentions of some of the bored children who enlivened the wait by poking her, like persistent insects, with spears of grass. She was forced to react with a jerky stamp and kick, showing her teeth in a grimace, creating to the general amusement, a good impression of a horse bothered by flies.

When at last the Chairman emerged she was almost ready to be grateful, eager to be driven away. The council members were beaming as they escorted the short stout man in the severe blue tunic down the steps. The villagers cheered with unfeigned enthusiasm, the Chairman acknowledging them with pompous gravity, a ruler to his subjects despite the outward appearance of equality. This was a nightmare Nicola would like to have believed she would wake up from, yet she knew the heat and dust, her harnessed naked state, the clamouring people were all too real.

Now the Chairman was shaking hands with the village council. Then he was down the steps and Nicola felt the vehicle rock. She took the weight upon the shafts, leaning forward into the harness automatically as she felt him settle his bottom on the seat. She felt him take up the reins, and gripped the bit with her teeth, head up and ready on her toes, trembling with nervous apprehension, knowing very well what to expect next.

The Widow Feng had already coached the great man in the use of the long carriage whip. Nicola anticipated by the reaction of the crowd, his unfurling of the thong and was already flexing leg and bottom cheek muscles when he laid it neatly enough, for a beginner, across her bottom.

Her yelp was drowned by the crowd’s fawning applause. Nicola leapt away from the pain, bare feet thrusting hard, white teeth showing on the bit. She got the rickshaw rolling with exemplary speed, sensing the slightly greater weight of her new driver, but not escaping a second supplementary flick of the whip. She drew in air with flared nostrils, expanding her lungs, her breasts bouncing wildly. Her whip-seared bottom cheeks dimpled and filled alternately as her long legs drove strongly. One half of her mind was upon the desire to get away from the humiliating applause of the crowd, the other half upon doing what was necessary to escape the whip. Both combined to produce the effect of total dedication to her animal function.

This was almost a little monarchy over which Nicola’s new Master presided. The villages that had survived were built just above the flood line and connected by dirt roads that wound round the contours of the hills between them. As active as the Chairman was obliged to be, his new transport was useful as well as ornamental, for the short distances between the villages made a woman-powered carriage perfectly adequate.

The inhabitants of the other villages had already heard of the red haired white skinned devil captured at Goh Lap. Their ancient traditions accustomed them to the idea of humans performing tasks that in other lands would have been fit only for draught animals. It seemed only natural to them that so gross a creature should be used as one. Until Nicola became too common sight on the roads, they brought their children to see the big she-devil trotting in harness. She towered head and shoulders above the giggling audience, who pointed out the big feet padding in the dust, the enormous, bouncing breasts, the flood of strangely coloured head hair complemented by a thick furry pelt between the legs and warned them of how she ate naughty children.

As the effects of the Catastrophe were ameliorated by time, the Chairman was busy organising the reclamation of buried fields out on the muddy plain and their allocation between peasants and refugees or for the more energetic and enterprising to share-crop on behalf of widows and orphans. Soon the white canopied rickshaw was to be seen regularly travelling between villages or out along the narrow field divisions, with Nicola harnessed between the shafts, striding or trotting, her red hair streaming, her bare feet hard callused, spurning gravel or mud indifferently.

She stood mutely stationary in village streets or on windy embankments while her Master directed adjudicated disputes or chatted to field gangs or yoke-laden women. She had no idea if any other world still existed beyond the sea of mud. Above the villages on the bare hilltops, little brick towers still existed, built originally to detect imagined enemy air attacks, but now only used for spotting roosting duck coveys. Once or twice she saw in the distance spidery frameworks of girders or isolated tilted and fragmentary ruins amid the mud. Refugees had ceased to turn up and it seemed her former prison must have been wholly overwhelmed by cave-ins and landslips, since so far as she was aware no-one who knew her there had ever reappeared.

Her Master drove her out almost daily, leaving the office detail to his wives. Naked and unable to communicate, governed by the mind-numbing tyranny of whip and reins, Nicola’s reduction to the condition of a docile draught animal was inescapable. She had become a feature of the landscape, her Master’s status symbol as useful as she was unique.

Physically she found her jaws becoming stiff, callused at the corners, her mouth drawn wider showing more of her white teeth. Her body, still pale under the cloudy skies, was as firmly muscled and proportioned as any athlete’s. There was no problem of fleshiness of hip or bottom in her present life; the remedy was displayed by the faint pink of old whip wheals and occasional red ones more recent. Her lung capacity had been perforce enhanced by the need for staying power at the trot and she now thrust out her chest to display two bouncing globes that Hollywood might have envied. Only her feet, once slender by European standards, were now two or three sizes larger and equipped with soles as unfeeling as boot leather. With such a regular routine she was usually able to avoid accidents of evacuation in the public street. She could not entirely avoid the need, however, and she learnt to take advantage of any halt to manoeuvre over to a roadside ditch, spreading her legs and thrusting out her rear without shame.

Insensibly, for want of better treatment, she had been brought to appreciate the pleasures of an animal, sun on naked skin, cool breeze on heated limbs, a splash in canal or pond, washing off the road dust. Food too, of which her Master’s wives never stinted her, affecting to treat her as carefully as any thoroughbred filly and bringing her tit-bits. Even the business of trotting down a smooth track under shade trees and being let go flat out in a hard run, had a certain physical pleasure.

In any case she could no more have resisted such a fate than a horse or donkey. Laziness or sulkiness her Master punished with punctilious accuracy so that Nicola in harness trembled with eagerness to please. The sound of a warning whip crack was enough to bring her to obedience and it was seldom necessary to do more. She was most of what a carriage pony would have been with the added edge of intelligent anticipation.

She had almost forgotten how to speak and still understood little of what was said about her, for the only sounds that she needed to attend to were those of command and even those became less frequent as she grew clever in obedience to the reins.

The Chairman was a short thickset muscular man with a brush of greying hair over a round bland face. He had originally been sent with a company of militia to sort out an outbreak of faction fighting in the district before the Catastrophe. He was capable and energetic. Despite the disabling of military weapons and mechanical aids by the promiscuous dissemination of the bugs originally designed to be Peace weapons, he kept control of the militia force and rearmed it with more primitive but effective weapons. With this power he became the indispensable arbiter between village factions, refugees and militia and thenceforth no one ventured to challenge his rule over this unofficial kingdom.

His weakness was his taste for collecting women. His prestige was high enough to encompass the possession of three wives, while the villages competed to place pretty concubines in his way. His wives, however, were officially employed as his secretarial staff, while the pleasure garden attached to his house was respectably designated as a public park and opened on public holidays, filled with entertainments. Goh Lap village’s gift had taken his fancy at once, satisfying his taste for exotic females while at the same time being made to serve a useful function.

The Chairman’s wives were not so receptive at first. However, once they decided that the strange creature was not to be a rival, they became keenly interested and took charge of her management and training, using her for transport for themselves and their children with much enthusiasm.

One day they drove her to one of the villages near the waterside where the local militia were celebrating a victory over a gang of marauding river pirates who had tried to raid the rice barns. She was left tethered there in an earth-walled compound while her mistresses were treated to rice wine by the village council and they and their children watched a display of fireworks and the traditional burning in effigy of an Imperialist demon.

The elders of the village returned to their convivial gathering. The night was dark but warm, the glow of the bonfire in the village square giving only a little light where Nicola stood with eyes wide and body tense with horrified apprehension before a tittering juvenile audience.

She had been stripped of her little G-string and between her thighs, lit ruddily by the distant firelight, there stuck out prominently the blue-fused end of a large, round, gaudily coloured firework. It had been worked firmly butt first, up into Nicola’s unveiled sex. The cuffs at her wrists had been fastened together behind her back, rendering her helpless to remove the intrusion, nor did she have the option of screaming for help, for in place of her wooden bit her jaws were straining to accommodate the intruded cylinder of an even larger firework.

Most of Nicola’s horror was directed at this, right beneath her nose, where she could both smell with flared nostrils the sulphurous odour of its combustion and actually see the worm-like spark creeping through the touch paper. But even as she crossed her eyes to keep its progress within view, there came a heart-stopping hiss from further below and the invisible but tangible firework between her thighs went off with a fizzing sound.

A roaring upside-down Roman candle scorching her thighs forced Nicola to caper wildly, straddle legged as a succession of whooshing fiery balls bounced about her ankles and parted the yelping, skittering crowd.

Nicola was hardly aware of them. The village boys had done their cruel work thoroughly. Swinging in a wild circle she revealed yet another beginning eruption. Like a mongrel dog with a firework tied to its tail she had been the victim of fiendish juvenile tormentors. A whooshing fountain of golden fire shot from between the cheeks of her behind as the eruption from another firework, buried deep in her anus, shot her forward like a human rocket propelled by a flailing tail of fire.

Last of all to go off was the coloured incendiary cylinder gagging Nicola’s aching jaws. This time her it was her head that was jerked back and she was driven into reverse. She staggered blindly back and forth like a creature demented, with fiery golden streams of fire swirling and lashing in incandescent arcs from three different orifices.

At last they faltered and one by one they petered out, first from between her thighs, then from her anus and last of all from her jaws, leaving her half collapsed, sweating and trembling with reaction in the midst of a ring of giggling juveniles.

The Chairman’s wives were very annoyed when they saw her condition. The hollow reeking cases of the burnt out fireworks had to be extracted from their powder-blackened fleshy sockets. The firework stub between Nicola’s legs was now ringed by the frizzled stubble of what had once been a luxuriant pubic bush and her face was comically blackened with a halo of singed hair. Their husband hastened to satisfy their complaints and the village was heavily fined as a communal punishment for the mischief that their children had got up to. Nicola did not escape unscathed, since clearly a dumb beast could not be expected to do other than suffer abuse and steps were taken to secure her.

Behind the Chairman’s big house on the outskirts of Lui Feng village ran a lane littered with useless pieces of mechanical equipment, now devoted to small workshops where broken tools and weapons were repaired or put together with considerable ingenuity. Nicola had been down there once when repairs were needed to the harness. She expected something of the kind when the senior wife drove her round during her husband’s absence.

The other two were already there waiting by one of the workshops where Nicola was unhitched from the shafts and let inside. It was not much more than a booth with mud walls and a ladder in the corner leading to living quarters on the upper floor. The walls were lined with shelves and benches racks of tools and coils of rope, rawhide and leather. The craftsman in attendance, a skinny wrinkled old man in a ragged singlet and loose knee length trousers, was blowing life into a small charcoal brazier that glowed in the rear.

This man and the three wives engaged in a brief discussion. Two giggling young girls came down the interior stairs to join them and took charge of Nicola like girl grooms with a filly. A small knot of infants of under school age gathered to watch as the pair backed Nicola up against the pillar that supported the upper floor across the open street front. With some difficulty, due to the disparity in stature, they hooked her reins so that she was forced to stand on tiptoe with her back to the pillar. Cords fastened her wrist cuffs and elbows behind the pillar, while long leather straps held her belly in and prevented her from lifting her knees. A roll of grass matting was thrust between Nicola and the stone across her shoulder blades, forcing her to arch her chest right out.

Panic filled Nicola’s brain as she realised that all the focus was upon her breasts that the two girls were prodding and tweaking with a lot of giggling. She was well aware that they regarded her as ridiculously proportioned. Urged on by the old man now busy at a bench, the girls stilled their giggles and set to work employing soft fingers and feminine dexterity to tease their helpless captive. At first, Nicola wriggled and hissed behind her gag, her eyes wide and her chest heaving in panic making the russet-tipped globes wobble and jiggle in the two small pairs of hands. The girls murmured soothingly, keeping Nicola under pressure, dropping their hands to her belly and down between her thighs.

She was used to being handled like an animal by the Chairman’s wives, washed combed and petted, but this was a new thing, both alarming and confusing. She didn’t want to react but at last she began as the soft palms and gently circling fingers both soothed and excited her. Her first emotions of fear and panic melted insensibly, first into trembling submission and then into erotic reaction. Her panting became tumultuous. Her breasts seemed to swell willingly into the soft cupping palms, her nipples stiffening against the little tantalizing finger-flicks so that she arched a little more against her bonds.

Flushed with heat and emotion she let her eyelids droop wet lashed on hot cheeks, making little helpless mewing sounds round the gagging bit. She looked down upon two dark haired heads, the diminutive girls hardly needing to bend to reach her breasts. Lips closed around both nipples, warm, soft and moist, nuzzling and sucking, sharp little teeth nibbling like nursing puppies. Nicola mewed frantically, eyes closed, aware that her nipples were as swollen and stiff as two rubber nozzles. Unable to stop herself she arched and thrust after those tormenting tongues as they withdrew and the sudden chill made the nipples prickle even as they throbbed.

There was a quick hiss from the old craftsman and both girls fell back out of his way though continuing to support Nicola’s breasts with cupped hands, presenting them like two round white fruit with the nipples standing up proudly red and glistening with saliva.

In that instant the old man seized, pierced and released her nipple, shifting to its twin and piercing that before the first had even completed its bounce or Nicola had collected breath for a whinny. Sweat ran down to mingle with her tears. She could smell her own flesh, both nipples throbbing and burning. The two girl assistants captured them and swiftly applied cooling soothing cream, the wives, meanwhile, clapping in approval of their elder’s skill. The red-hot needle had passed through both swollen nipples in quick succession and the cauterized passage was now swiftly followed by the insertion of a large silver-gilt ring through each. Nicola squealed as the two girls bounced the ringed breasts on their small palms.

Nicola’s ears were already pierced and now she had large plain rings, similar to those in her nipples, and now a similar adornment brought fresh tears, a hole pierced through her septum, the ring dangling on her upper lip.

There proved to be more important parts that her mistresses felt could be

improved by metal additions. Her legs were pulled apart and fastened by the ankles behind the pillar to prevent her from closing them. Kneeling before her, one of the girls nipped Nicola’s labia in four places, stretching the fleshy flap between sharply nailed fingertips. The old artisan slid in beside her and again Nicola felt the piercing needle drive between the nipping fingers, left then right, each of her labia penetrated twice in turn. The man left and then returned with four more silver gilt rings, smaller and finer than those in the rest of her. The rings were threaded through the pink flesh and long silk threads passed through them, fastened round Nicola’s thighs, held her labia spread open.

The worst was still to come. The nimble fingers of the female handlers sought out Nicola’s clitoris where it lay exposed to view. Nicola whimpered and jerked, quite realizing that the needle was now to pierce the most intimate part of her flesh and striving not to let it protrude. As if in warning of what was to come, her nipples and labis throbbed stiff and sensitive, seeming to have swollen to twice their normal size. Deftly the two girls manipulated the little bud, taking turns until in Nicola’s disordered and defeated state, she lost track of what she was trying to achieve. The clitoris began to respond despite her first intent, enlarging until the short gold cylinder that the old man extended could be slipped over it to form a collar.

The cylinder was supplied with two holes ready prepared. The sharp needle passed through the holes, piercing right through the intervening flesh. Nicola wailed, or rather whinnied behind her bit. The path it had pioneered was followed inexorably by a slender rod of gold, which was secured by two gilt balls screwed onto the projecting ends. The silken threads that held Nicola’s labia outspread were now released, but the lips could no longer close completely and left Nicola’s gold-sheathed clitoris plainly exposed to view.

The Chairman evidently approved of her enhancements and so she trotted daily ringed and in harness with the heavy gold ornament on her clitoris making the little fleshy projection bounce like a tiny penis, creating a constant source of excitation. Before she had gone a very short distance she was in a state of arousal that had her searching for some way of expressing it. Her Master and owner was the most immediate prospect, the only male that she could foresee might use her. Nicola waggled her bottom shamelessly at him but that seemed only to attract more frequent use of the whip. She looked hopefully for signs of sexual interest in every new encounter, male or female, and even though their curious scrutiny of her flaunted nakedness excited her mind, she found no outside relief. She supposed desperately that she was simply too big to be interesting.

The wives proceeded to improve upon Nicola’s presentation by supplying a variety of little dangling ornaments, tassels and pendants. Normally she carried a fine gilt chain lacing the rings in her labia close together, finished off with a tiny dangling padlock, the little gold clitoris poking between the lacing. On special days, little silver bells on tiny chains were added to all of Nicola’s rings, in ears, nose, nipples and labia so that, trotting about her duties, she tinkled merrily at everyone she met.

The stimulation of her clitoris as she trotted and the semi-permanent state of arousal in which she existed during the day, led to her being forced to relieve the tension during the hours of darkness by rubbing surreptitiously against any suitable post or projection in her stable.

She was in such a state of semi-arousal as they came down the village street one afternoon to find a lot of hubbub about the waterside. Several small boys ran to meet the Chairman’s equipage, but their attention to his filly was only perfunctory. “Yeren!” the boys were shouting. “See the Yeren!”

In the muddy creek below the village, several fishing boats had returned unusually early and one among them had just landed a strange red bundle from which emanated mournful hooting sounds.

The Chairman drove Nicola closer and jumped down to see what this curiosity might be, leaving her reins in the hands of one of the boys. The bystanders told him it had been discovered floating upon the receding flood, clinging to a whole uprooted forest tree. Its captors had rolled it in a strong fishing net and bound it with many turns of rope. Bundled like that, it seemed to Nicola to be a large Orang-utan or such a sort of ape, with a dense coat of red hair. Remembering her own similar style of capture she felt a wave of sympathy for this unfortunate animal.

Directed by the Chairman, they desisted from poking and tormenting the miserably hooting beast and instead concentrated upon roping it to two stout poles. Several of the men, very small and slight beside their burden, hoist it up by the poles and staggered towards her. To her dismay and alarm they stripped the canopy from her vehicle and, with much shouting and grunting, heaved the creature on board, almost lifting Nicola off her feet before they had its weight distributed correctly. She had to bend hard into her traces to haul its weight, much greater than the Chairman’s, but here her carting experience came to her aid. With the boy leading her importantly by the reins and his friends taking turns at cracking the carriage whip, she plodded the long way back to the Chairman’s house.

Nicola was left to the wives who simply tied her up in the street outside in order to hasten to watch the disposition of the strange beast, which was placed in a small enclosure built of stout bamboo stakes, secured by a stout chain to a stake.

The Chairman rewarded the finders and consulted opinions. A Yeren was the general verdict; a legendary animal said in fireside tales to inhabit the dense bamboo forests in the mountains and hitherto to have only been seen by Buddhist hermits and lost travellers. The advocates of this origin supposed that it had been washed out of some mountain fastness by the flood, though there was a minority opinion that it was an escaped creature from some secret scientific research laboratory. As evening fell the wives returned full of excitement to attend to the hapless carriage beast. Nicola welcomed the prospect of at last being able to relieve her usual state of longing. Yet nothing went as normal. Her ornaments were all removed except for the little addition to her clitoris and the gilt rings in her vaginal lips, though they were left unlaced. Being opened so blatantly to entry, her little gold-sheathed clit glinting prominently, made Nicola suddenly feel shy and apprehensive.

“See, she is quite excited, she knows where she is going!” one of the wives giggled. With much excitement and more giggling, they led her in this state to the enclosure where the Yeren was confined and thrust her inside.

Fully expecting to be fallen upon by the beast, Nicola scurried in panic into one corner of the pen. She saw that the frissure of sharpened stakes that formed the enclosure was topped by a row of eagerly anticipatory faces and then realised that the similarity of colouring had given her peasant owners the idea that she might be mated with this red-haired beast. The idea horrified and aroused her in equally fearful measure, but the animal only watched her progress as if baffled by her presence and purpose. It looked round at the noisy but increasingly disappointed audience and returned to huddling in a tight ball, hooting to itself mournfully.

Between them was a pile of bamboo shoots, balls of rice and other vegetable products, evidence of an attempt to tempt the beast to eat.

For a long time, the two of them huddled in opposite corners eyeing one another until Nicola recovered her nerve and feeling a sudden loving sympathy for a fellow captive, uncurled herself and crawling forward to the pile of food, picked out a finger-full of rice and eating a little herself, gingerly offered the rest in propitiation to the Yeren. As she uncurled herself, it had raised its head and began snuffling the air perhaps investigating her scent. She knew that she had been self- excited all day and probably still exuded a strongly female bodily odour. Since it was presumably male, she hoped that such a scent would make her less alarming.

Suddenly a long arm extended and took the offering, which it presently began trying and continued munching in desultory fashion. At intervals it made soft babbling sounds, which seemed to be regularly repeated sequences. Wanting to seem sympathetic, Nicola imitated the sounds as accurately as she could.

The Yeren hooted quite eagerly and suddenly uncurling, took her by surprise. She lost her balance and fell into the creature’s grasping hands. She squeaked in alarm but she had been captured with ease, long arms extending caught her before she could withdraw, long fingers and palms like soft leather holding her fast despite her wriggles. The hands compelled her proximity to the massive form and her own nostrils flared as the smell of its maleness overwhelmed her, a rich and musky odour not at all unpleasant but rather strangely stimulating.

Conscious of the heartless curiosity of the watching heads, thrust in increasing numbers above the bamboo spikes, Nicola remained still, heart in mouth and, contemplating the prospect of being devoured, hoped desperately that big flat teeth and a bulging belly signified a vegetable diet.

The monster was gentle though firm, holding her with one large hand while the other one examined her red hair, running its hand curiously down its length. At first glance it might have been what she had supposed it to be, merely a giant ape, long-armed and short-legged like an Orang-utan standing upright. It was now standing perfectly erect like a man, and over six foot tall at that. The process of rearing to its full height had also made it clear that it was a male of its species. The evidence was thrust from beneath the bulge of its hairy belly; a penis perfectly man-like in shape if rather large in size and in colour blush-pink with a bright coral-red knob and dark red testicles dangling beneath. Under Nicola’s nervously excited scrutiny, the whole huge projection swung ponderously with a rhythm of its own, seeming by its length and the shortness of the thighs, to hang almost down to the knees.

Thrusting its head forward and holding her at arm’s length, this strangely variant male snuffled loudly. Then, as if her scent, having been savored, was found attractive, she was thoroughly sniffed, animal-like, up and down her trembling body. Nicola squeaked and, seeking nervously for reassurance in his expression, felt a surge of excitement as she found it contained something more than amiability. His thin-lipped mouth curled in a definite chuckle, while his eyes showed an undeniable twinkle of appreciation. It definitely wasn’t edibility she was being tested for; the Yeren was interested in her in the way any human male might. He began to emit more of his hoarse hooting sounds, though this time they sounded so masculine that Nicola shrank from repeating them, merely making timid, propitiating, hopeful murmurs of her own.

Resuming its careful examination of her, the hairless nose of the Yeren, pale in colour, bulbous and laterally vented, sniffed appreciatively, soft hand patting her with reassuring gentleness. Nicola, well placed in a position to make a close scrutiny of her own, realised that it was only the way that the long russet hair fell thickly about his shoulders that had made him seem without a neck and that the appearance of forward thrusting jaws was largely due to a jutting beard of fine red hair. His narrow forehead furrowed deeply as it completed the examination, unsure but with a decided glint of interest and appreciation in soulfully dark eyes.

Without thinking Nicola put out her hand to touch the Yeren in her turn and found to her surprise that the red hair was soft and fine, as thick and luxurious as the most expensive mink. She couldn’t help stroking it and evoked an instant soft babble of what she was now sure was speech. She did as she had earlier, copying as best she could the sequence of soft sounds and was rewarded with a deep rumble of masculine pleasure from within the massive chest. She buried her hands in the soft luxury of his coat and in turn felt the big soft velvety palms slide along her bare arms and down over her shoulders and back.

The hooting sounds resumed, seeming more urgent as if containing some kind of signal, which expected a response. She didn’t know how to reply. With some notion of making herself smaller so as to seem unthreatening she slid to her knees.

The big male figure slid downwards too overwhelming her and she was suddenly clasped close to the broad chest, sinking into the softness of its fur, the thick red beard turning out to be equally as soft and almost burying her in silky hairs. Nicola squirmed within the enveloping wealth of fur as if struggling with a mink coat that had somehow developed hard muscle. Above her, the Yeren tossed back his mop of hair and his red mouth opened to expose to the watchers a set of huge white teeth, hooting in menace. As if satisfied with his defiance he then dropped his head to regard Nicola and from deep within his chest came, rather astonishingly, a series of gentle, crooning propitiatory cries.

Nicola had subsided beneath his weight onto all fours and was now trapped like that beneath his overarching body, the Yeren’s great hands holding her gently but firmly by the hips. He made more of the hooting noises, seeming interrogative in tone. Nicola answered him, trembling, not knowing what she was saying, but wanting somehow to both soothe and encourage. That it was intelligent she was now perfectly convinced, not an animal at all but a man, some primitive kind of human, a long surviving close cousin of her own.

Confused thoughts overwhelmed her brain, her body still trembling with excitement in the Yeren’s embrace as she remembered the evidence of maleness and the state of arousal. She was conscious of the presence of the audience, but filled with a surging chaos of emotions and quite powerless to suppress them. She had been put here in the expectation that she would mate with a beast, but they were being fooled. This, she assured herself, must be a human male and a powerful one at that, a male so lustfully attracted to her that she knew without thinking she had the means here to win an ally, desired and desirable in more ways than one.

The Yeren seemed to appreciate her position, not forcing her, as if confident that this female’s approval would emerge and be expressed of her own accord. He sniffed Nicola slowly, hot breath going up and down her naked body, over her thighs and bottom, making her jerk and tremble. She uttered desperate mollifying words, wishing she knew the right sounds. He put his head right down almost between her thighs and sniffed loudly at the cleft plumpness half exposed between them.

Nicola let out a squeal this time, jerking upwards as his tongue suddenly caressed her, lapping this way and that across her tender flesh. Her bottom rose involuntarily before the questing silken muzzle, which was so evidently appreciative, chasing the female juices with its eager tongue into the most intimate crevices. Every time it touched her gold-sheathed clitoris the throbbing bud sent irresistible waves of sensation between her thighs. She squealed loudly.

That seemed to be the kind of signal the Yeren was anticipating. In a sudden breathtaking moment of decision he rose and mounted Nicola. She opened her mouth to shriek in dismay, but all that came out was a squeak of excitement. She was paralysed by contradictory feelings of shame at her circumstances and the simultaneous desire to please and enjoy such a powerful partner.

The male had treated her well. Instinct told her that he was human, he smelt, felt and sounded almost familiar. His powerful maleness established such a command over her reactions after so long an abstinence that it overcame all desire to struggle or dissent. Careless of the audience she thrust her backside up and parted her thighs wide, waiting with a mixture of fear and excitement to be served.

The Yeren evidently assumed this co-operation to be normal. He found her presented slot and tore right in with all the directness of a uninhibited, triumphant male. Arching over her white back, her naked rump buried beneath his softly furred red loins he grasped her soft feminine flesh with long fingered hands, firmly and inexorably, holding her steady as his quivering haunches thrust and thrust.

Nicola moaned and gasped as his size was made apparent; so much more rewarding than any of her past abusers. She tried to stay silent at first, conscious of the audience but the Yeren seemed tireless in his enjoyment, hooting gently, thrusting harder and longer than any man she had ever known. His thrusts tweaked her clitoris too and fro and soon she was fighting to hold back, reluctant to lose the effect. The sounds she made in response to her partner, rose inexorably though into a wholehearted shriek as the thrusting burst a dam deep within her. She recovered slowly and found he was still going strong. She tried to help his penetration and to squirm around his surging shaft but found the Yeren only clasped her more firmly, as if mistaking her intent. The long feet, twice the size of a normal man’s, were splayed to either side of her, with prehensile fingers gripping the earth bracing against the heave of the muscular haunches. Above her head he crooned reassurance even as he pounded into her without heeding either assistance or resistance.

Nicola’s own efforts made headway, crooning encouragement in return, she slowly built into renewed co-incidence with the Yeren’s rhythm, her head drooping, tears of pleasure splashing into the dust only to be erased by tumbling tresses that swept this way and that. She had been completely carried to one orgasm and now another was building, as her partner rooted harder and faster than ever. Dust coated her red hair and her sweat and tears turned the dirt beneath her to a smear of mud. She grovelled beneath the randy pumping male and found herself supplementing his efforts with an eager rhythm of her own.

Saliva drooled from the jaws above her onto her bare back. Rougher treatment as she writhed involuntarily left red raking finger marks across white skin. Her voice, muffled by her posture, rose in jerky fractured howls of ecstasy as lean and muscular loins pounded the long cock into her soft passage with slackening resistance and increasing penetration, savagely splitting, thrusting and widening her, as it seemed without limit.

The Yeren’s hooting grew triumphant then breathless and finally subsided to explosive grunting. Nicola’s jerky howls translated too into desperate gasping. She was being filled to the limits by the male cock surging at astonishing speed, forcing her to react like a woman drowning in sensation. She was conscious that her eyes were nearly rolling in her head, her flared nostrils snuffing the rich odour of her partner’s lust. Her teeth were gritted and lips drawn back, saliva ran down her chin unhindered. She heard herself whining like an animal on heat and couldn’t help breaking into a wild ululation as she was shafted with enthusiastic speed and regularity.

At last her partner faltered. She begged him wildly to hold on, hoping her tone would carry the message. They reached their climax simultaneously. Almost crazy with mingled shame, lust and amazement she grovelled in the dirt as the long cock pulsed into her, seeming endlessly. Her strange partner slowed at last. He withdrew jerkily, sat back and upright rumbling deep in his belly. The pink shaft and red knob glistened wetly like a half-licked candy stick, sagging slowly inch by inch, retreating back into the soft depths of russet fur.

Nicola collapsed entirely, face down and shuddering, her own coarser red hair spread in a tangle about her head, her up-raised behind the last part of her to subside as widely splayed thighs collapsed and she flopped onto her belly. The Yeren might not be of her race exactly, but it was still close enough to the ancestral forms to be capable of satisfying and being satisfied by her.

As the morning passed, the news spread that the Yeren and the Chairman’s filly had been successfully mated and a long sequence of curious inhabitants came to inspect the pair.

Nicola was turned out from where, in one corner of the bamboo pen, she was curled up, half hidden beneath the soft fur and warmth of the Yeren and returned to her duty. She ran in harness all that day, in a tumult of feelings that earned her several severe applications of her Master’s driving whip. She no longer felt herself to be entirely a kind of uniquely strange domestic animal, subject to the whip and rein, designed to be useful to her owners, but a woman who had attracted a sexual partner and was being cruelly kept from him.

By evening, when she was returned to the little pen, it was with equally mixed feelings, eagerly excited to be re-united with her new partner, but conscious that their anticipated union would be treated as a public show.

The Yeren seemed not to notice the giggling audience and Nicola soon lost her initial shyness. They satisfied the curiosity of their captors several times before darkness fell upon their activities. During the day, as she pursued her duties like an animal, her mind was active as never before. Thinking of her softly furred partner she had become worried by the prospects for their future. She hated the idea of her partner being used as a beast of burden and it was clear that the quality of his coat would undoubtedly make the Yeren more valuable dead and skinned than alive.

During that night, aided by the darkness, she furthered her command of the sounds that her companion made. She made herself mistress of the sounds for ‘you’ and ‘me,’ ‘go’ and ‘come,’ ‘push’ and ‘pull’ as well as many words more intimate but less relevant to making an escape. The Yeren’s fingers were just as nimble, and far stronger than, Nicola’s. Under her direction they proved equal to dealing with the rusty iron of the padlock on his chain.

As the first streaks of dawn appeared in the east the peasants of Lui Feng were woken rudely from sleep by repeated shouts of “Yeren! Yeren!” The news that the Yeren had broken free seemed to bring with it a reluctance to be foremost in tracking it. Amid the shrieks and wails of women and children, men shouted and ran aimlessly until at length, gathering courage from numbers and the growing light, they headed in a bunch towards the Chairman’s house yard and the pen that had held the Yeren. They found it broken and empty, the door pulled apart at the hinges and both the Yeren and his female companion gone. The sharp sounds of shattering bamboo stakes and frightened screams indicated the direction of escape. Streaming through vegetable gardens and back lanes they followed a trail of shattered fences. They were well behind their quarry, however, by the time they crossed the fields and, reaching the high outer bank, climbed its steep height in a panting mob.

Lining the top, they peered out gaping and pointing over the mud flats. The myriad creeks and waterways glinted in the early light. The figure of the Yeren was far out on the mud running strongly, splashing through the pools and kicking up a spray of mud and water, going straight as an arrow as if inspired by sudden vision towards the distant mountains that showed up blue in the distance.

None ventured to suggest pursuit though the escapee was visible for a long time, a reddish misshapen bulk with a smaller white one slung over its shoulder from which, one keen-eyed man swore, he had seen a white arm lift and point, as if directing the creature in its course.