"Well, now, it's adorable that you're sneaky friend thinks he's escaped, but now it's time to put an end to that charade, don't you think?" said the witch, knowing full well that no one in the room could answer her anymore except in bird noises. She pulled out a magic book from one of the bags that of stolen property that Chris didn't take with him.
"He's managed to take with him quite a few things of mine, so he's quite connected to my magic, and it shouldn't take long to get a proper hex going." She thoughtfully flipped the pages and traced them with her finger before stopping. "Aha, this one should do, I should think." She turned to look at John and commented, "If your accomplice likes swiping poultry so much, I think this curse will be very appropriate."
--- Meanwhile ---
Out on the forest path outside the village, Chris had slowed down and was starting to give up hope of his partner catching up.
"John? Buddy, where are you?" he said, setting his bag down beside the side of the road.
* It's okay, * he thought. * Those witch rumors were exaggerated; she probably just turned him over to the village watchmen. She's old, and she's a stranger here; all I'll have to do is tell them a convincing story, and he'll be out of trouble in no time. *
He decided to step down to the river in the woods downhill from the road and rinse himself off to calm down. He slipped out of his shoes and pants and decided he needed to take a leak as well. He walked up to a tree, started his business, and then a jolt went through him, interrupting the familiar sensations down there and making him gasp.
"What the ... what is this?!" His member was all wrapped up in furry skin against his abdomen. Looking down further, he didn't expect to find that his big toes were missing, but now he only had four toes on each foot.
"That's not normal," he said out loud. He would have bent down to get a closer look, but then a tidal wave of flesh and bone unleashed itself from his behind, and he was left wobbling with dizziness and a rush of new sensations gushing up his spine. When he got himself balanced back up again on his four-toed feet, it only took a second or so to find the bushy tail so long it dragged the ground behind him. It was crazy to feel the dirt and leaves of the forest floor against its furry white tip, but he could feel them just as clearly through the tail as he could through his feet. Another second or two, and Chris got to watch it raise up behind him and swing in one direction, then another. It amazed him that he could move the whole length of it so swiftly, so effortlessly, without even lifting a finger to touch it. All he had to do was pick a path, and away it went! Intrigued, he quickly got both his hands around it, held it gently in his palms, and traced his fingers softly over its silky orange fur.
"It's real," he chattered to himself. "My own fucking tail..."
The vulgar boy of barely nineteen years then yelped in startled discomfort as a force took hold of his ears and stretched them out into black-tipped triangular cups that towered comedically over his once-blonde, increasingly reddish-orange head of hair. The sounds around him grew louder, clearer, stronger, while his mind pieced together the truth about the lady he'd robbed, the rumors John told him, and reality of what she could do to those who crossed her.
"Help! Somebody help me! It's a witch, she's ... HELP!!"
He ran screaming back up toward the road, with his huge ears tucking back against his head for the first time and his long tail thrashing around behind him in an eerily natural vulpine show of terror. Unfortunately, the whole reason he ran to this spot was that it was not well-traveled, so there was no one to hear him for at least two miles. Yet he could nevertheless hear the distant voices of villagers through those new bestial ears of his. He would have made it at least to the road, though, had a sudden shift of tendons not yanked him up on tiptoes mid-stride, sending him tumbling forward onto all fours. He felt that pads had grown out on his fingers to cushion his fall, and he got a sudden good look at the claws that had replaced his nails there; he glanced back and saw claws sprouting from his back toes, too.
It was no use. He was going to change here and be completely unrecognizable before there was any hope of getting even halfway back to town. An inescapable itching overtook him, and he rolled over onto his back so he could scrape at his belly with his handy-looking claws.
Scratch-scratch-scratch...
The shirt was gone in seconds, nothing left but shreds, and Chris at last got to see the white fur blossoming from his underbelly as the itching started to die down. It moved to his back, and orange fur sprouted there; he twisted and dug his back further into the dirt. His arms went out in front of him so he couldn't move them sideways anymore, and they grew dark brown fur as he watched. He rolled back over and lifted himself up on all four paws, unable any longer to stand stably on two. His vision became different, and unlike John who had gained a primary color, Chris lost one, mentally lamenting his descent into colorblindness.
The muzzle and whiskers stretching out in front of him became the final confirmation of the truth that he had been forced to accept, but it was the blackening nose at the end that gave him his final tsunami of sensation. Suddenly everything on this whole mountain was in Chris's frame of consciousness, either as a sound funneling in through these large drifting ears, or as a residue wafting in through this misleadingly inconspicuous nose. The former human sat down on his haunches and tried to mentally organize all the things he could do with this new body, and figure out if there was any possible way of regaining his old one.
--- Meanwhile ---
"Well, now that's over," said the witch to her pets. "Let's get you back to my place. This petty hideout is beneath us. Perhaps we'll even meet some confused-looking wildlife on our way back through the woods."