Chapter 11
In Which I Have Been Transmogrified into a Member of the Fairer Sex, and Am Therefore Encumbered by Some Enormous Melons, Some Knockers if You Will, You Know, Hooters, Bags of Sand, or Whatever Term You Know Them by, and by God Do They Weigh Heavily on My Spine.
A secret people keep about womanhood: deprived of any other form of support, you will end up holding your own tits.
The continual flopping of chest meat had fast become unbearable. When at last I broke down and provided support in the form of a self-grope, it brought instant relief.
My entrance to the fireplace room did not cause the sorcerer to look up from his book; he brought one with him everywhere these days.
“Oh good, you’re here. I was ready to send a construct to drag you down by the ankles.
Next time be more responsive to my sum—” The words turned into spluttering.
He’d finally torn his gaze from the pages. “What are you doing?”
“My lord,” I said with all the dignity at my command. “I need a brassiere.”
The corpse clothes, which had already fit my man-body poorly, now hung like bags. The trousers threatened with each step to fall about my ankles. My shoes fit so loosely that I’d discarded them all together, padding barefoot through the castle.
“Stop clutching yourself. We can get you clothes, that was already a point of order.” The sorcerer closed his book with obvious reluctance.
“There’s another thing,” I said, pressing my luck. “The needle—I reckon it sticks out in a place that will interfere with undergarments. So . . . if it could be removed . . . ?”
The mad sorcerer stared blankly.
“I mean if I do something bad, my lord, just hit me. Or is it an issue of upper body strength? I reckon even with your musculature, if my lord puts his hips into it and really swings—AH!” Knives stabbed out from the embedded needle, the pain clacking my teeth together.
He had yanked, hard, on the intermittently visible chain that connected to my needled chest. I wondered how it attached, and whether he wore his end of it as an unseeable ring.
“I’m just saying, my lord, it was already weird when I was a vulture, and it’s extra weird now.” I rubbed at the needle’s head, soothing my poor stung flesh.
“What’s ‘weird’ is that I have yet to wring your neck. Clothing will be purchased, be content with that.” He returned to his book, opening it with a pointed snap. When I didn’t move, he growled, “What? Oh, the original purpose of my summons. You said you’d clean.”
“I have been cleaning!”
“Yes, I noticed that someone had smeared the dust around in concentric patterns. Are you doing this to anger me, or is it genuine incompetence?”
Neither option seemed good.
The sorcerer pushed back his oily curtain of hair. “Do better. You can go.” He waved in dismissal. I did not budge. “Now what?”
“Can we go clothes shopping now? My lord?” I pulled at the front of my pants to demonstrate their bagginess, nearly causing them to fall. “It’s just that I’m always tripping, and I’d hate to accidentally flash you. Since you don’t want to be seduced.”
From the contortion of his face, you’d think Merulo was the one with a needle in his chest.
“Fine,” the sorcerer spat. “We leave now.”
And he really did mean now. Drawing a pouch from his cloak, he emptied the contents into one palm: white chalk, and several smooth pebbles.
I watched him kneel in the dust, scratching a round shape of intricate outline with the chalk.
The diagram took a minute to produce in full, at the end of which he placed the small stones around the edges at regular intervals, singing odd words in a wistful melody.
Light shot from the circle, in a flash that left me blinking.
The combined odours of rain, unicorn feces, and fried food filled the room.
“Come along, then,” the mad sorcerer said and, stepping into the circle, he disappeared.
Biting back apprehension and holding my loose pants with one hand, I jumped into the glowing ring—and emerged into a bustling town, slick with fresh rainfall.
The uncloaked sun shone clear overhead, sparkling in puddles that erupted in splashes as unicorn-drawn carts drove through them.
Around us, people strode about their business, with no apparent reaction to the two figures who had just appeared from thin air.
Vendors shouted, hawking street foods and baubles.
Dirty-haired children ran by us, giggling and yelling to one another.
All this commotion passed around me as I stood free and unhunted.
I didn’t notice the tears until they fell, wet on my cheek.
The sorcerer frowned at me but refrained from comment.
For his part, Merulo was transformed. A fashionable black hat sat perched on his head like a confused crow.
In place of his cloak, he wore an open-breasted jacket buttoned with drops of silver, flaring to a tail over his bony rear.
Disconcertingly, his exposed shirt was only a shade lighter than his pallid skin—if not for the ruffle at his neck, it might have given the illusion of partial nudity.
His breeches also made me grin, form-fitted to his stick legs, and culminating in pointed calf-high boots.
Head to toe, he looked like a wealthy and uncomfortable merchant.
Looking down, I found myself similarly transformed, with an unstylish dress falling to my ankles. It was part of the spell, I assumed, cloaking us to blend with our destination. My clothing retained its baggy feel, so I knew it to be an illusion.
“Sir looks almost like a proper person,” I said, tears already drying.
“Is it ‘sir’ now?” The mad sorcerer brushed the front of his jacket, looking uneasy.
“Well, sir, if I use ‘my lord,’ people will look around for the duke I’m addressing.” I stepped forward to link arms with the sorcerer. “Or how about we play it like brother and sister, and dispense with formalities altogether?”
Merulo coughed and tried to pull away, but I was hooked on tight like a barnacle to a ship. Go on and make a scene, you bastard.
My strategy was this: touch, the forgotten vitamin, in the absence of which infants perish and grown men wither.
Perhaps Merulo ordered one of his constructs to hold him at night, with all the comfort of cuddling a knot of brambles, but it could never substitute for skin on warm skin.
With what I had at my disposal (granted, what most people had: a living body), I’d worm into his affection and then, down the line, with the sorcerer yanked about on my puppet strings, my handsome man-body could be restored.
The mad sorcerer leaned his head to mine, and I glowed at our comradery. My plan was already bearing fruit!
“When we get back,” he whispered, “I may genuinely kill you.”
“Ah,” I replied. “Oh. Well.”
He led me, arm in arm, an unremarkable pair of civilians in the crowded street.
The chatter that had come as such relief after the castle’s silence was becoming overwhelming, making me feel as though we walked amid a great flock of birds.
I tried to glimpse myself in the shopfront windows, craning my neck until a break in the passersby revealed a strange woman peering back at me.
“Wait,” I said to the sorcerer, pulling him bodily over to the glass.
Hovering in translucence over a rack of display shoes, a woman gawked back at me with familiar amber eyes.
Ringlets of gold fell to her chin, a lion’s mane about a face that glowed bronze from the sun.
Her lips were pouty petals, her jaw slim and graspable, her breasts heaving under an unremarkable brown dress.
“Well,” I said. “Aren’t you the pervert? Look how delectable you made me!”
“Quiet,” he hissed. “This isn’t my design. It’s simply how you’d look as the opposite sex. If you’re unable to handle it, we can always return to the vulture.”
“I’m handling it. It’s absolutely handled. Let’s get some clothes, please.”
The mad sorcerer attempted to enter a modest store, already occupied by a pair of drably attired shoppers, but—remembering how easily he’d paid off the chancellor—I tugged at his arm, leading him across the street to a more elegant establishment.
Merulo shouted a dark cloud of oaths as a carriage nearly trampled us and I yanked him hard out of the way, directing him around traffic to our destination.
“Stop. Pulling. Me,” Merulo said in my ear, the clip of his words implying an ‘or else.’
I kept a firm hold on his arm. “Stop standing in front of unicorns.”
A shop assistant opened the door for us, releasing a billow of perfume-drenched air.
Our eyes hardly needed to adjust as the expansive windows let in a fall of natural light.
Soft, sweet fabrics hung about the shop like fruits to be plucked.
In the center stood a carved mannequin, eerily reminiscent of the sorcerer’s constructs, clothed in a waterfall of rippling peach satin with sleeves puffed like wasp hives. I let the longing show on my face.
“Welcome, sir, madam. How can I be of assistance?” A plump woman in a dress that fit her like the rind of a lemon stood waiting with a smile.
“My sister,” said the sorcerer, “needs attire in which she can kneel on the ground for hours brushing dust and mold. Something that does not foul easily. And I don’t want to spend much money.”
I let out a small noise of pain.
The seamstress sucked her teeth, passing me a look of sympathy. “We do have items at the lower end of the price range, and fabrics that are easier to wash. Mind, a beauty like you could make a burlap sack look like a queen’s gown.”
“Oh, do you think so?” I clasped a hand to my chest, trying not to let the sorcerer’s sigh ruin the moment. “Thank you so much.”