Chapter 19
In Which I Am Sore and Bruised in Some Excellent Ways, and In Which I Certainly See the Appeal of Having a Different Set of Plumbing.
I woke up smiling to myself. “Hello, fog,” I said, to the curls of white infiltrating the stone window slit.
“Hello, rat stain on the floor. Hello, hard, shitty cot. Hello—” I paused, as something broke through my tranquility.
A feeling of dampness on the bed beneath me.
But I couldn’t have . . . I was an adult, for God’s sake!
Already plotting how I would hide this from the sorcerer, I pulled back the curtain I used as a blanket, and screamed.
I found the sorcerer in the kitchen, leaning over a pair of plates in nervous inspection. Breakfast for us, I assumed. Tiny kitchen constructs prodded at the eggs and bread, optimizing their placement; these scattered at my approach.
“Merulo,” I choked, drawing my blanket tighter around myself, “something’s wrong. I think I’m dying.”
“Is that my curtain?” The sorcerer stepped out from behind the table, squinting at my wrapping. At my choked sob, he paled, hands jumping into the air where they fluttered like sickly birds. “Calm down, calm down. What’s the matter?”
Unable to speak, I simply unwrapped my blanket to show him.
The sorcerer shouted, his panic, for a moment, reflecting my own. Then, he paused, and a change came over his face. Unbelievably, he snorted. “How can you be this poorly educated?”
“Merulo!” I wailed.
“Alright, alright! Damn you. This is what you wanted, yes, to be a woman? And not a vulture? So then . . .” He waved a hand, poorly masking his own discomfort. “Here are the consequences.”
“Merulo,” I moaned, clutching at him with a red-stained hand. “My insides are coming out.”
“No, they’re not. They’re—there must be a book for this. Sit there, I’ll find you a book. And don’t drip. You’re dripping everywhere.”
I lowered myself into a chair, barely containing a sob. “It hurts.”
The sorcerer—who had backtracked so hastily he nearly tripped over a bag of flour—placed himself at the opposite side of the table, looking ready to leap if I grabbed for him again.
“Women go through this every month,” he said, his lopsided stare fixed on a hanging bundle of herbs.
“Did you not . . . did your mother . . . ?”
“She died,” I said, fidgeting. The fabric of my dress felt uncomfortably damp, and it was driving me close to madness. “In childbirth. I don’t remember her much.”
The sorcerer’s face went through an odd series of contortions. “I’m sorry to hear that. Mine is . . . similarly disposed.”
“Yes, I assumed,” I said, wiping at my face. “Because of your age.”
“How old do you think I am? No, don’t answer that.” He brought his fingernails to his face, as if to claw his cheeks. “This entire thing was a terrible idea. Though it is a relief to know you’re not expecting.”
It took a moment to process that. Then: “WHAT!” I shot up from my seat, the blanket falling. “That was a possibility?”
“Yes, I mean . . . Cameron, when a man and a woman—”
A horror seized me, entirely distinct from the Fear. I slammed my hands down on the table, the plates jumping from the force. “Turn me back into a man. Right this moment.”
“Ah . . .” Merulo wavered in place. “The prophecy—”
“I’M BLEEDING OUT!” I roared.
“Yes, yes,” said the sorcerer, more flustered than I’d ever seen him. “Yes, alright, it’s just . . . alright.”
At his hesitation, something in me deflated. “You would still like me as a man, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s the prophecy. You do remember the prophecy, don’t you, Cameron? But,” he added hurriedly, as another sob built in my throat, “I would. That is to say, I would still appreciate you, as a man. Though the mechanics . . .”
“Oh,” I said, brightening. “I can teach you that.”
The sorcerer half turned from me, his face reddening; at the flashing of his eye, a pair of kitchen constructs toddled in.
Heat drenched the room from the still-burning oven.
Bending, the constructs seized either side of a large paddle and dipped it into the flames, fishing out a plump loaf.
The scent of fresh bread and fire rose, almost drowning out the copper of blood.
Merulo’s eye flashed again, and I realized he was avoiding the interaction. “Merulo,” I insisted.
He jumped, before clearing his throat and drawing himself to his full sorcerous height.
“We could, perhaps, restore you to your original form. My castle has remained unbreached for decades. That will not change, regardless of the bodily sex you walk about in. Some deviation may still be warranted to subvert the prophecy. A change in hair colour—”
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I have to be blonde!”
“And why is that?”
I thought it over. “I’m more handsome as a blonde.”
“Oh for . . .” The sorcerer kneaded his brow. “Fine, fine. The fault is mine, for assuming your looks are worth less than your life.” From between two gnarled fingers, he peeked a ghastly eye at me, presumably to see if his taunting had any effect.
I didn’t budge.
The continued silence gave me the opportunity to wipe more snot from my face. For some reason, Merulo stared as I did this, with something near to a grimace. “Don’t do that,” he said finally. “You’re . . . you’re leaving streaks.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, let’s just—” He clapped his hands together. “Let us go. Now.”
I hopped to my feet and followed his departing form out of the fire-warmed room through the winding corridors, leaving my poor stained blanket behind.
It distracted from my misery to see the castle constructs stand aside, respectfully issuing our passage. That these towering monstrosities of wood and teeth could give way to a frail, thin-shouldered man seemed comically imbalanced. Though, he did strut like he expected every ounce of subservience.
When we reached the library, I realized that I’d forgotten to treasure my final moments in female form. Would I miss it? Would I miss these?
“Stop that,” snapped the sorcerer, and I lowered my hands from my chest. “Wait in there. I have materials to gather, before we can begin.”
When he returned, he had a bandage wrapped around one hand, a bag of chalk occupying the other. Crumpled beneath one arm he carried a stack of papers with what looked like blood staining them.
I looked at them in question. He scowled back at me. “This is costly magic. If I’m to be doing it every other week, then it must be made more efficient.”
“And . . . blood makes it efficient?”
“Blood pays the price.”
“Ah,” I said, not understanding. We might as well have used mine, if that were the case; I had an awful lot of it at the moment.
For all his grumbling, the casualness with which he performed his spells amazed me.
I’d heard of people saving up half their lives to afford this procedure, but here I lay on my third transmogrification of the summer, a chalk outline being traced about me.
I tried not to look at the ruin of my dress, though the discomfort of the stiffening fabric made my situation unignorable.
Merulo placed the bloodied papers at the spokes of the pentacle.
Kneeling carefully so as not to smudge the chalk, he took one of my hands (with a downturning of his mouth that, frankly, I did not appreciate).
He produced a slim knife from his robes and sliced off the outer crescent of my pinkie nail, then moved to my head and cut a lock of hair.
“A quick prick,” he warned, before sticking the knife into my exposed arm.
“Ouch!” I drew my arm back instinctively, before surrendering it again at his huff. The blade had penetrated shallowly, drawing only a single droplet of blood, which he scraped up with the flat of his blade.
Having gathered all the necessary components, Merulo deposited them into a loop above my head, where the chalk outline bloomed into a pentagram. And he spoke the words.
There was the wet crack of flesh, my body shifting and crunching around me, and a distant awareness of agony, the numbing of which was surely central to the spell.
Then came the tear of fabric as a muscled man’s body erupted through my slim linen dress.
The corset held until I sat up, then snapped with a crack that resounded through the library.
The relief was immediate. I could wash, I could change, and I would never again experience whatever the fuck that was.
“Well. That’s done with.” I flexed the new breadth of my shoulders. It felt unbelievably good to rise to my full height and see the sorcerer shrink. My calm restored, I felt ready to talk about things in a more sensible manner. “Does that really happen to all of them?”
“I think so,” said the sorcerer. “Mostly. I mean, I’ve read . . .” He trailed off, grimacing, and I joined him in his silence.
Only for a moment, though. “That can’t be true. Even Glenda?”
“I don’t know!” Merulo threw up his hands in furious helplessness. “If she’s not beyond the age of . . . then . . . actually no, Cameron, I do not wish to discuss elf menstruation with you. There’s a book. I’ll provide you with a book.”
He hurried off between his shelves, fleeing me. The sound of books rasping against their neighbours and pages flicking told me that he was genuinely seeking out the information.
As I stood there in my torn and stained dress, it occurred to me: I’d gotten exactly what I wanted! All of it: my humanity, my handsome man-body, and the sorcerer under my thumb. Granted, the route I’d taken was perhaps not what I’d have chosen or expected.
I mean, every month? That just couldn’t be true.