Chapter Eleven
It’s a long walk back to the tram stop. We stumble along, my legs feeling like they’re turning to lead, me leaning on Bastian.
“Oi oi!” someone yells as we stagger past the chip shop. There are two white blokes standing in the doorway smoking. One of them is holding an empty pint glass from the pub next door. “Had one too many, has she?”
“Yeah, mate!” Bastian calls back in a jovial, laddish voice that sounds nothing like him, but his hand tightens across my shoulders. “Getting her to the station now!”
He hurries me on faster. I’m not surprised, and I’m not mad at him for playing straight. It definitely seems safer. We walk past them, my legs still wobbling and unpredictable, my steps sloppy. I trip over a curb and Bastian has to steady me. “Shit.”
“So it all feels completely different?” Bastian asks, holding my elbow tightly as I straighten up. I hate these questions, I’ve always hated them, because this is supposed to be as easy for me as growing, as breathing. Instead it’s violent and broken and produces frowns rather than smiles.
“How would you feel if you suddenly grew tits?” I demand.
“Weird, I reckon.” He says it so calmly that it takes all the indignation out of me.
“Yeah.” I’m too tired to brush him off with sarcasm. “I don’t usually…”
“Don’t usually what?” He slows his steps down until I’ve got back into a heavy, limping rhythm, definitely looking like a drunk.
“I don’t usually shift so often,” I admit. “Before this summer, my last shift was the summer of first year.”
That had been the shift after Carl Lord’s consistent attempts to jump me in annoying places. At least my hair becoming long and curly, my waist narrowing, my boobs suddenly appearing had been enough to deter him.
“How many times have you shifted?” he asks.
“Um … it’s hard to say but … maybe twelve? Since I started college this will be my third.”
“That isn’t usual for shifters, is it?”
“No,” I say flatly. “For most shifters, it’s like changing a coat or putting on pajamas. They have a resting form they return to. It’s natural.”
Which makes me unnatural. Or at least, that’s how it’s always been told to me. I try not to think about it as I continue to stagger toward the luminescent glow of the tram stop. Bastian walks quietly beside me.
“I don’t know how you do it, anyway,” he says eventually. “If I had to change form like you do, I’d not cope. I’d be massively dysphoric.”
“Well, I’m not coping and I am massively dysphoric,” I say automatically, and then wince, wishing I hadn’t. I don’t want him to pity me.
“Touché,” he says. Then he gives me a steady, sidelong glance, his left hand held out toward me like he’s indicating on a bike, as if he wants to leave it there for me to grab in case of emergency. “There’s something I don’t get.”
“What?”
“Well, shifters don’t age like humans or witches, right?” Bastian says thoughtfully. I nod. It’s another reason witches don’t like us very much. We can outlive them by double. “You get old but your forms, once they’ve reached adulthood, they don’t have to get old.”
“Yeah.”
“So why not look young forever? Why not be whatever gender or no gender and just embrace the intersectionality of it?” Bastian asks. “It seems like all shifters should be as flexible with gender as you are.”
“That’s hilarious, please tell every shifter you ever meet that.”
“Why is it such a big deal?” Bastian presses.
I sigh and pause to give my sore muscles a rest, leaning my head against the wall.
It’s the question that’s haunted me my entire life and I still don’t have an adequate answer, unless you count: Because this is the way we are, Lando.
They told me I could be like the shifters who settle into one form and never change again, who age their form as naturally as they want, who follow the obvious paths of humanity, and when their body wears out, because our bodies do eventually wear out their ability to shift and pump blood and breathe, die in a manner that reflects a human death.
They told me I could follow in the family business, go into espionage or security, shifting between forms but maintaining a key, solid gender identity at home, as if playing dress-up in my skin should be enough to fulfill the part of me that has always wanted more.
Align with your resting form, Orlando! a voice yells at me from the past. Don’t give them a reason to hate you!
“Because shifters still live in this world, with all the prejudice and bullshit that comes with it,” I say, staring up at the lamppost light that is casting a dim sepia gleam over us.
“We’re not like witches, we’re hidden, concealing our powers from humans to stay safe and managing our magic so witches don’t hate us more.
Conforming to a gender binary is a type of safety, another tool we can use to hide our difference.
At least that’s always how it’s been taught to me.
Not conforming to a gender binary is seen as needlessly reckless.
They don’t believe that actually being nonbinary is who I am. They think it’s a choice.”
I can’t help the bitterness in my voice on that final word, one that my parents have thrown in my face all my life. There is a long pause and Bastian doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“I don’t hate you,” he says finally. “I think you’re … brave.”
I stare at him. In the glimmer of the streetlight his handsomeness is curiously transformed, the gruesome glow making him too tall, too sharp, too crow-like. Somehow, it makes me like him more.
We walk down the ramp onto the empty platform.
A fox runs across the opposite platform like it’s late for the tram, a flash of burnished fur and neat black paws, and then hops off, disappearing into the bushes.
Two pinpricks of light appear in the distance that remind me nastily of the eyes of the boggart and I shiver.
The tram rattles in, casting a mechanical yellow shine over us both, and suddenly, looking at Bastian in the normality of fluorescent lights, I see how scruffy he looks.
Denim jacket muddy, T-shirt torn, hair full of twigs. I can’t imagine I look much better.
“Are you sure you want to do this still?” I ask uncertainly, because it seems like the polite inquiry after you’ve nearly been killed by a boggart.
“Yes,” Bastian says quickly. He leans past me and presses the button. We both climb on board and find seats. I’m surprised that when I pick two seats by the window, he slides into the one next to me rather than finding another set, farther down. He sighs and leans his head back, eyes closing.
“Sleepy?” I ask.
“Not to be dramatic but my hand really hurts,” he mutters, and I look down at his cut hand. It’s filthy, smeared with mud and blood. “And I have to stock up on a lifetime’s supply of goat’s cheese when I get home.”
I smirk to myself, imagining how that online shop is going to go.
“There’s this great cheesemonger in Didsbury,” I say. “You could probably set up a standing order.”
“Christ,” Bastian groans. “I suppose I could just get an actual goat and make it myself.”
“And where would the goat live?”
“In the flat, of course, can’t you tell it’s remarkably goat friendly?”
“And what about René?”
“I’ve been thinking about getting René a mate to play with.”
“Most people choose another dog.”
“I don’t want René to be one of those racist dogs who only has dog friends, Lando, come on.”
I laugh and my laugh turns to choking because I’m so thirsty.
Bastian reaches into his satchel and pulls out a reusable bottle of water, handing it to me easily.
I’m too dry to cough out a thank-you and by the time I’ve glugged down half of it, Bastian’s eyes are drooping and his breath has evened out into a doze.
I don’t blame him, really. It was a lot of magic he did and I would be feeling sleepy myself, if I didn’t have so much to think through.
I roll my sore wrists in circles and finally turn my mind fully to my shift.
What does it mean that I had a vision of a suffragette meeting in Boggart Hole Clough, the site of a famous gathering?
Why are the stories in an old diary infecting my mind?
I’ve heard of ancient witches who have visions—some have old rings that once held the gift of foresight—but I don’t know of any shifters who do.
Also, if it was a vision, why did it feel so real?
Why can I still feel the brush of the long dress around my ankles and the bake of the sun on the back of my neck?
For a wild second, I pull out my phone. I’ve even selected the contact marked MOTHER and hovered my thumb over the CALL button before I come to my senses.
If I want answers about shifters, I will literally go anywhere else in the world to get them.
The tram slows down, pulling into St. Peter’s Square, the closest stop to Bastian’s flat. I nudge his shoulder. He jerks awake.
“Shas!” he gasps out. My chest tightens. I know that feeling; I recognize that desperate tone. He’s been dreaming about his dead brother.
“It’s your stop,” I say. I know that the last thing I want after I’ve dreamed about Elizabeth is to be asked about it.
“Oh.” He looks around a little blearily. “Well. Good night, then.”
“Yeah.”
I can tell he’s still struggling to pull himself out of his nightmare and I don’t add anything else as he gets off the tram.
I watch him walk down the platform in the dark as the tram pulls away into the night, taking me out of the city.
I wonder what his dreams are like and if they are as bad as mine.
When I get home to Beryl’s, I do what I always do after a shift.
I stand naked in front of the long mirror that hangs on the back of my door and look at my reflection, trying to learn myself in this new form, stretching and flexing every muscle to feel its limits.
People always think shifters will change themselves into miraculously strong or brilliantly slim forms, but they forget that shifters can’t change what they don’t have.
I’ve never been a very athletic person, easily running to fat.
My last form was taller so I was leaner, but this one is shorter.
I’m still pudgy and soft all over, but rounder in the face and hips and fuller in the chest. My eyebrows are bushy and my hair is dark and coarse all over, and shoulder length from my head, in curls that I can see will easily go to frizz with a little humidity.
My eyes are dark brown, and as I look at my wide hips and wobbly thighs, taking in my round nostrils and pointed Cupid’s bow, I feel like I always do after a shift, like I’ve borrowed someone else’s flesh.
I’ve never had this happen before, shifting so abruptly.
Aside from the incident in the cave with Elizabeth, throughout my childhood I used to always feel a shift coming on, the same way you feel vomit coming.
I’ve absolutely never had a vision while shifting.
Just thinking about it makes the hair all over my new skin rise up, an uncanny sensation flooding my body.
I try to tell myself it doesn’t mean anything—I read a story in the book, I had a strange dream, so naturally, my shift followed my thoughts.
But shifts are not supposed to follow whims, they’re supposed to follow will, they’re supposed to be inside my control.
Magic is to be directed, Orlando! my mother used to shout at me.
Directed by will! Shivering, I climb into bed and tell myself the same thing I tell myself every time I shift, over and over, until I fall asleep: I am more than my body, I am more than a label, I am Orlando, I am Orlando, I am Orlando. …