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 aroundin 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’dhateto 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 hookedon 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.”
