“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 toa 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 missthese?
“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, hetook 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 fuckthatwas.
“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.
