In an old changing room on an abandoned beach was an ancient, ruined mirror. There were cracks all along it, and the few spots that weren’t shattered were stained with dirt and grime. It made a horrible mirror, but it felt like a perfect representation of the ruined city it sat within. 

Some other people might’ve tried casting a spell or two to return the mirror to its former glory, but to me the mirror couldn’t be better. It was just broken enough that, unless I wanted to, I didn’t have to look at my awful reflection. I never had to see my lifeless orange eyes, or notice my depressingly short white hair. I could avoid focusing on the hints of stubble poking out of my chin, and I was able to pretend that maybe, just maybe, my oversized figure was smaller than it actually was.

It was the one relief I had before my daily swim. Every day, while my mother and sisters slept, I went to the beach. I never spent more than half an hour swimming, I couldn’t stand the painful truth surrounding me every time I went into the water, but I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to believe that, if I just kept trying, eventually my wish would come true. 

Every woman in my family, with no exceptions, suffers from our bloodline’s curse. The curse has always appeared at some point between each girl’s sixteenth and nineteenth birthdays. From then on, every time they enter a lake or ocean, they are transformed into a creature most old human texts call a mermaid, or siren. The specific name is confusing, though my experiences with my oldest sister tell me that singing definitely isn’t improved as part of the curse.

The curse is fairly benign, all things considered. It only affects women in the family, for one. For two, the specific circumstances to activate it are easy to avoid. Even so, every woman in the family feels grief over the curse they suffer from. It might only be considered an inconvenience when compared to the kinds of curses other families had to suffer through, but it was still something to constantly think about and work around. 

Was I so terrible for wanting to be part of that? 

I wasn’t the young man everyone thought I was. My body might’ve told people that, but I knew they were wrong. They had to be. I wasn’t Jonah, son of Ezran. I was Madison, daughter of Sybil. Every time they called me by a name I had cast off, every night I had to live knowing who I was meant to be, was like torture. I prayed to Gaia every morning, just before I left to swim, for Her to give me some sign that She understood who I was, but every day She was silent. 

I was three days away from turning nineteen, and I didn’t know what I would do if my prayers were left unanswered. I needed an answer, a beacon of hope, something. Anything.

Before too long I was standing just at the shoreline, my feet tickled by the last trickles of waves as they broke up along the land. According to my great-grandmother, the beach used to be covered in filth, the water black from the damage done to it by the humans of old. I couldn’t imagine how disgusting that must have been. The idea that the sand and water could have been anything but pristine and untouched by human nature was unbelievable to me. 

I walked into the current without hesitation. I’d done this hundreds of times before, there was no point in holding back. As more and more of my body was submerged, I had a feeling that I was in for more disappointment, but I kept going. I had to push myself to stay for the full thirty minutes, no matter what. 

And I did. The pain in my heart grew more the longer I was unaffected by my time in the ocean, but I had to stay. Thirty minutes felt like an eternity, but it was something I had to force myself to suffer through. The longer I stayed, the better my chances of the curse finally deciding to pick me.

My lungs burned like the always did as I neared the conclusion of my swim. My heart felt like it was working as hard as it could to keep me alive. The physical pain these organs were causing me felt almost enough to match the emotional pain I was going through. The longer I swam, the more I hurt, but I wouldn’t let myself stop. Not until my allotted time was up.

Once my time in the water passed, I stayed laying on my back on the shore. Waves continued washing over me as if I wasn’t there, and I was content to stay that way. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to deal with the pain of continuing on in a form that wasn’t, and could never be, me.  

Every time I swam, I let myself feel hope. Ever since I was sixteen, it was the only thing I had. The only thing keeping me going through the constant agony that was my life. An agony that began when my body started turning against me, and didn’t seem close to stopping. 

As the last handful of days before my nineteenth birthday began to pass with nothing changing, what little hope I had was fading fast. The curse always affected women before they turned nineteen. I was one, I knew that, but knowing that Gaia didn’t seem to agree was tearing me apart. 

In time, I forced myself up to begin the trek home. I didn’t want to go, but my heart couldn’t take too much more of the pain staying would bring.

My journey home was several kilometers long, as far from the ocean as possible while staying near the cluster of other families within the limits of the old city. We lived a bit far out from Cos, the village where the other families in town lived, but we were always close enough that we could quickly and easily get supplies or help. Traveling so far just for basic medical help or to socialize with others was annoying, but I understood why my family chose to live so far away.

I made a habit of avoiding walking close to the old buildings of the city as I made my way home. The decades without human inhabitants had done a number on most of the older buildings. Many were falling apart, and it wasn’t unheard of for one or two to collapse at random. Nobody had died to a building’s collapse, yet, but it was always better to take as few risks as possible. I didn’t want a freak accident to happen when my mom didn’t even know where I was.

Great-Grandmother always called the city eerie when she walked through it, but I never understood why. Sure, there weren’t any people to talk to, and there wasn’t much noise, but that only made it more relaxing. Hearing the birds chirping, or the sound of the wind blowing through the streets, was more calming than off-putting to me. The songs the birds sang alone were usually enough to make up for the fact that I had to be awake during the day. 

I made it home without much issue. Dim sunlight passed through the clouds covering the land. I grimaced; I was later getting home than normal. Everyone would still be asleep, thankfully, but I was probably going to lose out on another hour of sleep. Dusk was probably only five or so hours away, which meant I had a maximum of five hours before I had to get up for breakfast. 

Thankfully it was much easier to tell when dusk was than it used to be. A few years ago the dark clouds that used to permanently cover the sky faded, replaced by much thinner clouds that did little to block out the full, painful light of the orb in the sky called the Sun. Apparently it made taking care of plants easier, but that didn’t make me like it. My family slept when it was in the sky for good reason. 

I took my usual steps to keep quiet as I headed to my room, and soon enough was alone on my bed. I didn’t think I felt tired prior to lying down, but within seconds I felt the overwhelming urge to sleep.

*****

“Jonah, get up! Breakfast is getting cold!” I heard one of my sisters—I was too tired to pay attention to which one—yell through my door. I didn’t move, but I knew I’d have to eventually. Five hours was nowhere near enough time to rest, but I had to act like I had plenty of sleep. I had kept my swimming sessions secret for almost three years, and three days until, for better or worse, I was done with them was not the time to let that secret get out. 

I slowly forced my way out of bed, muttering all the while. I rubbed my eyes in the hopes that doing so might clear up some of the drowsiness no doubt evident on my face, but I had no way of confirming that it did anything without looking into a mirror. I threw on some clothes with no real attention paid to what they looked like, and headed into the dining room. 

Our table was already fully set, with most of the family sitting around it. Bea, my oldest sister, was doing dishes, but everyone else was still digging in. Selkie, the middle sister just behind me, seemed to pout when she saw me. It looked like she had been using my chair as a place to rest her legs, again.  

Mom smiled as she caught sight of me, and turned her attention from my youngest sister, Melody, to me. “Good to see you’re awake. Are you feeling alright, sweetie? You don’t normally sleep in so late.” I loved my mom for how much she cared and I didn’t want to lie to her, but telling her the truth was so terrifying. She loved her son. I didn’t want her to think that I’d killed him, or took him away from her. 

I nodded my head as I took a seat and dug in. The food wasn’t much, just a usual fish and berry stew, but I tore into it all the same. I rarely ate after swimming, in order to minimize the noise I made once I got home, so I always felt ravenous when I woke up. Mom used to comment on my appetite, usually calling it a ‘sign that I was a growing boy,’ but at some point she stopped commenting at all. I didn’t know if it was because she noticed my discomfort or if it just became business as usual to her, but I was thankful all the same.

“Well, if you say so. Melody, what was it you were talking about before your brother came in?” I didn’t let myself flinch at being gendered incorrectly, but I still felt the pain deep in my heart. It might have been dulled, like all of my emotions, but it was still there. 

Melody began rambling like always. I tried paying attention, but I was too used to her long winded stories to care too much. It probably had something to do with the traveling witch’s apprentice she had a crush on, or one of the werewolves from Cos. They were a huge family, making up over half of the population of the village, and a good number of the kids were her age, so if she wasn’t talking about her crush it was safe to bet that she was talking about them. 

 My first guess was right, as it turned out. Apparently the apprentice girl told her that she was on her way to Cos, and she wanted to spend some of her time in town with Melody. Bea and Selkie were obviously trying to push the two of them together, but I couldn’t bring myself to care all that much. Melody was happy, which was good enough.

Selkie was easier to pay attention to, as usual. She was always to the point. “I’m happy for you, Mel. Where are you two going on your little date?” 

“D-date? No, no no no we’re just friends! She’s way too busy for that. Plus she probably doesn’t like me like that.” Melody was blushing up a storm and making excuses all the while. It was hard not to smile at her denials. 

“Oh, come on. Don’t pretend to deny it, Melody. She let you ride with her on her broom. She gave you that statue so you two could keep talking to each other. She made plans to spend time with you as soon as she came back into town. She definitely likes you back.” Bea was, as usual, unwilling to even consider the idea that Mel’s beliefs were true. She broke our sister’s argument down with cool logic, leaving Melody incapable of forming a response. 

Lucky for Melody, our mom came to her rescue. “Girls, stop teasing your sister. You’ve both had crushes before, as I recall. And reacted the same way.” She was smiling, so I knew nobody was in trouble, but when both of my sisters looked embarrassed I could tell they had nothing more to say.

The breakfast table quieted then, which was a situation I was more than content with. Silence meant not hearing the wrong name or pronouns. It meant no forced conversation where I had to pretend to feel anything, or that everything was fine. 

I cleaned my plate and left without too many more words. I said thanks, of course, but I didn’t want to hear my voice long enough to say anything else. It was painfully masculine, yet another sign of everything wrong with this body.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to work this week. I was allowed to rest in my room as long as I wanted in the lead up to my birthday. Others, particularly Bea, would probably argue with the idea of not being able to work, but I was glad to have a break from interacting with people.