CW:

Chapter Four

I plodded behind the witch as she took me to the center of her house, passing by piles of glass tubes and strange, dripping contraptions full of oddly colored liquids. When we reached the center of the building, we climbed a thin, spiral staircase. It led up to an attic with a small desk covered in sheaves of paper, an antique globe, a collection of ancient books stacked atop a wooden crate, and a strange tube with glass on both ends, mounted on a tripod and pointed right out the window.

“Why do we need to be alone?” I asked.

“Because I want to make sure you have space to speak your mind without worrying about judgment. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and I doubt our social circles will overlap much. Whatever you say will not leave this room if you don’t want it to. Of that you have my word.”

“You sound like the Mind-Healer.”

“She and I are… good friends, yes.”

I snorted. Of course. “So, what, you think I don’t like my body. Now what?”

“You keep tensing up whenever I call you Rondren.”

I cringed yet again.

“Like that, yes,” Verona said. “What are you feeling when I call you that?”

“I-I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Who wants to be called… that? It’s such a weird-sounding name, you know? Like, Rawn-drain—I mean, why would I want to be called something stupid like—like that?”

“Okay,” Verona said, spinning the chair at her desk around and sitting backwards on it. “And what would a good name sound like?”

I froze. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t have a chair, nor did I have anything to do with my hands. Though the window was open, her air conditioner was downstairs, so it was awfully hot up here, and I kept sweating under my cloak. But I clung to it like a child holding her mother at night.

“I don’t—I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about better names for myself,” I said, trying to laugh her question off.

Her eyes shrank yet again.

“I mean,” I said, “I’ve thought of it a f-few times, but only as, like, a joke. Like, w-wouldn’t it be funny if I was called… something else?”

“A very funny joke,” Verona said.

“Y-yeah, you get it!”

“So, what’s the punchline?”

“Uh…”

“Come on, what would it be funny for you to be called?”

Rosalie.

The thought bubbled up to the front of my mind without my consent. Frantically, I looked for any means of escape, but the staircase was the only place I could go, and down there was Lynn. If I told her about all this, she’d think I was just some freak. But—wait, tell her about what? There was nothing to tell! I’d just been making it up this whole time. After all, it would be too much of a coincidence if I of all people was… different. I was just a normal g—person, person, who, who was perfectly fine! Yes! I loved spending my time up in the tower, where no one could see my hideous fucking form, and—and—

I wept.

Collapsing to my knees, I wept as hard as I could, for a long, long time. Long enough that my whole body began to ache, my breaths becoming faster and faster, my heart pounding as hard as a cannon, my lungs straining to take in enough air.

And then, Verona knelt beside me. She didn’t touch me—thank the Highest she didn’t touch me—she just started breathing. Loud enough that I could hear. In and out, pausing between each breath.

Instinctively, I followed her rhythm. Up and down, I let myself get lost in the sensation of breath. She tapped on the floor, and I listened to the sound, concentrating on that. Soon, a strange scent wafted by, and I noticed that she’d lit a candle at some point.

After a few minutes, I felt my heart harden, going numb once more. But at least I could breathe.

“I’m going to suggest something,” Verona said. “Now, I don’t really know you, so I could be completely off-base here. If I am, let me know, and we’ll work from there. But if I’m right, I want to let you know ahead of time that I can help you—more than you probably think is possible. And so I don’t upset you, I’m just going to call you R for now. Is that okay?”

Barely acknowledging her with my muddled mind, I nodded, eager for her to say her piece so I could leave and get back to my tower.

“Well, R. Uh—this might be a lot, but have you ever thought that, maybe, you might not necessarily be a… man?”

I gaped at her.

“Now,” she said, “I’m not insulting you, R. I’m not a man, myself, so I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to be something else. But, you know, if you don’t like being a man—if it feels like you’re pretending or playing a role you don’t like—you don’t have to be one.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blinked. We just looked at each other for a long, long time as my frazzled mind tried to understand a word she’d just said.

“I do,” I said. It was such an obvious fact. What was she even talking about?

“N-no,” Verona said. “No, you don’t. Haven’t the Archivists told you that there are other types of people out there?”

“W-well,” I said, “yeah, I suppose, but… that’s really rare, so it’d be a huge coincidence—”

“Putting the coincidence aside,” Verona said, a bit of an edge in her voice, “I think it’s mostly about what you want. That’s what I care about right now.”

I stared at her, periodically opening and closing my mouth like a fish.

Eventually, she spoke again. “R, would you rather be a woman?”

My brain broke at that point. My eyes must have gone wild, because she recoiled.

“You don’t have to be a woman, specifically—there are other kinds of people—but, I mean, you seem pretty, uh, responsive to the idea, so—”

“I can’t be a woman,” I said, explaining it to her like a child. “I have a—I’m a man.”

She scoffed, looking off. Then, she got a sly look in her eyes and turned back to me. “What if I told you I could turn you into a woman?”

I froze.

“I am a witch, after all. I can use my Magick and turn you into a woman right now!”

I stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence. “M-my w-wife,” I said.

“Don’t worry about what anyone will say. It’s just you and me up in this tower—and it’s a bit telling that your first reaction is to wonder what somebody else will think, rather than denying any of it, huh?”

Shaking my head, I stood up and wandered to the window, pushing aside the strange tube, and letting myself breathe fresh air.

“You can actually do that?” I asked, breathless.

“Easily,” she said.

“H-how? How can you turn someone into a woman? I mean, what would everyone say? What would I do?”

She wagged her finger at me. “Ah, my ways are secret. But I can do it right now, and the best part is that I can do it slowly, so you don’t have to tell anyone right away. I can snap my fingers and turn you into a woman, yes, but your body is another matter—for that, I’d give you two special drugs that would slowly change you. You’d grow breasts, your hips would widen, your skin would soften, and your face would become more girlish, dainty. I could teach you to change your voice to match, too. It wouldn’t be hard at all, and you’d never have to pretend to be a man. Only a few months’ work, and you’d be a woman. Just like that.”

With every word she said, I only grew more and more desperate for this to be true—but it couldn’t be true, could it? Nobody could just… become a woman, just like that.

“W-what would I have to do?”

“I can do it right now, R. Would you like me to?”

My mouth going dry, I managed to let out a strangled sound that might have resembled the word, “okay.”

Smiling, she walked over to her desk and retrieved a few candles and a piece of chalk. She found a long, slow-burning fire stick and lit it with a few scrapes of a flint and steel. Humming, she drew a circle around me, lit the candles, and arranged them around the edges of the circle. She closed the curtains, and the room was bathed in darkness, save the light of the five candles.

Striking the flint and steel a few more times, she closed her eyes. I watched the sparks dance on the floor as she chanted in a language I’d never heard before:

“Aliquid, aliquid, magica, magica! Hoc certum est magum carmen, iuro!”

After a moment of silence, she blew out the candles, opened the curtains, and wiped her hands clean of the chalk.

“There!” she said. “You’re a girl now.”

Blinking, I stared down at my hands. I felt no different, but... she was a real witch, with real Magick. She wouldn't just lie about casting a spell, so it must have done what she said. My eyes twitched. I took shaky breaths, realizing the gravity of what I'd just let her do. Highest, I thought, no, no, this is all wrong!

I couldn’t be a woman! That wasn’t allowed—that wasn’t for me, I wasn’t—I couldn’t just take womanhood for myself, no matter what some witch said or did to me. But now, I was changed. She’d changed me. And I’d asked her to do it. By the Highest, I couldn’t live like this.

I couldn’t just be Rosalie. That wasn’t how the world worked. I was born one way; I couldn’t just reject the sentence fate had condemned me to. After all, I didn’t deserve to be something wonderful, something beautiful. Women were the blessed children of the Highest; men were dull, dirty, unlovable beasts that no one would ever choose to be. This was my punishment.

The witch had meant to offer me a gift, but she had cursed me. Now, I would forever be a freak, stuck with the body of a man but the soul of a woman. A process left ever incomplete, because it was performed on a wretch whose bent in life was to suffer.

So, I got to my feet, wiped my eyes dry, and took a step toward the stairs.

“R?” Verona said. “Are you okay?”

“T-thank you,” I said. “But it’s Rondren.”

With that, I slunk down the stairs.

 

Oh dear! I hope that didn't just SPELL Rosalie's doom! Eh? EH?

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