“Magic exists with three rules in mind: Consent, Intent, and Will. Any spell cast must always account for these three rules, with no exceptions. If you’ve become interested in magic because you wish to enchant your potential partners into overlooking your flaws then I apologize, it cannot be done. Magic without consent from the target, expressed intent, or strong will from the caster will always fail.” Our school’s guest speaker, Dr. Rivan, continued to drone on about the importance of magic as I barely kept myself from yawning. It wasn’t his fault the lesson was so boring, of course. My mothers’ careers were just so magically involved that I knew every basic thing to know about magic. 

Unfortunately I couldn’t keep my mouth from making noise for very long, and let out an embarrassingly loud yawn a split second before I could cover my mouth. My eyes widened and blush spread across my face as my fellow lower-schoolers stared at me. They knew what was coming, and I saw a few devious smiles from my friends as they imagined how I’d be publicly shamed by our speaker. It was never anything permanent, from what my older brother told me, but it was still going to be enough that nobody from my class would let me live it down. 

“Ah! A volunteer, just what I was looking for! Come up here young man, if you please.” I twitched as he called me young man with that stage actor voice of his. He sounded like an American pretending to do an English accent to sound more professional. That, plus how weird it felt to be addressed as a young man when I was just thirteen, gave me a slight feeling of discomfort. It always gives me that feeling, though I knew it would go away when I was older and grew more comfortable in my body. 

Slowly I stood up, ignoring the stifled laughter from my friends and classmates. I wanted to be mad at them, but I knew that if any of them were in my position I’d be laughing just as much. All of the stories from upper-schoolers told us what was coming, and I was the unfortunate target. Idly I wondered what was in store for me. I knew he always started with an attempted enchantment or physical alteration so that we could resist it and show the power of consent, but the follow up was always different. He’d probably cast a spell to force a gust of air to knock me over, or decrease the temperature around me until I was freezing, but it could be anything so long as I wasn’t the direct target. After all, wind and heat don’t have the First Rule applied to them. 

As I reached the stage the overdramatic doctor gave a theatrical bow and motioned for me to follow. When I didn’t he sighed, and loudly addressed me with his increasingly grating voice. “Now tell me, and the class, what your name is Mr. Disinterested. And, of course, why you felt it prudent to yawn through my lecture.” He was smiling, but for a moment I thought I heard a hint of genuine frustration in his voice. I must have actually upset him, and that made me feel almost as uncomfortable as being called ‘Mr. Disinterested.’ And why wouldn’t I be uncomfortable? I obviously wasn’t old enough yet to be any kind of Mr., and I did genuinely love magic. 

“I apologize for yawning, sir. My name is Maxwell Mayleaf, and I made the mistake last night of staying up late studying.” None of that was false, though I knew he’d probably call me a liar based on the last bit.

I was genuinely surprised when he didn’t. “Oh my! Mayleaf? Why that’s quite a shock, I didn’t realize Elyzabeth and Penny had a son who attended here. More noteworthy, a son lacking magical interest! Well, well, hopefully our little duo of demonstrations will fix that, no?”

I didn’t correct him when he accused me of not wanting to have anything to do with magic, though I wanted to. Sure I wasn’t into the fields of healing or policing like my mothers were, but it wasn’t like I didn’t want anything to do with magic. I loved transmutation, and studied it almost religiously. I had plans of going to an Upper School for transmutation after my fourteenth birthday in the summer, and wanted to apprentice to a professional transmuter once my schooling was over. 

I wasn’t paying attention for the entire time he prepared whatever spell he wanted to fail on me, and by the time I realized we were starting he was already halfway through his explanation. “-course, a spell this powerful requires both an enormous amount of willpower and full understanding of the results on a personal level. Our friend Maxwell (I hated my full name, couldn’t he just call me Max? That was at least tolerable.) will very quickly learn just how thorough this is.” I had tuned out his explanation on what the spell was, but my quick examination of his hands hinted that it had to be transmutation. My mind filled with the possibilities of what it could have been, but before I could even come close to guessing I was thrown out of my thoughts and into… 

My mind?

I was floating in some sort of empty space, a void filled with nothing but vibrant yellows and greens as far as I could see. I didn’t know how, but I knew it was my mind, or some copy of it. I didn’t quite know how I got here, but I figured Dr. Substitute Theatre Teacher was responsible. 

Unfortunately it seemed my mind was dreadfully boring, and there was nothing to do but wait and examine my surroundings of nothingness. Or myself, not that there was anything there I wanted to think about. I always felt uncomfortable in my body, like it was some awkward meat puppet I was piloting at a barely functional level. Examining it here was going to do nothing but bring back that feeling, at least here it felt almost gone.

It was hours before I was interrupted. I had moments of paranoia, when I thought I saw someone in the corner of my eyes, but every time I looked towards what I saw I found nothing. Eventually I learned that I had some semblance of control over everything here. If I imagined it, and had seen it, I could bring it here. Even things I only vaguely remembered, like a kid’s book detailing basic magical knowledge, were perfect replicants of what I’d seen. 

After almost four hours, as I was pushing away boredom by playing catch with a silent clone of my mum, I jumped at the sound of a nearby woman’s voice. “Wow, that took foreva! Have ya ever thought about organizing yer brain, kid? It’d do ya a world’a good.”

I turned to see a spectre of some kind hovering just above me, a smile on her face. It took an enormous amount of control to stop myself from screaming at the sight of her. Unfortunately all of that control couldn’t keep me from letting out a frightened wimpier. I felt like a scared child as I did, but I couldn’t help it. 

The strange woman’s smile quickly faded, replaced by a look of concern. Her accent followed her smile, vanishing as she spoke again. “Oh, damn, I’m sorry kid. Didn’t mean to scare you. Also didn’t mean to take so long, but your brain took forever to figure out. Should have gotten to you in a few seconds, but I think it’s been nearly a day. Your family must be worried sick.” As she spoke I found myself reminded of my mom in her looks. She had the same curly black hair and bright violet eyes I inherited, though her skin was much darker, similar to my own and my mum’s.

Her compassion did a lot to push away my fear of her, but it was quickly replaced by a different kind of fear. Panic consumed me as I took in what she said. “A day? What do you mean? And where am I? What did that quack do to me?”

To her credit, the strange ghost woman didn’t get riled up or frustrated at my onslaught of questions. “It’s been roughly twenty-two hours since Dr. Rivan cast his spell on you. You’re probably safely in a hospital resting until you wake up. In terms of where it’s easiest to say we’re in your core. Your soul, brain, magical core, whatever you want to call it. The most important bit of you. And finally, he cast a spell meant to make you smaller by about four feet. Something just absurd enough that you’d easily reject it outright. Unfortunately he miscast the spell in a rather severe way, and the spell he did cast… well, your soul isn’t rejecting it automatically like it would others.” She spoke slowly and calmly, like she was trying to soothe me with her answers.

It sort of worked, her calm and controlled demeanor did wonders to ease my panic. I wasn’t completely stable, but I was at least able to sound a little bit under control as I asked my next set of questions. “And what did he end up casting? Can’t I just reject it now? And who are you? Why are you here to answer these questions?” I might have come off as rude, but it would be equally rude to keep referring to her as just ‘a ghost woman.’

“Oh, did I not introduce myself? Shoot! Knew I forgot something. I’m magic. All of it.” Her casual answer betrayed any semblance of seriousness she might have possessed. I didn’t even have time to process that before she answered my first question. “Well… I suppose the best way to describe it for you is a spell to change one’s sex to match their gender. Which answers the question of why you can’t ‘just reject it’.” 

I froze at the implication of her words. Immediately I shuffled her second answer away to confront her first answer, and refused to think further on the spell cast on me. “You’re magic? That doesn’t make sense! Magic isn’t a person, it’s an essence. It’s everything.” I felt sweat crawl down my face (How was I sweating?) as my idle brain forced me to confront my fears as she thought of an answer.

I wasn’t a girl. I couldn’t be. I was a boy, second son of Elyza and Penny Mayleaf. Sure I didn’t like my name, feel comfortable in my skin, or like male pronouns usually, but I couldn’t be trans. Trans people know who they are from a super young age, and I was thirteen! That was way too old to be anything but a boy. I was probably just going to grow into comfort with myself as I grew up. After all, puberty was supposed to be full of discomfort. My brother and sisters talked about it all the time.

“You didn’t catch anything I said, did you?” ‘Magic’s’ voice snapped me out of my internal thoughts, and I offered her an embarrassed look as a response. Before I could open my mouth to apologize she held a finger to my lips and continued. “It’s alright, no need to apologize. You’re going through a lot right now, for obvious reasons. Just know that you’re right, I’m just taking on a comforting form for your sake.”

“Oh.” Was all I could manage before letting our conversation die. I didn’t want to continue it, any questions I had answered would probably only do more to confuse me. All I needed to focus on was the simple fact that I wasn’t trans. The odds of that were way too low, anyway, which helped me repress my… hope? No, confusion. Not hope. My sister Veronica had come out when she was little, so there was even less of a way I could be trans, too.

We sat in silence for an incalculable amount of time. I tore through book after book about magic and transmutation to keep my mind off of the thoughts trying to overtake me, and Magic seemed content to wait patiently for me. I didn’t know what she was waiting for, because I wasn’t going to approach the only subject she seemed to care about. I wanted her to just release me, but every time I felt the urge to approach her some part of me pushed it down.

Before I knew it I was through every beginner and intermediate textbook I could remember reading. If time passed in the way I thought it did then we might have been in here for weeks. I wondered how my family and friends were doing. I knew Andrew, my brother, would try not to worry too loudly while my sisters Rissa and Lana pretended not to hear him cry. I knew Lexi and Griff, my two closest friends, would fight like they always did without my intervention. I knew my mom wouldn’t leave my bedside, and my mum would have Dr. Probably-Not-Actually-A-Doctor arrested for child endangerment.

When a slip up years ago caused me to hit my head and fall unconscious for days that was their responses then. Sure everyone was a bit older, but I knew my family and friends like no one else. If I woke up I knew the first thing I’d see would be my mom’s beautiful violet eyes, full of tears of joy. The rest of my family would be teleported into the hospital as soon as possible, and we’d share a hug while I apologized for worrying them all. They’d say there was nothing to apologize for, and we’d slip back into normalcy.

I needed to stop worrying them. It could have been weeks and I was selfishly refusing to do anything to see them again. What was wrong with me? I willed the library of my mind away and approached Magic, who turned to face me as soon as I came close.

“You ready, kid?” 

“As ready as I can be. I need to see my family again. No matter what.”

“Which way are you going as? Boy? Girl? Both? Neither? I can set you up however you want, though the spell will need to be cast a second time for you to change again.” 

I opened my mouth to answer ‘boy’, but caught myself before I could. Maybe… maybe I could be a girl? At least try it out for a few days, then go right back. Right, of course. I’d do that. Then after a week’s vacation from boyhood I’d slip right back in like nothing happened. “I… I’d like to try being a girl, I think.” Why did I feel so bashful? It wasn’t like I felt anything more than simple curiosity.

Magic gave a slight smile in response, and nodded her head. “Alright, kiddo, good luck. Maybe I’ll see you again soon, maybe not.” She winked, and suddenly I felt myself enveloped in a beautiful, brilliant white light.