Did the transformations happen all at once or gradually over a period of time? Was the transformee’s body swapped with someone else’s, or did a magical troop of Sylvan fairies show up and sculpt it like clay while singing the Norian national anthem?
Eliza really had no idea.
So curious and with the boy’s permission, she decided to stay up and watch but then, almost immediately, fell asleep on the sofa she’d dragged into his room.
It was the sound of bare footsteps on hardwood that roused her, and she opened her eyes to see Oliver wearing a long nightshirt, examining himself in the mirror.
He looked the same height as before, but his shoulders seemed a bit narrower. The split on his right eyebrow, where he’d been cut from the fall, was still there, and though the red had faded, there was a notch where the hair would likely never grow back.
Oliver was staring at his face, mouth agape. When he finally closed it, his features appeared softer than Eliza remembered. He still looked like himself, but not.
“Please, tell me I got that right,” she whispered, rising from the sofa.
Oliver was trembling, her eyes watering. “Oh, you horrible monster, What have you done to me?” said the girl as she wrapped her arms around Eliza and began sobbing into her chest.
“What, I thought?” And then Eliza heard the sobbing turn to giggling. “Well, I am sorry,” she said.
“For what?” Oliver pulled away, tears streaming down a smile.
“All the times I called you ‘boy.’” And now Eliza was giggling too.
“Oh!” said the girl, turning back to the mirror. “I shall never forgive you.”
“So, what was it you needed to tell me? Some dark secret about yourself?”
Oliver alternated between making comically sad and happy faces in the mirror. She puffed out her cheeks and crossed her eyes. “It’s just so weird.”
“Weirder than being a cat?”
“That was weird because it wasn’t me.” She flexed her arms, watching the reflection in the mirror. “This is weird because it is.”
“Well, I can’t call you ‘hey boy’ anymore, and Oliver seems—”
Oliver raised a finger, looking perplexed.
“What’s wrong?” Eliza asked.
The girl scrunched up her nose. “Um… I need to go to the bathroom, and I’m… ah, not sure if I know how to—exactly.”
“Oh.” Eliza scrunched her nose as well. It felt funny to talk about; she didn’t have anything to compare against, so she didn’t think she’d be of much help. Finally, she shrugged. “Just sit down, the rest isn’t so hard.”
“Okay…” The girl paused for a second, then ran out of the room.
A few minutes later, Oliver ran back through the door and resumed looking at herself in the mirror.
“Are you just going to do that all day?” Eliza asked.
Gaze firmly locked on her own reflection, the girl waved her arms, moving her eyebrows up and down as fast as she could. “I mean… Can I? Would it be all right?”
“I guess so.” Eliza rolled her eyes. “You do make it seem fun.” She stepped up beside Oliver, took a look at herself in the mirror, gave her sternest glare, and then stuck out her tongue. “I wonder why it’s so important? Being a woman, or a man, or whatever.”
Oliver shrugged, imitating Eliza with a mock scowl. “I don’t know. The world just never made sense to me as a boy. They make everything into a fight. It’s annoying.”
“Well, I do like to duel—” Eliza started to correct her, then thought better of it. “But I get what you mean.”
“Oh, hey.” The girl’s gaze shifted from the mirror to Eliza. “I thought you had to learn the eagle spell first, before you could do this?”
“That was the favor I did for Thelemule. The old bird’s probably flying up the coast as we speak. It’s why he wanted a copy of the counter spell.”
“Really?”
“He said he wanted to test it for ‘military purposes.’ But I think he just wanted to go flying. Still, good luck getting a hundred and fifty pound eagle into the air. The square-cube law is not a suggestion.”
Oliver smiled at that, then looked back in the mirror and flapped her arms. “I wonder if he’s a pink eagle?”
“Don’t give him any ideas.” Eliza groaned. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.” She waved to Oliver’s reflection and left the room.
Eliza went downstairs and began sorting through the mess of her workshop. Most of it had been set up for flame-bloom production, and by the time she moved all that to a storage room, her workbench was bare for the first time in years.
After that, she went up to the library to hide her remaining bloom notes. She slid them between the pages of a book on female biology, figuring no thief would look there, and returned it to the shelf.
She had assumed Oliver might be up there reading, but found him, err… her still enthralled in the mirror.
“Hey Oliver, want to go grab lunch?”
“I don’t know… maybe in a bit, Ms. Scaggs,” Oliver spoke in monotone, not really paying attention.
She returned a few minutes later. “Hey Oliver, want to go… get revenge on your enemies?”
“I don’t know… maybe in a—” The girl slid narrowed eyes at Eliza, then turned back to the mirror.
“Hey Oliver, want to go… clothes shopping?”
“I don’t know… maybe in a—” Oliver’s head spun. “Yes.”
They went to the market square, and Eliza watched the girl browse dresses, skirts, and shoes, smiling as she tried things on, but with a sense of loss. After all this time worrying he might be stuck as a cat, she realized she’d never truly get the old Oliver, her Oliver, back—
But— What about all the mornings Oliver hadn’t been able to even see herself in the mirror—all the years she’d lost. Eliza bit her lip and kept quiet as the girl adorned herself.
Still in shock from seeing ‘the boy’ in a striped blouse, blue skirt and heeled boots, they passed a hair salon, and she caught the girl eying it wistfully.
“Oh, all right,” said Eliza, “Hey ‘boy’, what do you want me to call you? Unless you want to be a girl named Oliver?”
“Um… no, I guess not.” The girl shrugged. “I just never thought I’d get this far.”
“Well, I still can’t believe the transformations worked at all. How open do you want to be about all this?”
“I thought we’d put a sign out front.” Oliver rolled her eyes.
Eliza shot a glance back. “And where did this sense of humor come from?”
“You want me to stop?”
“No. It’s fun. Just be careful where you point that thing.”
“So, no jokes about your hair then?—after that one, sorry.”
Eliza huffed. “Thank you, but back to everyone else. Is there anyone in particular you want to tell? I expect Thelemule will figure it out when he comes to be defeathered, but I don’t think he’d tell anyone, except Stephan, and the only one he has to tell is Thelemule. That and, they both, I think, value discretion.”
“I guess I just don’t want Messer finding out.” Oliver tensed up. “He might come looking for me.”
“Honestly, I’m more worried about the Church. They consider it their job to tell—everyone, everything—That, and pass judgment.”
“Oh…” Oliver sighed. “I always wanted to be ‘Olivia,’ but that might be too obvious?”
“Oh…” Eliza sighed in agreement. “‘Olivia,’ I like it. I like it a lot, but it is a bit… same-ish.”
“And I always wanted to be ‘Liv’ for short.”
“Songs.” Eliza groaned. “That does suit you. ‘Hey Liv’ even has the same ring to it as ‘Hey boy.’”
Liv huffed. “But I should probably choose another name, like ‘Brunhilde’ or something.”
“And you still look like you, so maybe we need to do something about that?”
Liv narrowed her eyes. “Maybe we don’t. If there’s one good thing about Messer, it’s that he taught me how to lie. The best ones are always in plain sight.”
“Oh…” Eliza cocked an eyebrow. “So, now we’re doing what Messer would do?”
“He does get away with things. Don’t worry, we’ll leave out the um… screwing people over part.” The girl smirked.
“Fine, you come up with something, and we’ll test it out on Miss Fleming.”
“Mary? Why her?”
“Hey, it’s not like I can make you go through all this and then not buy you a fancy dress, is it?” Eliza stepped up to the salon door and held it open. “Come on, hair first, then Mary.”
Her face lost in thought, Olivia stepped inside.
? ? ?
“Hey Mary, I’d like you to meet my new apprentice.” Eliza tried to say as matter-of-factly as possible, but even she heard a jitter in her voice.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Mary was distracted, stitching on a dummy. “Oh hi, Scaggs, I already met Oliver.”
“No no, this is my new-new apprentice, Liv.”
Mary cocked her head, looking the girl over. “…for a second, I thought you were Oliver.”
“She’s his sister, Olivia.”
The seamstress gave a sideways smile. “That would explain the resemblance. But what happened to him?”
“Well,” Eliza answered, “he got a new job.”
“Sorry,” said Mary, “it’s so nice to meet you, Liv. It’s just that ever since I heard about his ‘accident,’ I’ve been worried about him.”
“Oh, he’s fine,” said Liv, sounding surprisingly relaxed. “I hear from him all the time. I’ll tell him you were asking about him.”
“So, you know where he’s gone?” Something seemed off about the way Mary was asking, more probing than usual.
Liv blinked, then made solid eye contact. “He’s been learning about the Sylvan… I can’t remember the name of his teacher… I’ll ask next time.”
“Please do, now what can I do for you lovely ladies?”
“She needs a fancy dress,” said Eliza.
“Any particular style?”
“Liv?” Eliza backed away and watched at a distance as the two negotiated patterns and materials. Oliver err… Liv really did have better fashion sense than her anyway.
It was going to be strange having this new girl in the house, and Eliza found herself missing the old Oliver, but that person was a lie, wasn’t he? A white lie to be sure, but the goofy way he walked, everything she knew about him, that had just been a mask, right?
The next she knew, Liv and Mary were motioning her over. They showed her a rough sketch of a long-sleeved dress.
“Our thinking,” said Mary, “Is that, as an apprentice, she really ought to compliment you, and she wanted something she could also wear day to day.”
“So, instead of maroon on charcoal like yours,” Liv added. “Charcoal on maroon, and styled like a clerk or a professional assistant.” She pointed to a high white collar on the drawing. “But what do you think? Would bows make it professional… or too cutesy?”
The girl seemed to be asking for permission.
“You can have whatever you like. You don’t have to match me.”
Liv looked up at her. “I kind of want to.”
“It can be both, professional and cute.” Smiling, Eliza turned to Mary. “She wants bows, give her bows. She’s been through a lot.” She winked, though it came off more like a facial tick.
? ? ?
Eliza set out what she thought was an overtly ‘feminine’ breakfast: tea and fruit sandwiches. She’d only seen such fare once before, at a client’s house, a stylish woman who couldn’t be rid of the flame witch fast enough. But maybe that was why she chose it: it stuck out in her mind as something she’d been denied and was serving it now as a way of welcoming Liv into the ‘girl’s’ club… whatever that meant.
For a moment she wondered if she couldn’t just tell ‘Liv’ how strange this all was for her—
And then Liv came down wearing Oliver’s old work clothes. Her hair, though still neatly cut from the day before, was back in a loose mop, and she walked with Oliver’s usual gate. Eliza found herself gaping.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“It’s just, where are all your clothes?”
“I was up too late trying them on.” Liv’s eyes looked tired. “I think I just want to be regular today. I mean I don’t have to be a girl all the time, do I?”
“Wait—should I change you back?”
The girl’s face went white.
“That was a question, not a threat,” Eliza said in a rush. “I’m just trying to keep up.”
“I just meant ‘a girl’ with the dresses. I guess I used to think that clothes would make me into one.” Liv shrugged. “But today I woke up, looked at myself in the mirror, and there ‘she’ was. Honestly, I think I like boy’s clothes better, most of the time… So, now people will probably make fun of me for being a tomboy.” She groaned.
“It is comforting to see a bit of the old you.” Eliza bit her lip. “Not that I don’t like the new you—I prefer it. Just, my head is spinning… And look, if anyone does make fun of you, we’ll turn them into toads.”
Liv nodded, her shoulders slumping. “You can, but I guess I need to keep studying.”
“Speaking of which, how’s the time spell coming along?” Eliza asked, relieved to have something other than Liv’s body to talk about.
“I understand most of it. Time is like… a function of the rotation of the Earth… relative to the Sun. But how do I turn that into a spell, and how do I figure out the rotation of the Earth?” Liv’s eyebrows crept together.
“Ah, to the library!” Eliza held up a finger, rushed to the foyer, and, making it look effortless, bounded up the stairs, a trail of spark embers in her wake. Smirking, she held the door for Liv.
“Look boy, err… Liv. Once you get the feel for it, you can use your internal spark to solve problems, store information, that kind of thing.”
“What really? Like can it think?”
“Of a sort. It can help with math. You visualize an equation with spark, then feel the external thing you want to keep track of, and then it’s like remembering something, only that memory changes. Want to give it a try?”
“Okay…” Liv looked at her sideways.
Eliza nodded to the window. “First you need to figure out your angle to the Sun, right? It’s easier to start with the external things than the equations. So, find that, with your spark.”
“What the Sun? I can’t feel that.”
“Have you tried?” Eliza shrugged.
Liv made her scrunch face. “No.”
“Relax.”
“It’s not working.”
“Sometimes it helps if you throw a bit of spark at it,” Eliza added.
“Really?”
“Don’t worry, you can’t blow up the Sun. It’s just a way of feeling for it.”
The girl held up her hand, stretching it toward a high window across the room. “Okay, but I don’t know if my spark will—”
—A shriek of lightning cut Liv off, mid-sentence—
Blue electricity arced from her fingers, shooting skyward. Shards of broken glass burst from the shattered window.
“Bastard’s Verse…” Eliza’s jaw dropped.
“Sorry, sorry,” Liv said in a panic.
“How much of your spark did you throw at it?”
“All of it? I mean I’ve always had to.”
One last lonely piece of glass fell from the window frame, splintering as it hit the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Liv repeated.
Eliza stared at her. “Do it again.”
“What?”
“Again… now!”
Liv raised her hand and there was another shriek, another arc, another broken window.
“Again!”
Eliza’s ears popped as it happened a third time.
“What’s going—”
“Ohhhh!” Eliza interrupted, “You remember when you were a chimp, and you couldn’t use your spark at all, and as a cat you could a little. Do you know why?”
“No, I guess not,” Liv said, visibly working something out. “I mean I guess I felt more like myself as the—”
“Ohhh!” Eliza said with a crazed sort of glee.
“Oh…” Struck by realization, Liv took a step back.
“To the blast chamber!”
? ? ?
“Okay,” Eliza called out, “Try cleaning the wall.” She pointed to the other side of the room.
“What, from here?”
Eliza nodded. Then, as Liv raised her hand, half the soot fell off.
“Not bad.” Eliza stepped back from the cloud. “Not bad at all.”
“How’s it… next to you?”
“Well, you know.” Eliza shrugged and raised her hand. Five bolts, one from each finger, each as big as Liv’s, shot out and snapped against the wall. “But you’d give old Thelemule a run for his money.”
“I thought you said sparks didn’t get any bigger?”
“They don’t, but they can be muted—and unmuted. Look Olivia, I want you to give one more thing a try. Remember when you first started lighting candles?”
“Yes…” Liv pulled her lips to one side.
“I want you to try that, say, about ten feet in front of yourself.”
“Okay, where’s the candle?”
“To the air.” Eliza nodded. “Do it to the air.”
Liv furrowed her brow, and a little flicker of flame sputtered in front of her. It was tiny but it was there.
“That’s better than I was expecting,” said Eliza.
“But not hoped?” asked Liv.
“Do you know what makes me the fire witch?”
“Um… you have green skin, a knobbly nose, and you like to incinerate eyeballs?”
“Well, two of those.” Eliza rolled her eyes. “Sometimes mages can use their spark in unusual ways.”
“So, what does this mean?” Liv held out her hand, shooting another sputter of flame.
“It means you’re strong enough to ignite the soot in the air, but your spark can’t ignite like mine.”
“Can I learn to?”
“No, probably not. I’m unique, at least in the city. But someday, maybe you’ll find a unique use for yours, maybe not fire, but… something.”
“How many wizards have a ‘unique’ thing they can do?”
Eliza shrugged. “I had to make mine known publicly to get the council of wizards to accept a ‘witch’ like me. Most wizards, how would Thelemule put it? Have the good sense to play their cards close to their chest. Still, he’s too good at imbuing spark weapons for that to be just a spell, and then there’s Masarie. He brags about being the ‘Master of Powder,’ what-in-the-hells that means.”
“Wait, so what is a ‘witch,’ exactly?”
Eliza rubbed her temples. “It has two meanings: According to the Church, it’s all of us, anyone who can use a spark is a ‘witch,’ and we’re all damned to the Bastard’s Hell because of it. But… most people hear ‘witch’ and they think of old women riding around on broomsticks, that sort of thing. The wizards can’t change the Verses, but they can confuse the matter, so they call all women who can use a spark ‘witches.’ They think they’re being clever, throwing us to the wolves.”
“Ah… broomsticks,” Liv sighed.
? ? ?
A few days later, a wavering voice called from the hallway. “Eliza?”
She put down her cup. “Liv? What is it?”
The boy stepped out from around the corner. He was taking short quick breaths.
“Oh no.” Eliza’s heart sank.
Oliver’s eyes went wide as he tensed up. He crumpled over.
“We can fix this.” She put her arms around him.
After an hour of poring over the Sylvan book, Eliza pushed it away. “How long has it been?”
“About a week,” said Oliver, his gaze falling to the floor.
“Sylvan magic.” Eliza shook her head. “It always has safeties. You were never in any danger of being stuck as a cat. It seems the transformations only last a week.”
“What does that mean?” The boy looked ill.
“It means—it means I can just recast it. Again and again, for as long as it takes.”
“For the rest of my life?”
“Until you learn to cast it yourself,” said Eliza.
“But I’ll always turn back?”
Wishing she had a different answer, Eliza sighed. “Yes.”
Oliver slumped, defeated.
“But maybe… In theory there's no reason it couldn’t be permanent. Old Whatshiznam’s spells were. Hold on.”
After another hour of poring over the book while Oliver watched on anxiously, Eliza spoke, “Okay, the spell requires a certain amount of spark to maintain. If someone casts it on you, they can’t add any more, and it’s over as soon as the initial spark is used up. But maybe… if you cast it on yourself, we could modify the spell so you could add more, and it wouldn’t run out.”
“Okay, let’s do that then?” Oliver sounded like he knew there was a ‘but’ coming.
“Well… it’s a complicated spell, and to modify it… it will take a while to learn all the skills involved.”
“How long?”
“A couple of years, maybe.” Eliza’s gut twisted as she spoke.
The boy’s head hung low.
“That’s not so bad, is it? I know that seems like forever when you’re young, but it’ll be okay, I promise.”
He sighed. “I guess so.”
“On a bit of a fun note…” She smirked. “I’m guessing Thelemule’s eagle ran out yesterday. He’s got a long walk ahead of him.”
“How is that fun? Exactly?” Oliver raised an eyebrow.
“Just… just, during his walk he—he won’t be able to steal any more of my inventions.”
The boy rolled his eyes at that.
“There is one other thing, I’m afraid… Show me your spark.”
As the boy lifted his hand, tiny flickers of blue, no bigger than static discharges danced across his fingertips.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispered.
? ? ?
? ? ?
Summer gave way to Autumn.
Liv had her fifteenth birthday.
Eliza—accidentally—baked her a cake of ash.
They laughed and sang… badly, and everything seemed to be okay…
Until, on the day of the first snow of the year, a sealed letter arrived.
Oliver was reading in the library when Eliza found him. He’d transformed back last night, and wouldn’t be Liv again until tomorrow.
On those days, the ones where Liv was Oliver, which came once a week, there was a strange sort of melancholy where he’d be back to being too quiet. At first, she tried to cheer him up, but that only seemed to make him more withdrawn. If there was one good thing that came of it, Oliver could focus on his studies in a way Liv couldn’t, hiding in a book.
She stepped in behind him, looking over his shoulder.
“I think I’ve got it,” he said.
“What?”
“The time problem. Pouring all that math from my head into my spark has me dizzy, but…”
“Well, what time is it?” she asked, standing between him and the wall clock.
“Three twenty-six.”
“Close, it’s three twenty-eight.”
“No, it’s not.” He smiled. “That clock isn’t adjusting for the seasons.”
Eliza checked her own time spell, smiled, and adjusted the clock. “I did get it on discount.” Then she held up the envelope. “This came today.”
“What is it?”
“You still have that letter opener?”
Oliver retrieved Rafe’s knife from the desk drawer and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” Eliza slit the envelope open. “It’s a newspaper… ‘Norian Embassy in Shivar Firebombed’…” The knife fell to the floor and, with a reverberating thud, stood on end.
She felt dizzy. “It’s from Drake. They’re summoning me to the palace. You’re to come with.”
“Me, why me?”
“If word’s got out I have an apprentice, they’ll want to register you.”
The boy looked down at his body in a panic. “Now?”
Eliza shook her head. “Tomorrow. Registering is a good thing. It’ll grant you a higher social status, but it'll also attract attention. That’s why I was avoiding it.”
Taking the newspaper, Oliver scanned through the article. “Was it a flame bloom?”
“I don’t know how it could be. Not one of mine anyway… At worst, someone out there has six pages of my notes. I don’t think that would be enough. Unless they found the one you dropped in the river, or…” She closed her eyes. “The chest I sunk.”
Oliver shook his head. “That firebomb hit the Norian embassy, the one in Shivar, right? If they wanted to attack Noria, those blooms were in the heart of it. Why ship them back?”
“Drake said he thought Shivar was developing its own fire weapon. Honestly, I’ve never believed a word that man’s said, but maybe… maybe they got one home to study, figured it out and used it. Either way…” Eliza shuddered.
“Or someone just set a regular fire?” The boy met her eyes. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Ms. Scaggs.”
Trying very hard to believe that, Eliza said, “Hopefully, we’ll know more tomorrow."
Now that Liv can shoot lightning, what do you think will happen to Messer?
