***

The sloop was fine, of course; but by the time we’d satisfied ourselves of that it was too hot to do anything or even contemplate walking back up the hill so we put up the awning and flaked out under its shade on the cabin roof.

“We could sail away right now, just us.” Asuti suggests dreamily.

I chuckle. “I’m tempted.” It’s not like we’re Bound to port after all. All paid up. Let the wind pull on the sails and let the deep draw us on forever.

The shadow of the boom sways across the awning from the slight movement of the boat on the harbour water. A soft clink of metal as it reaches the limit of its stayline and sways back slowly. The motion is soothing and proper.

“Why are we here anyway? It’s not like the Satthei’s coming here even if she is all right.”

“An old friend of mine and Sam’s lives here. The falcon was… a message, reminding us we need to find him and speak to him.”

“The Goddess?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Too strong an omen to ignore twice anyway.”

“Why haven’t you gone to see him yet then?”

“Nervous,” I admit. “He’s probably changed a lot since we last saw him. If he’s changed half as much as we have…” I sigh. It turns into a quiet chuckle. “He might not even recognise us. He’s a rich man now, he might think we’re just trying to get money out of him.”

“Oh. I suppose that is awkward. You’re not though, are you?”

“What?”

“Going to try to get money out of him.”

“No, ’course not. We can look after ourselves. We don’t need to beg or borrow off any islander.”

“Hey, we could start our own market fleet.”

“Heh.”

“And you could become a Satthei too.”

“No I couldn’t. I can’t even imagine how long it would take me to become the sort of person who’d want that, you know?”

“Hundreds and hundreds of years,” Asuti supplies. “I’ll be so long dead you’ll have forgotten all about me.”

“Oh, I’m never forgetting you,” I say.

“Elves can’t say never.” A variant of that proverb.

“I won’t forget you,” I insist quietly.

We fall silent, dissipating heat.

And after a while asks, “Why were you two arguing about me?”

Oh, where to begin? I take a few moments to try to find a way to say it right. No need to say I hadn’t known, that Sam had had to point it out to me. “She’s worried… She’s worried I might be, uh, influencing you to want to be a girl. More than you would otherwise.”

She doesn’t answer that. After a few minutes she sits up to look away over the water, propping herself up on one hand, her legs folded on the other side of her.

I put my arm out and rest my hand lazily against her back. “What’re you thinking?” I ask.

She just shrugs. “Don’t know.”

“Okay.”

A little later she says, “I don’t want to be a girl, I just am, I think. I was supposed to be but my body came out wrong. Does that make sense?” she asks, twisting around to look at me.

“Oh yes. It makes perfect sense.” And because of what Sam said, I’m now worrying if it makes too perfect sense. There’s a tear on my cheek, and she sees it.

“Why are you crying?”

“I’m not. I’m…” I wipe the tear away and try to compose my thoughts. “I’m just amazed you’ve got it so well figured out already.”

She shrugs again.

“How long have you felt that way?”

“Long time. Before I knew I could sing to the wind.”

“Ah, I was wondering,” I say. “In case you were thinking, ‘oh, I’m a windsinger, I must be a girl,’ and trying to make yourself be one because of that. Just because no-one’s ever heard of a male windsinger doesn’t mean you can’t be the first, you know? No-one understands why anyone becomes windsingers. Not even the Sattheis.”

She looks away again, pensive.

“And I don’t mind either way,” I say. “We’d still be friends, wouldn’t we? The main thing is be yourself. That’s what it’s all about.”

Even as I’m saying the words I know I’m lying, and Sam’s right. I want Asuti to be this way. I feel such a connection to her and it’s because of this, and it always was, even though I didn’t know it. (And she looks so pretty in her new dress.) And it’s so selfish of me to wish that on someone; especially here, where there’s nothing anyone can do to help her as her body grows into that of a man, any more than Sam can be helped, in the reverse predicament.

I hope I’ve said the right things anyway, even if it has ruined the mood. She lies down again, on her side this time with her back to me, still looking out over the water. I don’t know how to reach her like this.

***

“Sam…”

She’s sitting by the stove in the kitchen. I’ve sent Asuti on into the house.

“I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to–”

“I know.”

She’s still angry then. Do I go to her, plead with her? Would it just make her angrier, saying that I was ‘doing the bishoujo thing’ again?

“You’re not going to… go away, are you?” I ask; my real fear. ~Don’t leave me.~ My voice shakes.

Now she looks at me. “Where would I go?” She looks thoughtful. No, she’s performing looking thoughtful. “Hmm, I could go around breaking into old tombs and seeing if there are any pretty girdles lying around for me to try on.”

“Oh Sam.” In the game, one of the random artifacts the players might find in a treasure haul was a Girdle of Femininity — or Masculinity, whichever quality the character that first foolishly tries it on most lacks.

I don’t know why, but I go round the table to Sam. I kneel on the hearth-rug next to her feet and rest my head on her knee.

After a moment I feel her hand rest on my head, and stroke my hair a little.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“It’s not your fault.”

Except…

“Asu… ti is going to grow up into a man’s body,” Sam says. “There’s nothing on this Earth that can stop that.”

“A Satthei can,” I say.

Pause. “Huh, the oil, yes. She can make him a chemical eunuch. Is that the only choice?”

I nod, my head moving against her knee. A Satthei would take him, being a windsinger, and he would grow up an androgyne. And that’s probably the least worst option available.

Or there’s the surgical kind of eunuch, which slavers do to the male kids they take to make them more manageable, or so the stories tell it. If we’d been taken on the atoll, maybe they would have done it already. And Asuti would probably have bled to death, or be dying even now from an infection in the hold of a slaver ship.

I’ve already thought about this, lying on the cabin roof, looking at Asuti’s back as she watched the water, deep in her own thoughts, thinking that even that, even that risk might come to seem to her to be preferable to the long coming betrayal of her own growing body.

I might have chosen it. I’ve sat in the bath with a long, sharp kitchen knife held to my genitals, not much older than Asuti is now, trying to be brave enough and stupid enough to drive it into the deformity.

Only ever when my parents were in the house, so my screams would have brought help, and someone who could call an ambulance. There’s stupid-desperate and there’s just moronic.

“I’ve been talking to the others,” Sam says. I think it’s easier for us to talk when we’re not looking at each other sometimes. “Chi was on Master Retican’s ship too. She says Asu… Asuti’s been dressing as a girl on and off for the last three years, going by that name, on-ship. People noticed, because most kids — most marketeer kids even — don’t gender-play that long. But no-one had a problem with it until Beni came aboard. So… So I guess I owe you an apology.”

I sit up straight on my heels and look at her. “She means well,” I say.

Sam nods. “This isn’t back home. There just isn’t the same kind of… bullshit about, um, these kinds of things.”

“Except what we bring,” I say softly.

Sam nods. “Beni’s not on some moral crusade here. She just… she worries that indulging Asuti now will just set her up for more hurt later.”

I shake my head. “I don’t have any memories of being a little girl,” I say. “Well, a few now I suppose, from Taniel. But… Scraps. I miss it. I’ve missed out on that forever. I want her to have memories she can treasure, whatever happens when she grows up. I want her to have those memories of being a girl at least for the time she’s got.”

Sam looks thoughtful about that, but if she has any thoughts in particular she doesn’t share them. “We agreed,” she says, “Asuti can be a girl, at least while it’s up to us. None of us are going to make it a problem.”

I sigh with relief. “I wish you’d waited until I’d got back before talking about it,” I say.

“I know, but you can get awfully defensive, and they’d get all deferential around you and nothing would get decided.”

I bite my tongue on any response. She’s probably right. It’s still not fair though.

“Anyway, Chi was advocate enough, I assure you. She laid it on the line pretty strong with Beni.”

“Chirasel?”

“Think there’s a bit of a marketeer vs islander thing going between those two. Different ideas about how to bring up kids… and most other things. Chi was all, ‘what right have you got to decide what Asuti wants to do? You were leaving Deregan anyway and Asuti’s my shipmate too, I have at least as much say as you do!’”

“God. Sounds intense.”

“Yeah, she can be.”

“Anyway, it’s decided,” I say, making sure.

“Yep.”

Silence.

“You know, you never called me a he, since coming here,” Sam says suddenly.

“Uh…” I have to scramble for an excuse. Luckily I find one. “You never asked?”

Her look says she hadn’t thought of that. “Heh. No, I didn’t, did I?”

“Is that… Do you want that?”

She looks thoughtful again. Finally she sighs. “Guess it would be confusing to the others. Leave it.”

I have to hide my relief. Whatever her mannerisms she has such a pretty face, and such a nice feminine figure, it would be hard to remember.

I wonder if that makes me a hypocrite as well.

No, I decide. Back in that former life I never expected anyone to treat me as female. I’d already decided I wouldn’t ask that of anyone until I could pass well enough to not make it impossibly hard for them. Even if that seemed an impossibly long way off.

***

We take a couple more days to settle into our new lodgings and rest before we feel ready to go up the hill and try to get in to see Lord Hajarean. Gyrefalcon. Possibly our friend Simon.

I’d wanted to write him a letter, in English. Sam had objected, saying all the things that could go wrong with that, that would mean a no-show didn’t necessarily tell us anything. Some flunky opening it and seeing a meaningless scrawl, for instance. Sam wanted it face to face. She wanted to see his reaction when we said something in English.

“What are you worried about?” I’d asked.

“I’m not worried.”

But I know she was lying. I want to think she was just being extra-suspicious.

Luckily Sam has a pretty face, and a way of talking to people that gets us past the guy at the outer gate and the guy at the inner gate, so we quickly find ourselves in our best new formal daywear waiting in a large formal office on the front of the ground floor of Lord Hajarean’s palatial house on the rim of the valley.

“Impressive,” Sam says, standing at one of the large, glassless arched windows where she can see down all the way to the harbour. “He’s done well for someone who started as a stowaway street kid.” It’s cool and pleasant here in the late afternoon.

“That’s how he started?”

“In the game. Gyrefalcon was Thief-class. Pickpocket who picked the wrong pocket and needed to get out of Dodge in a hurry. Stowed away on the ship the party met on. That was his intro to the campaign.”

It is impressive. The architecture up here has more than a touch of the Arabic about it, with its arches and domes and geometric patterns everywhere. It’s a motif carried into the buildings’ interiors, if this one is any guide. Interior and exterior blend into each other in a way I find pleasing. Arabesque screens sweep glowing dappled pools of lightacross the patterned floor towards the far wall.

The door across the room opens and a man steps in, alone. I stand up to join Sam.

He crosses towards us. He looks middle-aged; I’d guess he’s in his fifties, but he looks good with it, with the lifelong fitness of someone who was a superb athlete in his youth. Now his red hair is greying, as is his neatly kept beard. He’s dressed unassumingly in a simple belted tunic and leggings, which serves to show off he still has a pretty decent figure for a man his age. The style may be unassuming, but the cloth is of the very best quality.

He doesn’t look anything like Simon, of course; any more than Sam or I look like Lee or Paul. He has a nice face though, I decide, even if he’s showing us nothing more than mild curiosity at this moment.

“Well,” he opens informally, “good morning, ladies. What can I do for you?”

Sam launches into her prepared speech. “Lord Hajarean?” He nods minutely. “We have been charged to deliver a verbal message to one who was once called the Gyrefalcon.”

That takes him a little by surprise. “I haven’t heard that name for a long time,” he remarks evenly. “Well, yes, I’m Gyrefalcon, or I was. You had better deliver your message.”

Sam switches to English. “Simon? It’s Lee and Paul. From the game. We’ve been looking for you.”

If there was a reaction from Lord Hajarean I missed it. He just looks at us both impassively for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually in Jeodine. “I didn’t understand that. What language was it? Is it a code?”

“Well, you’re a lot shorter than I remember,” Sam continues in English. “Aren’t you going to say anything about how we’ve changed?” She smiles hopefully.

Lord Hajarean looks at Sam again, a slight frown on his face. “You must forgive me, Miss, I do not understand what you’re saying.” He smiles, trying to make light of an embarrassing situation.

“But Simon–”

“Sam,” I say. “It’s not him.” With those words the disappointment lands on me like a terrible weight. “My apologies, Lord Hajarean,” I say, addressing him for the first time. “We made a mistake. I’m very sorry for wasting your precious time. Our message was clearly meant for another.”

“Apparently so. I’m only sorry you had a wasted journey,” Lord Hajarean says, unfailingly urbane and polite. “As for my wasted time, think nothing of it. I can lend you a carriage to take you back into the city,” he offers.

“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” I say.

“As you wish. Then I suppose I had better see you out.”

***

“He’s lying,” Sam says, as we walk back down the hill through already-baking streets. I’m already beginning to wish we’d accepted the offer of the carriage. Going downhill is surprisingly hard work and the heat of the day is really starting to kick in. It makes me long to be out over the water, but then most things do, when I’m ashore.

“What do you mean, he’s lying?”

“What do you think I mean? That was Simon, and he lied to us, to our faces. Couldn’t you tell?”

“Why would he do that?”

“He must have been forewarned somehow,” Sam is saying, voicing her own reasoning. “Not to show any surprise. He must’ve known we we coming. He’s one of the city oligarchs, he probably gets reports on everyone that comes through the port.”

“Sam, maybe it just wasn’t him.”

“Then what was the fucking bird for?” Sam snaps. “Why lead us all the way here?”

“Wild falcon chase?” I say wryly. Sam just looks like she wants to hit something. “Maybe it really was just lost and we just took off after it because we didn’t know what to do about the Satthei.”

“I don’t believe it,” Sam mutters. “Well. The last part, I admit that.”

“What are we going to do now?” I wonder.

Sam looks thoughtful. “We got the women and children to safety,” she sums up, conveniently forgetting again that we are the women and children. “We checked up on Gyrefalcon, he doesn’t appear to be our friend,” she says carefully. I nod, getting her multiple meaning. Even if that man used to be Simon, it seems he doesn’t want to know us now. “We discharged our duties. Speaking for myself, I intend to get rat-arsed tonight. We can figure out what to do tomorrow while you’re tending my hangover.”

“Won’t Beni be tending your hangover then?” I ask, a deliberate wind-up.

“Shush you.” But she grins thoughtfully, if such a thing were possible. Then she sighs. “I think my sex drive is coming back,” she says darkly, apropos of nothing, it seems. The Satthei oil is wearing off.

“Uh-oh. Jeoda better watch out,” I say, trying to make light of it.

It works for now. She grins again.

***

Jeoda wakes up in the evening. The sun sets and the city cools and expands and comes alive. I watch from my bedroom window as the lamps come on one by one; red, blue, purple, green, pink. The sky is darkening blue, striated with pink clouds at high altitude.

The door behind me opens. “Sure you don’t want to come?” Sam asks.

“No, I’m fine babysitting.” I was never one for going out pubbing or clubbing or whatever before, and that hasn’t really changed when I’m not being paid to play music, which I haven’t been since Denhall.

“Jalsone can do that.”

“I know. I want to.” I turn around and stop. “Are you wearing make-up?”

“Wasn’t my idea! They ganged up on me!”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s true. Chirasel said she wasn’t going to dance with me if I didn’t, and then Beni joined in and–”

“Yeah yeah.” I mime a talking sock-puppet with my hand. “It’s about time. You look lovely. Go on.” Actually what I don’t say is that it’s a weird combination having the make-up with the black leather leggings and the oversize white tunic and the black waistcoat-type thing and all the jewellery…

Sam grins. “’Suti’s got the baby. Little ones are playing in the hall. I said you’d tell them a new story after supper.”

“You said what?”

Sam grins again and makes her escape.

“Why’d you even ask if I wanted to go with you then?” I yell after her belatedly. “Bitch.”

***

I’m woken by knocking on the front door downstairs. It must be late. Not too late, as I can still hear people in the streets and music and the occasional slight turbulence from nearby taverns. I look across and see Ateis still sleeping in the child’s bed nearby, and Asuti in the second full-size bed with the baby. I remember now, I’d said they could come in with me in the hope that Sam and Beni coming home wouldn’t wake them.

I can hear Jalsone going to answer the door. ~Is Sam back yet?~ I wonder. I think I would have woken at the sound, unless she was supernaturally quiet about it.

Jalsone’s coming up the stairs. Nothing for it then. I swing my legs out of bed and find a tunic to put on before the soft knock on my door.

I open it quietly from my side.

“There’s a man wants to talk to you,” Jalsone whispers.

“Me?” I ask. “I’ll be right down. The others aren’t back yet, are they?”

“No Miss.”

A little wrench of fear starts in my belly. ~What if something’s happened to them? This could be a watchman coming to tell me–~ I do know there’s no purpose in delay. “I’m coming,” I say, feeling my voice shake.

I recognise the man standing in the parlour instantly. It’s not a watchman. “Lord Hajarean,” I say, surprised into courtesy. “Can I… help?”

“What are your intentions?” he asks curtly.

“What?” It takes me a moment to realise he spoke in English. And from that everything follows. “Simon it is you!” I exclaim. “Sam was right! What… Why did you pretend?”

“What are your intentions?” he asks again. His English has a thick Jeodine accent. “Why did you come here?”

“What do you mean? We don’t have any, we just… we’ve been looking for you. We’ve been trying to find you.”

“Do you know a way to return to the other world?”

“No.”

He sighs, and a load of tension drains out of his shoulders. For a moment he looks like a much older man. Then he straightens, but only in a manner of regaining poise, not tensing up again. “I’m glad,” he says in Jeodine.

“So am I,” I reply, and break into a smile, It’s good to acknowledge that sometimes. “Oh, sit down pleas– No wait, let’s go to the kitchen, it’s comfier. I’ll make some tea,” I suggest, already leading the way.

“Ahem.” He didn’t clear his throat. Gaspode-like, he said ‘ahem’. Until now, I suddenly think, he might have been anyone who learnt a few phrases of English from somewhere. Now I know this is Simon.

“Hey, I learned to make tea, finally,” I protest. “I mean, Jeodine tea anyway,” I add, flashing a grin back to him as he follows. “We’ve got some Waker, Sleeper, Talker, lots of Calmer. Kids,” I explain. “Absolutely essential, trust me.”

“Oh I know.”

“You do?”

We reach the kitchen and I point him to one of the comfortable chairs around the stove.

“Four children,” he says. “Six grandchildren and counting.”

“Wow. So you… how long… I mean–”

“Right after the Kaleshha campaign ended,” he replies. “I’ve been here thirty four years.”

“Shit. We wondered if… Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Why?” He takes his seat. “I have a life richer and more full than any I could have achieved back in that other place. I have a beautiful wife whom I love very much, and children and grandchildren who illuminate my world. I have a home and a life here I wouldn’t leave for anything that other place could offer me. I have wealth and position and that allows me to make a difference to people’s lives here. Don’t feel sorry for me because I am older. My time has been well spent.” He smiles. It’s that old slow smile I remember. “That’s what the young do, back there, isn’t it? Pity the old.”

“That’s why you pretended you didn’t know us,” I say. “You were afraid we’d take it away from you.”

He nods. “But it was rude of me, and for that I apologise. I should not doubt old friends. And anyway, I’m curious.” That smile again. “What have you been up to? Did James and Dave come through too?”

“Y-Yes. But they… We lost them.”

“Tell me the whole story,” he says. He sounds so kindly, like a favourite uncle, I think.

“Do… Do you want tea?” I ask again.

“Let’s have some Talker then. A mild inhibition-loosener shouldn’t go amiss at a time like this.”

“I’ll just get some water. Pump’s outside.”

***

It takes a couple of hours to bring Hajarean up to date. He sipped his tea and listened, and asked questions here and there to prod me on. He was especially interested in any details I could relate about life aboard a Neri familyship. I think it’s one world he hasn’t been able to penetrate and learn much about. So I talk about the social life, the music, the dancing, the thrill of hunting with dolphins and feeling part of a beautiful, deadly sea monster.

Finally I tell him of the attack, of being abandoned on the atoll and making our own escape from the slavers and our flight here.

I don’t mention the gyre falcon that led us. I’m not sure why; I just feel I need to not mention it yet.

“You got here from the Western Atolls in ten days?” he says, sounding surprised. “That’s really impressive.”

“Well, we had help. Turns out one of the kids is a windsinger.”

“Oh really? That was fortunate.”

I stop myself. I hadn’t meant to say that. That was the tea doing its job. I don’t have to say any more though. I don’t have to say which one, for instance. “Anyway,” I say lamely, “so here we are. Then we heard you were here and came knocking. I mean, we’ve been asking at every port we’ve been to,” I lie, “but we didn’t know your real name, only Gyrefalcon. Just our luck Jeoda wasn’t on the Satthei’s trade route.”

***

“So… I can’t help noticing…” Hajarean begins.

“Oh no–”

“You’re both girls now,” he observes.

“Oh damn, you noticed,” I joke, and lean right forward to bury my head in my arms. I’m sitting cross-legged on the big comfy chair and I think, suddenly, that my old hips wouldn’t let me do that.

“It’s a little hard to miss.” He chuckles. “How is that working out for you both?”

I sit up straight again and sigh. “Sam’s finding it hard. You know how Lee was such a lad…” Hajarean nods. “She’d go back to being male again like a shot, if she could.”

“Hmm,” Hajarean muses. “You wouldn’t.”

“I…” I stop myself before I give out the old excuses. “No, I wouldn’t,” I say, looking him in the eye.

He nods. “I can’t say I’m surprised,” he says, a touch of humour in his voice. “If memory serves, most of us were waiting for you to tell us what was on your mind.”

“You… You were?”

He smiles.

“Oh God,” I say, burying my head again. I can hear him chuckling.

“If I might say,” he starts gently. I sit up again. “You do seem happier in yourself. You seem more yourself, somehow.”

“I guess. Kerilas said that too.” Remembering that takes some of the happiness away.

Pause.

“You sound like you’re not sure.”

“Oh I’m definitely happier, it’s just the ‘myself’ bit I’m not sure of. Heh.” I watch the stove for a few moments. “I would have done it myself, eventually,” I say. “Back there, I know I would have got my arse in gear sooner or later.”

“The sex-change?” Hajarean asks, just confirming. I nod.

“I just… I wasn’t ready yet, you know? It’s too big. Scary. It’s a lot easier to fantasize than to get on with it; start actually… coming out to people; doing irrevocable stuff to my body; being on drugs for the rest of my life.”

“Drugs?”

“Hormones.”

“Oh, right.” He shrugs. “I don’t know much about the… technicalities, I admit.”

“Oh, I’d been researching this for years.” I give him another long look. “Since college, even though I didn’t really know what I was doing.” That was where I’d met Simon. He was in the year ahead of me. It was coincidence that work took me to live in his home city a couple of years after I graduated. That’s when I got involved with the role playing groups, through him.

He nods.

“I mean, what they can do with hormones and surgery, and laser and voice training and all that. It’s not… It wouldn’t have been perfect. Bone structure, for instance. There’s only so much you can do after the skeleton’s stopped growing, for a start.”

“Who has a perfect body?”

“I know, I know.” Smile. ~I have, now,~ I remind myself. “But I know I’d always have looked… I don’t know, frumpy, I think. It always put me off, thinking how… how hard it was going to be even to… even to look okay enough that asking people to call me a she… wouldn’t strain credibility. I mean, I’ve seen some TSs that look fantastic, but… I don’t know. I don’t think I would’ve. Point is, I still would have done it, eventually,” I say again. “I know I would. I already knew I would. Just… not yet.”

“It’s like you said, you weren’t ready yet.”

“And now I never will be, will I? I’ll never have to make that step, and I’ll never be the woman I was going to be. And sometimes I’m just glad I don’t have to go through all that ’cause it was terrifying me, it really was, and here I am instead in this… lovely, perfect little female body and I didn’t have to go through any of that shit. And sometimes I feel like such a fraud, ’cause I haven’t earned any of this, I’ve just stolen this girl’s life, and even if I could give it back–” I stop on the brink, suddenly realising what I’m about to say. I look at him and decide to say it. “Even if I could give it back, I honestly don’t think I would.”

“Had you decided on a name? Back there, I mean?”

“Uh… Not really. Kind of.”

“Which means yes. Come on, what was it?”

“Well it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“I want to know.” There’s that slow grin again. It’s so Simon. I can feel I’m blushing.

“Cathy,” I say. “C-Catherine.”

He nods. “I think it would have suited you.”

I shrug. Still blushing. “It’s beside the point. I can’t ever be her now.”

Silence.

“I named my daughter Catherine,” Hajarean says suddenly. “Well, Katarin, which is about as close as anyone here can pronounce it.” Another grin, then he turns thoughtful. “What you were saying about feeling like you’ve stolen a life. I know what you mean. I still get those thoughts a lot, even now.”

“It doesn’t go away?”

He shakes his head. “Which is ironic, I think, as I’ve lived in this body longer than he did, now.”

“How do you deal with it?”

He looks pensive. “I try to earn it; be worthy of it. I try not to bring dishonour to his name.”

I sigh. “Funny thing is, we two, we’re probably the happiest out of all of us. We’ve come out the best.”

He nods, taking that in.

“Kerilas said something, I remember,” I say. “He said, the thing with me is… Taniel… I wanted to be Taniel. It really was wish-fulfilment. That must have made it easier, because it meant I actually got the chance to be who I wished I could be.”

“Yeah. I think it’s fair to say I was the same there.”

“James never wanted to be Kerilas. He fancied playing an evil character in a game, he didn’t want to be… actually evil. And Sam certainly didn’t want to be a girl.”

“I think I dodged an arrow with Barak dying before we got pulled here,” Hajarean says.

“Heh. For about five minutes we thought you might have turned up as Jalese.”

“That was the N– The girl Lotan found belowdecks, right?”

I nod.

“How come?”

“Because sometimes after a character death a player takes over an NPC in the party–”

“Ohh, right, of course. ’Cause that would have been just what we needed, three of us turned into girls overnight.”

I laugh at the thought. “Oh God, I don’t think I could…” I break up. I’ve got the giggles.

“What?” he wants to know.

“Two of you…” I have to slip the words out through giggles. “Freaking out… about… first period…”

“Ohhh.”

“It’s not funny, it’s not funny, it’s not funny,” I tell myself, three times in quick succession, to make it true. “Poor Sam,” I say, calm now. “It’s not funny. She covers it a lot when other people are around. You know how Lee was…”

“Yeah.”

“Still the same. In private she gets pretty depressed sometimes.”

“Oh, that doesn’t sound so different from Lee,” Hajarean says. “It always was a cover. Didn’t you realise?”

“No. Well, I only ever saw him at the game.”

“He went through some very bad stuff growing up.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, at least Sam does have you to talk to.”

I shrug.

“Maybe she leans on you too hard,” Hajarean suggests.

“No, no, Trust me, I’m the one leaning on her.”

“Does she blame you for what happened to her?”

“No!” I object. “No, I–” My throat blocks up. Suddenly I’m weeping, almost silently, as emotions I don’t understand and hardly suspected feel like they’re crushing my chest.

“I wanted this!” I manage to get out in between tears. “I wanted this… so much! Every day I dreamed of something like this happening to me! So I didn’t have to be that… that thing any more!”

His arm is around my shoulders. My eyes aren’t open but he must be kneeling by my chair. I lean forwards and almost shoulder-barge him in trying to get closer to him. My head rests against his shoulder. He smells nice, of strength and manliness if that makes sense. And humanity. My lost humanity.

“I wished, I wished, I wished,” I say. “I wished that this could be real and not a dream and I wouldn’t have to go back… into that horrible… carcass… Ever. Ever. Ever.”

“Shh.” He rocks me slightly. I don’t know where this strength of feeling has come from. “Do you really think your wishing made this whole world? All the people you’ve known here. The thousands and thousands of years of history. My children… Taniel, do you really think you could have made all this with a little wish?”

“I…” Of course it’s a stupid idea. I know it is. But I’d wished so hard for so long.

“We were all brought here, for whatever purpose or whoever’s design, whoever’s plan it was, chose to prepare the way for us with a… with a game. I have no idea, but it had nothing to do with what any of us might have wished. Some of us…” He sighs. “Some of us were just lucky with the lives we found here.” I nod at that, my hair sliding across his shoulder. “So Sam’s in the mirror predicament of where you were back there. Add to that you’ve lost James and Dave–”

“I know–”

“You’ve heard of survivor guilt, haven’t you?”

I nod again.

“You let yourself be happy for a while and then–”

“Then I fuck something up and–”

“And she gets angry with you. You think you deserve that?”

I sniff. “I don’t know.” I squeeze the material of his sleeve hard. ~Do I fuck up because I deserve to have Sam angry at me?~ “I don’t know.”

***

“Still, at least you’re human. I don’t even get to be that any more.” I’ve dried myself up and Hajarean’s returned to the other chair.

“Who says you’re not human?” he asks.

I stare at him. “Uh… these?” I reply, sweeping back my hair behind my ears and showing them to him in turn. “Kind of a dead givaway, those, aren’t they?”

“And that makes you nonhuman, does it?”

“Wha–” I flounder. I don’t know what to say. “What are you getting at?”

“Look at you,” he says, becoming more animated, even enthusiastic. “Look at any human and any elf side by side and instead of looking at the few tiny little things that are different, look at all the huge things that are the same. Mammals, bipeds, hands,” he raises his own to demonstrate, and shakes them comically, “eyes, ears, a big brain, language, art, music, dancing, laughter, tears, love. Human, in every way that matters.”

“Human,” I whisper. The word almost locks my throat again.

“Elves in this world are not mystical demigods, no matter how much some of them might like playing the part. They’re real, biological beings. They evolved here. And we’re so similar; we can even interbreed… I think by definition that probably makes us the same species.”

I just stare, with eyes that still hurt from crying.

He continues, “My own private theory is that we’re two subspecies of homo sapiens. Homo sapiens sapiens,” he says, pointing at himself, then at me, “Homo sapiens neriens.” He smiles self-deprecatingly and shrugs. “Yeah, I made it up. It’ll have to do unless someone a bit more qualified falls through.”

“And the Reki are Homo sapiens rekiens, you’re saying?” I ask.

“Maybe. Or maybe all the elves are one subspecies and it’s just ethnic differences, I don’t know, I’m not enough of a biologist.”

“You’ve had a long time to think about this,” I say.

“Yes, I have.” He nods slowly. “The point is, I believe you’re as human as I am, Tani. And anyone who says otherwise is the sort of person who thinks these tiny differences,” he touches his own ear to illustrate, “are more important than the hugeness of what we have in common. It’s a shame, but there are plenty of people who think that way, here just as much as back in that other world, and they do it for the same reasons. To claim special status, to justify special treatment.”

“Kerilas said… Kerilas said it’s not about race,” I say. “Because we really are different.”

“Not so much–”

“Living thousands of years is quite a difference,” I point out. “Staying forever young, perfect regeneration, and I know that works because these,” I show him my hands, “were fucked a few months ago. I still have nightmares about it. But… we have all these advantages. It’s not fair, on you. You have to grow old–”

“And you have to die young.”

I would never have thought of it like that. Actually I remember I have had similar thoughts, but to hear it put so concisely stops me dead, staring at him.

He continues, “Yes I can see how the extended lifespan might change your perspective over time, but only in the same sort of way mine would, if I lived that long. But you know, you’re not thousands of years old yet. Why try to second-guess how you’ll be changed by that much experience? It’s an impossible standard to hold yourself to. Be who you are now and let time take care of itself. Don’t let people make you feel inferior and juvenile.”

“But I am–” I stop myself, feeling embarrassed and suddenly not wanting to meet his eyes.

“What?”

“Well…” I shrug. “Juvenile, I guess. Just a kid, aren’t I?” The sadness in my tone of voice surprises me. I hadn’t realised I felt that way about it.

“Ah. And you’re afraid that just because you said that, I’m going to start treating you like a child, like everyone else does?”

I nod.

“Or are you hoping that I will? It lets you off the hook from so many things, doesn’t it?”

That makes me look up at him, but his face is neutral, regarding me quietly.

“I see a charming young woman who’s been told she’s a child so often and treated like a child so much it’s hard for her to disbelieve it. Especially by your Satthei, am I right?”

I can only nod. “But she’s right. I mean… I act like such a kid sometimes. I don’t mean to, it just happens. She said it’s ’cause my brain’s immature. Still growing. But I mean, it’s not only her. Just ask Sam. I had another tantrum at Sam the other day. I didn’t mean to, I just…” I don’t know, and I fall silent.

“It’s what everyone expects of you, isn’t it? We’re all shaped by others’ expectations of us, Tani. It’s only human.”

I curl up sideways in the chair and hug my knees. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think, now.

“You confuse me,” I say eventually.

“I get that a lot,” Hajarean admits.

“I was just getting used to thinking of myself as not human and you come here and tell me I am. I was just getting used to thinking I’m a kid — again — and you tell me I’m not. I don’t know… I don’t know what I am, okay? It’s hard enough figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing any given time.”

“Telling you you’re a child, treating you like one, it’s a means of social control,” he explains. “It’s not just the Sapi humans they hold back this way, it’s the rest of the Neri humans too, only even more literally. Literally holding back even their physical development by decades, even centuries; they artificially keep their own offspring in an immature state to control their fertility and make them more tractable.”

“You’re… You mean the Sattheis.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“I was… I was induced too early, she said.”

“She told you that?”

I nod. “Well, this shaman–”

“What does that mean anyway? Do you know what this ‘inducing’ actually is, Tani? Do you know how it’s done? Have you seen it done?”

I shake my head. No-one ever explained it to me. No relevant-seeming memory has ever resurfaced.

“It’s just what happens when you’re removed from the chemical environment of a Satthei’s ship for long enough. No pheremones, no oil, your natural development kicks in and you start growing up as you’re supposed to. That’s all it is. There’s nothing sinister about it. No black-hearted Reki doing foul misdeeds–”

I sob, suddenly, surprising myself.

“They told you that, didn’t they?” Hajarean asks gently. “They wanted you to think your growing up was because Kerilas had done something to you.”

I nod, squeezing my eyes shut. “I knew he didn’t,” I whisper thickly. “I always knew he didn’t, but I thought it must’ve been someone else–” My throat blocks up.

“Ever since the Sattheis left us alone here, younger Neri have been coming, dribs and drabs. Runaways, orphans, refugees, what have you. They’ve made a home for themselves here. Growing up naturally, raising families, living the way humans are supposed to live, not… bound in chemical servitude in a floating hive.”

“I saw a couple in the market,” I say. It’s still difficult to speak. “Neri kids. They looked happy. She was pregnant. She– She’s just a child.”

“No, she’s not. Hm, heavily pregnant?” I nod. “That’s probably Sarelis then.”

“You know her?”

“I believe I’m acquainted with all the Neri in the city.” He smiles. “There really aren’t that many. A hundred or so. If you come to any of the functions in my house you’ll probably meet her. You can talk to her, ask her about this yourself. Or I’m sure I could arrange some other introduction if you prefer.”

I draw in a ragged sigh. “I don’t know,” I say. “Not yet.”

He nods. “I can understand. It’s hard to take in when you find out you’ve been lied to for so long. Take it in your own time.”

“She was so kind,” I say, meaning Fareis.

“Of course she was. All they do, they do with motherly kindness. Really, I see no malice in what the Sattheis do. They mean only the best, and they’ve been doing what they do for so long it’s hard to remember sometimes that it’s not… natural. But the kindest mother can be…” he seems to be searching for a word. “Reluctant,” he decides, “to let her children face the world alone, without the protection she can give them. Believe me, I can understand that. I have grown-up children. But there comes a point in any normal parenthood when you just can’t protect your children any more. It’s terrifying, it really is, but they grow up and you have to let them do their own thing. Except the Sattheis found a way around that. They stop their children growing up.”

I can’t say anything. I just look at nothing, at my own knees, and the floor tiles. I don’t want to cry again.

He gets to his feet unhurriedly. “I’ll make you some Calmer tea if you like?” he offers.

I nod. “Thanks. There’s water–”

“I know. Just tell me which pot.”

I point and he takes my mug to rinse and gets on with it.

“Thing is, they treat the whole of Jeodin the same way,” he says as he pours water from the pail I’d brought in into the kettle. “To them, we’re all their beloved, darling children, always trying to run too fast, always trying to get into trouble.” He returns with the kettle and my rinsed mug and places the former on the stove. “Maybe when you get to that sort of age that’s just the way you see the world; I don’t know.”

“And now someone’s trying to kill them,” I say.

“Yes,” he says thoughtfully, “yes, that is troubling, especially if slavers are involved, as you say. That’s…” He bites his lip. “Last thing anyone wants is them getting a foothold in Jeodin. Hark,” he says, at a sound outside, “I think the revellers return.”

The sound is of four women coming through the outer courtyard door less quietly than they think. “Marketeer girls in portfall back from a night out on the razz,” I sum up. Hajarean chuckles and takes up the boiling kettle to pour my tea. “’Least we don’t have to fish them out of the harbour when they fall in.” Finally he hands my mug back to me and resumes his seat. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The door opens. Chirasel is the first one through. “Hey Tani,” she says quietly, then she sees Hajarean. “Oh, you’ve got a visitor.”

“What?” I hear Sam’s voice from outside. Then, as if propelled, all three other women spill into the room. Sam’s arm is around Beni’s waist, I notice. “Whoah,” she says, staring at Hajarean. Then, “I knew it! Hah!”

“Hello, Samila,” Hajarean says, in English.

“Just ‘Sam,’” I warn.

“Oh man, I am too drunk for this,” Sam says. “Hi.” She laughs. “Damn it I knew you were faking!”

“Any trouble from the kids, Tani?” Chirasel asks me.

“No, they’ve been fine. Oh and, everyone, this is Lord Hajarean. He’s a friend. Um… Okay, that’s Chirasel, Demele, and Benitese,” I complete the introductions, grateful at least none of them decided to bring back any locals with them, marketeer-style.

“It’s a pleasure meeting you, ladies,” Hajarean says urbanely, instantly charming the pants off them, figuratively speaking, thankfully.

“Okay, okay, I see I’m going to have to watch you,” Sam counters.

“Come on, Demi,” Chirasel says, and literally pulls Demele out of the room.

Beni leads Sam as far as the door. “Are you coming up?” she asks Sam. It’s that special way of asking that you just know means there’s something you weren’t sure was really going on, really is.

I can just stare.

“Uhhh.” Sam looks between Beni and Hajarean. “He’s an old friend. I need to–”

“Thought so.”

“I’ll be up in a bit.”

“I’ll be asleep.”

“I’ll wake you up.”

“I’ll hit you if you do.”

Their faces are getting very close together. “What if I do it sloooowly.”

“Then I might forgive–” Beni’s interrupted by Sam kissing her.

It goes on for some time, Hajarean and myself looking away, at each other, at anything. I’m embarrassed, but after a moment I realise Hajarean’s laughing, in that silent, contained way I remember Simon doing.

Finally the two of them finish and Beni slides out of Sam’s arms and disappears into the rest of the house. Sam wanders back into the kitchen.

“I don’t believe you, Lee!” Hajarean exclaims. “Putting you in a girl’s body hasn’t slowed you down at all!”

Sam grins hugely. “What can I say? I am just that sexy.” She locks her hands over her head and gives us one emphatic hip-grind. “Oh yeah,” in that deep low voice like that song from Ferris Bueller, or as close to deep as her voice goes. “Ooh, yeah. Shove over you,” she indicates to me.

“Get yer own chair, I’m comfy now.”

Sam sighs dramatically and goes to pull over the other comfortable chair from its place in the corner. “You know what the crazy thing is,” she says. “I think my pulling powers have actually increased.”

“She says this every time we make port,” I comment as Sam flops into the chair.

“See, my theory is, right? There’s no such thing as contraception — not that works anyway. But also, there’s no such thing as sexuality. Added to–”

“What?” I ask, half laughing. That didn’t make sense.

“No, Sam’s right,” Hajarean agrees. “Even in the other world, sexuality as a concept is only a hundred or so years old. No-one here’s heard of it. There’s no such word as homosexual here. There’s no such word as heterosexual either. It simply doesn’t occur to people here to categorise themselves, or anyone else, according to who they’re attracted to.”

Sam has been watching Hajarean a little swimmingly. “What he said,” she pronounces at last. “Added to that, there’s no religion making stupid rules about sex an’ saying it’s bad or nothing like that. So if girls just wanna have fun or romance or whatever it’s only sensible of ’em to have it with other girls, until they’re actually ready to have a baby. In my current station in life it’s an arrangement of which I wholly approve, on soooo many levels.” She grins again and leans back, self-satisfied, her hands behind her head, and one booted ankle resting on the opposite knee. “Well, at least two,” she admits leerily.

“I’m glad to see you’re adapting so well,” Hajarean says.

Sam fixes him with a look. “I have good days.” Grin. “This is a good day.”

“Well, it’s not just the women here that do that, you know,” Hajarean informs us.

“I bow to your doubtless extensive experience in these matters,” Sam declares, noticeably not bowing from her mostly-recumbent position.

“I’ll have you know I’m a happily married man,” Hajarean protests.

“Uh-huh,” Sam and I say in unison.

“Hey!”

“Careful, your English neuroses are showing,” Sam says.

“You have to admit, you walked right into that one,” I say to Hajarean.

He chuckles. “I did, I really did. Actually, most of my education on the matter came from my son.”

We both stare at him.

“We’d talk,” Hajarean protests, “after another one of his big emotional break-ups I’m the one he’d come and talk to. I’m rather… proud of that, to be honest.”

“Ah,” I say, exaggerating my relief.

“Hang on, most of your education?” Sam notices. “Ahhh, so come on, was he pretty?”

“Was who pretty?”

“Or were you pretty?” I ask, getting in on it.

“Gyrefalcon was always very pretty,” Sam says.

“How would you know? You weren’t even born!” Hajarean answers back.

“From the game, silly.”

“You couldn’t see me in the game.”

“I’m right though, aren’t I? I mean come on, you’re pretty dishy now and you’re what, fifty-something?”

“Mmm. And a bit.”

“Fifty-something-and-a-bit.”

“Yes. I’m actually not sure to the exact year.”

“You think he’s dishy now?” I ask Sam.

“I’m not afraid to admit it. Come on. The princess had to have seen something in you.”

“She wasn’t a princess, you just called her ‘princess,’ it’s not the same thing at all,” Hajarean points out. “And perhaps she merely perceived my dazzling wit and charm and my unquestioned gallantry in the face of insurmountable odds.”

Sam makes a loud raspberry.

“Oh come on, I saved her from being sacrificed to a fucking evil goddess–”

“Excuse me, what’s with this ‘I’ business?”

“All right, ‘we’. Honestly, you two, it’s like talking to my granddaughters.”

“Ooh, roll saving throw against patronising old fart attack!”

“I am not a patronising– I’m not, am I?”

Sam grins, victorious. “Are they pretty?”

“Who now?”

“Your granddaughters?”

“You keep away from my granddaughters!”

“You sayin’ I’m not good enough for your granddaughters?” Sam cries out, affecting more drunkenness than she actually possesses. “What do you think I’m going to do, get them pregnant?” She grins again.

“The eldest is twelve.”

Sam shrugs. “I can wait.”

“Since when?”

“Hey that’s not fair, I didn’t know she was fifteen!”

“What?” I ask. This must be something from before I joined the group.

“Never mind,” they both say to me in unison.

“You’re a bad influence,” Hajarean tells Sam. “Is she always like this?” he asks me.

“More so when she’s drunk,” I concede. “Hey, and you wouldn’t even kiss me that time!” I berate Sam unseriously. “I feel so shunned.”

It’s Hajarean’s turn to ask, “What?”

“Never mind,” Sam and I say in unison.

Hajarean laughs. Almost motionless but for a deep tremor, silent and helpless to breathe in, his belly convulsing. It’s so perfectly the way Simon laughs when something really gets him.

“Woop, there ’e goes,” Sam quips.

Hajarean snatches a breath and manages to get out a “You bas–” before the paralysis takes him again.

“Come on, it wasn’t that funny,” Sam protests.

“If he needs mouth to mouth, you’re doing it,” I add.

“Ew, he’s got a beard. Be all scratchy.”

“Maybe it’s an acquired taste.”

“Not if I can help it.”

Eventually, and without much help from us, Hajarean gets himself under control again. “I have missed you two,” he says, becoming serious. “More than I realised.”

“It’s really been thirty four years for you?” Sam asks.

Hajarean nods. “I’m glad you at least had each other, to remind you the world we came from is real, and you’re not just going insane.”

“I can’t imagine what it must have been like suddenly finding yourself here on your own.”

“It wasn’t pretty.”

He falls silent. We wait.

“I must have been impossible to live with,” he continues finally. “I don’t know how Hani put up with me when every time I opened my mouth it was to deny her existence. Insisting nothing was real, nothing mattered, no-one could be hurt by what I did because they weren’t real anyway.”

What he’s saying reminds me so much of Lotan. And then I remember what he did, helping us escape. I still can’t figure out what it is I’m feeling about that.

“What changed your mind?” Sam asks.

He smiles. “Holding my son in my arms for the first time. Such a cliché, isn’t it? It just… flicked a switch inside me.”

“Clichés get that way for a reason,” I offer.

“Mmm. I just knew, in that moment. I understood what mattered to me, what was more real to me than anything I’d known before. My son, and Hani’s love.”

***

“Well, girls–” Hajarean starts.

“Watch it,” Sam warns. She’s nearly asleep.

“Hehehe. I need to head back up the hill. If I’m much later I’m going to be early.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’m glad we caught up with you at last. It’s been great talking, catching up on things–”

“Oh, I hope this isn’t it!” Hajarean objects.

“I don’t know what we’re doing, long term. I don’t think we planned on staying here for good.”

“Well, as long as you are here, you must come up for a proper visit. I promise I’ll be more welcoming this time.”

“That’s good to know,” I say. Smile.

“In fact, we’re having one of our semi-regular parties in just a few days. I say party, it’s just family and friends, whoever’s in town, expressly not for politics or business. You’re very welcome to join us.”

“Thank you.”

“And I do mean all of you. Bring the kids, and the girlfriends,” he adds with a sly look towards Sam. “And I am being serious,” he continues. “We three are unique in this world, as far as I know. We should be family. I think you two already are, I’m so glad.” He smiles. “There’s so much more to talk about, there’s so much I want to show you. In fact… Why don’t I send a carriage down to get you? How many of you are there again?”

“Uh, eleven, including the baby.”

“I’ll send the big carriage,” he says, grinning.

“What’s Hanima going to say?” Sam asks, slightly more awake after the last exchange.

“Hani? She’s the one who made me come down here and talk to you after what I did earlier. I’m so glad she did. She knows… about me,” he said. “Well, she accepts it, I’m not sure she believes it, entirely, but I know she’s curious to meet you too.”

“Okay,” Sam says.

“Oh and Sam, you are not to attempt to seduce my wife.”

“Would I do such a thing?” Big wide sleepy grin. “You’re just scared I’ll succeed.”

“Petrified,” Hajarean says dryly. He smiles fondly and gets to his feet. I stand as well and show him out through the courtyard as far as the outer door.

“Are you sure you want to walk home this time of night?” I ask. The first light is touching the sky.

“The city’s never lovelier,” he says. He turns to look at me. “You really did finally learn to make tea,” he says.

Then he’s gone. I lock the door and head back into the kitchen. “Come on, Sam. Go to bed.”

“Mnh, I’m comfy here now.”

“And you’ll have a sore neck in the morning when Jalsone comes down and wakes you up, and you’ll be grumpy at everyone all day. Come on. I’ll help you take your boots off so you don’t wake Beni going upstairs.”

“Ohhhh, I meant to–”

“Yes well, it’s too late now. Foot.”

She raises a foot and I start unbuckling the boot.