“I'll be lucky if my father even attends. He doesn't have much time for those of us who didn't inherit his power. But my brothers and my cousins on my mother's side will be there, they're fun to be with, and some of our neighbors I know well... and my sister. You'll like her; she's pretty.”

She was, and he did.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Part 2 of 22

Launuru watched a smile appear on Verentsu's face and grow larger as he read the letter he'd just gotten.

“It's from my mother,” he said. “She says she's talked my father into letting me have a name-day feast at home, and I can invite up to four friends from school. You're the first.”

“Thanks,” Launuru said. They were on their way back to the dormitory after checking checking for messages at the gatehouse. Launuru would not have gone that day himself, having had letters from his father and brother only two days ago and not expecting any more for a while, but Verentsu had been going to check twice a day lately, impatient for a particular message he was expecting. This must be it.

As they reentered the dormitory, they met two mutual friends, both first-year students like themselves, and Verentsu invited them to his name-day feast.

“Where and when?” asked one, before Verentsu could finish speaking. He wasn't quite as close friends with Verentsu as Launuru was, or he would have known when his name-day was.

“The sixty-third day of Spring,” Verentsu said — eleven days hence — “at my family's home in Nilepsan.”

The boy who had spoken looked eager, the other uneasy. “Will your family give us transportation there and back to the academy?”

“It shouldn't be a problem. My mother usually sends the carriage to bring me home for holidays, and there's easily room for four more besides me, the driver and the guard.”

“Your father won't teleport us all there?” asked the other.

“Not a chance,” said Verentsu, looking annoyed. “He doesn't do that kind of magic.”

Later, though, when Verentsu and Launuru were alone, he said: “I'll be lucky if my father even attends. He doesn't have much time for those of us who didn't inherit his power. But my brothers and my cousins on my mother's side will be there, they're fun to be with, and some of our neighbors I know well... and my sister. You'll like her; she's pretty.”

She was, and he did.

Verentsu's mother Terasina, a tall woman with greying hair, presided over the feast; his father came briefly, just long enough for the name-rite. He appeared suddenly on the dais beside Verentsu and his mother, startling everyone except them, who had apparently been expecting it; recited his paternal ancestry in unison with his youngest son; then remained standing while Verentsu and his mother recited their maternal ancestry. Moments later, the wizard was gone. After a few minutes of nervousness, the revelers became more relaxed as they sat down to eat and drink.

Launuru found himself sitting across the table from a lovely girl a little younger than himself. He hadn't met or even noticed her earlier, before the name-rite when the guests were arriving and being introduced to one another.

“Hello,” he said. “I'm Verentsu's friend Launuru, from the merchants' academy.”

“I'm Tsavila, Verentsu's sister.”

So she was the young wizard in training. How much of her father's magic had she already learned? Verentsu didn't like to talk about it; it was painful to be reminded of how his father had rejected him when it became clear that he, like his older brothers, had inherited no trace of his father's power. Launuru had quickly learned not to ask.

“Launuru told me about you,” she continued. “He said you're good with languages?”

“I suppose so. I grew up speaking Tafriin as well as Ksiluri; my mother spoke it with us so we'd be able to speak with our grandparents when we visited them. Tafriin isn't much use to a merchant by itself, of course, they only speak it in about three villages way up near the source of the Kentsan, but already knowing two languages made it easier for me to learn more, the language-masters said; and it's related to Ksarafra, so that was easy for me to learn.”

“I almost wish Father had spoken Dwebran or Rekhim with me when I was was a baby; it would have been easier than starting to learn them when I was seven. But he didn't know for sure which of us would inherit his magic, so he couldn't do that.”

Launuru had heard of Dwebran; it was a dead language, once spoken by the people whom the Viluri had conquered and displaced when they arrived here. He'd never heard of Rekhim, but wasn't sure if he should ask about it.

“Verentsu told me a little about it,” he replied after a moment's thought. “Your father tested you all for magic when you were quite young, right?”

“Yes, and I was the only one with any power, so of course I must learn the eleven mystic gestures when other girls were playing with dolls, and learn the forty dire names when other girls were learning to sew, and learn languages spoken by nobody in their right mind for the last thousand years when other girls are learning to manage the servants and keep them from stealing the silks and silver.”

“But I suppose it will be worth it eventually, being able to do magic?”

“Maybe. Probably, I guess. But it takes so long to learn enough to do anything fun or interesting... I'm finally learning to do some useful things, but for a long time it was just boring preparations that would help me cast spells years in the future.”

“I suppose it's like that for everyone, except perhaps those of the simplest professions... For half the things we must learn at the merchants' academy, I can't see how they will help us buy and sell.”

Their conversation continued through dinner and afterward. In the following two years, Launuru met with Verentsu during every holiday, and, as often as possible, with Tsavila as well. As their friendship grew and deepened into passion, they had made plans to marry once Launuru had graduated from the academy and been accepted as a full partner in his father's business. But first Terasina, her mother, died of a brain fever; then Psavian arranged a marriage for his daughter to a young wizard she scarcely knew. With a spell she had recently mastered, she joined her dreams that night with Launuru's; she told him of the crisis and they made plans to elope. Waking, he remembered the dream more clearly than the previous day's lectures, and this memory did not fade like the memory of other dreams. He slipped out of the academy dormitory by night, and made his way to the city, and her house.

After a light lunch, Kazmina led Launuru back to the pond, where she once more changed them into ngava geese. Again they swam a bit, flew a short distance, landed, and returned to human form. The change was less wrenching each time, but Launuru still found it impossible to retain his reason for very long in the form of a goose.

“I think we're ready,” she said as she got dressed. “We'll leave tomorrow morning.”

And they did, carrying nothing with them. Before the morning's transformation they breakfasted, then left their clothes, not on the bench by the pond, but in the house. They had seen one another naked several times now, but he was still self-conscious as he followed her down the hall from the kitchen to the back door and out into the garden. His self-consciousness did not survive his human form by ten heartbeats. He joyfully followed the flock leader as she took off and flew southward.

When he became aware again, he was standing on a small island in a large lake. Razory grass was abrading his bare legs and even his secret parts; it was tall enough around Kazmina, where she was standing a few feet away from him, to conceal her secret parts. He had vague memories of flying for hours on end, then descending onto this lake and swimming ashore here.

“Eh, this is not a good place to stop for the night,” Kazmina said. “I wasn't thinking clearly, or at least not humanly, when I picked this spot. We could change back into geese and fly or swim to the mainland...”

“Perhaps,” Launuru said, “we should remain human for a little while before we do that?”

“Good idea,” she replied. “I'll protect us from this grass first, though.” Suddenly his legs no longer felt the prickling of the grass, though the touch of it on his privates was still aggravating. “There, I've given us calluses all along our legs.”

“What are we going to do for clothes?” he asked. “Or tents or bedding?”

“I can conjure something,” she said carelessly, “but there's no point in wasting the effort if we're just going to turn into geese again and leave this place in a short while. You can turn your back if you like, and I'll do the same.”

He turned away from her, looking at the sunset. The sun had just dropped below the horizon, and it would soon be nearly pitch dark; last night was the new moon. Moments later, he heard her say: “Oh, I have a better idea.”

“What?”

“As I said, there's no sense in wasting effort on it now when we're going to be geese again soon... I'll show you later. Tell me something interesting that happened while you were traveling under Psavian's geas.”

He thought for a few moments, and said: “When I crossed the border from Harafra into Setuaznu, I was arrested as a spy.”

“Really? And then what? Did you escape, or did they acquit you...?”

“I escaped, I think... when the geas was outright controlling my actions and not just influencing them, I wasn't totally aware of what was going on. I approached the customs post at the bridge and went through my usual speech, about how I was under a curse and my listeners should think twice about interfering with wizards lest such things happen to them. I'm not sure why the border guards' captain thought that was suspicious, but he threw me in jail, and I was there for several days. They questioned me several times about about where I was from and what I thought about the revolution, which I had barely heard of at the time. The geas seemed happy enough as long as I had someone new, a guard or a prisoner I hadn't met before, to tell my warning to; but when a day passed with all the same guards I'd had before and no new prisoners thrown in there with us, my need to travel became stronger and stronger, and I became frantic. I tore the door of my cell off its hinges and walked out of the jail, just pushing aside anyone who tried to stop me — for a short while the geas made me unnaturally strong. I took several cuts from the guards' swords; they didn't kill me as they probably should have without the magic's protection, but they hurt badly and took many days to heal completely. My body wasn't fully under my own control again until I approached a farmhouse five or ten kilometers from the border to beg for supper.”

“We did have a lot of spies coming in from Harafra and Mezinakh about that time, or so I heard. Some trying to contrive King Sundavu's restoration, or put a pretender on the throne; some just trying to find out what the revolutionaries' intentions toward our neighbors were... You being arrested is unfortunate, but understandable.”

He was about to reply when she went on, after a brief pause: “Well, let's swim over to the mainland and find a better campsite for the night.” A moment later he was twisting and shrinking into bird-shape. He followed the flock leader onto the surface and swam across the lake to the near shore; they caught and ate several fish on their way.

Sated, they waded ashore and waddled along the bank for a ways. The flock leader turned to him, and suddenly they were growing and twisting again. After so short a time as a goose, he still had most of his human awareness, and was less shocked by the change; he'd been expecting it. By the change in himself, that is; he had not expected the flock leader to transform, not into a woman, but into a man.

“What?” he asked, bewildered.

“You seemed uncomfortable with us being together naked,” the other man said, “with you being betrothed to Tsavila, and all — I thought this might be better? At least until I conjure us some clothes, but perhaps even after that — I should have thought of this earlier. My father used to be very strict about not letting me be alone with men, but I've been so happy to be free and independent that I'm afraid I forgot about those rules in dealing with you.”

As he spoke, Kazmina started plucking the long brown leaves of the grass. “Help me gather some more,” he said, and Launuru did so, frowning. A few minutes later, Kazmina took half the bundle of grass they'd collected and muttered some words over it in an language unknown to Launuru — one of the wizardly languages Tsavila had told him about, he supposed. The grass suddenly shifted form into a tunic and pair of trousers, which Kazmina handed to him; he then picked up the other bundle of grass and transformed it into clothes for himself.

Launuru wondered why Kazmina needed to speak a spell aloud to make the clothing, but apparently didn't need to do so for transforming them into geese and back into humans. He knew better than to ask, though; too many times Tsavila had quietly rebuffed his questions with “It would take a year and a day to explain,” or “It would give you nightmares if I told you,” and he had long ago stopped questioning her about magic, content with what she told him on her own initiative — which was actually a fair amount. Come to think of it, he had several times seen Psavian, and more recently Tsavila, casting spells without apparently saying anything aloud or making the mystic gestures they'd made on other occasions.

Once they were dressed, Kazmina put them to work gathering more grass for bedding and wood for a fire. This took a while, as it was rapidly getting dark. All the wood they found was damp, but her fire-starting spell was powerful enough to set it alight anyway, though it smoked terribly for the first few minutes.

“Have you done this often?” Launuru asked, stepping aside as the wind shifted and blew thick smoke toward him.

“No,” Kazmina replied; “just a few times — and never without my father, or this far from home. It's exciting!”

Launuru realized he was probably talking about camping in the wilderness. “I meant turning yourself into a man,” he said. “Do you mean you've hardly ever slept on the ground by a campfire, or...?”

“Yes,” he said. “I said my father never let me be alone with strange men...? When he had men coming to visit, he would change me into a boy, or sometimes into a cat or fox. When women visitors came, or a mixed group of men and women, I stayed a girl, though. Then when I started learning to transform myself, I did different human forms first, before I tried becoming any sort of animal — man, boy, woman, girl, giant, dwarf, pale Northlander, hairy-faced Islander — Father said it was safer that way. He wouldn't let me change into an animal without his supervision for two years. When he went off to war and I took over his business, I found out that people in the neighborhood had been arguing among themselves about whether my father had a son and a daughter or only one child who changed back and forth. I let them keep wondering.” He grinned.

The next morning, Launuru woke to find himself naked again. He was covered with a thin layer of dead grass. He sat up and looked around, the grass falling off his chest and arms. Kazmina, lying on the other side of the coals of their fire and apparently still asleep, was also naked, largely but not decently covered in dead grass. Launuru averted his eyes, got up and walked a little distance from the camp to pee; when he returned, Kazmina was awake.

“I'm sorry about the clothes,” he said, brushing the grass off himself. “I'm not as good at transforming dead things; they're more stubborn.”

“Can you remake them?”

“I could, but it would be a waste of time. We'll be on our way as soon as we extinguish the fire thoroughly.”

“How shall we do that?”

“Just watch,” Kazmina said with a grin; he knelt on his hands and knees, and began transforming alarmingly. His nose stretched out, absurdly long, and almost every part of him grew hugely, especially his arms and legs. Moments later he (or she, Launuru thought, but wasn't sure) was ambling toward the lake on four legs as thick as oaks. The creature stood in the shallow water, extended its long nose, and snorted up a great bolus of water; then turned, raised its head and nose into the air, and sprayed water toward the smoldering coals — and incidentally toward Launuru, who was instantly soaked. He yelped, backing away from the fire and the steam rising from it. Two more slurps and sprays and the fire was thoroughly extinguished.

Launuru wanted to ask what sort of creature Kazmina had become, whether some wizardly anomaly unknown to nature or a natural animal from a distant land, but he had no immediate opportunity; he found himself shrinking and twisting into the now-familiar form of a ngava goose, while the monster at the lake's edge rapidly shrank into the flock leader. He followed the leader onto the water and, having devoured a few small, savory fish, they took to the air.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or list. You can also create derivative works, including adaptations to other media, or new stories using the same setting, characters and so forth, as long as you mention and point to the original story.

An earlier version of this novel was serialized on the tg_fiction mailing list from December 2010 to March 2011. Thanks to the people who posted comments on that draft.

The full novel is already available from Lulu.com. I'll be serializing it here in twenty-two parts over the next few months, about one chapter per week. The next chapter will be posted no sooner than 23 August, as I'll be traveling next weekend.