This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
Mom and Dad had tried to raise me and Taylor without gender stereotypes. They’d given both of us gender-neutral names, and had me wearing her hand-me-downs, skirts as well as pants and shirts, until I was old enough to rebel against them.
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
“Won’t you give us just a little hint?” Taylor pleaded. “We have to know what to pack!”
“At least tell us if we’re flying or driving,” I asked, reasonably enough. “Should we bring our neck pillows?”
“We’re driving for the first stage,” Mom said. “And maybe we’re flying later on, but — not on an airplane, I think. You can leave the neck pillows at home.”
“What about swimsuits?” Taylor asked. “Or other clothes?”
“If I told you we wouldn’t need clothes where we’re going, that would seem like too big a hint. But you still wouldn’t guess.”
“So it’s a naturist resort?”
“I won’t say it’s not,” Mom said with a smile. “But it’s not one we’ve been to before.”
“Stop teasing the kids, Stephanie,” Dad said. “Taylor, Leslie, I wanted to tell you, but your mom convinced me it’s best if you wait and see where we’re going. It’s going to be the biggest surprise of your lives. The one and only hint you’ll get is that it’s nowhere you’ve ever been before.”
“Nowhere we’ve been,” Taylor said, pouncing on the crucial detail. “So you and Mom have been there?”
“Possibly.”
“Are we going to be out of contact?” I asked. “I need to warn my friends if I’m going to drop off the net for a week, like if we’re going wilderness camping.”
“You’d better assume so,” Dad said. “Tell them you might be out of touch, and if you find out later that you can contact them, it will be a pleasant surprise.”
“We’ll tell you as we’re walking out the door whether you’re allowed to bring your tablets and phones,” Mom said. “How’s that?”
“That’s fair, I guess. So I guess I’ll need my sleeping bag and — if we’re not going on an airplane, I’ll bring my hunting knife just in case.”
“I don’t want to make you waste time packing things you won’t need,” Mom said; “but I don’t want to give you any more hints about where we’re going, either. Pack whatever you like. I don’t think you’ll be sorry if you pack light, though.”
Despite that, my sister and I kept fishing for hints about where we were going all through the next week. Taylor spent a lot of time with her boyfriend Jarrod, and I spent a lot of time over at my friend Daniel’s house, as much as his parents would stand for, since I wasn’t going to see him for over a week.
“And your parents won’t tell you where you’re going?” he asked me.
“Not the slightest hint, except we’ve never been there before. It’s not like it’s the first surprise vacation we’ve ever been on, but the last one was when we were too little to do our own packing, so it wasn’t an issue — Mom and Dad packed our swimsuits and sand shovels and stuff for us in a secret suitcase and took them out when we got to the beach house.”
“Man,” he sighed, “your parents are so cool.”
I sighed for a completely different reason. “Tell me about it.” It wasn’t always fun having parents who were so much cooler than their kids.
“I wish my mom and dad’d let me come over to your house.”
“You’ve got a better gaming system than I do,” I pointed out. “And the games we’ve got that you don’t, I can bring over.”
“Yeah, but it was more fun playing them with your folks.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Dad was great at getting into the spirit of any game, and being just competitive enough to make it fun and no more. Mom could be a little too competitive sometimes, but not as bad as she used to be, to hear Dad talk. They had a big collection of card games and board games most of my friends at school had never heard of, and before Daniel’s parents had forbidden him to go over to my house, we’d played a lot of them. Daniel’s parents weren’t into games, and most of the best games at my house were for four or more players, so when I went over we mostly played two-player video games on his PlayStation or Xbox.
I’d been worried that his parents would forbid me to come over either, but they apparently hoped Daniel would be a good influence on me if my parents weren’t being a bad influence on him. And he was, sort of; at least, he was my main source for what normal boys were supposed to act like.
Mom and Dad had tried to raise me and Taylor without gender stereotypes. They’d given both of us gender-neutral names, and had me wearing her hand-me-downs, skirts as well as pants and shirts, until I was old enough to rebel against them. And they’d given us all kinds of toys — they gave both of us dolls and both of us toy swords and armor. At home, or anywhere except work, Dad was as likely to wear skirts as Mom was to wear pants, and Dad did more than his share of the dishwashing and vacuuming. They home-schooled us until I was eight, and then they put us into this Montessori school where several of the other kids had parents who were raising them the same gender-neutral way. It wasn’t until Mom got laid off and they couldn’t afford that anymore that we started going to public school. And all the books we were allowed to read and the movies we were allowed to watch until we were about ten or eleven were things that had been edited by the people in Mom and Dad’s Gender-Neutral Parenting support group, with the characters renamed and given different clothes and hair to make them less stereotypical.
Needless to say, although we’d learned enough from the kids in our neighborhood and the Montessori school to figure out that outside our family it mattered a lot more whether you were a boy or a girl, we were still pretty vague about a lot of the details when we were plunked without warning into public school, and we got picked on a lot. Me more than Taylor, because girls can get away with being a “tomboy” easier than boys with being a “sissy,” but she suffered plenty as well.
Basically I learned to imitate the boys at school as closely as possible, and to keep my mouth shut about my family and my home life. I didn’t make any friends for my first year or so in school; it wasn’t until Daniel moved to town, and didn’t know the reputation for being a weirdo and a sissy I’d gotten the year before, that I made a real friend among the kids at school. And things were going really well until the day Daniel’s mom gave me a ride home from a chess club meeting and found my dad clipping the hedges in an old skirt.
I did my packing Friday evening; Taylor, across the hall in her room, was packing too, and we kept wandering into each other’s rooms to talk about where we might be going, to try to deconstruct Mom’s hints about it. We never got anywhere close to the truth.
I decided to pack stuff for a camping trip in one bag, and stuff for a hotel trip in another; I’d wait until morning and see what Mom and Dad were putting in the car before I decided which bag to bring. Saturday morning, I saw that Mom and Dad just had one small bag each, and no tents or sleeping bags, so I left the camping stuff and just brought the hotel suitcase and my satchel. Taylor had a bigger suitcase, but still everything fit into the trunk with room to spare; we didn’t need the car-top carrier, and Taylor and I didn’t have a pile of stuff on the seat and in the floorboard between us. It was nice not being crowded, but I was worried that I’d forgotten something important, something that would be obvious if I just knew where we were going. But Mom and Dad still wouldn’t tell us, even after we were on the road.
Taylor and I started narrowing down our guesses as we saw where Dad was driving. He got on the expressway going north, which eliminated half the places we’d talked about last night right off the bat. And he went past the airport exit — which we hadn’t seriously expected — and past downtown and into the northern suburbs; not too surprising, after the initial turn north. We figured we were probably going to some naturist resort in the mountains north of the city, or maybe to one of the big cities further up the coast.
When Dad pulled off in Turnerville, we didn’t think anything of it at first — it was about time for a bathroom break, though nobody’d said they needed to go. But he went past the gas stations and restaurants near the exit, fending off our questions with a “Wait and see,” and turned into an office park three or four miles down the road. Then he parked in front of an office with a sign reading TRAVEL AGENCY.
“You’re picking up our keys to the condo or cabin or whatever?” Taylor guessed.
“Watch and see. Everybody out.”
“This is going to be great,” Mom said.
We followed them in to the office. It looked like your usual travel agency, with a bunch of posters advertising exotic places, and moderately comfortable chairs, and a desk in front of a door to one or more back rooms. There was a black guy at the desk, probably ten years younger than Mom and Dad, wearing a light gray sweatshirt with darker gray slacks. He seemed to recognize them; he stood up and smiled as we walked in.
“Ray! Stephanie! I’ve been expecting you. And these are your children?”
“This is Taylor, and that’s Leslie,” Mom said. “Kids, this is Mr. G.”
“Your parents and I go way back,” Mr. G. said. (What kind of name was that? And he didn’t look old enough to go way back with my parents, unless maybe Mom babysat him when she was in high school.) Turning back to Mom, he asked: “Have you explained to them yet?”
“No, we thought we’d save the explanations until you could demonstrate,” Dad said.
“Perhaps that was wisest. Well, go ahead and explain your side of it — I’ll pitch in whenever you like, and I can give you a very good demonstration” (he glanced at his watch — an actual wristwatch, like old people wear, not a cell phone like everyone else uses) “at noon. Another forty-five minutes.”
“A demonstration of what?” I asked.
“We’ll get to that,” Dad said. “Stephanie, you want to start?”
“All right,” Mom said. “Sit down and get comfortable.” She and Dad took seats, and Taylor and I did the same, giving each other puzzled glances. “Not long after I met your dad, but before we’d really started dating, my friend Melanie told me a fantastic story about this travel agency she’d been working at. I thought she was pulling my leg, but she convinced me to come and meet Mr. G and see a demonstration, and it convinced me to give it a try.”
“How old was he then?” Taylor asked. “If that was before you and Dad started dating...” I did the math too; unless he was a lot older than he looked, he must have been just a kid.
Mr. G. got a thoughtful look and said: “I think I was sixty-two that year, but it all runs together. Go on.”
There was no way he could be sixty-two now, much less twenty years ago. But I let that pass for the moment. “Give what a try?”
“Melanie said Mr. G. could send people to another world,” Mom said. “A world with a different history from ours, not just what if Napoleon refused to sell us Louisiana, but millions or billions of years' difference, and different laws of nature. She’d been there herself, several times, and seen amazing things —”
“No way,” I said.
“Just listen,” Dad insisted. “I didn’t believe it at first when she told me, but then I saw it for myself... Go on, Stephanie.”
“You couldn’t go to this other world as yourself,” Mom continued. “You have to leave your body behind, and temporarily swap places with someone in the other world. You’d be in their body and they’d be in yours for a few days, and then you’d swap back.”
“You’re going to demonstrate that?” Taylor asked. “You demonstrated that for Mom? Like, swapped her body with Melanie’s?”
“No,” Mr. G. said. “In those days I was demonstrating my magic by levitating things — usually a piece of gold, which won’t magnetize but is very sensitive to magic. Impressive, but not too much of a strain, leaving me plenty of energy for the soul transference spells.”
“Spells,” I repeated in a disbelieving, if not outright sarcastic, tone.
“Listen to your mother,” he said.
“Well, to make a long story short, I convinced several friends from school to try it with me during Spring break. I wanted Melanie to come with us, but she’d just taken a lot of vacation and couldn’t get any time off.” She gave Mr. G. a little glare, and he smiled. “We went in to the office — it wasn’t here, he’s moved a couple of times since then —”
“More than a couple.”
“Okay, a lot. He can explain why later, maybe. Anyway, we went in and she cast the spell, and the next thing we know, we’re all in another place, in different bodies!”
“Really,” Taylor said.
“What kinds of bodies?” I asked, curious even though I was sure they were pulling some elaborate hoax.
“Well, we were all guys, to begin with. And only three of us were human. Rae Nan — you don’t know her, I lost touch with her after college — was a kind of centaur, but her lower half was like a camel, not a horse. And Natalie... she was an ifrit.”
“Like an Arabian demon?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know about demon per se, but she wasn’t human. At first she was shaped like Rae Nan, a kind of camel-centaur, but she was a shapeshifter, and after she got the hang of it she tried on all kinds of different bodies — she looked like her old self, and like each of us, and a bunch of famous actors, and a dozen different kinds of animal... she had a lot of fun with that. We spent a week in those bodies, in that world, and then went home. I’ll tell you more about that trip sometime, but it’s your dad’s turn now.”
“After we’d been dating a few months, your mom told me about her trip back in the spring. And I thought sure she was joking, but she was so serious, and seemed so sad and discouraged when she said she couldn’t really expect me to believe her, because she hadn’t believed Melanie at first. And she didn’t mention it again for a few weeks, but then she asked me if I’d thought about what she’d said. I hadn’t, much, but I saw how serious she was, and I knew she had to be either crazy or telling the truth — I knew by then she couldn’t keep a straight face when she was joking. So I agreed to go with her to Mr. G.'s office and see if he could do what she said. It was a Friday afternoon and we had the weekend free — well, mostly; we wound up studying less than we should have and getting a B- and a C on a couple of exams, but it was worth it.
“Mr. G. said he had a couple of hosts ready if we wanted to go right then, and if I was skeptical I didn’t have to pay for the trip until I got back. So I said sure, and he worked his magic, and a moment later we were there.
“And I was female, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed. No, the first thing I noticed was this additional sense, and all the things I was sensing through it — it was my link to my tree, a three hundred-year-old oak. I was a dryad.
“Stephanie was there too; she’d wound up in the body of an elf, and there was another elf there, who said she was our guide. She worked for Mr. G. — they call him the Gray One over there — and showed visitors around and helped them out if they got into trouble. Of course, she couldn’t show me much, because as a dryad I couldn’t get far from my tree — barely more than a mile. But we were only going to be there for the weekend, and within a mile radius of my tree there was an elf village and a pixie village, and an amazing waterfall... it was the best thing ever, once I got over the shock.”
“So,” Taylor said, “if you aren’t just making all this up for some reason, and we go over there, we might be anything? Boy or girl, elf or dryad or camel-centaur or whatever?”
“Or whatever,” Mom said. “How many kinds of people are there in your world, Mr. G.? I know I’ve been eight different kinds, and I think Ray’s been nine or ten...”
“Even I don’t know,” Mr. G. said. “My firm has done business with members of more than forty intelligent races, who have visited your world in the bodies of local humans; but there are others who live only in certain regions where my magic doesn’t work well.”
“So you’ve been there lots of times?” I asked Mom and Dad. They nodded, and Dad said:
“After that, we went as often as we could afford it until Taylor came along. And then we made it a tradition to go on our anniversary... I think we’ve been there twenty-five or twenty-six times.”
Every year they’d go somewhere on their anniversary and leave us with relatives. When I was eight or nine I remember thinking it was strange that they were always so vague about where they’d gone and what they’d done — they were always more interested in hearing about how Grandma and Grandpa had taken us horseback riding, or whether Uncle Dave had shown us scary movies that would give us nightmares — or worse, icky gender stereotypes — but by the time I was twelve, I thought I’d figured it out: they probably spent the whole time in a hotel room having sex. Well, apparently not.
Not in a hotel room in our world, anyway.
“Is it completely random?” I asked. “Or can you ask to swap places with a particular kind of person? Like if I wanted to be an ifrit or — do you have kitsune over there?”
“It’s not random,” Mr. G. said, “but I can’t often fulfill specific requests, especially for group packages like this —”
Just then the outside door burst open and a man a little older than Dad came in, puffing for breath. “Am I late?” he asked. “Sorry, there was an accident on Landon Avenue and traffic got backed up, I had to go around...”
“You’ve still got eleven minutes to spare,” Mr. G. said with a glance at his watch. “Chad, this is Ray and Stephanie Kendricks, and their children Taylor and Leslie.”
“Chad Nellis?” Dad asked, just as Chad said: “Ray Kendricks? I know you from the forum —”
Of course there was an Internet forum for people who’d been to this other world. There was a forum for everything else.
So then it was old home week, and three or four of the eleven minutes we had until some mysterious deadline were used up with introductions and reminiscences. Chad said Mom looked familiar, but she said she never put photos of herself online, and she didn’t remember meeting him. Then Mr. G. got us back on topic, and said to me and Taylor:
“As I was saying, I usually can’t fulfill requests unless you’re traveling by yourself, and even then it’s iffy. I have to match you four with the group of four people in my world who have been waiting the longest for hosts, and to be sure of swapping each of you with a specific member of that group, I’d have to cast my transference spell four times... so I’d have to charge you four times as much.” He looked inquiringly at Mom and Dad and they shook their heads.
“Don’t tell them, or us, who’s waiting for hosts,” Dad said. “We want it to be a surprise.”
“Well,” Mr. G. said, rising from his seat behind the desk, “I promised your children a demonstration — though it sounds as though they’re taking it seriously already.”
“Let’s see,” I said. We all followed him through the door behind his desk, down a corridor and into a smaller room; it was crowded with all six of us. Mr. G. picked up a wooden staff — I’d seen wizards carrying staffs just like that in movies I watched at Daniel’s house, but it looked out of place with his sweatshirt and slacks — and warned us to stay at the edges of the room, outside the chalk circle that filled most of the open space between the cabinets and shelves.
He looked at his watch again, and said: “Just a bit more.” Mom and Dad looked curious; Taylor and I were looking all around to see if we could see any wires or mirrors or other gimmickry. Chad looked excited and nervous; he was tugging at his beard and staring at the center of the circle as though it was a centerfold.
And a moment later, it might as well have been. Mr. G. rammed his staff into the floor with a sharp crack, and a tiny naked woman with green skin and hair appeared in the center of the circle. What with Mom and Dad being naturists, I’d seen plenty of naked women — Mom and Taylor at home, when the weather was hot and we didn’t have company over, and other people at the naturist resorts we’d occasionally gone to on vacation. So I didn’t react quite as you might expect a fourteen-year-old boy to react. She was pretty, but mostly I was just astonished at her being so tiny and green and — holy shit she’s flying right at me!
No, actually, she was flying toward Chad, who was standing next to me. He cupped his hands and she landed in them, saying “Chad!” in a tiny high-pitched voice. He bent his head and kissed her gently.
“It’s good to see you again, Maella.”
With her sitting in Chad’s hands, right next to me, I could see that she had a lock of white hair that hung over her left eye, and wings like a dragonfly’s which I hadn’t been able to see when they were buzzing so fast while she was in flight. Mom was staring openmouthed, and Dad was looking pretty astonished too.
“You can bring people over physically now?” Dad asked, and Mom said:
“Maella? Is that you?”
“Not full-sized people,” Mr. G. said. “And even to bring over a pixie is possible only when the magic levels here are at their highest. I won’t be able to send Maella back until two weeks from now at midnight, and the next window after that will be... well, you won’t want to miss this window, Maella.”
“Are you going to introduce me?” Maella said, and then: “Oh! I’ve been you before!”
“And I was you,” Mom said, “seventeen or eighteen years ago for six or seven days.”
“That’s where I know you from,” Chad exclaimed, and blushed crimson. “Um, you look different now...” I could figure out what he and Maella-in-Mom’s-body had probably gotten up to that week, and I blushed too.
“And Trikka was you!” Maella said, flying over and hovering in front of Dad. “I didn’t recognize you at first without the beard.”
“It was a brief experiment,” Dad said. “Stephanie didn’t like it and I shaved it off a few weeks later. And none of us look as young as we used to — except you, Maella.”
She turned a darker green. Was she blushing? “I’m older too, but your human eyes aren’t sharp enough to see the wrinkles.”
Mr. G. cleared his throat. “Chad and Maella will be the local guides for the people inhabiting your bodies, while you’re gone.”
“Oh,” Taylor said. “What are they going to do while they’re in our bodies?”
“I was thinking of taking them to Muir Woods, and various places in San Francisco and Berkeley,” Chad said. “There’s nobody there that would recognize you, is there?”
“Hardly anybody,” Dad said. “Stay away from Mountain View, where my college roommate Wendell lives, and you should be fine.”
“We used to allow visitors to stay in their hosts' homes, and their guide would show them around to local tourist attractions, to save money,” Mr. G. said, “but some years ago we had an incident that made us change our policy. Now we send them to a nearby city to stay in a hotel.”
Mom nodded grimly, and I saw that she knew something about that incident. But she didn’t explain until much later, and this isn’t the place for that very long story.
“I suppose we’re ready whenever you are,” Dad said. He took his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Chad. “Our suitcases are in the trunk of our car, that silver Corolla parked right outside — there should be plenty of clothes and toiletries for a week.”
“Right, then. I’ll keep your bodies safe. Have a great trip!”
“Step into the circle, please,” Mr. G. said, and Mom and Dad did. Taylor and I followed them a moment later.
“Oh,” Mr. G. said, “I forgot to answer your question, Leslie. Yes, there are kitsune in my world.”
“What are kitsune?” Maella asked, but I didn’t hear what Chad or Mr. G. said in reply. Mr. G. touched his staff to the edge of the chalk circle, there was a flash of blue light, and I lost consciousness.
I had breasts — well, they’d warned me I might be a girl of some kind. And it was hard to be sure in the dim light, but I thought my skin was darker than it was in my real body. But the really important thing was that below the waist, I wasn’t human at all.
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
When I came to, it felt like waking up from a normal sleep — I held on to vague images from a dream for a minute or so, as I became aware that I was lying in bed, with a blanket drawn over me. But then I realized I wasn’t in my own bed — this one wasn’t as soft, and it was wider but seemed to be shorter, because it felt like my feet were dangling over the edge of the bed. And then I realized my body felt off, and when I sat up, that felt all wrong — the sensations from the muscles in my legs and hips and back were really weird.
It was pretty dark in the room, but there was dim light coming from a window, shaded with something translucent. As I sat up and the blanket fell off me, I remembered going to Mr. G.'s travel agency, and realized exactly what had happened.
I had breasts — well, they’d warned me I might be a girl of some kind. And it was hard to be sure in the dim light, but I thought my skin was darker than it was in my real body. But the really important thing was that below the waist, I wasn’t human at all. I pulled the blanket off completely and saw that I was scaly down there... was I a mermaid? If so, why was I out of the water?
But no, once I got the blanket off all the way I saw that I was a snake from the waist down.
Just as I was pulling the blanket off I heard a voice from off to my right, a quiet high-pitched voice not unlike Maella’s. “Oh, you’re awake. Stephanie? Taylor? Leslie? Is that you?”
“I’m Leslie.” I looked and saw a tiny woman, larger than Maella but smaller than a human baby. She was nude, like I was — like Maella had been — but she wasn’t proportioned like Maella; she was more like a human with dwarfism, only smaller than any dwarf I’d ever met.
“I’m your dad,” she said. “I think I’m a dryad — at least, I can feel a connection to my tree, and you don’t forget what that feels like, even after twenty years. But I’m not sure because everything looks huge, and the dryad I was that first time was just a little shorter than your mom in her elf-body.”
“I think I’m a naga,” I said. “Have you seen anything like me before, when you were here before?” From what he — or she — had asked me, I gathered she hadn’t found Mom or Taylor yet. They hadn’t said anything about us getting separated; we were supposed to swap with a group of four people who wanted to travel to our world together, right?
“No, but like Mr. G. said, there are a lot of intelligent races here, and some of them only live in a few places, while others, like humans and elves and pixies, are all over.”
“How long have you been awake? Have you explored any?”
“No — I woke up just a minute or two before you did. I was wondering whether I should wake you... Let’s find my tree, and then find your mom and Taylor.”
“Um... Is this it over here?”
I’d been looking around the room as we talked, and experimenting with my new snake-tail, coiling and uncoiling and shifting around. In the corner to the left of my bed (which was very low, like a futon), there was a pot with what might have been a bonsai tree, or might have been some non-woody house plant — I couldn’t tell in the dim light. Dad eagerly scrambled across my bed, jumping over my tail, and touched its gnarly branches. “Yes, this is it! I was worried that I’d tie the rest of you down, not being able to go far from my tree, but if it’s in a pot...”
“Let me see how heavy it is.” I leaned over — with the leverage my long tail gave me I could lean way over without falling on my face — and picked up the pot, which wasn’t too heavy; it felt like lifting a gallon jug of milk would have felt, in my scrawny fourteen-year-old boy body, but I suspected this naga body was stronger.
“Careful!” she said. “Don’t drop it!”
“Maybe I’d better put it back down,” I said, and did so. “Do you think it’s safe to leave it here while we explore? Where do you think Mom and Taylor might be?”
“They’re almost certainly nearby. I’ve gotten separated from her when we arrive, a few times, but usually we find each other within minutes. Let’s go.”
“Should we find some clothes first? Do people wear clothes around here when they’re not sleeping?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been to a bunch of places in this world. The elves and dwarves usually wear clothes, and the dryads and pixies and centaurs generally don’t, and the humans can go either way depending on the climate and the culture, like back on Earth... I don’t know about naga.”
I searched as well as I could in the dark, and I couldn’t find anything that was obviously a shirt or blouse. “Come on,” Dad said, going to the door and reaching for the latch, but it was too high for her. I opened it and we exited into a long corridor, where it was even darker than in the bedroom we’d woken in.
“Did you see any kind of candle or lamp in that room?” I asked Dad.
“No —”
But just then we heard voices from behind the door directly across from ours. I knocked, and a few moments later the door opened.
The man who opened it — he looked human at first glance, until I noticed his pointed ears — was tall and slender, wearing something like a bathrobe, and holding a lit candle. There was another figure standing behind him, whom I couldn’t see as clearly.
“Hi, we’re looking for Stephanie and Taylor,” Dad said.
“I’m Stephanie,” the elf said. “Which of you is Ray and which is Leslie?”
“I’m Leslie,” I said. “I think I’m a naga.”
“A nagini,” said a voice from down the hall. We turned and looked; there was a tall woman, with Asian features and red hair, wearing a blue and green kimono and holding a lamp. “I see that the Gray One cast the transference spell while your hosts were asleep. I apologize, but when we have been waiting so long for hosts, it is difficult to be alert at every moment. Welcome to our world, and to my home.”
“You’re our guide, then,” Dad said. Mom came out of the bedroom, and I got a better look at the figure behind him.
“Taylor?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s me.” He was shorter than the woman in the hall, but he had the same Asian features and red hair. And his ears were high on his head, and erect and pointed, like a wolf’s or... a fox’s? I glanced down and saw a couple of bushy red tails sticking out from under the hem of his robe.
“You’re a kitsune! I wanted to be a kitsune.”
He shrugged and grinned. “You look pretty cute as a nagini.”
“Thanks.” If Daniel could see me now, or any of the kids at school, I’d be mortified. But with just my family around, I could handle being a nagini. It wouldn’t have been my first pick, but it could be pretty cool. And I didn’t mind Taylor seeing my breasts; I’d seen hers often enough.
The other kitsune invited us to come down the hall into another room, where she gave us little gold bracelets that flowed like mercury and shaped themselves to fit our wrists perfectly. “They will show people that you are under the Gray One’s protection,” she said. “And they will help me find you if you get separated from the group.”
“The Gray One is Mr. G., right?”
“Yes, that is one of the names he uses in your world. I am Kinuko, and I will be your guide for the next eight days. I know you’re wide awake right now, with the transference spell having woken you, but your hosts' bodies had just gotten two or three hours of sleep, so you should probably go back to bed soon... we can talk in the morning about where to go and what to see.” She yawned.
Going back to bed right away might have been a good idea, but we were really wired, and felt like we wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. We bombarded her with questions until her yawns became so frequent that Mom and Dad apologized and said we’d see her in the morning. By “we” I mean mainly Taylor and me, but Mom and Dad had a few questions as well, since they’d never been to this part of the Gray One’s world before, or seen a nagini like me, or a dwarf-dryad linked to a bonsai tree like Dad.
“You’re not actually a dryad,” Kinuko explained, “but a kodama. Dryads usually link with oak or ash trees, and kodama with cherry or maple. Being a bonsai kodama means you have freedom to travel, but you also have to work harder to keep your tree healthy. Your host told me that her cherry tree won’t need to be fertilized or pruned in the next eight days, but you will need to water it every day — whenever you feel thirsty, she said.”
We also found out that we were in Kinuko’s house, and that she lived on the outskirts of a big city, the capital of an empire. Mom and Dad had visited some outlying regions of this empire on their anniversary trips, but they’d never been to this city. There were a lot of kitsune in this quarter of the city, and a lot of humans in some other neighborhoods. “And there are sea-elves like your host in the waterfront district, and tengu, and kappa. Watch out for kappa; the ones who live here in the city are more law-abiding than the wild kappa of the mountain lakes, but they’re still predators at heart.”
“So are we, aren’t we?” Taylor ran his tongue along his sharp canines. “And so’s Leslie, I’m guessing.” I’d noticed what seemed to be fangs in my mouth, and I wondered if I had venom sacs behind them.
“We are civilized predators,” Kinuko said primly.
Naga (“nagini” were the girls, and “naga” were both the boys and the whole species — so sexist) weren’t native to this region, apparently; just a few had immigrated here within the last few decades.
After Kinuko went to bed, the rest of us stayed up, drinking the tea she had made us, comparing notes, and listening to Mom and Dad’s stories about their previous vacations in this world.
“I can’t believe I’m an elf and you’re a dryad, just like our first time,” Mom said. “You’re so cute!” He was holding Dad in his lap by that point.
“You’re looking pretty scrumptious yourself,” Dad said, tracing her finger along Mom’s chin.
Taylor rolled his eyes and said, “Should we leave you two alone for the rest of the night? I can take the other bed in Leslie’s room.”
“Dad should probably sleep close to her tree,” I said. “I’ll come over to your room.”
So Taylor and I went down the hall to the room he and Mom had woken up in, and went back to bed, but we lay awake in the dark for a while, talking about how awesome and weird this all was.
“I think I’ve figured out why Mom and Dad wanted to raise us the way they did,” Taylor said after a while.
“Hmm?” I was finally starting to get sleepy.
“It’s so we wouldn’t freak out the first time we came here. So you wouldn’t feel castrated or something if you wound up in a girl body like this, and so we wouldn’t be embarrassed if we wound up in a culture where they don’t wear clothes, like Maella’s people or some others they told us about.”
“You’re probably right. Man, we put up with all that bullying the first couple of years in public school for this?”
“Totally worth it.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think it was.”
Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
“You’re not too uncomfortable being of the opposite sex?” Dad asked us. “My first time, I panicked when I realized I was a girl.”
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
The next morning I woke and found Taylor had already left our room. In the sunlight from the window I could see my scales better, and appreciate the banded pattern, alternating blues and greens. I also noticed that I had no belly-button; I later learned that that was because naga hatch from eggs. I got up and slithered down the hall toward the room we’d had our tea in during the night — the door across the hall was closed, and I didn’t knock to see if Mom and Dad were awake. I found Kinuko and Taylor eating breakfast, laughing and talking.
“Good morning, sis,” Taylor said. “Kinuko’s been telling me about us kitsune... watch this!” And his nose and mouth started protruding, and the red hair shortened and spread over his whole face and neck and arms, and all the while he was shrinking; his robe collapsed and a fox squirmed out from under it.
“Awesome,” I said. “Can I do that too? Turn all the way into a snake, or maybe all the way into a human?”
“I don’t know,” Kinuko said, as Taylor grew into his near-human form (still with fox ears and two tails, though) and got dressed. “Your host was the first nagini I have ever known, and she was quiet and secretive. I have never seen a naga or nagini transform, but that does not prove anything.”
Taylor tried to describe how he’d transformed, and I tried it myself, but nothing happened. Later on I found out I was wasting my time; naga don’t transform like kitsune.
A little later Mom and Dad came down the hall, rubbing their eyes. Mom ate with us, but Dad said she wasn’t hungry; she just wanted a small cup of water for her tree, which Kinuko gave her. She came back a couple of minutes later, and Kinuko told us what she’d planned for us.
“I think it best, perhaps, to travel up the river. There is much to see in the city, but the longer we remain here, the greater the chance that you will meet people who know your hosts, and that is an awkward situation it is best to avoid.”
“But they’ll see the bracelets and know we aren’t really them, right?” Taylor asked.
“If they are familiar with the Gray One’s work,” Kinuko said. “The Gray One has only been offering his services in this city for a couple of years, and not everyone knows what the bracelets mean, as in his homeland where almost everyone has visited your world or knows someone who has.”
“There was that time we were centaurs,” Dad reminded Mom, “and our hosts had gone off to our world without telling their husband where they were going...”
“Oh, that was awkward,” Mom said with an embarrassed laugh. “Even though he knew what the bracelets meant, he was mad at his wives and wanted to take it out on us... Our guide had some work to do to protect us from him. Yes, let’s go up the river if that will keep us away from people who know our hosts.”
“Then that’s why Chad was going to take the people in our bodies to San Francisco?” I asked.
“Among other reasons,” Mom said.
“But we can see a few things here in the city today and perhaps tomorrow,” Kinuko continued. “I will begin attempting to secure us berths on a riverboat, but it may take time to find a suitable one. In the meantime you can see the city. Let us begin by going to the riverfront, and if we cannot find suitable berths on the first riverboat we try, then I will escort you to a public garden or some other place where you can amuse yourselves while I speak with various riverboat stewards.”
So after we finished eating, we set out. Kinuko delicately suggested that I ought perhaps to cover my breasts, and I said sure; did she have anything I could use? She went to the room I’d first woken up in, and showed me some long strips of cloth that my host had used to wrap around her breasts, loop over her shoulders and tie off; it took me two or three tries to get it right. My host apparently hadn’t brought anything with her to Kinuko’s house, except for the jewels she’d paid for her trip with, and two of those camisole-saris. Dad’s host had nothing but her tree, but Taylor’s and Mom’s hosts had each brought a small bag of clothes, combs, brushes and so forth. They each got dressed in fresh clothes, and Mom brushed my thick hair with a brush he’d found in his host’s bag, and they declared we were ready to go.
When we set foot outside Kinuko’s house, we saw that it was a long, rambling structure separated from the neighboring houses and set in a garden full of cherry trees; we’d only seen a few of the many rooms, apparently. Most of the houses in this neighborhood were like that, but we could see taller buildings in the distance, and she led us in that direction.
Mom, Taylor and I took turns carrying Dad’s pot. Dad’s short legs couldn’t keep up with their stride and my slither, so after a couple of minutes Mom gave her a piggy-back ride. It was a long walk to the riverfront. The buildings got denser and taller, and so did the traffic; there were rickshaws, and donkey- and horse-drawn carts and carriages, but mostly people on foot. There were more kitsune and humans than anything else, but a few elves and dwarves, and when we first saw a group of short greenish-blue skinned people with frog-like faces, Kinuko turned her nose up and said we must be closer to the river than she thought, if there were kappa around. We didn’t see any people like me that morning, and I noticed that a lot of people stared at me — maybe they were surprised at the diversity of our group, since most of the groups of people I saw traveling together were all of one kind, but I think they were looking at me in particular.
Then, when we were close enough to the river to see the masts of ships in the distance where there was a gap between the taller buildings, Kinuko cried “Look!” She didn’t point, but we followed the direction of her eyes, and saw a white dragon, long and sinuous, with feathery antennae or whiskers or something trailing from its head. I don’t know how far overhead it was, but it was either flying low or really, really big. It wove through the sky as though it were floating and its wings were there just for decoration. We all stood still and watched until it was gone.
“There will be a storm,” Kinuko said. “I hope it does not delay our departure, but I fear it will.”
“You didn’t mention dragons last night,” Taylor said. “Are there a lot of them around?”
“I’m surprised to see one in such an urban area,” Mom commented.
“It was probably one of the royal family,” Kinuko said, continuing toward the river. We followed her as she went on: “Perhaps one of the emperor’s cousins or aunts or uncles... Undoubtedly they were on an urgent mission, or they would have left the city in human form and then assumed dragon form when they were safely away from populated areas.”
Of course that raised another ten questions, and we asked them. She explained that the founder of the dynasty, the current emperor’s great-grandfather, had married a dragon, and the family had continued intermarrying with dragons and half-dragons in the last few generations. The emperor and his children were more than half human, and couldn’t assume full dragon form, but a lot of their cousins were at least half dragon and could shift back and forth more or less easily. But because dragons tend to cause thunderstorms when they fly, the emperor normally didn’t want his relatives flying into or out of the city.
Sure enough, as the dragon disappeared over the horizon to the west, storm clouds gathered in the east, and soon covered the sky from horizon to horizon. But it didn’t start raining, at least not where we were, until later. By then we’d reached the riverfront, with its long array of docks and wharves extending out of sight in both directions, and ships pulled up to more than two thirds of them. I’m not nautical enough to be sure, but I think there were a mix of riverboats and sea-going ships; the river was pretty wide and deep at this point, Kinuko said, just a few miles from the ocean, but only the riverboats could go much farther upriver. So the riverboats and ocean-going ships would swap cargoes here in the city.
Kinuko led us along the wharves, pausing in front of certain boats or ships (I couldn’t always tell the difference; it wasn’t just a matter of size, though the very biggest were all “ships” and the very smallest were all “boats”) and calling out questions to the people working on deck. In a couple of cases someone would come down the gangplank and talk to her, and look us over, and they’d haggle over the price for five berths, and she’d say she’d get back to them soon. All of them said they wanted to wait and see what the weather did before they set out.
And then we heard thunder, and Kinuko said we’d better get inside somewhere. She took us to a tea-house near the river, but it was already raining hard by the time we got inside. Mom and Taylor were looking pretty bedraggled in their soaked clothes, but Dad looked invigorated, bouncy even, and Kinuko still managed to look graceful though she was as soaked as Mom or Taylor. I’m not sure what I looked like to them; the strangers in the tea-house might have stared just as much at a nagini who wasn’t wearing a soaking wet camisole-sari that showed her erect nipples. I think my tail looked nicer when it was wet, though, all shiny and glistening.
Kinuko suggested that we all go to the privy, one by one, and take off our clothes and wring the water out of them before putting them back on. We did that, all except Dad. While I was back there I tried to figure out how I’d pee or poop in this body; it wasn’t obvious. I didn’t need to go urgently, but I situated myself over the hole in the floor and tried to go. But the pee came out further down my tail, where I wasn’t expecting it, and I made a mess on the floor; I apologized to one of the waitresses when I came out. She nodded resignedly and said she’d go clean it up.
After we’d eaten (all except Dad), when most of us were drinking another cup of tea, Kinuko spoke to the proprietor (a human) and borrowed an umbrella from him, and went out, saying she’d return soon. It was still raining hard out there, and the thunder was sometimes near and loud enough that we had to ask each other to repeat what we’d said.
“What do you think so far?” Mom asked.
“Best vacation ever,” Taylor said with a grin.
“It is pretty awesome,” I added. “It’s a lot to get used to, but being a nagini is starting to feel... well, not normal exactly, but a lot less weird.”
“You’re not too uncomfortable being of the opposite sex?” Dad asked us. “My first time, I panicked when I realized I was a girl.”
“Why?” I asked. But then I thought about the way the guys at school talked about girls, and the way they’d made fun of me when I came to school wearing barrettes or even a pink shirt, and I realized Dad had been subjected to that kind of conditioning his whole life, not just for a couple of years.
“Most boys are raised to think that they’re better than girls because they’re boys, and that the differences between girls and boys are hugely important. They might not be explicitly taught that — nowadays they’re often explicitly taught the opposite — but they see grown-ups favoring boys over girls and treating boys' concerns as more important, and that implicit message is what really soaks in. I had to come over here several times in female bodies before I really unlearned most of that, and it still pops up in the back of my mind once in a while.”
“I guess it would be embarrassing to have Daniel or the guys at school seeing me like this,” I said, “but then, if they were here, they’d probably have strange bodies of their own to get used to.”
“I’d like to bring Jarrod over here,” Taylor said. “He’s a pretty cool boyfriend most of the time, but there are times when he acts like you were saying — like being a boy makes him more important. Having a penis is kind of convenient, but it’s not as big a deal as he makes out.”
“Maybe you could invite him to come with us next year,” Mom said. “Or if you save your money, you and he could go on a shorter trip later this summer.”
“You’d let me and Jarrod come here without you?” Taylor’s eyes got wide, and I immediately asked:
“Can I come over here with Daniel sometime, if I pay for it?” I had no idea how much Mom and Dad had paid the Gray One for our vacation, but it couldn’t be too far out of reach if they were talking about Taylor paying for it with her wages from McDonald’s.
“Probably when you’re as old as Taylor,” Dad said to me, and to Taylor: “And we’d want to talk with the Gray One about the hosts he’s matching you with, and where you’re going, to be extra sure you’re safe.”
“Merfolk should be good,” Mom said, “since they aren’t interested in sex outside mating season, and the Gray One doesn’t swap people with them when the mating season is coming up.”
“Aww,” Taylor pouted, then brightened: “It’ll be fun to see Jarrod as a mermaid.”
“Too bad we can’t bring home pictures,” I said, and then: “Wait, if Mr G. — I mean the Gray One — could bring over Maella in her own body, couldn’t he send us a camera, and bring it back loaded with pictures? We wouldn’t be able to recharge it during the trip, but a couple of days worth of pictures would be better than nothing.”
“Let’s ask him next time,” Mom said. “I didn’t know he could transport physical things until yesterday. I suspect it will cost far more than the soul transference spell, though.”
Just then Kinuko returned with more umbrellas, and returned the one she’d borrowed. “We can go now,” she said.
“Have you found us a boat yet?” I asked.
“Not yet; there’s no sense trying to talk to the stewards or captains while this rain keeps up. I could escort you back to my house, to wait out the storm, or we could go to the greenhouses in the Autumn Garden.”
“The greenhouses sound neat,” Dad said, and we set out. Dad rode on my shoulders — she hardly weighed anything — and held our umbrella, while I held her tree, extending my arms way out at first so it would catch some of the rain. But Dad told me she’d had enough to drink for a while, and I pulled the pot back in under the umbrella.
It was a fairly long walk to the Autumn Garden, though not as far as from Kinuko’s house to the riverfront. There were a lot of people in the greenhouses, both gardeners and visitors, but they were vast, built on multiple levels, so we weren’t too crowded. Most of the people there were humans and elves, but there were a few kitsune and others I couldn’t readily identify. No kappa, though; they seemed to like being out in the rain. And then, when we’d been walking (and slithering, in my case) around the roofed garden for an hour or more, I saw a naga. Another naga.
He was older, with wrinkled skin — about as dark as mine — and white hair, but his scales were still brightly colored. His snake-tail was about twice as long as mine, and had alternating bands of pink, yellow and blue scales; he was bare-chested except for a sequined sash that slung from his right shoulder to his left hip. When he saw me, he approached me.
“Good day, Miss. There are not many of our kind in the city, and I do not think I have seen you before. I am Soradhapam.”
“Um, hi. I’m Leslie — I’m not from around here. This is my Mom and Dad and my sister Taylor, and our friend Kinuko...”
“You were adopted and raised by kitsune?” He looked shocked, and I realized I hadn’t been very exact in my gestures when I was introducing the others.
“No, see, we’re all visitors, borrowing these people’s bodies...” I held up my wrist and pointed at the gold bracelet, and Kinuko explained further, going into a sales pitch and telling Soradhapam how to get in touch with her if he wanted to visit our world.
“I see. I hope you enjoy your visit... May I ask who your host is, whose body you now occupy? Is she new to the city?”
I looked questioningly at Kinuko; for some reason I’d never asked her that. She said: “Leslie’s host called herself Nenikha. She told me very little about herself; however, she spoke with a strong accent, so I suppose she was not born here.”
“Thank you. Good day.” Soradhapam bowed low, then turned and slithered away.
We continued going through the greenhouses. Dad kept wanting to stay longer at each exhibit than the rest of us, especially the trees; she’d brush the tips of their branches with her fingertips, if there were any low enough for her to reach, and close her eyes. The first time she did that, Mom said: “I didn’t know you could tap into trees you’re not linked to.”
“I didn’t either,” Dad said. “I think it’s a kodama thing, something they can do that dryads can’t. I can’t get as strong a feel for them as I have for my own tree, but I can feel whether they’re healthy and happy... This one is. She likes the gardener who smells like sage and mint; she likes living in the greenhouse where the gardeners don’t let deer come along and eat her leaves.”
After that Dad told us something interesting about most of the trees she touched — or at least it was interesting the first ten or fifteen times. Long before the rain stopped, Taylor and I got a little bored. When the rain finally stopped, an hour or two after our encounter with Soradhapam, Kinuko said she would go back to the riverfront and try again to arrange passage for us; she suggested we walk around the gardens until she returned. We left the greenhouses and started exploring the outdoor gardens.
We’d seen from the trees in Kinuko’s garden that it was autumn, though you couldn’t always tell from the trees in the greenhouse. But out here the changing colors of the leaves made a fantastic spectacle; a few unfamiliar trees' leaves were turning shades of purplish-red that you never saw back home, and though most of them were the usual reds, oranges and yellows familiar from Earth, the trees seemed to have been planted in a deliberate arrangement so that their leaves would make neat patterns seen from a distance, or from a hill or observation tower overlooking the park.
Before long, we came to a large oak; Dad, who was riding Mom’s shoulders while I carried her tree, reached up to touch one of the lower branches, and then jerked her hand back as if she’d been shocked. A moment later a naked woman stepped out of the trunk of the tree — she looked a lot like Dad, except that she was nearly as tall as Mom and Taylor, and she was proportioned like a normal human, not dwarfish like Dad. And her features were more European or Middle Eastern than Asian.
“You’re a bonsai kodama, aren’t you?”
“Yes — for the moment. Are you a western dryad?”
“Yes, though I have lived in this garden nearly my whole life. I was a small child when explorers from this country dug up my sapling and put it in a pot, like the one this snake-girl carries, and brought me on a ship to this garden. But they did not keep me in the pot forever, like you; they planted me in the ground here so I could grow tall and strong. Sometimes I have wished that they had kept me in the pot, so I could travel freely.”
“I wish I were as pretty as you,” Dad said frankly. “Having one’s growth stunted is the cost of freedom, for our kind. But there may be another way you can get the freedom to travel, at least for a time.” Dad held up her wrist with its bracelet, and she and Mom explained how we were visiting her world.
The dryad, whose name was Tiranella, and Mom and Dad got into a long conversation; they told her about our world and about the various places in this world they’d visited, and she told us more about her homeland and the trip across the ocean. Taylor and I listened with interest at first, but after a while, when Mom and Dad were telling her a long story about the time Mom was a ghoul and Dad was a cyclops — a story which they’d already told us last night, and which wasn’t as funny the first time as they seemed to think — Taylor said: “Is it okay if we go explore that section of the garden over there?”
“Sure,” Mom said. “Meet us back here at Tiranella’s tree in... well, we don’t have watches here, but I’ve seen several sundials around the garden. Meet us here before they show the third hour after noon.”
Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
I leaned way over to get a closer look at my reflection, and suddenly there was a splash of water that blinded me for a moment, and something was grappling my arms and shoulders, pulling me down into the water.
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
I handed Dad’s tree over to Mom, and Taylor and I went off to explore. We crossed a high-arched bridge over a stream, and descended a steep zig-zagging staircase into a section of the garden planted in a deep gully. Not many of the trees growing in the bottom of the gully were tall enough to clear the rim of it. There were a lot of plants there that liked shade, and something about it appealed to Taylor’s fox-nature; he asked me to take care of his clothes for him, and turned into a fox and slipped off among the trees and bushes. I followed him as closely as I could, though after a few minutes I found the shady sunken garden oppressive; my snake-nature wanted more direct sunlight, apparently. I thought about telling him I was going up the stairs to the other side of the gully to see what was over there, but I didn’t want to get separated from him, so I tried to stay close.
Not many other people were visiting that section of the garden just then. I’d seen a couple of elves walking hand in hand when we first arrived, but they’d gone up the stairs we’d come down and since then I’d seen nobody but Taylor, and only a glimpse of his tails from time to time. After a while I came to a bench by a wide, calm pool in the stream, and I called out: “Taylor, I’m going to sit here for a while. Let me know when you’re done being a fox.”
I tried sitting on the bench as though I were a human, but it wasn’t very comfortable. I coiled up my tail and rested on it, and sat there looking into the pool. I hadn’t seen any mirrors in Kinuko’s house, and this calm water was the first time I’d gotten a good look at my reflection. My skin was dark, as I think I mentioned before, and my features were like a woman from India or Pakistan — not surprisingly, since if I remembered right our world’s legends about naga came from India. I was young and pretty, or at least I looked like a fairly young human woman, late teens or early twenties — I had no idea how long naga lived or how quickly they aged.
I leaned way over to get a closer look at my reflection, with my hair dangling down on either side of my face, and suddenly there was a splash of water that blinded me for a moment, and something was grappling my arms and shoulders, pulling me down into the water. In a moment my human head and torso were underwater, though it felt like most of my tail was still on land; I uncoiled my tail and tried to lash it around the bench or a tree trunk or something and pull myself out, but I felt more and more of my tail getting pulled under as I struggled to breathe. I’d had no warning to take a deep breath, and I didn’t think I could hold out long. I lashed out with my hands at whatever had hold of me, but the water was muddy and I couldn’t tell if I was doing any damage.
Then I felt someone pulling on my tail, and a moment later it felt like more than one pair of arms pulling. My torso and then my head broke above the surface, and I gasped, drawing in a huge lungful of air, collapsing on the bank for a long moment before I drew myself up to look around.
Taylor, back in humanoid form but still naked, was standing over me, as was a naga, younger and a lot more muscular than Soradhapam, but a few years older than my host Nenikha. “Thanks,” I said. “What was that?” Then I turned and saw, near the other side of the pool, a frog-like head raised just above the surface of the water. A kappa.
“Leslie, Kinuko warned us about those things! Why’d you get so close to it?” Taylor asked.
“I didn’t even see it until it jumped out of the pool and pulled me under,” I protested. “Um, hi — thanks again for saving me.”
“What are you doing here?” the naga burst out. “You could have been killed! I am afraid this may be a terrible diplomatic incident no matter what happens next — whether we report this to the authorities or take private vengeance... Honored kitsune, will you aid me if I attempt to slay that miscreant?”
When he said “Honored kitsune,” I suddenly realized he was switching to the language I’d been speaking with Kinuko, Mom, Dad and Taylor — up to that point he’d been speaking another language, which I hadn’t known I knew until that moment. Taylor gave me a puzzled glance and replied:
“I’m not keen on tackling him in his own element. But nobody tries to drown my little brother and gets away with it. He can’t get out of the pool without going on land or at least wading in the shallow parts of the stream, and then we can grab him... or we could keep him trapped in the pool until reinforcements arrive.”
“I wasn’t trying to drown her,” the kappa said. “Just scare her a little. She shouldn’t have been leaning over the pool like that if she didn’t want to play.”
“Um, what was that about a diplomatic incident?” I asked, holding up my wrist bracelet and tapping it. “The Gray One didn’t say anything about the U.S. having a consulate here or anything...”
“You, young lady, are coming straight back to the embassy. You’ve caused enough trouble...” He’d spoken that other language again. He took a small horn from a bag slung over his shoulder and blew it.
“Um, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” I said, unconsciously switching to the language he’d addressed me in. From Taylor’s expression I was pretty sure he didn’t understand us, and I deliberately switched back to the language I shared with him. “Probably my host, I think Kinuko said her name’s Nenikha...” I wasn’t explaining things clearly, I know, but I’d just suffered a near-drowning; cut me some slack.
“Yes, a very plausible alias!” the naga said sarcastically, in the language we shared with Taylor. “To anyone who does not know our language! Well, Miss None-of-your-Business, your safety is my business and I take my business very seriously. You are not getting out of my sight again, unless it is in your suite at the embassy — and be assured I will have guards posted outside your windows this time.”
Just then four more naga came slithering down the banks of the gully. “Seize the kappa,” said the one who’d helped rescue me, and they slithered right into the pool, while the kappa dove underwater. There was a lot of thrashing and splashing, but a minute or two later they’d dragged the kappa out and were threatening to hold him upside down if he didn’t stop struggling. I wasn’t sure why that was such a dire threat, but he immediately subsided and begged them to spare his life.
Meanwhile I was insisting that I wasn’t this Nenikha he was looking for, and telling him all about the Gray One and Mom and Dad and Kinuko but not in any coherent order, and Taylor was pulling his robe on, which I’d left on the bench. “I don’t want to hear any more excuses,” the big naga said, and took me firmly by the arm.
“Hey!” I said, but he was way stronger than me, and he pulled me along across the nearest bridge over the stream and up the other stairs. Taylor followed and tried to force him to let go, but at a command from the big guy, two of the ones who’d subdued the kappa pulled Taylor away and held him. He turned into a fox to slip out of their grasp, dashed a short distance away and changed back.
“Go tell Mom and Dad what happened,” I called out. “And Kinuko. She said the bracelet would let her find me if I got separated.” But by then my captor and I were over the rim of the gully into the next section of the garden, out of sight of Taylor. The other four naga brought up the rear, two of them holding the kappa firmly between them.
“What is this bracelet?” my captor asked. “And what has become of the pearl necklace you were wearing when you left the embassy eight days ago?”
“Um, I think maybe Nenikha used it to pay for her trip to my world. Like I’ve only explained three or four times.”
“No more of this Nenikha foolishness! I am not as gullible as your chaperon. I hope you realize the disgrace she has suffered and will suffer because of your willfulness —”
We were leaving the garden by a different route than Kinuko had led our party in by, and weren’t anywhere near the greenhouses or Tiranella’s oak as far as I could tell. As we came to a gatehouse, my captor broke off his reprimands to tell the park authorities about how the kappa had attacked me.
“Your emperor shall hear of this within the day! This garden is supposed to be safe for distinguished visitors such as Princess Serenikha, but you allow murderous ruffians such as this to lurk in shadowy pools, ready to drown passersby —!”
The kappa protested again that it had only been a bit of harmless roughhousing, and that we had overreacted. The park security guards, or whatever they were, apologized profusely and took the kappa into custody. I tried to tell them that those other naga were kidnapping me, but my captor told them that I was a child by the standards of their people, and had tried to run away; they were taking me home. The security guards didn’t seem inclined to interfere in an affair between naga, and they made no move to help me.
Once we were out of the gardens and into the street, they hustled me into a waiting carriage drawn by four creatures that looked like goats, but were bigger than horses — they were shaggy, and their horns were twisted together so at first glance I thought they might be unicorns, until I saw that at their bases they were separate. There was an older nagini waiting in the carriage, and she hugged me, then exclaimed over my disheveled appearance, and insisted on my taking off my wet sari-camisole and putting on a dry one. The new one she gave me was much fancier, in five different colors, with tassels and sequins.
“Why did you run away and worry us all so?” she scolded.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “it wasn’t me. I’m not who you think I am.” And I tried again to explain. Either I was calmer now that I hadn’t just suffered a near-drowning, or I’d gotten better with practice, or this nagini was just smarter and more open-minded than the big guy who’d rescued and then abducted me, because she grasped the basics of my story right away, and seemed to take it seriously.
“Then the princess, when she ran away from us, went to this kitsune woman, and had her soul exchanged with yours? And you were a human in a far-off country before you paid a mage to swap your soul with my Serenikha?”
“That’s basically it,” I said. “Except it’s not just another country, it’s a whole other world, and my parents paid for the trip. I’m just fourteen in my human body — I don’t know what that is in naga years, but back home we’re considered adults when we’re eighteen.”
“Naga live longer than humans, but Serenikha is not much older than you, relatively. She is only a decade away from her majority, but alas, she is not so mature as I hoped she would be by now — as this foolish stunt of hers proves.”
“So you believe me?” I asked eagerly. “Let me go, and in seven more days the Gray One will swap our souls back, and you can take this girl home. Are you her mom?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I am only one of her chaperons during this voyage... But I am afraid we cannot let you return to your family just yet.”
“Why not?”
“In exchanging souls with Serenikha, it seems to me that you have implicitly agreed to undertake her responsibilities during your sojourn in her body. Perhaps she deceived you, or the mage who exchanged your souls, with a false name and story — but that is no matter. We must have a Princess Serenikha, and we must have her right away. We have delayed things as long as we can with the excuse that the princess is indisposed, but we can afford no more delay. You must pretend to be her until she returns to her body. I will coach you on what you need to know, and perhaps our own mage can break the spell and return you to your body and Serenikha to hers some days early...”
“But why can’t it wait, whatever it is, until Serenikha comes back?”
“You were supposed — she was supposed to appear for her third audience with the emperor two days ago. And the betrothal ceremony is only six days from now.”
“I can’t get married,” I said, panicking. “I’m only fourteen! And definitely not to some naga I’ve never even met —”
“He is not a naga,” my chaperon said. “And you shouldn’t have to get married as Serenikha. The wedding will be after you have returned to your own body. But we must have the betrothal as soon as possible, so your uncle can sign the treaty, and we can get the Empire’s help against the garuda.”
That didn’t console me as much as it should have. I knew exactly why Serenikha had run away and gone to the Gray One: she was trying to get out of this arranged marriage. And if so, she must have had some kind of plan for staying in my body and leaving me to marry this guy, whoever he was. I felt a knot in my stomach as the carriage came to a halt and one of the guards who’d captured me opened the door.
“We’ve arrived, my ladies.”
I thought briefly about trying to escape as we got out of the carriage, before they escorted me into the palatial building I later found out was the embassy of the Naga Kingdom. But there were even more naga guards than there’d been at the gardens, and there were human guards too, wearing the same insignia. I followed my chaperon and the guards quietly, hoping that Kinuko would track me down soon, and that she’d be able to get me out of this.
Soon I was locked into a very comfortable cell, a suite of rooms the smallest of which was three or four times bigger than the bedroom Taylor and I had shared at Kinuko’s house. There was a bathroom with a bathtub like a small swimming pool, and a bed long enough for me to stretch out my tail without it trailing onto the floor, and a lot of upholstered furniture that seemed designed for naga, with seats curved just the way a naga’s tail naturally bends when relaxed. There were servants, one nagini a little older than me — than Serenikha — and two human girls about Taylor’s age — Taylor’s real age, not however old her kitsune host was. They offered to draw me a bath, and I thought I’d take them up on that later, but first I wanted to ask them a bunch of questions. They were confused at first, but tried to answer my questions. I explained who I really was, and one of the human girls, whose name was Tiaopai, said she’d heard of the Gray One; her cousin had swapped with an old woman in my world for several days. The nagini, Talarikha, was able to answer a few of my questions about who this Princess Serenikha was and what the arranged marriage and the treaty were about, and I learned more later that evening when my older chaperon returned. But before we’d talked much, there was a peremptory knock at the door and one of the guards asked, “Are you decent, my lady?”
“Yes,” I called out. The door opened and several naga came in: the guard who’d helped rescue me from the kappa, the nagini who’d ridden in the coach with me, and a couple of older naga in fancier clothes. One of them was the oldest I’d yet seen, with skin like crumpled paper and a beard that hung down almost to where his scales began. The nagini dismissed the servants, and slithered over into a corner where she coiled her tail and leaned back on it, silently listening and watching.
“What of this bracelet?” the guard captain asked.
The old naga took my hand, and looked carefully at the gold bracelet Kinuko had given me. “Yes, there is a strong enchantment on it. It will take at least an hour to remove it. But that is not the question you should be asking.”
“What should we ask?” the other naga asked, who seemed to be about as old as the chaperon nagini.
“Is she who she appears to be? And the answer is no. Her aura is strange, more like a male human than anything else. I think the tale that Bhavalikha told us is true, and we should hear it from this nagini’s own lips.”
The other naga, who seemed to be in charge, asked me: “Tell us, child. Who are you and how came you to be in Serenikha’s body?”
I told the story again. Then, after a brief discussion, the guy in charge said to the long-bearded naga — another mage like the Gray One, I soon discovered — “Remove the tracking spell on her bracelet. And then see if you can remove the enchantment that keeps her and Serenikha in the wrong bodies.”
“No,” I cried, “Mom and Dad will be worried, they won’t be able to find me!” But they ignored me. The guard captain and the guy who seemed to be in charge left the room, and the long-bearded naga said something in a language I didn’t know, and suddenly I couldn’t move or speak. He glanced at my chaperon, who was still quietly resting on her coiled tail, and ordered her to be quiet and still — though she hadn’t said a word or moved since she came in — and started studying my bracelet again.
After a few minutes his paralyzing spell started to wear off, and I squirmed until my hand pulled free of his. He looked startled, like he’d expected the spell to last longer, and he cast it again; I froze again, and he continued studying the bracelet. Rinse and repeat; the paralyzing spell seemed to wear off quicker each time, and finally he left. I hoped he hadn’t been able to break the enchantment on the bracelet, but how could I tell? It still seemed to be stuck to my arm, anyway; that was a good sign.
After that I was exhausted. The chaperon, Bhavalikha, asked me how I was feeling, and I told her; she summoned the servants and ordered them to draw me a bath, and I relaxed in the hot water for a while, asking the servants a lot more questions while they scrubbed my back. A little while after I got out and put on another of those sari-camisoles, a softer one without the tassels and sequins, Bhavalikha came back in and told me more of what was going on. Between her and the servants, this is what I learned.
The Naga Kingdom was situated on a small continent or large island in the ocean east of the continent this city was on the coast of. They shared that island with several other kingdoms, including their neighbor and long-time enemy, the Garuda Kingdom — which had recently conquered several of the smaller kingdoms and started calling itself the Garuda Empire.
The garuda were a kind of bird-people — from the pictures in a book Bhavalikha showed me, they looked kind of like Hawkman from the Justice League — and enemies of the naga from way back. Once they told me some about them, I started vaguely remembering things I’d read about the garuda in mythology books back on Earth, though they weren’t as familiar to me as the naga or kitsune, who featured in a lot of the video games I played over at Daniel’s house. (If I’d played video games with kappa in them — or if Kinuko’s warnings had been less vague — I might not have gotten pulled under and almost drowned, and maybe none of this would have happened. But the naga embassy security guards probably would have found me anyway.)
Princess Serenikha’s father, the Naga King, decided to ask the Dragon Emperor for an alliance against the Garuda Empire, and he sent Serenikha here along with a proposal for her to marry one of the Dragon Emperor’s sons. Apparently the royal families of these countries are cool with interspecies sex; I could have inferred that by the way Kinuko told me a human had married a dragon back when this dynasty was founded. The problem was, the ambassador from the Garuda Empire was apparently also proposing a royal marriage between one of the Dragon Emperor’s daughters and a garuda prince. So far the naga had thought they were being more persuasive and that the Dragon Emperor would ally himself with them against the garuda, but he hadn’t committed himself yet. And Serenikha’s disappearance, and their cover story that she was sick, wasn’t helping them cement this alliance.
Once I’d heard a few horror stories about what the garuda armies had done to innocent naga in the border villages, I started to think that maybe Serenikha was kind of selfish to run off and hike in the sequoia forests of California while her country’s enemies got the jump on them diplomatically. But Mom and Dad had taught me about wartime propaganda, and I wondered what horror stories the garuda might be telling about the naga, and whether there was any truth to either version. And I didn’t like the idea of these arranged marriages. Why couldn’t the grown-ups just negotiate the treaties by themselves without messing up these princes‘ and princesses’ lives?
I fell asleep that night mulling over that, and worrying about Mom and Dad and Taylor.
Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
There was no reason I should have to put up with all this nonsense just because I was female; Mom and Taylor never took half this long to get ready, even on fancy occasions. (Mom wore her hair short, I reflected, which might be a factor.)
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
When I woke up the next morning, Tiaopai had a pot of tea ready. By the time I’d drunk a couple of cups, Bhavalikha came in.
“We have a lot to do to get you ready,” she said. “We must be in the emperor’s audience room in less than four hours... Talarikha and the human maidservants will bathe you and do your hair, while I coach you on what you need to know.”
She insisted on calling me Serenikha, though she knew that wasn’t my name, saying that I’d need to learn to respond to it by reflex. She crammed me full of facts about Serenikha’s family, their home country, the war with the garuda, and what had happened during Serenikha’s previous audiences with the emperor. Now and then she’d pause and quiz me, and I’d try to repeat back what I’d managed to memorize — a list of Serenikha’s older brothers and sisters, or of the Dragon Emperor’s sons and daughters, or of battles, their dates and locations and who’d won them. Meanwhile the servants were scrubbing me, and applying makeup, and pulling my hair as they re-braided it — apparently Serenikha had loosened her hair when she ran away, as part of a not very effective disguise — and dressing me in the most elaborate sari-camisole I’d worn yet, along with a headdress, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. They covered the Gray One’s tracking-bracelet with a larger, gaudier bracelet encrusted with jewels, in case anyone at the emperor’s court might recognize it and know I wasn’t really Serenikha.
“What did that guy figure out last night?” I asked. “That guy with the long beard — he didn’t tell me his name and he wouldn’t answer my questions, but I figured he was a mage or wizard —”
“The Patient One,” Bhavalikha said. “He was not able to remove the enchantments on your bracelet, or discover how to undo the spell that keeps you in Serenikha’s body and her in yours. He will try again tomorrow.”
I wondered if I should maybe “accidentally” let the over-bracelet slip down my arm at some point during the audience or the banquet that was to follow, and hope someone saw the Gray One’s bracelet and rescued me... But even if they knew what it meant, they might not realize I needed rescuing; maybe they’d think I was a deliberate impostor, and I’d suffer along with all the other naga for Serenikha’s escape attempt.
After several hours of this, Bhavalikha declared I was as ready as I could get in the time available, which was good, because I was getting fed up. There was no reason I should have to put up with all this nonsense just because I was female; Mom and Taylor never took half this long to get ready, even on fancy occasions. (Mom wore her hair short, I reflected, which might be a factor.) Just then another naga came in, the older man who’d come into my quarters with the Patient One and the security chief last night.
“Good day,” he said. “I apologize that I did not introduce myself last night — things were so confused... I am Serenikha’s uncle, Lord Ravadh. When we are in public, among people who think you are Serenikha, you must call me Uncle Ravadh; in private, in your own persona, call me Lord Ravadh.”
“Um, pleased to meet you, Lord Ravadh. I’m Leslie Kendricks.”
“Do you think she’s ready?” he asked Bhavalikha.
“As ready as I can make her without further delay. If she does not speak more than necessary, she will not give anything away.”
He looked straight at me again. “I am sorry that my niece has gotten us all into this mess,” he said. “Bhavalikha tells me that this was not your fault. Thank you for agreeing to help us.”
Nobody’d really asked me if I was willing, but I just said “You’re welcome.”
They escorted me from my quarters, going through several smaller rooms to the carriage yard I’d come in by the day before. We got into a carriage and drove off a few minutes later.
The drive to the palace was longer than the drive from the gardens to the embassy. I looked out the window a lot, half-listening to Bhavalikha as she crammed me with more information about Serenikha, the diplomatic situation and the prince Serenikha was supposed to marry. At one point we boarded a ferry and were taken across the river without ever getting out of our carriage, though I think the creatures that drew the carriage were unharnessed and stabled on the embassy side of the river, because when we got out of the carriage at the palace, it was being drawn by six horses instead of the four quasi-unicorns that had drawn it when we left the embassy.
I’d thought the embassy was palatial, but the Dragon Emperor’s palace had rooms that could have held the whole embassy. After passing through several of those, we were shown into a room bigger than the vestibule or my bedroom at the embassy, lined with cushioned chairs and sofas of various kinds, and told to wait there. There were a few other people waiting for audiences with the emperor, mostly human plus one distinguished-looking kitsune with white hair and at least seven tails (I kept losing count) and a kappa who was taller and better dressed than any of the ones I’d seen in the street. (The one who’d tried to drown me — or just to give me a scare, if I could believe him — was naked, if I haven’t mentioned it before.) Bhavalikha warned me in a low voice not to speak to any of them, and then didn’t say much herself after that; most of them didn’t say much either, nothing to us and not much more to each other.
We waited there for what seemed like a couple of hours, until I’d mentally reviewed everything I could remember of what Bhavalikha had told me, and counted the tiles in the ceiling, and tried four times to count the kitsune’s tails, which kept waving this way and that, ducking under his kimono and peeking out again. Now and then a human man would come and summon someone by name, and one or two of the people who’d been waiting longer than us — and once, someone who’d come in after us — got up and left. Finally, he called out: “The honored representatives from the court of the Naga King.”
We rose and followed him down a zig-zagging corridor to a much larger room, hung with tapestries and lit by dozens of high, wide windows. There was a dais at the other end of the room, and an old but healthy-looking man with a trim white beard was sitting on a canopied throne; there were no other chairs in the room, but a dozen or more people were standing to either side of him, mostly human or human-looking men with a few women, one elf and two kitsune. I followed the others' lead, remembering how Bhavalikha had coached me to kneel and bow, and I kept my mouth shut until the emperor spoke to me — which he did pretty soon: “I am pleased to hear that you have recovered from your recent illness, Princess Serenikha. I trust you are suffering no lingering effects?”
“No, your majesty, I’m quite well now.”
“Then I hope you will honor us with your presence at the banquet this evening.”
I hesitated a moment, and Lord Ravadh said: “Yes, your majesty.”
“I believe we have still some business to transact, with regard to the relations between our realms. My son Tiensai and my minister Aopin will meet with you directly; they speak with my voice. In the meantime, my daughter Wushao will accompany your niece and your cousin; there is much beauty to be seen in the east garden at this time of year.”
Serenikha’s uncle thanked the emperor, and bowed again, backing up. Bhavalikha and I followed his lead; as we left the audience chamber, two of the men and one of the women who’d been standing on either side of the emperor left their places and followed us, pausing to bow to the emperor before backing out of the chamber.
Once we were in the antechamber, the woman who’d followed us — Wushao, the emperor’s daughter — said: “I’m glad to hear you’re better. I was worried when your uncle sent word you’d fallen ill.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m really feeling much better.”
“The east garden is this way — the leaves are marvelous this time of year —”
Bhavalikha and I followed her down one hallway, while Lord Ravadh went with the men down another; he gave me a searching glance over his shoulder just before we parted, as if pleading with me not to mess this up. Wushao was a few years older than me, about Serenikha’s age — or at least, she looked to be in her late teens or early twenties; she was part dragon, according to Kinuko, and maybe her family aged slower than normal humans. She was chatty, and told us all about what had been going on in the palace since the last time Serenikha was there; I nodded and said, “I see,” and “Oh!” a lot, and once in a while asked a question when I thought I could do it without seeming more ignorant than Serenikha would be. We soon came to the east garden, which was even prettier than the public garden Kinuko had taken us to; there was a circular path around the perimeter of it, lined by maples and firs, and twisty paths branching off into the interior. We wandered down one of those paths and came to the center of the garden, set on a little rise of ground, where there was a large statue of a dragon coiled around the base of a peach tree twice as big around as the oak in Grandma and Grandpa’s back yard. Wushao said: “This is my great-great-grandmother — a statue of her, I mean.”
“She’s beautiful,” I said, and she was, as a statue, though if she were alive I think I’d have been too scared to appreciate her beauty.
“She flew away toward the mountains after my great-grandfather died,” Wushao continued. “That was when my father was a baby. She’s probably still alive, but she hasn’t come back since.”
“All my great-grandparents died before I was born, too,” I said, remembering what Bhavalikha had told me about Serenikha’s family; it was true of my real self, too. “I remember my grandfather, though. I was just forty-eight when he died.” From what I’d gathered, that was equivalent to four or five years old for a human.
Just then another person came walking toward us by another path. “Pientao! I was just telling Serenikha about our ancestors,” Wushao said. I glanced nervously from the newcomer to Bhavalikha and back again; this was Wushao’s older brother, the man Serenikha was supposed to marry. The one I would have to marry if she found a way to stay in my body.
I’d seen him at a distance in the audience chamber, but now as he approached us and bowed, I got a better look. He was tall and good-looking, not much older than Serenikha — or maybe a lot younger, if dragon-human hybrids aged faster than naga — with long black hair, wearing a loose red robe cinched tight at the waist.
“Good day, Princess Serenikha. I was pleased to hear of your recovery.”
“Thank you...”
He attached himself to our party and walked with us through the garden for the next hour or more. I was nervous around him at first, and I don’t think he guessed anything was wrong just from that; I thought Serenikha must have been nervous about him too if she ran away rather than stay and get betrothed to him and marry him. But he was open and friendly, and from the way he acted there, and later that evening at the banquet, I didn’t see an obvious reason why she didn’t want to marry him. I mean, obviously having your father marry you off to somebody you barely know is nobody’s idea of a fun time, but I suppose princes and princesses grow up knowing they have to marry somebody else from a royal family, and won’t be able to marry just whoever they like. And Pientao seemed like a reasonably okay guy, if you had to marry a stranger. By the time Bhavalikha looked at the sundial and said we had better go get ready for the banquet, and we went our separate ways, he and his sister had cheered me up; I was laughing at his jokes and trying to respond in kind, though most of my own favorite jokes depended too much on American culture to translate easily.
Wushao showed me and Bhavalikha to the women’s privy, and pointed out the women’s bath across the hall. We weren’t expected to bathe again, having done so that morning at the embassy, but we washed our hands and faces after relieving ourselves. There were other women present, both human and kitsune, some of whom were taking full baths and some of whom were just washing up a bit like us. So I still didn’t have a chance to talk to Bhavalikha privately.
The banquet hall was only a little smaller than the throne room, though it was so full of furniture and people that it seemed a lot smaller. It had large windows, but as it got dark outside I noticed the light from dozens of little glowing white spheres; there were none of the candles or oil lamps that I’d seen in Kinuko’s house and the naga embassy. If I were back home I’d have thought they were small light bulbs, but the light they gave was softer than an incandescent bulb and they didn’t make the aggravating humming noise that fluorescent bulbs make.
The banquet lasted several hours, and I ate too much of the first couple of courses and didn’t have any appetite left for the later ones. I was seated between Bhavalikha and Ravadh, across from Pientao; we didn’t speak as freely during the banquet as we had in the garden, but it wasn’t as tedious as I’d feared such a long, formal meal might be either. After the first three courses, during which several people recited poems (surprisingly good ones) in honor of the emperor and various guests, musicians played, and then during the last couple of dessert courses some of those glowing pearls were covered to dim the lights and there was a shadow-puppet show, telling a story about a woman who found a large peach floating in the river. When she took it home, and her husband cut it open, a little boy popped out, and they adopted him, and then in the next scene he was grown up and having adventures.
Most of the guests at the banquet were human, or at least looked human like the part-dragons of the royal family, but there were more than a few kitsune and elves, and even a couple of kappa. The kappa came up to me during the socializing after the meal and apologized for the attack on me in the park. The kappa responsible would be hung upside down until he drowned, they said; I was horrified, because Mom and Dad taught me that capital punishment is wrong, but I tried not to show it. (I was also puzzled by the reference to hanging him until he drowned. I found out later that kappa have a kind of water-reservoir in their head — their brains are down in their chests — that lets them breathe when they’re out of the water. If they get turned upside down, the water drains out and they drown.)
And then there were the men with feathery wings and beaky noses. I never got a close look at them; they were sitting at a different table from us, and Bhavalikha kept me away from them during the mixer after the banquet. There were two kinds of winged people there at the banquet: the tengu, who were taller and leaner and had lighter skin, and were native to the Dragon Empire, and the garuda, who were stockier and darker-skinned. The tengu tended to laugh a lot more; the garuda seemed more serious. Apparently the tengu were encouraging the emperor to make an alliance with the garuda, but Lord Ravadh told me that they had less influence than the kitsune and human factions who favored the naga.
Once we were in the carriage on the way back to the embassy, Bhavalikha and Ravadh seemed angry and worried about the emperor inviting the garuda to the same banquet with us. Was it a deliberate insult?
“Or maybe he was insulting the garuda by inviting us to the same banquet as them?” I asked, and that seemed to cheer them up slightly, though they were still worried.
“What did you talk about with the prince and the minister?” I asked, when there was a lull in the conversation. Our carriage had boarded the ferry and was crossing the river.
“About the terms of the treaty, and the plans for the betrothal ceremony. It seemed then to be going well — until the banquet, and those arrogant garuda —”
I dozed off after that, and they had to wake me when we got to the embassy. My servants helped me take the earrings out and unfasten the necklaces and so forth, and I went to bed right away, falling asleep again almost at once.
Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
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“Lord Ravadh already knows I’m one of the Gray One’s tourists, and it doesn’t matter to him — he thinks I should stay here and pretend to be the princess until she gets back. And he told me to warn you that he’s got his own mage ready to stop the Gray One if he tries getting me out by magic.”
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
If you don't want to wait for the serial chapters as they're posted, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories. It also contains thirteen other stories (over 219,000 words), including several that haven't previously appeared online.
The next morning was much more relaxing, or it would have been if the lack of occupation didn’t give me more time to worry. We didn’t have anywhere to go, and though Bhavalikha told me we’d be hosting a party at the embassy that evening, we had a lot more time to get ready for it. So I could sleep late and eat a leisurely breakfast and lunch before starting to bathe and dress for the party.
About an hour before noon, the Patient One came back, with Bhavalikha to chaperon, and tried again to send me back to my body and bring Serenikha back to hers; I think he tried to break the enchantment on my bracelet too, but he didn’t tell me much. It didn’t work, and he went away looking puzzled and frustrated.
A little after that, some of the embassy servants carried a number of things in to my quarters. “Gifts for your highness,” they said, and there were little gift tags or cards attached to most of them. There was a little statuette of a dragon from Pientao, a painted fan depicting sunrise (or sunset?) over a mountain range from Wushao, a stained-glass bottle of perfume from the kappa nobleman who’d apologized for the attack in the park, several silk sari-camisoles from the local naga merchants' guild, and a few other things from people I vaguely remembered meeting at the banquet.
And then there was a bonsai cherry tree, with a card that said it was from Lord Tsurihano, a kitsune nobleman I’d met the evening before. It looked familiar, and it should have; I’d spent hours the day before yesterday carrying it around. My heart pounded when I saw it, but I managed not to show any reaction in front of Bhavalikha or the servants. I noticed a little gold band around the trunk of the tree, which was mostly but not completely hidden by a fresh later of mulch.
Not long after those gifts arrived, I told Bhavalikha and the servants that I’d like to be alone for a while, and maybe take a nap or at least rest until it was time to get ready for the party. When they were gone, I slithered over to the table Dad’s tree was sitting on, leaned close, and whispered:
“We’re alone... can you hear me?”
Dad emerged from the tree, the gold band around the tree-trunk transferring itself to her wrist as she did so; she looked up at me. “Leslie! Are you okay?”
“Keep your voice down,” I said. “There are servants in the next room, and they think I’m taking a nap. Do you have a plan for getting me out of here?”
“Kinuko’s working on it. She’s trying to get a friend of hers, a kitsune nobleman, to introduce her to the people in charge here — how much do you know about where you are and what’s going on?” She hopped down from the table the tree was sitting on and clambered up onto the bed; I slithered onto the bed beside her and coiled up my tail.
“This body belongs to a princess, and she’s supposed to get married to one of the emperor’s sons — no, not right away,” I added hastily at Dad’s panicked look, “they said it would be in the spring. But I need to get swapped back before the princess in my body finds a way to make it permanent.”
“I don’t think she can,” Dad said. “And why do you think she wants to?”
“Um, she’s being forced into an arranged marriage. That’s probably reason enough right there, even though the guy she’s supposed to marry seems okay from the little I’ve seen of him.”
“Well — I don’t think you’ll need to worry. I don’t remember if we already told you, but we don’t need to be back at Kinuko’s house or go through a special procedure when our vacation ends. The Gray One’s spell will swap you back wherever you are; your mom and I have swapped back sometimes after traveling a hundred miles or more from where we first arrived, though we try to put our host’s bodies back where we found them if possible, as a courtesy... But we don’t want you to spend your vacation cooped up here, forced to pretend to be this princess, so we’re trying to get you out — Kinuko’s going to get her friend to introduce her to the ambassador, and explain who you really are and —”
“He already knows. So do the princess’s chaperon, and their wizard, and some of the servants. But they insist I need to pretend to be the princess until they can get the real princess back, and I’m going to have to make nice at an embassy party tonight, and participate in some kind of betrothal ceremony in four days, and I don’t know what else.”
“Oh. That’s a problem... Well, we’ll try to figure something else out, but don’t worry too much; it’ll be over in five more days even if you have to stay here the whole time.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said. “Actually, it might be kind of neat... I mean, I’m seeing the inside of the palace and the royal family’s private gardens and stuff that the rest of you won’t get to see. So it’s not all bad. But talk to Kinuko and make sure there’s no possible way Serenikha can stay in my body!”
“Will do. I’ll sneak out of the embassy and go talk to Kinuko and your mom and Taylor — they’re in a tea-house just down the street — and come back later in the day.”
“What are we going to do about your host’s tree? I mean, it would suck for her to come back and find out her tree is now the property of this nagini princess...”
“We’ve got a plan for that too. You’ll send it as a gift to a noblewoman Kinuko knows, and she’ll pass it on to Kinuko. These nobles are always passing gifts around.”
“I’ll see what I can do. What’s her name and where does she live?”
She told me, but said I should wait until they’d tried some other things to get me out; Dad might need the tree here to help her get in again to pass me messages.
“I’ve found out I can do another cool thing as a kodama that I couldn’t as a western dryad. Look!” And she vanished from where she was sitting beside me, and a moment later emerged from her tree over on the table.
“I can use that to get back here as soon as I’ve talked to Kinuko and the others.”
“Cool. Good luck sneaking out, then.”
“I think I’ll go out that window —” And a few moments later, she was gone.
I curled up in bed and tried to relax. Everything was going to be okay.
I woke to find Talarikha shaking me gently. “My lady, it’s time to get ready.”
“Hmm? Sure. Bath and stuff.”
The preparations for the party hosted by the embassy were maybe not quite as elaborate as the preparations for my audience with the emperor, but that’s not saying much. Bhavalikha came in soon after my bath, and coached me further on how I was to conduct myself at the party, who I was supposed to talk to and who I wasn’t, and what to say and how. We had a light early supper, and then she led me out of my quarters into a large hall. There were several tables spread with dishes, pots of tea, and bottles of wine, and chairs along one wall; over in one corner the musicians were tuning their instruments, mostly string instruments I didn’t recognize. There were only a few people there yet, most of them naga.
Serenikha’s uncle stood on his coiled tail near the far door, looking around; when he saw me and Bhavalikha enter, he uncoiled and slithered over to us.
“How are you doing?” he asked me in a low voice. “I thank you again for the way you helped us yesterday. A few more days of this, and I will ask no more.”
“It’s okay,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “It was interesting... I’d never been to an emperor’s court before.”
Just then one of the servants announced the arrival of the first guests. Lord Ravadh took my arm and led me over toward the door to greet them.
“Lord Terunobu! It’s good to see you again... And is this your wife?... Allow me to introduce you to my niece, Princess Serenikha...”
The guests kept coming in a steady stream for an hour or more. One of the early arrivals was Lady Hanuseri, the kitsune noblewoman Dad had told me about; she greeted me and said:
“I believe we have an acquaintance in common — do we not? Kinuko of Chrysanthemum Street?”
“Yes,” I said, though I wondered if I should be so open in front of Lord Ravadh. “I hope we can talk later. Maybe you’ve heard from her more recently than I have.”
“I believe I have. Lord Ravadh, if we could speak privately at some point this evening it may be to our mutual advantage.”
“I will be honored,” he said to her. As soon as she had disappeared into the growing crowd, he threw me a frown — but didn’t say anything, and wiped it off his face immediately as the footman introduced the next guest.
Among the later arrivals were Pientao and two of his brothers, including Tiensai, the one who’d met with Lord Ravadh about the treaty, and Tiensai’s wife, whose name I’ve forgotten — she looked small and kind of lost in the elaborate puffy dress she was wearing — and their sister Wushao. After Dad’s reassurances, I was no longer so worried about getting stuck here and having to marry Pientao, and so I found I actually welcomed his presence, and Wushao’s; they were familiar and friendly faces in a sea of strangers.
When the stream of arriving guests slowed to a trickle, Lord Ravadh took me aside and said: “You can relax now — but after you rest a few minutes, you should circulate and talk to people. Including Prince Pientao, but don’t feel you have to spend a lot of time with him — indeed it would not be decorous if you did, though I suppose you will prefer to spend as little time with him as possible.”
I didn’t correct his impression. He went on: “This Kinuko that Lady Hanuseri mentioned — is she the Gray One’s servant?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the guards have orders to be sure that you do not leave with anyone except Bhavalikha, and then, only to go to the privy or return to your quarters. And if the Gray One or his associates have some thought of abducting with you by magic, the Patient One will thwart it. Tell Lady Hanuseri that you are helping us with our little problem, and will pay this Kinuko a visit after the betrothal ceremony.”
“All right.”
I went and got a cup of tea and a plate of sliced peaches and cookies from one of the refreshment tables, and then looked around for Lady Hanuseri. But before I found her, Pientao found me.
“Good evening, my lady,” he said. “You look well.”
“Um, thanks,” I said. “I’m glad you could come... That was a nice banquet your family gave at the palace yesterday. And, um, thank you for that statuette you sent me — it’s really pretty.”
“It was carved by the best craftsman of the Rensai province — from jade imported from your own homeland.”
“Oh. Um, I thought it looked sort of familiar,” I lied. I kept looking around for Lady Hanuseri, and spotted her over near the musicians, talking with a couple of other women. I chatted with Pientao for a few moments longer, and then said: “I’ve spotted someone else who sent me a gift I need to thank them for — I’d better go talk to her while I have a chance. I hope we can talk some more before the evening is over.” I realized that I meant it.
“You’re much more interesting to talk with than the old folks here,” he said. “I will look for you again soon.”
I slithered over toward Lady Hanuseri, who’d been talking with two elf women; I couldn’t remember their names, though I’d greeted them along with nearly all the other guests. “Is it true that you’re to marry Prince Pientao?” one of them asked in a low voice.
“We’re not actually betrothed yet,” I said, coiling my tail. “But Uncle Ravadh is working on arranging it... Lady Hanuseri, I wanted to thank you for your beautiful gift of that bonsai cherry. It reminds me of home.” I gave her a significant look.
“I did not realize that you grew bonsai in the Naga Kingdom,” the other elf woman said.
“It was the workmanship of the pot that Princess Serenikha alluded to,” Lady Hanuseri improvised. “The merchant assured me that it was imported from her homeland — if not, it was certainly made here by naga craftsmen who immigrated from thence.”
“Yes, that’s right. Thank you again.” But we had to go on making small talk for some minutes, and the elves made increasingly unsubtle attempts to fish for information about what Prince Pientao was like and whether I was happy about the prospect of marrying him, before they got bored and wandered off. When they were gone, Lady Hanuseri said in a low voice:
“Did your father speak with you?”
“Yes — and I told her what was going with me here, and she left to go talk to my mom and sister. If you haven’t heard yet, Lord Ravadh already knows I’m one of the Gray One’s tourists, and it doesn’t matter to him — he thinks I should stay here and pretend to be the princess until she gets back. He said I can go visit Kinuko after the betrothal ceremony, but until then I have to stay. And he told me to warn you that he’s got his own mage ready to stop the Gray One if he tries getting me out by magic.”
“Oh... we shall see. The Gray One is more skilled and powerful than most mages; I am sure he can get you out given time. But we would prefer to do it in a way that does not antagonize the emperor, who is making an alliance with the naga. Can you be patient for a few more days? They are not mistreating you, are they?”
“No, they’re pretty cool about it except for not letting me go. The food’s great and the bed’s softer than any other I’ve ever slept on, and... well, don’t get yourself in trouble with the emperor on my account. Dad said the Gray One could swap us back even if I’m here when the eight days are over. I wish I could see Mom and Taylor sooner, but it’s not like I’ve never been away from them before.”
“Perhaps I can arrange a visit. Please be patient.”
Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
“I’d never had wine before. They don’t let kids my age drink it, back home. But when Pientao gave me a cup I thought I’d better drink it to be polite and to stay in character, because for all I know Serenikha drinks it all the time and it would look suspicious if I said I didn’t like it.”
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
I circulated and talked to several other people, thanking some of them for gifts they’d sent. Then I got trapped in a long, boring discussion between Aopin, the foreign minister, and a couple of human noblemen; Wushao rescued me and pulled me away, sharing some juicy gossip about a conversation she’d overheard between Lady Terunobu and General Aitsu. She thought it meant they were having an affair, but I wondered if she was reading too much into it. While we were talking, I saw Lady Hanuseri and Lord Ravadh leave the room together.
I’d finished my tea and munchies some time ago, and had given the empty cup and plate to a waiter, or a servant I guess, a few minutes earlier. After I’d been talking with Wushao for a few minutes — mostly listening to her — Pientao came up to us, holding two cups. He offered me one, and I took it without thinking, and thanked him — then realized it was wine, not tea. I’d never had wine before, and I wasn’t sure how much I could safely drink. Naga in general must have some tolerance for wine, or they wouldn’t be serving it here — but how much could Serenikha’s body handle? If I got drunk and talked about who I really was...
I took one sip — I was pretty sure that much wouldn’t hurt, and I though I’d better make a show of drinking at least a little or I might offend Pientao. Before the banquet, Bhavalikha had told me that I didn’t have to eat everything the servants put on the table, but if a guest personally offered me something, I had to eat some of it. But that one sip was a mistake; I wasn’t expecting it to taste like that — I don’t know what I’d expected — and I made a horrible face and spluttered, spraying wine all over Pientao and Wushao’s silk clothes. I stared at them for a moment, then stammered out an incoherent apology.
“I humbly beg your pardon,” Pientao said, gently taking the cup from my hand. “The bottle this came from must have gone bad. I will tell the servants to throw it out.”
“No — I mean, maybe it’s okay — it’s just a lot stronger than I’m used to —” I felt miserable; I was sure I’d just given myself away, that the real Serenikha was used to that kind of wine and Pientao would know it. But if so, he seemed to have thought it was a white lie to avoid blaming him for giving me spoiled wine. He murmured something to Wushao, who nodded, and stayed with me while Pientao marched off to give the servants at the refreshment table a piece of his mind.
“I’m really sorry — I shouldn’t have — I mean, it wasn’t their fault or his —”
“Don’t worry,” Wushao said quietly. “Let’s go somewhere people won’t stare at us...” She raised her hand and made a gesture, and led me away toward the back doors. As we went, she said a little louder: “I am afraid you have overexerted and suffered a relapse of your illness — we are honored that you have pulled yourself from your bed to visit us and to receive us in hospitality, but really you must rest more and fully recover.” As we neared the doors, we were joined by Bhavalikha and a human servant girl who carried a large bag.
“Princess Serenikha is ill, I’m afraid,” Wushao said to Bhavalikha. “I hope it is nothing serious, but perhaps she had better leave the party for a while, at least, to refresh herself.”
“Yes, I think so,” Bhavalikha said. “And you’ll wish to refresh yourself as well — this way.”
She showed Wushao and her servant to a bathroom where the princess could wash up and change into clean clothes (which the servant had in the bag), and then led me to my quarters.
“What happened? Are you ill, as she said, or did you feign nausea to escape from Pientao...?”
“No, no, it was nothing like that — he’s cool — but, see, I’d never had wine before. They don’t let kids my age drink it, back home. But when Pientao gave me a cup I thought I’d better drink it to be polite and to stay in character, because for all I know Serenikha drinks it all the time and it would look suspicious if I said I didn’t like it. I didn’t think it would taste so weird that I’d spit it out before I knew what I was doing.”
“This is bad,” she said, “but I don’t blame you. We — and this mage, and Serenikha — have thrown you into a situation you are not prepared for, and our best attempts to prepare you must necessarily be imperfect. I don’t know what we are to do — perhaps I can persuade your uncle, I mean Serenikha’s uncle, to try postponing the betrothal until after she returns to her body. And we’ll have the Patient One try again to reverse this spell.”
“I don’t think it will do any good. I don’t think he understands the Gray One’s magic at all.”
“I beg your pardon!” she said. “Perhaps our naga mages are not so world-famous as the mages of the Dragon Kingdom, but they are powerful enough.”
“I didn’t mean it like that — I’m sure the Patient One has plenty of neat spells the Gray One doesn’t know, too. Only he looked pretty stumped after he tried to send me back this morning.”
“One doesn’t cross the ocean in an hour. He will try again tomorrow — or perhaps tonight, if you’re not too tired.”
“Sure. Could you leave me alone to rest for a while first, though? And maybe get me some tea to wash the taste of that wine out of my mouth?”
“Of course.”
After she left, I whispered to Dad’s tree — which had the gold band around the trunk again — “Don’t come out just yet — wait till she brings me the tea and goes away.”
It wasn’t Bhavalikha who came back with the tea, but Tiaopai; she fussed over me and helped me out of my party finery, and put me to bed, and finally left me alone. Dad emerged from her tree as soon as she was gone.
“Did you hear all that?” I asked as she climbed onto the bed and walked over to sit on the pillow next to the one I was leaning on.
“I heard, but I don’t understand the language you were speaking with your chaperon. I understood your conversation with the servant but it didn’t tell me much.”
“Oh...” I told her about the wine incident. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Oh no, Leslie. You’re in a hard situation. It’s not like you’d snuck off to a party with older kids where they were drinking — you were sticking to tea, weren’t you, until this Pientao fellow tried to get you drunk?”
“I don’t think he was trying to get me drunk — he was just trying to be nice, and he didn’t know how young I was and that I’d never had wine... But yeah, I didn’t want it but I was afraid he’d figure out I wasn’t really Serenikha if I said so.”
“Well, from now on — if you have to go to any more parties as Serenikha — you’ve got a good excuse: tell people you’re still just a little sick and can’t stand wine at the moment. Anyway, I’ve got some good news and some bad news...”
“What? Tell me the bad news first — are Mom and Taylor okay?”
“They’re fine; after I met with them and Kinuko, she took them to see the big market on the other side of the river, and I came back here, but you were getting ready for the party and I didn’t have a chance to come out of my tree until now. No, the bad news is that Kinuko says it’s possible Serenikha could stay in your body longer than eight days.”
“Oh no!”
“If he gets away from Chad and Maella, and doesn’t go back to Mr. G.‘s office with them at the end of our vacation, Mr. G. won’t be able to send him back to her own body until he tracks him down and finds him. But the good news is — well, there’s a lot of good news. For one, Kinuko’s going to talk to Mr. G., and tell him your suspicion about Serenikha wanting to stay in your body, and he’ll warn Chad to keep an eye on him and not let him run off. Two, Mr. G. is a lot better at finding missing persons than the police or FBI. The very first time your mom came here, the person who swapped with one of her friends — I think you’ve met Keisha once or twice, haven’t you? — well, she got kidnapped, and missed the rendezvous for meeting up back at Mr. G.’s office. But Mr. G. found where her kidnappers were holding her, and rescued her, and sent her back just a few days late. Kinuko says he’s had to do that two or three times, when people got lost or decided they liked their new body and wanted to keep it.
“And on top of that, there’s a thirty-day time limit built in. The Gray One likes to reverse the spell himself, under controlled conditions, but it’s supposed to reverse itself after thirty days if he can’t do it by hand for some reason. So don’t worry. Even if you have to stay longer than eight days, it probably won’t be very long — not until next spring when they said the wedding would be — unless —” She hesitated, and I demanded:
“What is it?”
“If she gets killed in your body... then you’d be stuck in hers. But of course she won’t want that, and Mr. G. has all kinds of protective spells on the folks in our bodies, and Chad’s watching out for them. Or — magic doesn’t work everywhere in our world. It works better in some places than others, and there are dead spots where it doesn’t work at all. If she finds her way into one of those, and stays there, Mr. G. won’t be able to track her down by magic, and the expiration of the spell won’t affect her. Still, we’d probably be able to find her eventually by old-fashioned detective work.”
“I hope so.” We hugged, and Dad snuggled up beside me in bed until someone knocked at the door; then she vanished back into her tree, and I said: “Who is it?”
“It is I, the Patient One.”
“Just a second.” I put on a sari-camisole and told him to come in — and of course Bhavalikha was with him; she wouldn’t let him be alone with me. He ordered her to be quiet, as usual, and started working his spells on me. After almost an hour of that, the bracelet suddenly fell off my wrist, and he gave a triumphant cry and snatched it up. I felt sick with apprehension. He left with the bracelet, and Bhavalikha left a few minutes later when I told her I wanted to be alone. Then Dad came out of her tree and said: “Don’t worry. Kinuko needed it to track you here, but now that we know where you are... well, I don’t think they’re going to move you anywhere, and if so, you can insist on taking my tree with you, right?”
“Sure... Please stay with me.” I was scared, in spite of all Dad’s reassurances, and I missed Mom and Taylor and Daniel and even Jarrod. Dad hugged me again and hummed quietly, a tune I recognized but couldn’t remember the words to at the moment. I fell asleep listening to her.
When I woke up to find Talarikha bringing in a pot of tea and asking if I felt better, Dad was gone. I figured she’d probably vanished back into her tree when she heard Talarikha coming. I drank the tea and ate the breakfast Tiaopai brought, but before I could get a moment alone to talk to Dad’s tree and see if she was still there, Bhavalikha and Lord Ravadh came in.
“Good morning... I hope you’re not mad at me because of last night?”
“Bhavalikha explained. It is unfortunate, but I hope it will not be disastrous. Prince Pientao gave no evidence that he was offended; before he and his brothers left, he spoke to me and said he wished you good health. And this morning we received a note from him.” He handed me a scroll of paper, which I unrolled and read:
“Honored Princess Serenikha,
“Your relapse into illness is a source of distress to all your friends, in which number I hope you will count myself and my sister Wushao (who is reading over my shoulder, and sends her best wishes). I hope to see you and enjoy your fascinating conversation again soon, but more than that, I hope that you will rest long enough to fully recover this time. Do not let the importunities of diplomats and ministers interrupt your rest before you are entirely well. I trust we will have many long years to get to know one another, and there is no urgency.
“Your servant and well-wisher,
“Prince Pientao.”
“So... I guess he bought into the story that I was sick? That was Wushao’s idea, I didn’t have the presence of mind to think of it.”
“I doubt it. But he is clearly willing to play along with it. And despite what he says, there is as much urgency as ever, perhaps more. We must not postpone the betrothal ceremony if we can help it. I will be going to the palace today to meet with the foreign minster and the elder princes, and hopefully finalize the arrangements. You will stay here, ‘recovering from illness,’ and will not leave the embassy again until the betrothal.”
That sucked. But it was partly my own fault, and I didn’t think I should complain, or that it would do any good. “Can I at least get out and see the rest of the embassy, and not be cooped up in these rooms?”
“Perhaps so. Another thing: I met with Lady Hanuseri last night.”
“What did she say?”
“She informed me of what I already knew from your own lips — that the mage called the Gray One had exchanged your soul with Serenikha’s, and that he and his servants were being careful to keep Serenikha safe in your body and would be sure to return her soul to her body in due time. And she tried to threaten me with unspecified consequences if I failed to allow you to leave the embassy and go traveling with your family, who are also apparently here in borrowed bodies...? I refused, of course, and pointed out how you had suffered a near-fatal attack from a kappa while you were supposedly under this Gray One’s protection. She offered to let me send one or more bodyguards to accompany you and your family during your travels, but I still refused; we must keep Serenikha’s body as safe as possible, and we cannot let her be seen roaming the city or the countryside in the company of strangers. However — we finally agreed that your family could come here to visit you, when Serenikha has no public appearance scheduled. She said she would speak with them and arrange a visit, probably for later today.”
“Great!” I involuntarily glanced at Dad’s tree, wondering if she was in it and had heard that — but then she didn’t understand the naga language we were speaking. But they didn’t seem to notice the glance or suspect what it meant.
After that, Lord Ravadh left, and Bhavalikha coached me on the betrothal ceremony for an hour or so. When she finally left me alone, I checked Dad’s tree, but she didn’t seem to be in it; she must have snuck out late last night or early that morning to talk to Mom and Taylor.
I slithered around the suite, looking at everything again, picking up and toying with the dragon statuette and the other gifts, looking for anything interesting to do. There weren’t many books, and the ones I found were boring and hard to read — whatever spell the Gray One had used to make me understand the language didn’t help with the nagas' literary conventions. I tried to puzzle through the book where Bhavalikha had shown me the picture of the garuda, and find out more about the history of the naga and garuda’s rivalry, but the language was so flowery, and so overblown when it talked about how evil the garuda were, I couldn’t make much sense of it and couldn’t take it seriously when I did.
In the comics I read over at Daniel’s house (Mom and Dad didn’t like most of them, because of the ridiculous way the women’s bodies were proportioned and other gender stuff), Hawkman was a hero and most of the characters who looked like snakes were villains. I wasn’t silly enough to think that that proved anything, of course, but it probably influenced me subconsciously. I wished I had some independent source of information about the naga and garuda.
I put the book down and wandered through the other rooms. Tiaopai came in to ask if I was ready for dinner, and I said sure. Then: “Would you like to play a game?”
“Oh — really, my lady? With me?”
“You know I’m not really Serenikha — you don’t have to call me ‘my lady’ when we’re alone. My name’s Leslie, remember?”
“Very well, Leslie... ah, what about sientsu?”
“I’ve never heard of it, but I’d be glad to learn. How do you play?”
“I’ll show you... I think there’s a board around here somewhere.” She walked into my bedroom and I slithered after her; she picked up a painted wooden board that was propped on a shelf, which I’d taken for a mandala or abstract painting, but which turned out to be a game-board. It was hollow, with little reddish and grayish stones inside, and after she brought in my dinner, I insisted that she eat with me, and she soon taught me the basics of sientsu. It was more like Go than checkers, but not exactly like anything I’d played before. After two or three games, I taught her to play checkers (improvising a little since the sientsu board wasn’t exactly the right size and shape for it), and we were still playing when Talarikha came in.
“My lady, you have visitors — Lord Ravadh said I was to inquire if you were ready to receive them.”
“Oh — sure, show them in.” And a few moments later, she returned with Mom, Taylor and Kinuko, and left again, with a curious glance at Tiaopai, who had hastily stood up from the game board as Mom and the others entered, and was standing alert.
“Mom!” I cried, and hugged her, and then Taylor. I didn’t ask where Dad was — probably she’d teleported back into her tree at some point in the last few hours, but hadn’t been able to come out to talk to me because Tiaopai was there. “Um, guys, this is Tiaopai — she’s one of Serenikha’s servants, and she’s helped me out a lot. She knows about me not really being Serenikha.”
“What game is that you’re playing?” Mom asked, and I explained.
“Tiaopai taught me this cool game called sientsu, and then I started teaching her checkers — listen, she can explain the rules better than I can...” But Tiaopai seemed a little confused and embarrassed at being involved in our conversation, so I told her she could go if she liked; she left in a hurry.
As soon as she was gone, Dad popped out of her tree. “I was going to tell you they were on the way, but you had company,” he said. “I’m glad to see you treating the servants here like real people, by the way. You make your mom and me proud.”
Dad had told them most of what had happened to me, but Mom and Taylor wanted to hear about it all directly from me, and Kinuko particularly wanted to hear about the Patient One removing my bracelet, and about what Lord Ravadh had said. I told them in as much detail as I could remember, and then I asked Kinuko:
“What do you know about this war between the naga and the garuda? The naga say the garuda attacked them, and that they’ve got a more powerful army than the naga — and the only air force, I guess — and so they need help from the Dragon Empire to defend themselves. But I wonder if the garuda would tell a different story.”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t heard much about it — there are few naga here and fewer garuda, and until a few days ago, when Serenikha came to me under a false name, I’d never had any dealings with either. Why does it matter?”
“Because — if the garuda did really attack first, if the naga are fighting in self-defense and they really need the Dragon Empire’s help to defend themselves against the garuda, then I want to help them as much as I can for as long as I’m here. I’ll stay here and do my part and I won’t need the Gray One to get me out, as long as I can swap back with Serenikha from here.”
“Yes, you can.”
“But if that’s just wartime propaganda, if the naga are just as much at fault as the garuda, or the real aggressors — then get me out of here. I don’t want to help them in that case.”
“Well... I don’t know anything but what you’ve told me, as I said. But the Gray One has resources to find out. I will ask him... but I don’t know if he can find out anything definite in the few days left before you return to your world.”
“Well, tell him I don’t need to be rescued until and unless we find out the naga are the bad guys here.”
“They kidnapped you,” Mom said. “And if we excuse that as a misunderstanding, because they thought you were this princess, they’ve continued to keep you even after they found out who you really were.”
“I’m not saying they’re perfect. But if they’ve really got their backs against the wall, if they really need my help to get the Emperor’s help and the Emperor’s help to survive — I’ll let bygones be bygones.”
“I’m really proud of you, Leslie,” Dad said, with a glance at Mom. “We’ll support you and help you if you want to get out of here — but I’m proud of you wanting to give up your vacation to help these people. We’ll find out what you need to know, somehow.”
We visited for a while longer, and Mom and Taylor told me about the gardens, temples, and markets they’d gone to see while Dad and I were here, and Taylor and I played a game of sientsu — he won. Then Bhavalikha came in and said:
“I’m sorry, but you’ll need to leave soon. You can visit Leslie tomorrow at the same time if you like; the next day she may be busy.”
She showed Kinuko, Mom and Taylor out — Dad had vanished as soon as the door started opening, because it would look suspicious if I had another visitor who hadn’t come in with the others. If Bhavalikha had recognized her as a kodama she’d wonder where her tree was, and might get suspicious about the bonsai I’d gotten from Lord Tsurihano.
Before Dad had a chance to come out of her tree again, Talarikha and Tiaopai returned with tea and supper. Tiaopai showed me and Talarikha a three-player version of sientsu, and we played that until the Patient One and Bhavalikha came in. The servants left, and the mage had me lay down on the bed while he tried again to swap me and Serenikha back early. This time his paralysis spell worked, and didn’t wear off until some time after he’d finished and gone away; I guess the bracelet had been protecting me against it. I got dizzy a couple of times while he was working, but the feeling passed quickly and I was still in Serenikha’s body.
Dad finally came out of her tree a few minutes after Talarikha got me ready for bed, and snuggled up next to me as I went to sleep, humming a lullaby.
“Sorry I can’t sing to you,” she’d said. “I heard a dryad sing once, when your mother and I were pixies, and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard... But I don’t know any songs in this language, and I can’t remember the words to any songs from back home. Only the tunes.”
“I can’t either,” I realized. When I tried harder, I thought I could remember the words to my favorite songs — but they seemed insipid, and they didn’t rhyme or fit the tune I remembered; I realized I was subconsciously translating them into the language they spoke here. Or else the Gray One’s magic was. I fell asleep listening to Dad’s humming and and thinking about how that magic worked, which was better than worrying.
I'll be traveling and may not be able to post chapter 8 on next Monday as usual. I'll probably post it by the end of next week.
Three of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
But why did my tail feel so weird? I looked down and saw it was split — that’s how it felt at the time. I wasn’t thinking of them as legs, but as something that had gone wrong with my tail. And when I tried to slither forward, my tail impossibly went in two directions at once, and I fell and hit the floor with a painful thud —
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
Early the next morning, Dad whispered to me that she was going to sneak out and visit with Mom and the others for a while before she teleported back into her tree. I dozed off again and woke when Tiaopai brought tea, and then breakfast. We played another game of sientsu and another game of checkers, and then Bhavalikha came in.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.
“Would I!”
Four big naga guards and the Patient One accompanied me and Bhavalikha, even though we didn’t leave the embassy grounds; she showed me around several parts of the embassy I hadn’t seen before, and then led me out into a walled garden. It was smaller than the east garden at the palace, but still pretty extensive, and had trees and shrubbery dense enough that you couldn’t see all of it at once. We slithered around the winding path and came to a pool and fountain.
“Guaranteed to be free of kappa,” Bhavalikha said with a smile, coiling her tail and looking into it. I coiled my tail and rested beside her, though I wasn’t tired; I was bursting with energy after being cooped up in my quarters all day yesterday. Two of the guards paused up ahead of us on the path; the other two, with the Patient One, were behind us, barely in sight just around a turn. After a few moments Bhavalikha went on:
“I asked your uncle — I’m sorry, Serenikha’s uncle — if he could find a way to postpone the betrothal until after you and Serenikha return to your proper bodies. He said no, unless the Patient One manages to reverse the spell early. He’s going to try again today, as soon as we return to your quarters.”
“Great.” I wasn’t looking forward to more of that dizzy feeling, and maybe worse, while the Patient One tried to figure out the Gray One’s spell and undo it. I didn’t think he could. And if he did, would it undo the spell on Mom, Dad, and Taylor and the people who’d swapped with them as well? The Gray One had said it was easier to cast the spell on a whole group at once than on each person individually. “What about if I ask Kinuko to ask the Gray One to undo it early? That would be safer than letting the Patient One mess with a spell he doesn’t understand.”
“Lord Ravadh already requested that, through Lady Hanuseri. She said she would pass the message on, but doubted that the Gray One would agree; you and Serenikha had paid for eight days in each other’s bodies, and he was determined to always deliver what he promised. But coming from you, he may grant the request. If Kinuko returns again today, you should certainly ask her. But I don’t think I can persuade Lord Ravadh to procrastinate — if Kinuko doesn’t visit until this evening, and it takes her until tomorrow to contact the Gray One, there may not be time for him to reverse the spell before the betrothal.”
So we slithered around the garden for a while longer — I was hoping someone would come and tell us Mom and the others had arrived, and I could tell them before the Patient One started messing with me again. But no such luck. Bhavalikha said we had to go, and as soon as we returned to my quarters, the Patient One cast another paralysis spell on me, and then started working other spells. I got a cramp in my tail and an itch in my side pretty soon, but of course I couldn’t move or scratch.
I started feeling dizzy again after a while, and the feeling got worse instead of passing as before. A few minutes later, I blacked out for a moment, and when I came to, I was somewhere else. And I felt weird all over, but especially in my tail.
It was a lot darker than my room at the embassy, but there was a dim light source behind me; I cast a big shadow over a room in which I could just make out two beds with someone sleeping or at least lying down in them, and some chairs, and — was that a TV?
I realized I must be back in my own body, and this was the hotel room that Chad had arranged for the people in our bodies. But why did my tail feel so weird? I looked down and saw it was split — that’s how it felt at the time. I wasn’t thinking of them as legs, but as something that had gone wrong with my tail. And when I tried to slither forward, my tail impossibly went in two directions at once, and I fell and hit the floor with a painful thud —
And then I was back in Serenikha’s body, and paralyzed again. The Patient One droned on with his spell, not seeming to notice that anything had happened. I thought about it, and decided not to tell him what had happened when the paralysis wore off.
He finally stopped and went away. Bhavalikha gave me a sympathetic smile and stroked my hair, then left me alone as well. When the paralysis wore off I worked the kinks out of my back and tail, and finally scratched that crazy-annoying itch, and then called Tiaopai to ask her if I could get some lunch. I was worried about Serenikha — and about my body. What if I’d gotten seriously hurt when I fell over? And it looked like he was the only one awake; had he been trying to sneak out and get away from Chad and the rest?
When Tiaopai asked if I wanted to play checkers or sientsu, I told her I wanted to eat alone, and as soon as she was gone I whispered to Dad’s tree. But she didn’t come out, so I called for Tiaopai again when I’d done eating, and we played games for the rest of the afternoon, until Talarikha came in about sunset and said that I had visitors. This time Tiaopai hurried out before Talarikha showed in Kinuko, Mom and Taylor.
“How are you doing?” Mom asked.
“Pretty okay,” I said. Talarikha left, and a moment latter Dad emerged from her tree. “That naga mage, the Patient One, did something to me this morning...” I told them about how I’d briefly found myself back in my own body, in a hotel room somewhere.
“This is not good,” Kinuko said, and Taylor exclaimed: “That’s probably just when we all felt dizzy for a moment!”
“So it affected all of you too? Were you in your own bodies again?”
“No — we just felt dizzy for a second or two,” Mom said.
“I didn’t feel dizzy, exactly, but for a moment it felt like there was a wind blowing through the boughs of my tree,” Dad said.
Kinuko added: “Since all four of you — all eight of you — were transferred by the same spell, it is difficult to undo or alter the spell on one without affecting the others. The Gray One could probably do it with sufficient time to prepare, I’m sure, but the Patient One cannot — I doubt he understands what he is meddling with. I must speak with Lord Ravadh at once.” She started to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “Before the Patient One messed with me, Bhavalikha told me what he was going to do, and I said I’d ask you if the Gray One could swap us back early, before the betrothal tomorrow. She said if he could do that, they wouldn’t need the Patient One to do it.”
“I will tell Lord Ravadh that you have agreed to swap back early... Ray, Stephanie, Taylor: I apologize, but this may mean all of you swapping back early. The Gray One may not be able to reverse the spell only on Leslie and Serenikha with so little notice.”
“We’d want a partial refund,” Dad said. “Even if it’s just Leslie who swaps back early.”
“I am sure the Gray One will deal fairly with you. I will pass on your request... But I must hurry and speak with Lord Ravadh.” She left the room.
“This isn’t turning out as we hoped, I’m afraid,” Mom said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Even with everything that’s gone wrong, it’s still the coolest vacation ever.”
“You’re not just saying that?” Dad asked.
“No, really.”
“We’ll come back later in the year — there are more interesting places in this world to see, and more interesting people to be. It’s not always like this — almost never.”
“Sure,” Taylor said. “I can’t wait to come back and be a pixie or mermaid or something.”
“Oh — I almost forgot,” I put in. “Did Kinuko find out anything about the naga and garuda, and who started the war, and stuff?”
“Nothing definite,” Mom said. “I know she asked the Gray One, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. And we went to the neighborhood where most of the naga live, and went shopping, and asked a few people about the garuda. Some of them said they’d come here after their villages in their home country were destroyed by the garuda. But we haven’t heard anything from the garuda themselves yet — Kinuko was going to take us to look for them tomorrow.”
And probably by the time they returned from interviewing a few garuda immigrants, I’d have already left the embassy to go to the betrothal ceremony.
Just then Bhavalikha came in, and Dad vanished just in time. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave.”
“But we just got here,” Mom said.
“I know; I apologize, but it can’t be helped. Come along, I’ll show you to the vestibule where Kinuko is waiting, and we’ll get you some refreshments before you leave if you like...”
They’d hardly been gone a minute when the Patient One came in.
“You can’t do this now,” I said. “Kinuko was going to talk to Lord Ravadh about it — she said if you mess with the Gray One’s spell it could have unpredictable consequences. It’ll probably affect everybody he swapped, not just me and Serenikha.”
“That is not my concern,” he said. “Lord Ravadh is still at the palace; he has been in meetings with the princes and ministers all day, and before he left he instructed me to keep attempting the reversal.”
“At least wait till Bhavalikha gets back,” I insisted, playing for time. “You know you’re not supposed to be alone with me without a chaperon. I’ll scream rape.”
He glared at me, and rang the bell to summon Talarikha, ordering her to coil quietly in the corner and not make a sound. Then he turned back to me and said “Now get into a comfortable position, because you will be holding it for an hour or so...”
I lay back on the bed, fuming, and felt my muscles lock into place. The dizziness came on sooner than it had that morning, and after a while, I suddenly found myself back in my own body again.
It was daylight, and I was on a city street. Serenikha had been walking a moment before, apparently, but the moment I swapped into the body I couldn’t make my tail slither right and I fell over, throwing out my hands to catch myself. I skinned my hands on the sidewalk, but managed to avoid hitting my head.
As I clumsily sat up, finding it hard to make my split tail do what I wanted, I saw Dad — or the kodama in Dad’s body — leaning against a lamp-post, and whoever was in Mom and Taylor’s bodies looking at me in concern. There was another man there, who knelt beside me and spoke, taking my skint hands in his — it took me a moment to recognize Chad, because I’d only met him for a few minutes and so much had happened since then.
His voice was full of obvious concern, but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Maella popped her head out of his shirt pocket and said something in her clear high voice which made no more sense than what Chad had said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
The people in Dad’s and Mom’s bodies said something then, and I tried to stand up — Chad supported me, and I got to my feet, leaning against him.
“Tell the Gray One,” I said. “The Patient One’s messing with the spell and it’s put me and Serenikha back, but I still feel like I have a snake tail —” They didn’t seem to understand what I was saying either. And a moment later, I was back in Serenikha’s paralyzed body.
I lay there, still feeling dizzy, while the Patient One kept on with his work. Several minutes later I was back in my body again, but for no more than a second this time — not long enough to say anything or hear more than a couple of words of the conversation going on around me. I was sitting down that time, at a table in a restaurant next to Taylor and Chad.
Back in Serenikha’s body, I waited for it to happen again, but it didn’t. The Patient One finally fell silent and sat back on his coiled tail and watched me. When the paralysis wore off, I said:
“It’s not going to work. Even if you get Serenikha back before the betrothal ceremony, the other part of the spell’s going to last a couple more days — maybe longer, if you mess it up. She’ll still feel like she has human legs, and she won’t be able to slither or coil her tail or anything, and she’ll be speaking the language we use in my country, and won’t understand what anybody’s saying here.”
“You know nothing of magic... You told us that you have no magic in your world, and that the Gray One’s spell was the first magic you had ever seen or known of.”
“I know what I saw,” I said, and I told him what had happened. In retrospect, that was a mistake.
“Then I have almost done it! I must rest now, but I will try again before the betrothal, and this time I will succeed.”
“Talk to Kinuko first,” I said, but he was already on his way out.
Even though I’d been laying still for a while, the spell had taken a lot out of me, and I felt exhausted. I stayed in bed. Dad popped her head out of the tree as soon as Talarikha left, and snuggled in beside me, hiding under the covers rather than vanishing into her tree when Tiaopai came in to check on me.
“No, I don’t need anything more tonight. I don’t feel hungry... Good night.”
“I came back as soon as I felt wind in my branches,” Dad said. “And I saw him working that spell on you, but I didn’t understand what you said to each other...”
I summarized our conversation. “The Gray One had better get us out before he tries again,” I said. “I don’t know what will happen next time.”
Later on, I found myself slithering through a garden, very different from the ones I’d seen in the last few days. There were more tropical plants of various kinds, things I mostly didn’t recognize, and no pines or cherry trees or peach trees, which featured largely in the Dragon Empire’s gardens. The little bridge over the stream was built of stone rather than wood, and didn’t slope so steeply in the middle. No one else was around at first, but then, taking a sharp turn where the path ahead was hidden by a dense grove of vine-covered trees, I met a human boy in strangely familiar dress. It took me a moment to recognize him as myself.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I can’t remember how I got here either,” I said. “Are you Serenikha in my body, or are you another version of me, or what?”
“I’m Serenikha,” he said. “And you’re Leslie, right? Something weird’s going on — look over here.” And he led me down the path.
“Did you find yourself back in your own body for a few moments, a while ago?” I asked. “The Patient One did something to me and I was back in my body, but I still felt like I had a tail instead of legs, so I couldn’t walk and could hardly stand up —” I stopped suddenly when we turned another corner and saw what he’d brought me to see.
There was my back yard at home: the eucalyptus, the tree house, the barbecue grill, the swing set that Taylor and I hadn’t played on in years but which Dad kept around, he said, for our children to play on. “That’s yours, isn’t it?” Serenikha asked.
“Yes, that’s my yard — you haven’t been there before, have you? Chad said he was going to take you to San Francisco —”
“Yes, that’s where we’ve been, mostly, after a day in the forest and a day at the beach. I’ve never been here until now, but somehow I knew it was yours.”
“And — that place we were just now, that was your garden back home, wasn’t it? Not at the embassy, but —”
“The garden behind Daddy’s palace, right. I’ll probably never see it again. Uncle Ravadh says I’m going to live in the Dragon Empire with my husband.”
“So you decided to run away and leave me to marry him instead?”
“No! Well, I guess you might have to make small talk with him at a couple of banquets, but I’ll be back before the betrothal —”
“No, the betrothal’s... I’m not sure. What day is it now? I think it’s today or tomorrow.”
“Oh. I must have lost track of time — I thought I’d be back before then, but I didn’t count on sitting around Kinuko’s house for so many days before swapping into your body. Sorry.”
“So why’d you tell Kinuko your name was Nenikha?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want her figuring out who I was and telling Uncle Ravadh about me. And I figured you’d be safe from him once Kinuko took you up the river into the countryside; there’d be nobody that knows me there, like there’s nobody who knows you in San Francisco. This is my last chance to have an adventure before I get married.”
“Yeah, we kind of got delayed by the weather. Not your fault. But what are we going to do about the Patient One messing with the Gray One’s spell?”
“I don’t know. I told Chad after it happened, and he said he’d talk to the Gray One about it.”
“Where is he, anyway? If we’re here and he’s in San Francisco with the people in Mom and Dad and Taylor’s bodies — hey, what are you doing so far from them?”
“Haven’t you figured it out? I think we’re dreaming.”
“Oh.” I felt foolish; it was pretty obvious once he pointed it out, but somehow I hadn’t noticed. You almost never do, when you’re dreaming. “Maybe we can find our way into other people’s dreams, if we look around? Probably Mom and Dad and Taylor and whoever’s in their bodies, and maybe other people too.”
“It’s worth a try.” We went through the gate at the back of the yard that should have led into the Beekmans' yard, but led instead to a twisty trail through a dense forest. A little later Serenikha and I got separated, and a little after that I woke up.
If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |
“I am so close,” he said, hissing with frustration. “I could feel Serenikha’s soul returning — but it would not lodge securely in her body, your own was still tethered there.”
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
I'll be serializing it here over the next few weeks, but if you don't want to wait, the whole novella is available as part of The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with thirteen other stories, including several that haven't previously appeared online.
“Wake up, my lady,” Talarikha was saying. “The Patient One will be here in a few moments... you need to get dressed.”
I put on the sari-camisole she handed me and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Dad was gone, probably having vanished back into her tree when Talarikha entered the room, or maybe having snuck out during the night to talk to Mom and the others. I barely had time for a cup of tea, and for Talarikha to brush my hair, before the Patient One arrived.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “You don’t know the Gray One’s spell and you’re just going to mess it up... I’m sure you could figure it out in time, but you aren’t doing yourself any favors by working in such a hurry.”
“You understand nothing,” he said, and proceeded to paralyze me. I lay there feeling increasingly dizzy for a while, and then seemed to fall asleep.
When I woke up, it was dark and from the weird feeling in my tail, I knew I was back in my own body, and lying in bed. I sat up, mostly using my arms rather than the tail muscles I couldn’t trust, and then, leaning against the headboard, felt around for a lamp. I found one, and turned it on.
I wasn’t in the same hotel room I’d been in yesterday morning — last night, San Francisco time. In fact, I didn’t think I was in a hotel room at all; it looked more like a guest bedroom in someone’s house, with its eclectic furnishings, particularly the bookshelf; there wasn’t any TV.
“Chad?” I called out. “Anybody?” I tried to stand up, but couldn’t get my tail to work right, and fell right back onto the bed. Then I scooted my butt off the bed and lowered myself to the floor, and started crawling toward the door.
I’d gotten it open and started down the hall, calling out for Chad and Maella as I did. Another door on the hall opened, and Mom — or the elf in Mom’s body — opened it.
“Leslie?” she asked. “Or is it Serenikha? Are you okay?” She knelt beside me.
“I’m Leslie,” I said. “I can’t walk — my legs feel like —”
And then I was back in Serenikha’s body, lying paralyzed on her bed, feeling not only dizzy but nauseous. I hoped I wouldn’t throw up; being paralyzed like that I was afraid I might choke on it.
I didn’t, though I felt like I was going to several times. And then I was back in my own body again, back in the bed I’d woken up in before. Mom, or someone in her body, was sitting in a chair by the bed; I heard Chad’s voice somewhere nearby, talking — but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Before I could look around or say anything, I was back in Serenikha’s body, and I stayed there until the Patient One stopped working on me and the dizziness, nausea, and paralysis faded.
“I am so close,” he said, hissing with frustration. “I could feel Serenikha’s soul returning — but it would not lodge securely in her body, your own was still tethered there. I will rest and try again before the betrothal.”
He slithered out, and Talarikha and Tiaopai came in right afterward with breakfast. As soon as I finished eating, they started getting me ready for the betrothal ceremony; they bathed me, and dressed me in the most elaborate sari-camisole I’d worn yet, with three or four necklaces, huge pendulous earrings, large bracelets, and a jeweled belt. They did my hair, tying ribbons and flowers into it, and perfumed me until I started coughing. While they were still working on all that, Bhavalikha and Lord Ravadh came in.
“Hopefully this won’t be necessary,” Lord Ravadh said. “The Patient One will try again to put you and Serenikha back in your right bodies just before we leave for the betrothal ceremony. He seems very hopeful that it will work this time. But in case it doesn’t, we need to coach you more on the ceremony...”
“Why not leave well enough alone?” I said. “Go ahead and coach me, but don’t let the Patient One mess with the spell anymore. Suppose you get Serenikha back but she doesn’t remember what to do during the ceremony because it’s been over a week since you coached her on it?”
“That is a risk we must take,” Lord Ravadh said. “Having you personate her at a banquet or reception is one thing. Having you personate her during the betrothal ceremony — it would verge on sacrilege. It would be licit if there is no alternative, but we must exhaust all other options. Now, when we enter the temple sanctuary you will make this gesture of respect,” demonstrating, “and bow as low as possible...”
They continued coaching me, reminding me of things they’d taught me over the last few days, while Talarikha and Tiaopai finished gussying me up. By the time they were done with that, I was getting a little hungry again; but I didn’t get a chance to eat. The Patient One came in and asked Lord Ravadh, “Are you ready?”
“Yes — she’s as ready as she ever will be. And if you swap them back now, we’ll have a few minutes to refresh Serenikha’s memory before we have to leave for the temple.”
So he started working his spells on me. Sooner than last time, I found myself in my body again; it was sitting down, but in motion, and there was something pressing against my lap and chest...? It took me a few moments to realize I was in the back seat of a minivan. It was night, and there weren’t a lot of other cars on the road. I looked around and saw Taylor’s body sitting next to me, and what I thought were probably Mom and Dad’s bodies in the seat in front of us, and Chad in the driver’s seat, though it was hard to be sure in the dark.
Dad’s voice said: “Well, here I am again — what about the rest of you?”
“Dad?” I asked, and Chad said something incomprehensible.
“It’s me — is that you, Leslie?” Dad asked.
“For the moment...”
Taylor and Mom spoke up too, but I couldn’t make any more sense of what they were saying than what Chad had said. And then in mid-sentence, it seemed, Taylor abruptly stopped, and said: “Where are we?”
“In a van — Chad’s driving,” Dad said. “Chad, you can’t understand us, can you?”
He didn’t reply. Dad went on: “It looks like the Patient One’s made the three of us swap back, but not —” And then he was quiet for a moment, and said something in that incomprehensible language that I was pretty sure must be English.
“Looks like it’s just you and me now, Taylor,” I said. “Where do you think Chad’s taking us in the middle of the night?”
“Probably to —”
And then I was back in Serenikha’s body. The Patient One was chanting, and Lord Ravadh and Bhavalikha were looking on anxiously, and I was dizzy and nauseous. It was hard to judge the passage of time when I was feeling so bad, but I think it was just a few minutes later that I was in my own body again, still in that minivan. We were sitting at a stop light, and Chad had turned around to talk to us — he was in the middle of an incomprehensible sentence when I arrived.
“I’m back again,” I said quietly, as soon as he paused. “It’s me, Leslie.” I hoped he’d understand my name even if he didn’t understand the language I was speaking.
“Leslie?” Mom’s voice asked.
“Is that you, Mom? Are Dad and Taylor here?”
“Taylor was here a little while ago, but I think she’s back in the kitsune’s body again. I’m not sure where we’re going — probably to the Gray One’s office, but I haven’t been able to understand anything Chad or the others have said.”
“That makes sense. Do you recognize any landmarks?”
“Not many. I think we’re coming into Turnerville from the north, though; that would make sense if —”
But then I was back in Serenikha’s body, feeling a little less dizzy than before. And a little after that, the Patient One let me go, bowed low to Lord Ravadh, and said:
“I regret that I am unable to reverse the spell fully as yet. If I had more time — but I have exhausted my strength, and by the time I am rested enough to try again, the betrothal must have already taken place.”
“I honor you for your valiant attempt,” Lord Ravadh said. “Go, take your well-earned repose. Leslie, are you ready to play the part of Serenikha one last time?”
“I’ll need to rest a few minutes,” I said. “That spell took a lot out of me, too.”
So they left me alone for a little while, and I dragged my tail over to Dad’s tree. But the gold band wasn’t around the base of it; she must be somewhere nearby with Mom and Taylor and Kinuko. I laid down again and fell into a light doze until Bhavalikha woke me; then she and Talarikha had to fix my hair again, because it had gotten messed up while I slept. Finally Bhavalikha escorted me to the carriage drive and into a carriage, where Lord Ravadh joined us a few moments later, and we headed toward the ferry.
En route, Bhavalikha and Lord Ravadh kept coaching me and quizzing me on the betrothal ceremony. I felt about as prepared for it as I’d ever been for a test in school. Problem was, this wasn’t a written test; I’d never seen the temple where the ceremony would take place, and I’d had limited opportunities to really rehearse all the gestures and movements.
We were halfway across the river when I felt dizzy for a few moments, and found myself in my body again. It was still dark, but there was light coming from the windows of the building in front of me. Serenikha had just been stepping out of the van into a parking lot, and I stumbled, of course, skinning my knees and hands on the asphalt. Before I could assess the damage, or ask someone where we were, I was back in Serenikha’s body.
“You’ve got to call it off,” I exclaimed, interrupting whatever Lord Ravadh was reminding me about. I told him and Bhavalikha what had just happened.
“The Patient One’s messed it up big time — if that happened when he’s not working the spell on us, it could happen again during the ceremony.”
“If it is just for a moment or two, it won’t hurt —” Lord Ravadh began, but I interrupted again.
“If it’s while I’m sitting quiet on my coiled tail, which is going to be most of the time, maybe so. But if it happens when I’m supposed to be saying or doing something? Big trouble. And there’s no guarantee it will last for just a moment, next time.”
“I will consider what you say.” And there was no more rehearsing and coaching for a while. I looked out the window and watched what I could see of the ferryboatmen unloading our carriage.
The next time it happened, I was sitting down, and I recognized the reception area at Mr. G.'s office. Mom, Dad and Taylor — or whoever was in their bodies at the moment — were sitting in other chairs, and Chad was rubbing some peroxide or something on my skinned knees, while Maella hovered nearby looking anxious. I didn’t see Mr. G. nearby. I started to say “I’m Leslie again —” but I don’t think I got my entire name out before I was back in Serenikha’s body.
“What was that?” Bhavalikha asked me.
“Serenikha was here — I’m assuming she was, because I was back in my body again — and I guess she started to say something.”
“Oh, dear...”
But it was a longer interval before the next swap; we were almost to the temple when I found myself standing in front of a toilet, peeing. My penis felt just as weird and wrong as my split tail — I mean my legs — and if I’d stayed in my own body for more than a fraction of a second, I probably would have stumbled and splattered pee all over the floor. But I was back in Serenikha’s body almost before I’d realized I was in my own.
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“It would give more credence to the rumors if Serenikha shows up and can’t control her tail because it feels like a pair of human legs, or can’t talk sense because she’s still speaking my native language.”
This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.
This and my previous Travel Agency story, "Scouts", are included in The Weight of Silence and Other Stories, along with twelve other stories, several of which haven't previously appeared online.
When we got to the temple, I was surprised to find the Patient One waiting for us; I’d thought he was resting at the embassy. Apparently Lord Ravadh had called him somehow and told him what was going on, and he had some way of getting around fast when he needed to — I never did find out if he’d flown or teleported or what, or what energy reserves he’d called on to do that when he’d said he was exhausted after the morning’s spellcasting.
We greeted the delegation that met us — Pientao wasn’t there, but several of his brothers and sisters were, including Tiensai and Wushao, and several acolytes and lower-ranking priests. Then Lord Ravadh said: “Serenikha felt some momentary symptoms of her recent illness during the carriage drive. I fear we must have our physician examine her before the ceremony, but I hope we may still bring it off with no great delay.”
“Of course,” Prince Tiensai said. “Omisu will show you to a private chamber you may use.” One of the acolytes led us off down a side corridor, and into a private room a little smaller than my bedroom at the embassy. The Patient One asked me about my spontaneous swap-backs, and I told him everything I could remember.
“They’re getting shorter, then?”
“Um, maybe — the first two were about the same, the third was definitely shorter.”
“And at longer intervals?”
I thought about it. “Yes.”
He nodded and started working spells on me. I didn’t get the dizzy or nauseous feeling I’d gotten earlier, and I didn’t swap back with Serenikha. After a few minutes he said to Lord Ravadh: “It is a brief after-effect of the spell I worked earlier, and may be played out already. If it recurs, it will probably just be once or twice, and certainly for much shorter intervals — barely long enough to cause her to hesitate over a word, still less to stumble and fall, as she reports that she did during some of those intervals in her own body.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “Three data points isn’t much of a trend. Why not wait a couple of days, until the Gray One reverses the swap himself and you can have the ceremony with the real Serenikha?”
“No,” Lord Ravadh said. “The garuda ambassador has been spreading rumors about you, that your illness is much worse than we pretend and that you will be a barren wife... We cannot give credence to the rumors by asking for another delay.”
“It would give more credence to the rumors if Serenikha shows up and can’t control her tail because it feels like a pair of human legs, or can’t talk sense because she’s still speaking my native language.”
“If the Patient One is confident that you are well enough to go on, you must go on.”
So we returned to the vestibule of the temple, and the ceremony began. Lord Ravadh escorted me into the main sanctuary, and handed me over to a couple of nagini around Bhavalikha age, who escorted me to a place near the altar. The high priest — a human or maybe a human-dragon hybrid, I wasn’t sure — said some things, and I said the things I’d memorized to say in response, and then I sat back on my coiled tail and waited for Pientao to arrive. More than an hour had gone by since the last time I’d swapped back with Serenikha, and I hoped the Patient One’s diagnosis was right — but I didn’t trust him to know his way around the Gray One’s transfer spell, and I was afraid I might swap back for a longer time at any moment.
And I did, but maybe not because the Patient One’s diagnosis was wrong. I’d known that Chad had taken the people in our bodies back to the Gray One’s office in the middle of the night, and I should have figured out why, but I was so worried about the Patient One’s meddling and the stress of preparing for the betrothal ceremony that I didn’t think about it enough.
There were several more exchanges, the priest saying something long and me saying something shorter in response, usually “Yes” or “I will,” but sometimes something that seemed to have nothing to do with betrothal or marriage — “The snow may be beautiful even when it arrives unseasonably,” for instance? What was that about?
I had time in between those responses to look at the people watching the ceremony. There in a specially fenced-off section of seats were the Emperor and all of his children and sons- and daughters-in-law, except for Pientao, and Minister Aopin and several others I’d met at court. In the other seats and the standing room beside and behind the seating there were a lot of humans, elves and kitsune, with a few kappa and even tengu, but no garuda — not surprisingly. And there were more naga than I’d ever seen in one place, even at the embassy during the party. Judging from their clothes, some of them were less well-off than the rich and noble naga who’d come to the embassy party, though maybe not really poor, and there were more than a few children, including one really cute little tot who was lying in her mommy’s coiled tail like a bassinet.
Then a female acolyte approached me carrying a narrow wooden stick, and I braced myself as she struck me on the hip, just where my scales met my human flesh. She didn’t hit hard enough to hurt, but it startled me even though Bhavalikha had warned me about it. Then a a moment later — I don’t know if the shock triggered it or not — I was back in my own body.
I was sitting cross-legged, which felt sort of like having my tail coiled in two directions at once, and sitting facing Taylor a few feet away, with Mom to my left and Dad to my right. I heard Mr. G.'s voice chanting, but I couldn’t see him; maybe he was behind me? I had only a moment longer to take in the fact that we were sitting in the blue chalk circle in the back room at his office when I found myself back in Serenikha’s body.
And it felt like everyone was staring at me. Of course, I’d already been the center of attention before, so it was hard to be sure whether that was just paranoia; but maybe Serenikha had twitched her tail or blurted out something in English during the moment she was in her body. The priests and acolytes did seem to be giving me funny looks. But after a moment they went on with the ceremony.
We exchanged several more calls and responses, and then Pientao entered the sanctuary, flanked by two older men, one of whom I’d met at the banquet but whose name I couldn’t remember. When he was about twenty or thirty paces off from me and the high priest, I jumped back into my own body.
I was still sitting cross-legged in the circle with Mom, Dad and Taylor — or whoever was in their bodies — and the Gray One was walking around the circle, holding his staff, and chanting; as I arrived he passed Dad going counterclockwise and approached Taylor’s position, then tapped the floor behind Taylor. Even as he did, I was saying: “I’m Leslie — can you wait on this and put us back after the betrothal ceremony? It might mess it up if Serenikha arrives in the middle and doesn’t know what we’ve already —”
And I was back in her body; Pientao and his escorts were still approaching. They got within six or eight paces of me and stopped, and then the high priest started asking him things and he responded. I could relax for a while, theoretically, because I didn’t have anything to say for another ten or fifteen minutes; but I couldn’t relax because I knew I’d be swapping back any moment.
And I did, not long after that. The Gray One was still walking in circles, tapping his staff behind each of us in turn, and chanting steadily. I started to say: “At least, if you can’t postpone putting us back, tell Serenikha what she needs to know — we’ve gotten past the first section...”
“I don’t think he can interrupt the spell once he’s started,” Mom said, “or interrupt his chanting to talk to Serenikha. Better let him concentrate, honey. We’ll be all right soon enough.”
I nodded silently, and waited to return to Serenikha’s body — or for the feeling of wrongness in my tail to go away.
The Gray One circled us twice more before I went back to Serenikha’s body. Pientao still had five or six more responses to go, I was pretty sure. I swapped back again before he got to the end of them, but only for two or three seconds this time. A couple of minutes later Pientao’s interrogation was over, and the high priest gave a nod. Pientao took a couple of steps closer to me, and I uncoiled my tail and slithered over toward him as the high priest said: “Pientao and Serenikha, you have shown that you understand what marriage is as well as it can be understood from the outside. Is it your will that —”
And then I was back in my own body again, but I knew something was different. My legs felt like legs, not like a broken, twisted tail, and the Gray One’s chanting had stopped.
“Is it over?” Dad asked. “Can we leave the circle?” I realized he was speaking in English.
“You may,” the Gray One said. “I need to rest. Please wait in the outer office, make yourselves comfortable — Chad will get you coffee or tea if you like — and I will join you presently.”
We all got up. My legs felt a little stiff from sitting cross-legged for so long, but that passed in a few moments. Mom hugged me tight, and then Dad was hugging me while Mom hugged Taylor, and I saw over Dad’s shoulder the Gray One leaning back against the wall, looking tired but satisfied.
“Let’s go,” Dad said, and we filed out into the waiting room. Chad was sitting there, and he jumped up when we came out; Maella zoomed over and hovered near my face.
“Did it work?” Chad asked.
“It feels about right,” Dad said, rubbing the stubble on his cheek. “What about you, Leslie?”
“My legs feel like legs,” I said. “I can walk. I can understand English. Is there anything else we need to check for?”
“That’s all I know of,” Chad said, “but Mr. G. said you should wait until he talks to you before you leave.”
“Sure. He said something about coffee?” Mom asked, yawning.
“Sure,” Chad said. “Anyone else?”
Dad and Taylor asked for coffee, and I said I’d have tea. Chad showed us to a small kitchen or break room, where we got ourselves cups of tea and coffee. Chad got a carton of pineapple juice out of the refrigerator and poured a little into a tiny cup for Maella.
The sun had risen outside by the time Mr. G. came out of the back room and sat down beside Dad. “I’m sorry your vacation was curtailed like that, and I’m sorry that it was disrupted in the first place. A couple of times before I’ve had rival mages trying to interfere with or reverse-engineer my spells, and each time I’ve increased my precautions against it, but this Patient One was clever, powerful and persistent. If he’d had more time to work, I think he might have accomplished what he aimed at... but being in a hurry, he managed only to disrupt my spell in ways I still don’t fully understand.”
“What does that mean?” Dad asked.
“It means that though I will be giving you a full refund, and I would like to offer you another vacation at no charge in compensation, I don’t feel it’s safe to send you to host bodies in my world again until I am perfectly certain that all the after-effects of the Patient One’s meddling are gone. And there’s no way to be sure of that except to wait and see — though I recommend that you all come to see me for a sort of magical checkup once a month for the next year. Probably there will be after-effects, though I can’t be sure what they will be — hopefully no more swaps, but you may have more of the shared dreams that Serenikha told me about, or suffer a form of aphasia where you try to think of an English word and can only think of a word in the language your hosts spoke, or have moments when your body feels strange. I expect those will fade in time, and within six months to a year it will be safe for you to travel again.”
“Thanks for being so open about all this,” Mom said. “But what was that about shared dreams?”
I told them about the dream I’d shared with Serenikha. As I spoke, Taylor’s eyes opened wide, and when I finished she said:
“I’d forgotten until now, but I just remembered — I think I shared a dream that night with Tisicho, the kitsune who borrowed my body. I dreamed about him, anyway. I can’t remember much of the dream.”
Mr. G. nodded. “It may happen again, but hopefully not often. Keep a dream journal and bring it with you to your next checkup — not just dreams you think you shared with your host, but any others that might be influenced by shared memories.”
We talked for a few minutes, and then left. Chad and Maella got into a blue Civic, not the minivan he’d driven us here in, and the rest of us got into our car.
“Where to?” Dad asked. “We’ve still got two more days until your mother and I have to be back at work, or until your friends expect to see you.”
“Let’s go home for now,” Mom said. “I feel like my body hasn’t had enough sleep.”
“Yeah,” Taylor and I agreed. I was the only one who hadn’t had any coffee at Mr. G.'s office, and I fell asleep on the way home; Taylor shook me awake as we pulled into our driveway. We all brought our things in, and Mom and I made breakfast. They told me more about what they’d seen and done while I was cooped up in the embassy, and how they’d first started swapping back into their own bodies for a few moments, and I told them about the betrothal ceremony and the Patient One’s last couple of spells after Dad left the embassy for the last time.
“Oh, no!” Dad exclaimed. “Did you get my host’s tree out of the embassy? — give it to Lady Hanuseri?”
I groaned. “No — so much stuff was going on I forgot.”
“I’ll call Mr. G. and tell him he needs to get her out,” he said, picking up his phone. A few minutes later he told us: “She’ll be fine — Mr. G. told Serenikha she’d need to take care of that when she got back. But apparently she and the kodama really hit it off while they were here, and they’re pretty good friends now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she decides to stay with Serenikha for a while.”
We all straggled to bed after that, and I slept until late afternoon. It took us until Monday to get our sleep schedules turned around again.
I went over to Daniel’s house for a couple of hours Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t sure what I should tell him about the trip — I knew he was going to ask, and what could I tell him that he’d believe?
“So where’d you go?” he asked, very first thing. “What was the big surprise?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I replied, still not sure whether to tell him — and then what, try to convince him? Laugh it off as a joke if he didn’t believe me, which he probably wouldn’t?
“Come on, you can tell me.” He looked around; his dad was out running errands, but his mom was in the kitchen. “Maybe not here though,” he added in a lower voice.
We went up to his room, and he said: “Is it something my parents wouldn’t let me hang out with you any more if they knew?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not any more than what they already know about my parents and the reasons they won’t let you come over to my house.”
“So, another nudist camp?”
“Naturist resort,” I corrected automatically, and then: “No, that wasn’t it. I’d like to tell you, but I’m not sure you’d believe me... it was really weird, and mostly really cool except for the scary bits, but we couldn’t bring home any souvenirs to prove anything.”
“Did you take any pictures?”
“We couldn’t bring any electronics.” Or anything else.
We went back and forth like that for a while, and finally I said: “Look, I’m sorry, but I just don’t want to tell you until and unless I can prove it. Let’s talk about something else. Didn’t the new issue of Justice League come out while I was away...?”
That night I met Serenikha again, this time in the garden on the grounds of the naga embassy. She looked like herself, and it was strange to see that body from outside, to see her slithering along toward me and remember what it had felt like to have a tail instead of legs, to have those breasts wobbling on my chest...
“How have you been?” I asked. “I guess we’re not quite disentangled yet; Mr. G. said it might take a while.”
“That stupid Patient One! I could just strangle him... Yeah, the Gray One said he couldn’t be sure the spell would come off cleanly all at once, after the Patient One had tinkered with it so much. I’m doing okay, though. I had a nervous moment when I plopped back in my body in the middle of the betrothal, but I still remembered most of my lines, and now I’m betrothed and we have a treaty, so it’s all good.”
“Is it? Are you happy to be marrying Pientao?”
She shrugged. “He’s all right. It’s not like I could marry whoever I wanted, even if I got out of marrying him somehow. But I’ll miss living at home. Uncle Ravadh says more naga are going to be coming over here soon, though, now that we have a connection with the court and all, so I’ll have more naga my age to talk to.”
“How did you like San Francisco?”
She broke into a wide grin. “Wow, it’s the most amazing place I’ve ever been! They’ve got better gardens here, but the houses, the huge buildings, the streets and the cars and the streetcars... and those bridges! I thought the capital here was big compared to back home, but San Francisco...! Maybe I can talk Pientao into coming there with me sometime, after this entanglement wears off.”
“I know, right? You got lucky; any big city in my world would have skyscrapers and cars and stuff, but San Francisco’s the only one I know of that’s more beautiful than the capital of the Dragon Empire.”
We talked for I don’t know how long before I woke up; as soon as I realized I was lying in bed awake, I wrote as much as I could remember in my dream journal. At breakfast, I found out that Mom had shared a dream with Altimeth, the elf who’d swapped with her during our trip; he had shown her the island where he grew up, and she’d shown him some of her favorite places in our world. Dad and Taylor couldn’t remember any dreams like that just then, but over the next few days both of them shared one or two dreams with the person they’d swapped with.
Those dream-meetings got less frequent over the next few weeks, and stopped entirely within two months — for everyone except me. I kept meeting Serenikha in my dreams about one night in three. We got better at consciously manipulating the dream environment to show each other our memories of favorite places and things; Serenikha had more talent for it than me, but I got the hang of it soon enough. I told her I was sorry I’d distrusted her motives so, thinking she was planning to steal my body permanently and leave me to marry Pientao, and how frustrated I was about not feeling able to tell Daniel where I’d been. She told me about the progress of the treaty and how the Empire was supposed to send a fleet of troop ships to the Naga Kingdom as soon as the stormy season passed, to help them against the garuda, and about meeting Pientao again in more intimate settings (though still with a chaperon a little way off) and getting to know him better. She seemed happy, and I was happy to see how happy she was — though a little worried about what it meant that we were still sharing dreams so often.
And I was the only one of the family who had the other lingering effects Mr. G. had warned us about. Sometimes I found myself wanting to use a word from the languages they spoke in the Dragon Empire or the Naga Kingdom — either because I couldn’t think of the English word at the moment, or because it seemed more precise and fitting than the English word. I managed to avoid embarrassing myself that way with Daniel and his parents, but I sometimes used those words in conversation with Mom and Dad or Taylor. After the first couple of weeks, they didn’t understand me anymore — they’d forgotten the language we spoke in the other world.
And one morning near the end of our first week back home, I woke up after dreaming with Serenikha and tried to slither out of bed. I sprained my hip and left ankle and had to go to the emergency room. I never had any more serious accidents like that, but there were a number of times when my legs felt a little weird, or my penis felt wrong and out of place, usually for just a few moments. I talked to Serenikha about that, and she confessed she had the same problem occasionally, feeling a phantom penis or legs, though it never caused her real problems controlling her tail or made her forget how to pee.
When we went back to Mr. G. for our first monthly checkup, he listened to our stories and read our dream-journals, and cast some kind of spell on us — we didn’t feel anything. Then he told us what he thought was happening.
“I’m afraid Leslie and Serenikha may be inextricably linked,” he said. “It’s too early to be sure — his problems may fade with time like the rest of you, but just take longer. I need to examine Serenikha; I’ve met with each of the others you swapped with, but I’m having a hard time getting the naga embassy to allow me to visit her.”
He also told me what he’d learned about the Garuda Empire; they were clearly the aggressors in their current war with the Naga Kingdom; though they claimed they’d invaded just take back a province the naga had robbed them of in the previous war... you’d have to go back a long, long time to figure out who really started it.
Another month went by; I still saw Serenikha a couple of times a week, and the aphasia was just as bad though the dysphoria was getting better. I told Serenikha what Mr. G. had said, and she said she’d try to get her uncle to let her meet with the Gray One, but she wasn’t hopeful. “If that doesn’t work, I can ask Pientao for permission after we’re married.”
“But that will be six months from now, right?”
“Five months... Are you in a hurry to get rid of me?” she teased.
“No, you’re my best friend.” (Daniel had grown distant, hurt that I didn’t trust him with the story of where I’d gone on vacation, but I still couldn’t figure out how to tell him. It wasn’t like I could take him to Mr. G.'s travel agency for a demonstration — not until we were old enough to drive, at least.) “I’d hate to never see you again. But I’d like to visit your world again someday, too, and see you in person, wearing a kitsune or dragon-human body maybe.”
“You’d better come as a girl of whatever race; Pientao might be jealous otherwise.”
“I’ll ask Mr. G. about it.”
But Lord Ravadh was obdurate; he blamed the Gray One for nearly botching the betrothal and the defense treaty, and wouldn’t let him near Serenikha. The Patient One went to talk to the Gray One, and said if he taught him all about the spells he’d used on us, he could maybe fix the problem from Serenikha’s end. But apparently the Patient One (whoever gave him that name, anyway? he totally doesn’t deserve it) and the Gray One couldn’t agree on terms — I don’t think the Gray One trusted him, not surprisingly — and that broke down.
The following spring, after Pientao and Serenikha were married, she finally told him everything — how she’d run off and swapped with me, and how her trip to my world had been delayed so I was there for the banquet, the party and the first half of the betrothal, and how we’d been mystically linked ever since. He immediately sent for the Gray One, and the mage was finally able to study the tangled spell on me and Serenikha from both ends at once.
“It’s permanent,” he said when Mom took me to his office for my next checkup. “Perhaps I could have repaired it if I’d been able to act more quickly — but perhaps not. You and Serenikha will be linked for the rest of your lives, and will probably go on sharing dreams, bits of memories, and body images as long as you live. It wouldn’t be safe to try to swap either of you with another person — the results would be unpredictable. For instance, if I were to try to swap you with a pixie, it might be that the pixie would end up in Serenikha’s body and Serenikha in yours — and putting you all back in the right bodies would be as difficult as it was to partially undo the Patient One’s spells; you might end up with a permanent three-way link.”
“What about...” I swallowed. “If one of us dies, does that break the link? Or would both of us die whenever something kills either of us?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “More likely, the soul of the dying person will snap back to the other end of the link — into the body of the survivor. I don’t know if they would end up as a passenger in the other person’s body, take control from the other person, or share control of the body alternately; probably the latter.”
Mom broke down and cried when she heard all that. I sat quiet, thinking. Barring murder or accident, Serenikha was going to outlive me by centuries, and I’d live out the rest of that time in her body — and in her world. I’d never find out what it was like to be a mermaid, like Taylor and Jarrod became on their trip to the Gray One’s world that spring, or all the things Mom and Dad had become over the years. But being friends with Serenikha, seeing her and sharing news and memories with her a couple of times a week — that was a deep, strong connection to the other world that Mom, Dad and Taylor would never have, if they visited the other world a hundred times in as many bodies. It was enough magic for me.
Thanks for reading; I hope you've enjoyed it.
I'm working on the fourth draft of "Twisted Throwback", and I expect I'll start serializing it here just after I finish. I also have a science fiction novella finished in first draft, which will need a lot of work on second and third drafts, but may be finished by the time I'm done serializing "Twisted Throwback". Works in progress in first draft include a new Valentine Divergence story and a stand-alone secondary world fantasy.
I have a couple more possible Travel Agency stories outlined, but they probably won't be among the next couple of things I write. One is a sequel to "Scouts", involving Tariq and ul-Kalsim hiring engineers from our world to come swap bodies with people in their world and help them build steam engines and printing presses. (If someone out there knows a lot about steam engines and/or printing presses and wants to collaborate on this one, let me know.) Another is a sequel to "The Family that Plays Together", set several years later when Leslie and Taylor are in college. Other stories I might write soon include the third novel in the Launuru & Kazmina sequence, another Twisted story, and several stand-alone stories.
If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes | Smashwords | Amazon |
When Wasps Make Honey | Smashwords | Amazon |
A Notional Treason | Smashwords | Amazon |
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories | Smashwords | Amazon |