by J. S. Fields
“Magda.” It came out a whisper.
Her eyes came to mine, and she pulled back with a questioning look. “Sorin? Are you all right?”
I swung my leg from around her and sat back, on the far end of the bed. I’m not a woman! I wanted to yell, but I kept control of my voice, even as the pain of her eyes stabbed at my heart. “I’m not a woman,” I managed to say as my throat thickened.
Magda’s eyebrows furrowed, and she pulled her legs under herself. “Sorin, I never argued that point.” I crossed my good arm over my chest, crushing my breasts. Magda sat next to me, our hips just touching. She moved to place a hand on my knee, then placed it on her own instead. “Sorin, whatever I did, I’m sorry!” Again, she looked at my chest. “I thought when they were unbound…that with me…” She fumbled for words, grabbing at the blankets as she did so. “However you present yourself, I don’t care.”
“And if I didn’t have breasts?” I challenged her, determined now to drive the point home. “If I had a penis?”
“But you don’t! If you don’t want to be touched there, on your breasts, that’s all right.” Her voice turned pleading. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to understand.”
Wanting to understand and trying to, unfortunately, were very different things. I slid to the edge of the bed and off. Cold, and fighting tears, I struggled with my old clothes, cursing that I had nothing to bind over my breasts. It was night, and no one had cared before. Hopefully, no one would now either. Only when I was dressed did I turn to face Magda. She clutched the bedsheets, her knuckles white, her face searching mine for an explanation.
“You can like breasts,” I said firmly, for I needed her to hear the pain behind the words. “You can like my breasts, for being mine, or because it would give me pleasure to have you touch them. But when you look at me as you just did, as you do to women…you’re not seeing me. When you look at my breasts like that, you call me a woman, even without saying a thing. I need you to see me, not just the parts you find attractive. I am not a woman because of my breasts. I am me, despite them.”
Magda didn’t speak, but I could see from her face, from the V between her eyes, that she still didn’t understand.
She didn’t understand me. And that burned.
The misunderstanding, the precursory, marginal attempt at empathy, the well-meaning misgendering burned worse than steam from bone oil, cut deeper than the pain in my hand. It was uncomfortably hot in the room, between the steam from the bathwater, arousal, and anger. I fixed my cloak around my neck and went to the door. The night air would go a long way to easing what felt like a punch to the gut, and hopefully calm the prickling on my skin that made me feel like I had to get out, get away, or somehow take off this false exterior into which I had been born.
“Sorin!” Magda called out to me as I turned to pull the door shut.
“Some other time,” I returned. “Not tonight. I’ll see you in the morning, Royal Daughter.”
Twenty-Two: Ceration
I fled to the square, to the small spirit house of cedar and birch. Flickering candles surrounded the wooden structure, and between the candles and the house lay hundreds of dried flower petals in orange, yellow, and red.
I wanted to kick the petals, step on the candles, light the flowers on fire, and burn the house to tar and ash. I needed to destroy something, and not just for the pleasure of breaking. Wood could be distilled to tar. Honey to mead. Iron to gold, with transmutational alchemy. Why was I so different? Why couldn’t I be changed as easily into a form that truly represented who I was? If I burned this spirit house to ash, no one would still call it a house. No one looked at a sequoia and saw only the seed it came from. One admired marquetry for its beauty of form, not the component pieces, or the trees it had been. Why? Why why why couldn’t the same happen to me?! Why did the parts of me, the parts that meant female, have to be used in my definition?
I fell to my knees, knocking over a candle. I didn’t bother to pick it up, and the flame quickly extinguished. My throat prickled. My chest hurt. I dropped my head forward, and my wet hair fell into my eyes, and I let it hang there. Maybe it was time to pick between two ends: male or female, magical alchemy or woodcutting. Why try to make something new? That would make things easier, surely, and then maybe, with Magda…
Again, I saw the change in her eyes when she looked at me, and again, an anvil fell on my chest. But this was my fault, wasn’t it? I’d put off the conversation. I had avoided every opportunity to discuss who I was. I had thought…I had thought she might come to understand, intuitively, that I wasn’t male or female, but another option entirely. That I was a part of both worlds, but somehow also removed from them. That there was something else to me. I had thought her feelings for me would be enough to glean understanding.
I pushed my palm into the stony dirt. I was so tired of the questioning, so tired of having to explain. I had thought I was enough. I had wanted to be enough, for her, and I felt crushed under the weight of knowing that somehow, I had come up short.
A hand smoothed across my neck at the exposed skin there, the fingers warm, calloused, and intimate. I shrugged my shoulders and leaned away.
“I’m not ready to talk about this, Magda. Tomorrow, or the day after.” I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, embarrassed and upset that she’d followed me. I didn’t want her to see me like this. She hadn’t earned the right to see me like this.
“I’m not pleased to see you crying, Sorin. Especially with the royal daughter’s name in your mouth.”
My emotions stopped. My heart stopped, although I knew it had to still be beating. That was Mother’s voice. The deepness and disdain mixed so perfectly together into the familiar. I cried out in surprise and sprang to my feet, pivoting around.
It was Amada the master woodcutter. Grandmaster woodcutter, I corrected myself. She wore loose-fitting brown cotton pants and shirt, with a purple wool cloak around her shoulders. Her boots were still the same leather pair she’d had in Thuja, but they were well worn and muddy. Under the gibbous moon, I could make out the familiar cleft to her chin, the shape of her jaw, the tight pull of her hair back into a tail. Her woodcutting tattoo was prominent as well—distinct and without a halo. She was neither conjuring nor imagined. We were reunited, and my heart leapt. I had found her! Or, perhaps, she had found me?
“Mother!”
She smiled at me, and it held the warmth of my childhood bound with the more rational thoughts that wondered about her calmness, and Sameer’s predictions, and that she was here, alone, near a magical glacier and the pivotal treaty talks.
“You shouldn’t have come, Sorin. You need to leave. Now.”
“Leave?” I stood and brushed petals from my pants. “I’ve only just found you. Mother, where have you been? Do you remember woodcutting? Are you afflicted with the same thing as the rest of the guilders?”
Mother sighed. “Come with me. There’s a trail I can put you on that will keep you off the glacier and get you back to Thuja that much faster.” She offered me her hand, and I instinctively reached for it with my right. I touched my fingertips to her palm, wincing at the pain. Mother noticed, grasped them, and raised my bound hand toward her face. “Damn it, why hasn’t this been attended?”
I was surprised at the bite in her words. “Because I’ve been on a glacier, and because we arrived here at night, and because it’s tii.” I pulled my hand from her grasp, ignoring the pain that followed. “My hand isn’t important. I was worried about you.”
I hadn’t expected some overly indulgent embrace, but neither had I expected this brashness. Mother was never affectionate, but she was also never dismissive. I was old enough to take care of myself, and to journey with the royal daughter if I so chose. Her words flustered me and were far too reminiscent of the voice on the glacier, and of Sameer’s warning. Still, I wasn’t going anywhere, especially not without her.
“Mother, where have you been?”
“I was detained.”
“Witches?” I asked. I had to know because all I could hear was Sameer in my head. Baiting me. Warning me. His words battled with memories of Mother, of her hatred of witches, of her dismissal of magic. She couldn’t be a witch. She couldn’t.
Mother stared at me, then, a frown pulling at her mouth. Her hand fell away, and she tilted her head—like she was seeing me for the first time.
“Sorin, you have to go home. Now.”
“No!” If both my hands had worked, I’d have crossed my arms. As it was, the best pose I could manage was one balled fist. “The grandmaster woodcutter is dead, and grandmasters from across the guilds are missing. There are factories, Mother. Factories in Miantri, and on the glacier. The guilds are dying. Guilders are dying on the glacier. They’re losing their memories and skills, just like in the king’s time. It’s not safe here. You need to come with me, to Magda. With you, at least, she has the woodcutter’s guild. She can save at least part of Sorpsi at the talks, and then we can try to sort out what is going on.”
Mother squeezed her eyes shut and let her head fall back. “Damn it, Sorin,” she muttered. “Damn it damn it damn it.”
“Mother, would you please just—”
Mother’s hands moved then, fluid like water but with a speed I’d never seen before. She muttered words I couldn’t hear, and heat descended, first around my ears, then to my neck and shoulders. Sweat erupted across my brow. The candles extinguished, and the flower petals lifted despite the stillness of the air. I batted at them in confusion. Witches? Here? Where? I looked about the square, but I could see only Mother and myself. What was she doing? Some type of witch defense?
Calm down, Sorin, or you’ll end up with a nasty headache.
Had I heard the voice out loud, or had it been in my head? I couldn’t tell, but it was Mother’s voice, so surely that meant she had spoken. Mother was no witch. “Mother, what—”
It’s time to take a rest.
The light from the moon waned as the edges of my vision fuzzed. I tried to speak again, but the heat scalded my tongue and held it prisoner while petals clung to my clothes and skin.
Just lie down.
I clawed at the swirling petals, frantic to clear my vision, but everything before me spotted into drops of moonlight. I fell onto my side on a bed of petals, surrounded by the remains of white candles. Every intake of air coated my throat in stinging dryness, and my eyelids felt like sandpaper. I tried to stand, to speak, to beg for an explanation, but my vision turned black. Finally, I gave into the pressure on my mind telling me to relax. To follow. That I was going home.
*
“Do it again,” Mother said with that infuriating calm she always had when we argued. She pointed to a perfectly fine spot on the wood floor where the fresh finish gleamed. “Do it right this time.”
I clenched my jaw. “If I can redo it to your specifications by tonight, could I meet up with Magda tomorrow? She said Master Rahad would give me a tour of his laboratory, a real tour, and I—”
Mother stepped past me without speaking, into the forest.
“Mother!” I called out after her. “Mother, I haven’t seen Magda in months. Mother, why are you keeping me here?”
“Mother?”
“Mother!”
I awoke, naked, atop a pile of wool blankets in the middle of a fairy ring. Snow coated the branches of the ash and fir forest around me, yet inside the circle, it was warm and the ground clear.
“Hello?” I called out as I tried to shake the dream from my mind. That wasn’t one of my better memories of growing up, and I had no desire for it to linger. “Mother?”
I stood, wrapped one of the blankets around my body, and walked the perimeter of the ring. The fungi were strange and not a type I had seen before—candlestick-shaped and branched, almost like antlers at their top. They glowed, too, the faint green of foxfire, despite the daylight.
That spoke of magic, and I frowned and dug my fingers into the wool. The rough fabric scratched my palms, and when I pulled my hands back, I startled enough to drop the blanket.
My right hand was no longer bound. It was healed. Whole. I gave an experimental kick to my legs. My hips no longer popped, and not even the scabs from my wounds from Thuja were still present.
“Mother?” I called out tentatively. It was one thing to enchant foxfire. To repair muscle was…extraordinary, and unwanted. I ran my hands over the unblemished skin. I’d earned no scars from this. Magic had taken them away, it seemed, this chance to look older and more experienced. I gathered the fallen blanket, sat back on the pile, rammed my fist into the dry ground, then spat.
“Mother? Whoever did this? I didn’t ask to be healed!” I yelled into the bright morning sun. “You should have asked!”
My answer was the song of winter birds and the rustling of foragers. I clutched at my blanket and screamed, at my nudity, and the healing, and because I was tired of witches intervening in my life. I’d have rather lost my hand than this unnatural healing that left no scars. I wasn’t going to be a woodcutter or an alchemist. What did I really need a second hand for anyway? For that matter, where was I, and how far from Celtis, and where was Mother?
“Come out!” I screamed it hard enough to scratch my throat and launch myself into a coughing fit. Birds flew at my voice this time, but still no one answered me.
I muttered a string of curses I’d once heard Magda use. “Fine. Maybe I’ll crush a magical amulet and see if that gets your attention.”
Except…the amulet was in my pants pocket. Unless it had fallen out while the witch had disrobed me… I clawed frantically at my hips, then at the ground. I flung the blankets from my legs and searched through them. Nothing. I sat back down, pulled the blanket over my lap, and looked up at the canopy. Everything was gone, from the amulet to my bloody binding, to my foraging knife. What in the name of the gods was I going to do, sitting out in a forest clearing like some maiden or lost prince in a fairy tale?
Soft footsteps came up behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know the aroma of cedar on Mother’s cloak that no laundering could remove. I clutched the blanket to my chest and turned. The air warmed as she approached, the snow melting from her footsteps until she entered the ring of dry ground where I sat. Mother had a satchel slung over one shoulder. She slid it from her arm and placed on the moss next to me.
“Some old blueberries inside. Desiccated, but nutritious anyway. Help yourself, since you’re apparently staying a while.”
“Witches, Mother.” I curled my legs up to my torso as I tried to cover myself with a blanket. Too many questions coated my tongue, mostly about how calm she was in a forest filled with witches, and magic. But only one came out. “My clothes. Mother, I’m not—”
“You’ve been out twelve hours. You’re healed. You need to eat. Your clothes were filthy. Master Walerian is conjuring you new ones, or stealing them. He wasn’t clear on which, and I don’t really care.” Mother knelt next to me and turned my head from side to side, inspecting my neck. Her fingers were as cool and rough as they had been since my earliest memories. I wanted to sink into her, to drown myself in the smell of cedar, but how could I when we were both in so much danger?
“Did you not attend the fair then, Sorin?”
Her words took me by surprise, and I blinked several times. “The…the alchemical guild fair?” She’d remembered? She’d never remembered before, which was why I’d missed the event five years in a row.
Mother smoothed a wrinkle on her shirt. “Was there another one running at the same time?”
“I—no. It was cancelled. I’d have missed it anyway.”
“Why?” She sat on a patch of moss next to me, her eyes expectant. Like she knew my answer but wanted to hear my humiliation when I spoke it.
I clutched the blankets tightly to my chest and stuttered. “I had to go looking for you. And when I arrived, the grandmasters were all missing and the fair had been shut down.” And you were missing, and I was worried about you!
Mother crossed her arms over her chest. “So you did not become an alchemical apprentice.”
That was what this was about, then. Her words had no inflection, but I could hear the statement underneath, and it varnished me in shame. I was still unguilded, and that was worse, somehow, than witches, and being in a ring of enchanted foxfire. It was an embarrassment, both to her, and to guild tradition.
“I don’t care much for alchemy anymore.” I looked intently at the moss. The words were hollow even in my own ears. The pride from the fungal pigments that had once swelled in my chest had left only a deflated, hollow space.
“So you are still considering which guild to join?”
I did catch something in her voice, that time. Something that sounded very suspiciously like excitement.
“I suppose.”
Mother’s hand stroked my shoulder, once. She again peered at my neck, then sat back. “Would you consider woodcutting then? There is a welcome place for you here.”
Her voice lilted. She was hopeful. That was almost worse than excited. “Not witchcraft? You seem…cozy with them. The witches.”
Mother laughed and didn’t take the bait. “No, Sorin, not witchcraft. You belong in woodcutting. Your skills are in woodcutting.” She took my chin in her hand and stroked the skin with her thumb. “You are a woodcutter, by birth and by skill. It’s time to join the guild, and thus gain every benefit it offers.”
There was so much warmth in her voice when she spoke of woodcutting that it momentarily filled my chest with a feeling very akin to love. I let my vision blur. Woodcutting was as good as glass or smith or carpentry. At least in this, I had a history and some skill. It mattered to Mother that I was guilded, one way or another, even if the guilds eventually disbanded. If I couldn’t have what I wanted, at least one of us would be happy, and I wanted… I did want her to be happy with me.
“It is decided then. Once Walerian is back, we can have your guild mark placed.” She scooped a small handful of wrinkled blueberries from her satchel and handed them to me. “Here. Eat.”
