by Astrid Amara
Anant followed Tarek with his eyes but made no move to follow.
“You should dress now,” Tarek said.
Anant’s neck and face flushed bright red. He nervously retied his dejaru, his eyes firmly locked on the carpet.
“I’m sorry, my lord.” Anant couldn’t tie his sash. His hands shook. “I’m sorry.”
Tarek watched the young man fumble nervously in front of him, and again guilt flooded his mind. He fucked Anant and thought of Darvad. It was wrong. Compassion inspired Tarek to walk over and tie Anant’s sash for him.
“There.” He straightened Anant’s sash, and when Tarek looked up, he saw infatuation in Anant’s eyes. A slick horror crept through Tarek’s senses. Anant stared at Tarek like he would jump in front of a chariot for him.
Tarek backed away. “You have something for me?”
Anant frowned, not understanding.
“The scroll?”
“Oh!” Anant nervously reached down to retrieve the scroll from where he had dropped it. He handed it to Tarek. “I’m sorry, my lord.”
Tarek took the scroll and walked away. One of his ministers who oversaw a network of legal informants reported that Lord Kadal had broken the new laws, executing commoners for minor infractions. The news filled Tarek with anger. Kadal had smiled when he promised he would respect Tarek as Royal Judge. He had patted Tarek on the shoulder. And less than a year later, he had broken his oath and gone back on his promises.
Tarek felt revived as if someone had splashed ice water into his face. The troubles of his heart could be set aside. He had more important matters to address right now.
Tarek looked up, surprised to see Anant still standing there, sheepishly staring at the floor.
“What?” Tarek barked, colder than he intended.
Anant swallowed. “The minister asked me to wait for a reply.” He sounded deflated.
Tarek rubbed his temple. The way Anant looked at him was why Tarek had long ago made a rule never to screw people he knew. Things got complicated. He could already see the brewing storm of emotions in Anant’s eyes, the love, hurt, and hope flashing like lightening. It made Tarek sick to his stomach to realize he was the cause.
Tarek shook his head. He didn’t have time to worry about Anant’s feelings right now. He handed the scroll back to the commander.
“Tell the minister and my general to prepare the army. I will be there shortly.”
Anant bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
Tarek watched Anant hesitate at the door. He was so transparent, this man. He stood waiting for a kind word, some confirmation of feelings, some hope of a reprieve.
“Go now,” Tarek commanded. He couldn’t coddle warriors.
Anant flushed again and bowed lower. “Yes, my lord.” He hurried from the room.
Tarek stretched, crackled his knuckles, and then marched back down the hall to Darvad’s chamber. He knocked on the door loudly.
“What?” Darvad sounded irritated. Tarek heard the dancing girl giggle quietly.
Tarek cleared his throat. “It’s me.”
Tarek listened as Darvad whispered something to the girl and padded across the room. The door opened slightly. Darvad popped his head out, his bright green dejaru held closed around his waist.
“What’s happened?” Darvad asked.
Tarek stared at Darvad’s partial nudity, took in the smell of sex on him. He felt his body stir. “War,” he told Darvad. “I need you.”
Darvad stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind him. A slow smile spread across his face, lighting him up from within, his face glowing, truthful, beautiful.
“You have me.” Darvad put his arm around Tarek’s shoulder.
Tarek filled him in.
Chapter 28
THEIR FIRST MEAL AFTER CREMATING THE BABY WAS THE MOST depressing Jandu had ever experienced. His family stared at the flames of their camp fire in silence. The last fire they had lit had burned the tiny body of Suraya’s dead child.
Jandu pushed his food aside. He had no hunger, just a vague sickness, and a disbelief that he could feel any lower.
“Does anyone want more tea?”
Suraya spoke quietly, as if nervous about disturbing the silence. No one answered her. They sat together around the fire, although the heat was sweltering and the clammy sky pushed their sweat-soaked clothes against their skin. A roar of thunder echoed overhead. The sky brimmed with moisture.
But the darkness disturbed him, and Jandu turned to the fire gratefully. His body ached from their desperate scurry down the mountain. He and Yudar had carried Suraya most of the way, on a makeshift palanquin of branches and a zahari, until they reached a small farming community where they traded Jandu’s stolen gold for a horse and cart. Grief accompanied them down the mountain like a physical presence, breathing on their necks, tearing at their hearts.
“I’ll have more tea then,” Suraya said under her breath, as if to herself. Jandu looked at his siblings, saw that no one had touched their dinner.
Baram hadn’t said a word since his son was born dead. All day Baram had walked ahead of the rest of them, slashing at undergrowth that grew overnight to block the worn pathways south. Now he stared into the flames blindly, his shoulders tense.
He had scratches on the backs of his hands and blisters on his palms. He seemed bent on destroying the forest root by root to express his anguish.
Suraya looked terrible—her skin pale with dark circles under her eyes. She could only stand for a couple minutes at a time. She held her breasts and winced in pain as her milk dried up.
But as they had moved out of the mountain jungle and reached the plains of Pagdesh, Suraya pushed them all forward, assuring them she was fine, her eyes unwavering towards Afadi.
In silence, they extinguished their fire and made camp near a rocky outcropping that had a series of natural shelters, protected from the elements by a tremendous jut of stone. Baram and Yudar found places to sleep under the rock, and Jandu huddled with Suraya in a smaller cave-like shelter that had a soft bed of moss. It wasn’t large, but it was dry.
“Are you all right?” Jandu whispered.
“I will be.” Suraya leaned her head against Jandu’s shoulder. She was quiet for a moment, and then spoke softly. “The baby was part of our years on the mountain. I need to leave him, and all that darkness, behind.”
Jandu kissed the top of Suraya’s head. “You are very brave,” he said. “Braver than me even.”
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? What I’ve lost…” Suraya squeezed Jandu’s arm. “No. I’m not going to talk about it anymore. What’s happened has happened. There was nothing to be done for it.”
Jandu watched the rain fall in sheets, the water reflecting the half moon to make thousands of glinting droplets in the sultry darkness. “I failed you.”
Suraya stared at Jandu. “What are you talking about?”
Jandu swallowed. “I wish I could have protected you.” He turned and gripped Suraya’s shoulders. “Will you forgive me?”
Suraya leaned in and kissed Jandu on the lips. Jandu stiffened, but he realized it was meant to be friendly.
“You did everything you could to help me,” Suraya said with force. “So let’s look forward.”
“To Afadi,” Jandu said, smiling.
Suraya smiled back. “Afadi.”
Jandu hesitated. “And Baram?”
Suraya watched the brilliant flicker of rain. “I have no idea what I can say to make him feel better. I think he blames me.”
“He blames himself.”
Suraya sighed.
“Just talk to him,” Jandu said.
“And say what?”
Jandu shrugged. “I don’t know. If I were you, I’d just hit him about the face for a while and call him a fool, and when he finally starts crying like a baby, then you can forgive him and pull out your womanly charms.”
“Oh?” Suraya laughed. “So hit him in the face, then pull out my charms.”
; Jandu flashed her a grin. “That’s my girl.”
Suraya shook her head. “I don’t think it will work.”
“If you want, I can hit him for a while. When we were kids, I used to smack him under the chin and make him bite his tongue. Even though he was bigger and stronger than me, I could make him cry. He hated it, but he would fall for it every time. ” Jandu laughed quietly, remembering. “Those were good times,” he mused to himself.
“There will be more good times ahead,” Suraya whispered back. She closed her eyes and leaned against Jandu to sleep.
“Yes, there will be.” Jandu stroked her head. “I promise.”
But not for me, Jandu thought to himself, realizing that his year as a woman would have to begin.
As Suraya fell asleep against him, Jandu’s arm around her shoulder, he looked at her body and steadied his resolve. He could do this. It was only for a year. A woman’s body wouldn’t be that bad. He looked at her breasts, her hips, the way her bones protruded below her neck, the smallness of her feet. He had no choice.
Jandu slowly extricated himself from Suraya’s sleepy grasp and found himself a secluded spot in the tall grass to give his penis five minutes of a fond farewell.
“Take care, fella,” he told it. He knelt down in the rain and prayed to Mendraz as the Yashva king had instructed, and asked for his year of Umia’s curse to begin. Then he went back to his camp and fell asleep. Jandu had hoped that, as soon as he made the request for the curse to kick in, he would wake up that morning and find he was a woman.
He was wrong.
“Of course,” he said to himself, scowling under his blanket at his still-present penis. “That would be too easy.”
Instead, as they made their way towards Afadi, Jandu had to watch as he gradually shifted gender.
This was not the only change. Every step they took away from the mountains exorcised a little more of the grief that haunted them. Baram no longer walked by himself, instead staying by Suraya’s side. Suraya regained her health—Druv’s gold ensured them enough food now—and Yudar took pride in leading their cart and horse. Baram spoke gruffly at first, demanding help or asking someone where something was. There was a shadow across his eyes, a grief that Jandu realized he would never be rid of. But Baram was Baram, and he rallied along with the rest of them. He and Suraya sat together, sharing quiet words, and Jandu wondered to himself what had happened between them to make them so comfortable together again.
As they traveled, Zandi got heavier. And then one morning, Jandu couldn’t string her. He looked at his arms as if for the first time, and realized they were much thinner. The change over the week had been so gradual he hadn’t noticed. But now he saw his biceps were as thin as Suraya’s, and his arms had svelte, tiny wrists. The scars on his arms from the bowstring were still visible, but they were thin and faint, barely detectible under strangely soft skin.
Jandu burned with the bitterness of not being able to shoot her anymore. When he whispered the words to change her into a flute, he felt emasculated.
And he was shrinking, too. He kept tripping over his own feet, which changed shape in the night. He lost eight inches. The world grew around him.
Jandu’s transmogrification was just the kind of thing the rest of his family needed to take their minds off Suraya’s miscarriage. Baram needled Jandu, providing daily commentary on his appearance. He gleefully measured Jandu’s shrinking torso against his own, and laughed for the first time since they left the mountain when he realized Jandu only came up to his chest. It seemed the only way Jandu’s family could cope with the long, tiring journey through the rain was through mockery. And they were relentless.
Jandu’s changes accelerated, growing more painful each day. His body ached constantly, and his muscles shook from exertion, even after he had been sleeping. Everything about him was sore, as if fevered—his jaw, his fingers, his pelvis. He had let his hair grow out ever since Druv discovered them, but now it lengthened faster, furiously making up time, until it hung down past his shoulders, forming shining, straight locks. His eyelashes grew. The hairs on his arms thinned, and his chest hair fell out. And, more painfully, his bones changed as his hips protruded, his shoulders thinned, his jaw line shifted.
And if this wasn’t bad enough, the worse changes were yet to come. Jandu followed his family through forests and along rivers and down muddy streets, and tried not to complain, but there were terribly uncomfortable sensations pulsing from his groin, and with horror he realized his chest hurt like hell because he was developing breasts.
On the outskirts of the State of Karuna, they stopped a mile or so off the main trail for the evening. Baram immediately started a fire and Yudar went with Suraya to gather water from a nearby stream to start dinner. Jandu sullenly went off to care for the horse. He tied her to a tree and brushed her down, giving her water and hay for the night.
Around the fire, he ate rice and curds in silent fatigue. Jandu hadn’t spoken a single word all day. His body ached so badly he wanted to lay down and die. There was a sharp, chronic throb at his groin, but he didn’t dare look to see what was going on down there. He sipped weak tea and crossed his arms over his soft, bulging nipples, hoping no one would notice his latest development.
But of course Baram never missed anything. He was oiling the horse’s harness at the fire, when he saw Jandu sulking. He smirked.
“Lift your arms up, Jandu,” Baram said.
“No.” Jandu curled his arms tighter around himself. He blushed as Suraya smiled at him. Her spirits had lifted since Baram started talking again.
“Oh come on, Jandu, don’t be shy,” Suraya teased.
“I hate you all.” The second Jandu said the words, his eyes grew wide and he covered his mouth.
All three of them burst out laughing. His voice had changed. It had risen suddenly, gotten high and girly. It wasn’t him at all.
“Fuck!” he cried out, sounding like a sixteen year-old girl.
Yudar had tears in his eyes. “No wonder you haven’t said a word all day!”
“It would have been easier to have just screwed that demon, you know,” Baram said. He slapped Jandu on the back.
Jandu flew forward, almost falling in the fire. He glared at Baram, thinking he had been unusually harsh. Then Jandu realized he himself was just unusually weak. He couldn’t sit through Baram’s affectionate swings anymore.
Jandu promptly walked away from his family. He found a secluded spot behind some bushes and urinated. He had purposely avoided looking at his penis during this transformation, but now, in the fading evening light, he saw that his penis was almost gone. It looked pitiful and childlike. His testicles had shrunk as well, dwarfed by his thighs. It was the worst thing that could happen to him. He bit back a cry of horror, but he couldn’t stop tears forming at the corners of his eyes.
Jandu looked around to make sure none of his family was around, and then he hastily touched himself, hoping the shrinkage was an illusion, maybe he could coax his cock back to its former grandeur. But this was worse. Fully erect, it remained a stub of what he once had. He measured it against his palm. Panic flooded his mind.
Jandu quickly retied his dejaru and sank to his knees, breathing heavily. He was ashamed, both of his body and of his own behavior. How could he be reacting so badly to something that was, in many ways, insignificant? Suraya had lost a child, and she acted stronger than he. But Jandu’s whole body shook with anxiety. What if his penis never came back? What if he remained a woman forever?
Jandu tried to calm himself by noting that at least Keshan could still love him. After all, Keshan claimed to love both men and women. Maybe he wouldn’t mind Jandu’s strange new body. But this was cold comfort to a man who was staunchly proud of being a man, who had loved his body, and the bodies of other men. Losing his penis was like losing his mind. Worse even.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Jandu jerked his head up and saw Baram looking down at him. Jandu was on his knees, his face in
his hands.
“Are you all right?” Baram asked, more quietly.
Jandu accepted Baram’s outstretched hand and stood up. He brushed the soil from the knees of his trousers and looked away. He knew his face burned red with his embarrassment, but he didn’t want to talk about it with anyone.
Baram tried to lighten the mood by running his hand along Jandu’s long black hair. “Hey, at least you’re turning into a beauty.”
“God!” Jandu buried his face in his hands and began sobbing.
Baram’s smile disappeared. “Oh, shit. Jandu, I’m sorry.”
“Fuck off!” Jandu walked away, wiping his eyes, desperate to hide.
But there was nowhere to go. Darkness sank down from the sky and the world seemed sinister. Jandu sat by himself in the darkness, letting his grief mingle with the aches in his body, until he grew cold.
His brothers and Suraya were very quiet when he returned to the camp fire. Jandu despised the pity he saw in their eyes. He wanted nothing more than to go through this horrible transformation alone, but here they all were, constant witnesses to his humiliation. Suraya silently handed him a cup of tea, and Jandu curled in on himself, his eyes downcast. He worried he’d start crying again.
“So how are we going to disguise ourselves once we’re in Lord Indarel’s palace?” Suraya asked. She stretched upwards as she yawned, trying to act casual as she directed attention away from Jandu.
“We should make up new identities,” Yudar said. “Now is your chance to be that someone you’ve always wanted to be.”
“I’m going to call myself Azari,” Suraya said. She smiled. “I’ve always loved that name.”
Yudar smiled at her. “Oh? And what will you tell the lord?”
“I shall tell him that I was a handmaiden to Princess Suraya, back in Prasta.”
“You’re too pretty to be a handmaiden,” Yudar said.
“I had pretty handmaidens in Prasta,” Suraya said. “Remember Ami? And Kera? She was gorgeous.”
“I never saw them,” Yudar said. He looked into Suraya’s eyes. “Every other woman seemed plain to me once I met you.”
