Page 33 of Witchlore
“Shas!” he gasps out. My chest tightens. I know that feeling; I recognize that desperate tone.He’s been dreaming about his dead brother.
“It’s your stop,” I say. I know that the last thing I want after I’ve dreamed about Elizabeth is to be asked about it.
“Oh.” He looks around a little blearily. “Well. Good night, then.”
“Yeah.”
I can tell he’s still struggling to pull himself out of his nightmare and I don’t add anything else as he gets off the tram. I watch him walk down the platform in the dark as the tram pulls awayinto the night, taking me out of the city. I wonder what his dreams are like and if they are as bad as mine.
When I get home to Beryl’s, I do what I always do after a shift. I stand naked in front of the long mirror that hangs on the back of my door and look at my reflection, trying to learn myself in this new form, stretching and flexing every muscle to feel its limits. People always think shifters will change themselves into miraculously strong or brilliantly slim forms, but they forget that shifters can’t change what they don’t have. I’ve never been a very athletic person, easily running to fat. My last form was taller so I was leaner, but this one is shorter. I’m still pudgy and soft all over, but rounder in the face and hips and fuller in the chest. My eyebrows are bushy and my hair is dark and coarse all over, and shoulder length from my head, in curls that I can see will easily go to frizz with a little humidity. My eyes are dark brown, and as I look at my wide hips and wobbly thighs, taking in my round nostrils and pointed Cupid’s bow, I feel like I always do after a shift, like I’ve borrowed someone else’s flesh.
I’ve never had this happen before, shifting so abruptly. Aside from the incident in the cave with Elizabeth, throughout my childhood I used to always feel a shift coming on, the same way you feel vomit coming. I’ve absolutely never had a vision while shifting. Just thinking about it makes the hair all over my new skin rise up, an uncanny sensation flooding my body. I try to tell myself it doesn’t mean anything—I read a story in the book, I had a strange dream, so naturally, my shift followed my thoughts. But shifts are not supposed to follow whims, they’re supposed to follow will, they’re supposed to be inside my control.Magic is to bedirected, Orlando!my mother used to shout at me.Directed by will!Shivering, I climb into bed and tell myself the same thing I tell myself every time I shift, over and over, until I fall asleep:I am more than my body, I am more than a label, I am Orlando, I am Orlando, I am Orlando.…
CHAPTERTWELVE
When Counselor Cooper told me I should get a part-time job after the hospital, I don’t think she anticipated I would have to explain shapeshifting to the management at the local vegan supermarket. Beryl takes one look at my new form when I come into the kitchen to make tea the next morning and makes a call.
“This is what happens when shifters don’t learn to control themselves,” Beryl says darkly, eyeing my waist and hips and longer hair. “Chaos.”
I’m meant to be working in the afternoon, and I spend the entire morning on the phone to Counselor Cooper, answering questions on a GAD-7 questionnaire to check my risk of harm and enduring a very thorough investigation of my mental well-being. By the time it’s done, a package has been delivered by hand courier addressed to me.
“From your parents, is my guess,” Beryl says. She’s right. When I open it, a familiar heavy necklace falls into my hands. I instantly recoil from it, the silver chain as thick as a rope and the huge black opal stone the size of a quail’s egg. I remember the weight of it from my childhood, the magic oppressive, making itdifficult to breathe. Counselor Cooper must have called them and asked them to send it. I glare at it with dislike.
“Fuck them,” I mutter, weighing it in my hand.
“What is it?” Beryl asks, nosing over my shoulder. “Ah. A shifter shroud spell. Just what you need.”
I turn the package upside down, shaking it, but nothing falls out. There’s no note. They must have paid a fortune to have someone personally courier the shroud to Chorlton. They always told me I had to be ridiculously careful with enchanted objects like this, yet they were willing to send it with no note. Then I wonder why I’m surprised. Why would they need to write a note, really? All their words still rattle around my mind as I look at the shroud, their voices roaring back:You will wear this until you can transform properly! I do not care if it hurts you!
“No,” I say, feeling sick as I push the shroud into Beryl’s hand. I hate the way the metal feels against my skin, sticky and weighted.
“It’s up to you,” Beryl sighs, holding the shroud between her fingers where it hangs ominously. “But it’s this or you find a new job. Or you pull a sickie until you can change back.”
I give her a deadly look. We both know I can’t change back and neither can I casually explain shapeshifters to my very human manager. I sigh heavily. I could quit, I suppose, but I like having my own money. I like saving and thinking that one day I’ll not need theirs and never again have to live under their roof or be forced to wear painful shrouds against my will.
“Fine,” I say, bracing myself as Beryl drops the shroud over my head. The black opal is heavy with its own ancient enchantment and all it needs is a bit of magic, provided by Beryl’s twisting fingers, before I feel the magic of the shroud settle uncomfortablyover my skin like a heavy sun cream. When I look in the mirror, my reflection is the same as yesterday afternoon; same fey, slightly gingery hair, same pinched face with dull green eyes, same male form again.
“Remember, shrouds can only be worn for six hours maximum or you can have medical problems, overheating, trouble breathing,” Beryl says, dusting off her hands,cinnamon- andorange peel–scented magic sprinkling off her fingers. Mr. Pebbles stands up on his wrinkly hind legs, batting at the blue sparks.
“Yeah, I fucking remember,” I snap, slamming my way into my bedroom. I hate that even though they’re miles away, my parents are managing to impose the same solutions they always did. No matter where I go, their message is still nastily the same: my body is not my own.
Work is uncomfortable; I feel lethargic and slow wearing the shroud of my old form, and sweaty, too, like wearing a duffle coat on a hot day. I hate the idea of going back to Beryl’s and facing all of her questions about how my day was under the shroud, and it’s just when I’m considering taking myself for a long, lonely walk around the lake to avoid it that a message arrives from BBB.
Some college people are getting together for a drink in the Northern Quarter tonight. See you there?
I stare at the message. I want to tell him of course he won’t see me there, that these are the types of things I haven’t been invited to since my first year, when I was still basking in the questionable radiance of Carl Lord. I could lie to him and tell him I have towork, but the grocery closes by early evening and he could easily look it up online and catch me in a lie. While I’m hesitating, another message arrives.
Would be good to see a familiar face. I’ll buy you a drink.
No one has ever offered that to me. Not even Elizabeth, because we never really went out of her house. Yet here Bastian is, wanting my company after saving me from a boggart, still barely knowing me. It’s nice to be invited, I think, and Counselor Cooper did say I needed to make an effort to socialize with my peers. Besides, isn’t anything better than Beryl’s hovering concern right now?
What time?I ask.
Seven.
See you then.
Despite my mind running a hundred miles an hour through all the ways I could potentially embarrass myself in front of my classmates, I’m grateful to be on the tram up into town, the shroud tucked away in my bag, the cool air on my real skin. I’m still getting used to a female form again, the way men’s eyes slide toward me as I travel, and I’m grateful that I’ve worn my big flannel shirt over a vest top. I know people from college will be full of comments when they see my familiar clothes are encasing a different body, so I make sure I’ve got my headphones on when I approach the outside seating in Stevenson Square near college.
