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Fire, ice, water, alcohol! All flush against each other, until they rise in steam and smoke into the sky. Curling, curling, they form wings and birds and a hundred other flighty things, until bursting with so much imagery, they condense, form droplets, and fall, and it is all rain again, storms, thunderclouds, falling to the earth. The ground is moist now. The earth lets you smell its dusty perfume, the tang of petrichor in your nose.
“Don’t do that,” he says. The fire you had had burning is now sputtering after you dumped your drink onto it.
You open your mouth, scenting the sky.
“You’re not getting any more booze, if you plan on dumping it out.”
You raise an eyebrow and then laugh slightly. “Do we need more?”
“I do. Dealing with this many kids.”
You shake your head. “Get a different profession,” you say. You revel in the croak of soreness from shouting. It makes your voice sound raspy, harsh, and more how you imagine yourself to sound when you’re dressing people down. But it’s quiet now. The campers are all asleep, and the camp counsellors are tending to personal matters.
You begin walking back to your cabin, the wet grass catching on your shoes and skirt.
You shut the door.
“Harry?” comes the croaking voice of your bunkmate from the top.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Did Sarah Kinley get her– medication?”
“Isn’t that Samuel’s job?”
“It is. I just was thinking about it. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, if Sarah got to sleep at all, she probably did.”
“Hm. You’re right. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Anne.”
You kick off your boots next to the bed, pull on night clothes, and then slump onto the bottom bunk, a calculated win from a coin toss. You never look forward to climbing first thing in the morning, despite being a gym teacher during the school year.
Your body is falling asleep, and you’re hovering above it. No, your body is falling away, and you’re lying in perfect suspension in the middle of the Pale.
Waking comes just a moment after, and the sun’s probing tentacles are dragging warm tendrils over your face. You slowly open your eyes, and you see Anne facing the wall as she pulled on her nylon stockings, hopping slightly as she pinched the ghost of clothing and pulled it up, smoothing it over her thin, long legs.
You groan slightly. “Those– are going to tear so quickly,” you rumble.
Anne turns to face you. She’s just in her bra and knickers, and her body is soft, smooth, and pretty, with a cute stomach she hides with girdles. She’s a young teacher, like you, but she looks like a woman, unlike you. You don’t mind that. You’re ugly so the pretty ones are prettier. That’s why women like you.
“Well, I don’t plan on diving through the brush like a bushman,” she says, but she’s got a smirk on her face.
“Did you really wear rollers?”
“Harry, not all of us have to be tom-boys.”
“Yeah, not everyone’s so lucky.” You swing your legs out and sit up, looking through your bag to find your wool skirt again.
You and Anne drink coffee at the mess hall before splitting up, her to lead some kids in songs, and you to lead the daily hikes.
This far from Revachol, there is no chance of bullet wounds in buildings nor unhealed scars. The children find leaves on the ground and animals living in the earth. There is life skittering all around them, under rocks and in the air and in every fallen tree. The world gets bigger the closer you look.
You tell them this, holding a rock covered in ants.
“Oh, don’t be babies! These won’t bite, unless you’re a dick.” The children laugh. You recognize some of them from the school year. Some of them only eat three meals a day when they’re at camp. You can see the effect on them. They have brighter eyes and pinker cheeks.
“Miss Du Bois!”
“Harry is fine. What’s up, Jenny?”
“I found– I found a ladybug.”
You kneel and squint at the little beetle. “Ah, that’s not a ladybug.”
“What?”
You pick it up and feel a little sting on your finger. “Yup, just bit me. This isn’t a ladybug! This is– a fake. This is a harlequin lady beetle!” You hold it out, and the children peer in, crowding, one jumping to look over the heads of those first in line, and they all catch a glimpse just in time for the lady beetle to spread its casings and fly away. “Did you see? It wasn’t red, it was yellow!”
You smirk at their faces. “It’s funny how sometimes, things look like something they aren’t even related to. Like monarch butterflies and viceroys. Same appearance, different species.”
◇─◇────◆─◈─◆────◇─◇
You’re back home, alone in your flat, and you stare at yourself in the mirror.
“Do I really want to do this?” you mutter to yourself. Well, you always preferred function to form. You knew someone who was prescribed it to treat depression, but you wanted it for other reasons. You wanted to lift weights women only dreamed of. Your PR didn’t matter when it was other lifters’ warm-up rep.
You step outside of your body for a second, and you’re caught by the waist by someone. He has your eyes, his face harder, but his cheeks are full of joy and grace. What an apple of a man! He spins you around, and you laugh, and your head feels light.
◇─◇────◆─◈─◆────◇─◇
“Yo, Miss D, you got a cold?”
“Ugh! No, just the smoking. Don’t do it, kids,” you say.
You have to avoid shouting. Your voice is cracking, and you’re speaking quietly to avoid the honk. The kids would laugh their asses off if they heard that.
“HOP TO IT, MAGGOTS!” you roar anyway. It comes from deep in your chest, low and gargling. God, you like the way the words sound like that. And your body feels light, even though it is heavier, bigger. You had to let out the waistline on your skirts, and your blouses are tight around the shoulders. ‘Dyke’ gets slung your way, even more than before, which you hadn’t even thought possible.
You fly. Your shoes are waiting for you on the sideline, but you are just a streak, a comet with a tangled brunette tail whipping behind you. You’re holding your skirt up, so you can be unhindered legs, barely touching the grass.
Then, you jump, hit, skid, and tumble. Then, you pop up, holding your hands above your head. “Safe! I’m safe!”
“It’s not fair when you’re playing!”
“That’s why I’ll switch to whoever’s losing.”
You’re a bear of a woman. A dyke. A butch. There’s a word that hovers in front of you that you have not reached out to grab yet. You haven’t yet seized it by the throat.
After the children are sent home, you grade quizzes and then go to the gym that’s kept for the school team. You’ve been training. Your body almost walks in time with you now, instead of lagging a second behind. It’s not fully in sync yet, but to move your hand and to see the tendons in your forearm excites you. You lay back on the bench, taking the bar and tensing your core.
There’s a phrase that stuck with you when you were young. “Any man worth his salt can bench-press his body weight.”
You’re just five from 90 kilograms. You’ll probably be able to reach that goal in the next two weeks, especially if you keep bulking as you have.
“Harry?”
You grunt, putting the weight back onto the rack. “What, Dee?”
“It’s Friday.”
“Oh, shoot, forgot.” You wipe your forehead. Your clothes are sticking to you. It’s not ideal to lift in your work clothes, but you’re too lazy to change.
“You’ll be alright to go out like that?”
“What? I showered this morning.”
The laugh is bright and lyrical. “Of course you did.”
“You’re not fem-for-fem. So, stop complaining!”
“If I was, you’d be in big trouble.”
You laugh, and there’s a blooming branch of Yarrow in your lungs, glowing and blooming with light.
◇─◇────◆─◈─◆────◇─◇
“This is getting ridiculous.”
You’re bent in front of the mirror, face covered in lather. “What do you mean?” you ask, pulling your cheek up as you scrape the razor across your face.
“You’re really gonna put a skirt on when you shave every day? You look ten times the man I do.”
You sigh. “Dora, I don’t want to–”
“Find a new job!”
“But I like my job!”
“You’ve got a full beard, Harry. Even if you don’t mind being called ‘miss,’ you’re confusing everyone. I think it’s time for a fresh start.”
“Yeah, sure.” You finish patting your face dry, and then grab a letter off the counter. “‘Daniel Ingerlund’ knows all about letting her old life go!”
Dora snatches the letter from you, and sighs, stuffing it into her pants pocket.
“That’s different. If you just put on pants and a button-up, no one would look twice. You could actually– be yourself.”
In some way, you know this isn’t about you. She wants to imagine having the chance you have. No ties, nothing holding you down. No family to remember the name you didn’t want, although she’d never bring up something like that.
“Dora,” you say, and you put your hands on her hips, feeling those delicate, soft curves of hers. She’s rich, soft, her hands never having worked a day in her life. Even though she was a man and you were a woman, she was more feminine than you ever could have been. Poverty made you masculine. Wealth made her beautiful. You kiss her bourgeois neck, jaw, and face.
“I’ll look into it.”
You’re lesbians. You’re not. You’re just– a mess. Both of you.
◇─◇────◆─◈─◆────◇─◇
You tell them your full name is ‘Harrier’. ‘Harriet’ on your other paperwork was a typo from the school. They believe you, and you’re put down as ‘M’, not ‘F’. It was so easy.
You pick out your uniform, and it fits like a dream. It’s strange to not have the weight of wool hanging around your legs. Colder, too, but you do like it.
It’s scratchy.
“Welcome to the RCM, Officer Du Bois!” McCoy says, clapping you on the back.
You smile.
Your coworkers know you have a woman at home, but no one’s ever met her. Dora is a soft young man during the day, and she’s a goddess at night, when the two of you go out dancing, and in the heady darkness of clubs, clouded with cigarette smoke, you can kiss her flat chest and full lips, and she’s a woman like everyone else. You’re a woman and a man, a lesbian, a bisexual, anything that means you can kiss her and hold her.
You wrestled with the word until daybreak, until it touched you, and your delusions popped out of their sockets. "Let me go," the word said.
"I will not let you go unless you bless me," you tell it. And it left its mark on you. 'Transsexual'.
“Fags!” someone calls from across the street.
“Damn right!” you yell back. You and Dora laugh, and she leans into you. You’re both warm from alcohol.
You knew she was really leaving when she cut her hair again.
◇─◇────◆─◈─◆────◇─◇
“Hello, this is Daniel Ingerlund?”
“D-Dora?”
“... Hi, Harry.”
“God, what have they done to you?”
You call her beautiful. That’s the reason she answers, and you know it, because she’s pretending to be a man again. She’s making her family happy. And you’re the last tie to herself. You tell her, over and over again, how she was the most wonderful woman in the world.
You hope she believes you.