Mysterious Changes - Part 11

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The biggest problem was shaving. The little pink razor and the shaving gel were only slightly analogous to the process of shaving one's face when male. For one thing, there are a lot more contours under the arm than I ever realized, and shaving under the right arm with the left-hand takes practice. The legs are easier to shave, but I learned I had to be careful to avoid nicking myself.

Judy had told me I wouldn't need to shave every day, but it was just my luck that my leg hairs were dark enough that I would have to touch up every couple of days. Take it from me shaving my male face was much easier than shaving my female body.  I looked at my nails.

The polish was a little chipped. I really didn't want to wear nail polish, but for the moment, it was easier to touch it up than remove it. So I touched up the polish on my fingers and toes as I sat there wrapped in a towel as Judy had shown me.  As I dressed casually in a blue T-top and white Capri pants, I realized how normal and mundane the whole process of being a girl had become.

I had quickly come to identify this body as "me." Sure, I wanted to get back to being Steve. I missed the confident strength guys enjoy, and I knew that if I remained a girl, I would never be able to watch a football game without wanting to be a part of it. But I could make it as a girl if I was forced to. I was determined to do it if only to thwart the trickster.

I looked myself over in the mirror and did a mental checklist: Hair, makeup, clothing jewelry yeah, it was all in place.

I didn't need to worry about shoes and a purse. I wasn't going anywhere and it felt good to be barefoot. I was all ready for company. I even smiled at myself. I could do this. I didn't want to be a girl, but if I had to, I could do it.

I felt just a little bit of my old confidence flowing back into me.  Ron was the first to arrive. In spite of our morning phone conversation, he still had a hangdog look about him. "Uh, can I get a glass of juice?"  "Since when have you ever asked?" I returned. Ron and I for years had treated each others' houses like our own. Apparently, our usual "Hey, man," followed by a beeline to the kitchen for food or drink had been replaced by gentlemanly conduct.

Not if I could help it.  "Well, I thought"  "You thought things had changed."  "But you said we'd have to treat each other a little differently now that you're...you know..."  "A girl?"  "Yeah."  I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. And I knew that when I tried to explain everything to him, he'd just think I was a typical woman changing the rules on a whim.  "Yes, you can have some juice, you big idiot." He still looked suspicious.

I peered at him. "You really are nervous around girls, aren't you?"  "Yeah," he sighed. "I always have been."

"But I've double-dated with you before. You weren't this nervous then."  "That's because you were there another guy, I mean. That's why you've never noticed. I'd get alone with a girl and I'd fall apart."  "And now that I'm a girl, you think you have to fall apart around me," I concluded, my hands on my hips. I wondered if he knew how ridiculous this all seemed to me.

There he was, big enough to have handed me my teeth even when I was Steve let alone now that I was Sarah. I'd seen him catch balls with a two-hundred-plus pound safety bearing down on him and not blink an eye. Yet here I was, a fraction of his size and he was frightened of me. It was the elephant and the mouse. It was almost too much.  Instinctively new instincts, I guess I grabbed his hands in my smaller ones. "Look, in a way nothing has changed.

We're still friends. And if I get stuck this way and someday we decide to be more than friends, well so be it. In the meantime, just think of me as Steve in drag or something. You got that, man?"  For such a bright guy, he gave me a really dopey grin. "Yeah, I got it. So what do you say, friend, you want to go out with me tonight?"  "Sure," I said confidently, although I felt just a small twinge of the nervousness he had probably been feeling. I was agreeing to a date.

But what the hell I'd already gone on a date with him the night before. I just hadn't thought of it as such until I had agreed to go with him.  "And how about the dance tomorrow night?"  "The dance?" I replied stupidly. "You mean in a short dress and nylons and heels and"  "Yeah, all of that," he laughed. "What's the matter, Hall? Getting cold feet? I thought we were friends."

"We are," I agreed a little reluctantly. I was being hoisted on my own petard. "So you better buy me a nice corsage and treat me right tomorrow night, buster."  We smiled at each other and then realized that we were still holding hands. If the doorbell hadn't rung, we might have done a little more.  Judy took a moment to inspect me as she stood in the doorway. "Not bad," she admitted at last. "But you need to work on the eyes a little more.

The mascara is a little uneven."  "Do you know how hard that stuff is to put on?" I asked, ushering her in.  "Of course I do," Judy replied. "Think about it."  Before I could say anything else, the doorbell rang again. It was George looking very smug. I asked him in and introduced him to Judy. In a few minutes, we were all gathered around the kitchen table.  "I think I know who our friend is," George told us when we were all settled in with drinks. "An old friend of mine is, well, I guess you'd call him a shaman.

He lives out on the Winnebago reservation and knows quite a few of the legends from the days before the white men came. Have you guys ever heard of the Omaha Tribe?"  We were all good students and all of us nodded.  "Then you know the Omaha used to live around here. They were never a very big tribe.

At their height, they only had about three thousand people, but they were a pretty well-organized group. At their basic level, they were organized into the Earth Clan and the Sky Clan. The Earth Clan took care of war and providing food while the Sky Clan took care of their religious lives.  "According to my friend, about a hundred years before the white man came, there was a falling out among some of the younger members of the Earth Clan. They broke away, but they were all young braves.

No women meant the tribe wouldn't last long."  "I thought most of the tribes traded for or captured their women from other tribes," Ron interjected.  "They did," George agreed. "The problem was that they had nothing to trade with and were too weak to go to war to capture women. But then they came up with a solution. A shaman of the Sky Clan joined them.

He was something of a maverick among the shamans. He offered them a way to get women."  "He called up our friend," I concluded.  "Go to the head of the class," George chuckled. "That's exactly what he did. Then our rebels invited single hunters and even small hunting parties back to their camp where our trickster changed them into girls."

"That's quite a story," Judy commented. "But it seems as if that story would have survived in commonly known legends."  George nodded. "You'd think so. But consider that this wasn't the sort of thing the other tribes would want spread around. When the main body of the Omaha learned what was happening, they apparently wiped out the rebels. They probably added the women to their own tribe. Maybe they even used the trickster one last time and converted a few of the Braves or maybe not. We'll never know."

"When you said the trickster was called up, I assume you mean from the Spirit World?" I asked.  "That's right."  "Then why didn't they send him back? Why is he still here today?"  "My guess is that they didn't know how to send him back," George answered. "Most of the shamans didn't try calling up spirits. It was way too dangerous. And as for calling up a trickster, that was the most dangerous spirit of all. They could never be trusted.

But our rebel shaman apparently did just that and metaphysically chained it to that rock Amelia spoke of. When the Omaha crushed the rebellion, my guess is that they could think of nothing to do but hide the rock and hope no one ever found it. Amelia and her brother found it when the stream changed course and unburied it. It could even be that the spirit was securely chained to the rock, but as water eroded part of it, the bond weakened. I read the rest of the journal.

Later, Amelia and Jasper took a team of horses out, dragged the rock away from the stream, and buried it. As luck would have it, they must have buried it near where the Carver Homestead Monument was built."  "Oh shit!" Ron exclaimed. "When we built the new fairgrounds and built the monument, we disturbed a lot of rocks. We must have stirred the trickster up and uncovered his rock."

"I figured as much," I told him. "The rock is probably exposed near the monument. But what about that other part where he says our fathers should let him go?"  "I'm still working on that," George admitted as he took a swig of juice. "I need your help though. I don't think he's been changing people indiscriminately. There's a pattern here. Go over everyone who's been changed."

We quickly listed them all and let George ask us questions about each one. Judy, Ron, and I told him everything we could think of about each of the victims. That whole process took nearly an hour. I never really realized how much information about other people you can collect in a small town.  "Okay, so we know this Dr. Winter is on the city council, and so is your father, Sarah, which includes Lisa."  "And Marty's dad is on the council," Judy added.

George nodded. "Right. That just leaves Alicia and Gabrielle."  "Gabrielle's father donated the land for the fairgrounds," I explained. "And Andy's or rather Alicia's father is one of the county commissioners. Since the fair is a county function, he was involved in the decision to move the fairgrounds onto the old Carver property. But how would our trickster know all of this?"  "Labor Day!" Judy announced proudly. "That's when it happened."  "When what happened?" I asked.  Judy grabbed my hand. "Don't you see?

The Carver Homestead Monument was dedicated on Labor Day. The trickster was there. Its rock isn't far from the monument. It couldn't get out but apparently, it could observe. It saw who the town leaders were."  "Exactly," George agreed. "It has no experience with our modern society. It saw all the town dignitaries there and assumed it was like a tribal council."  "So a few days later, it spotted Doc Winter taking pictures out at the monument," I broke in. "She told me she took some evening shots. She must have taken an assistant with her. The assistant must have touched the rock, got taken over, and changed Doc Winter into a woman.

But the problem would have been Doc wouldn't remember being changed. She doesn't seem to remember being a man."  "That must have been quite a shock for our trickster," George commented. "Maybe adult Native Americans believed in him enough that even the adults would be aware of the change. When Dr. Winter changed, she lost all memory of her previous life. So our trickster decided maybe someone younger would be more open to magic.

I suppose we'll never know the complete answer."  "So this trickster is changing some of us into girls so we will convince our fathers to release him?" I asked skeptically. "Why go to all that trouble? Why not just contact us and show us a little magic? Why bother to change our sex?"  George leaned back in his chair, and I could tell from his expression that he had already come up with an answer to my question.

"Have you ever heard of a one-trick pony?" he asked.  "It was an old expression my grandfather used to use," he went on when we shook our heads. "It referred to a pony in a circus who only knew how to do one trick but he did it well.

The rest of the time, he just ran around the ring like any other pony would. I think that describes our trickster as well. Whatever shaman called him up knew enough about his trade that he knew what skills the trickster had. But since even the most radical shaman had to know that tricksters were always dangerous, he'd want to find one who could only do what the shaman wanted done namely turn stray braves into young women to perpetuate the new tribe."

"But this trickster can swap bodies and stuff like that," Ron pointed out. "That doesn't sound like a one-trick pony to me."  "But maybe that's just how it gets around," Judy suggested. "Maybe it's more associated with its basic nature rather than the magic it can perform. We don't know much about these things, do we, George?"  George shook his head. "No, we don't."

"So it's possible that changing bodies is how they have to move around in our world, but it's no more a magic trick than walking is for us."  "Yeah," I acknowledged, "but it's one heck of a trick. It's managed to change reality as well as us. Look at my room it's a girl's room. So it changed more than my sex."  "Not necessarily," George offered. "When it chants 'Wakan Tanka,' it may be notifying the gods of its intentions.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, reality whether god-driven or not probably abhors inconsistency. Maybe the greater gods warp reality to fit what the trickster has done. It wouldn't do for you to be a girl and not have been a girl all your life."  "But I haven't been a girl all my life," I pointed out.  "In this modified reality, perhaps you have been," George argued. Then he spread his hands sheepishly. "Look, I'm a historian, not a theologian or a philosopher. I don't know how magic works. Until yesterday, I would have argued that it didn't work at all.

But I'd be willing to stake my reputation on the theory that this trickster has limited powers and is using the only trick it knows to get out of a trap sprung on it a couple of centuries ago. It was probably summoned about like a wizard calling up a demon in a pentagram in Western legends."  "Okay," I said after we had all taken a moment to think about that. "So if all this is true, then we still need to figure out how to get him to stop changing guys into girls and change us back?"  George shifted uncomfortably.

I had a feeling I wasn't going to like what he had to say next. "I haven't figured that part out yet," he told us, confirming my suspicions. It seemed more likely every hour that I was doomed to spend the rest of my life as a female.  "I haven't given up, though," he added. "That shaman friend of mine is trying to research the problem.

Of course, the Omaha never had a written language so he's been forced to check with every shaman he knows in the Sioux Nation. If we can find a way to send this trickster back to the Spirit World, we may be able to reason with it."  My outlook brightened at once. "Like letting it go home if he changes all of us back into guys."  George put out his hands as if to push that thought back. "Don't get too excited," he warned. "Remember, we're dealing with something that isn't human.

It probably doesn't think like a human. It may not want to negotiate. In fact, it may not even recognize that negotiating is an option. Think of this thing as some sort of Native American demon. Remember all the tales about calling up demons and how they'd turn on their summoners the moment they got the chance? That may be what we have here."

"So what do we do now?" Ron asked.  "We seem to be safe during the day. Since it's made all of its attacks at night, it's probably dormant during the day. I'd like to take a look at that rock it seems to come from," George replied.  "I'll take you there," Ron volunteered.  "We'll all go," I added.  George shook his head and looked at Judy and me. "No, I've got another task for you two. I'd like you to go to the local library and see if you can find anything about this area that might help us.

We can meet later. We'll get a pizza. I'll even buy, and on a grad student's pay, that's an offer I don't often make."  We agreed to meet at Pizza Hut at six. That would give George plenty of time to get checked into his motel, make some calls he needed to make, and check out the rock before it got dark.  Judy had gone to use the bathroom and George was outside making some calls on his cell phone.

That left me alone with Ron for a few minutes. "Look, be careful out there," I warned him. "I don't care what George thinks. I don't even like the idea of you going out there with him."  Ron shrugged. "Somebody has to do it. It might as well be me."

I must have been out of my mind, but I instinctively stood on my toes and kissed him on the cheek. "Be really, really careful."  Ron smiled. "You know if we can figure out a way to get you back to being Steve, we're gonna have a little problem if we keep kissing each other."  I smiled back at him. He was right. The attraction I was starting to feel for him had no place in Steve's life. There wasn't a gay bone in Steve's body.

And as much as I wanted to be Steve again, I experienced a sudden wave of melancholy at the thought of losing Ron.  "I think I have a solution," I said slowly. "Why don't we just pretend for now that I'm not Steve and never have been? Then if I change back, the same rule applies. I never was Sarah. They're two different people.

Can we both agree to that?"  "Fair enough," Ron said with a grin. "Besides, I'd look sort of funny taking Steve to the dance tomorrow."  "Yes, you would,"  George called him at that moment and he left with a cheerful wave.  "So you're going to the dance with Ron?"  I turned and saw Judy standing there with a mischievous little grin.  "Oh! I was going to take you, wasn't I?" I gasped.  "Do I look like a dyke to you?" Judy asked lightly. "I sure don't want you taking me to a dance looking like you do. I want the guys all looking at me, not at my date."

"You know what I mean," I said with a laugh that was very close to a giggle.  Judy shook her head slowly. "You poor kid, it must be hell for you to go through all this. You don't know what you are or how to feel about anything, do you?"  I motioned for her to follow me into the living room, and each of us plopped down into comfortable chairs near the window as we watched Ron and George pull away.

"I don't know what I want," I admitted. "One minute, all I can think of is how much I want to be Steve again. Then the next minute, I'm thinking about Ron and how nice it would be to" As my voice trailed off, I could feel my face flush.  "Look, Sarah," Judy said, leaning over to touch my arm, "there's something you need to know about tricksters. I looked them up before I came over here this morning. Their magic tends toward the erotic."  "Erotic?"  She nodded. "That's right, girl, and I emphasize the girl part.

When all of you were changed into girls, I suspect part of the spell was a heightened libido."  "That would explain Alicia and Keith and Lisa and Dave"  "And you and Ron," Judy added. This trickster probably gets a big laugh out of watching former guys fall all over themselves to be the loving female."  "Then what I'm feeling, about Ron it's not real."

"Look, Sarah, if you feel it, it's real," Judy told me. "I suppose love is magical any way you look at it.

If you figure out a way to get back to being Steve, you'll have to deal with it, but for now, you're Sarah. If Sarah has a thing for Ron, so what? Enjoy it. I know I would."  I gave her a little smile, as much as anything to force back the tears I felt rising. "But it seems so gay!"  She shook her head. "No, gay would be if Sarah loved me.

You don't, do you?"  "Well as a friend"  "The story of my life," she retorted with a mock sigh.  We laughed and talked for a while after that. Then, it was time to go to the library.