Chapter 1

I ran down the lane, my breath rasping as I tried to keep ahead of the boys that were chasing me.

It had been an okay day for me up until about thirty minutes before, when I realised that I was being followed by the resident school bullies.

Hellstone Grammar School believed that they had a strong bullying policy and to be fair, they did. On school grounds they were very hot at stamping down hard, if that’s the right phrase, on any bullying, but they had very limited powers out of school and the bullies knew this.

Living as I did in a lovely part of the country—Cornwall, didn’t mean that only lovely people lived there. Like most parts of the UK, there were good people and bad people.

I was pretty good (sort of) and kids like Mike Furbin and Tony Hart were fine examples of the bad ones. In fact, they were the pits.

Going back a bit, I suppose my problems started when I was in nursery school.

By the way, to put the record straight my name was Tommy Tucker.

I had lost my mother to cancer when I was just three years old and to be honest, I didn’t remember too much about her, although there were plenty of photos of her around the house and we had several videos of her before she got sick. She had been very pretty and Nan always said that I looked just like her. I dearly wished that I knew my mum other than sketchy memories I had of her.

I was brought up by Dad and Gran, who lived in the next village but spent much of her time at our cottage as she looked after me when Dad was at work, which was most of the time as he was a computer consultant, always on call.

It was decided at the tender age of 4, that I should go to nursery school, because I didn’t interact very well with other kids and it was thought that it might help me to integrate better with others before I went to school proper.

At nursery school I didn’t want to play with the boys, as I wasn’t like them; I was quiet, shy and introverted. I was always with the girls, who at that age had no hang-ups and accepted me without question.

The boys just thought that I was one of those weird creatures from out of space, like the other girls and pretty well ignored me.

The adults didn’t have quite such a nice attitude though. I loved going to the dress up box with the other girls and I always wore girls’ things—never boys, my favourite being a fairy costume in bright pink with lovely gossamer like white wings.

I vaguely recall that I was once put in a cowboy outfit and screamed my head off…

The adults at the nursery constantly tried to steer me towards more boyish clothes, but to no avail. As far as I was concerned, I was a girl and that was that. Maybe there had been some complaints from parents?

I found it very difficult to understand what all the fuss was about. Out of nursery, I wore clothes that were a bit androgynous as I fatly refused to wear more obvious boys things.

I must have been a right headache to my Dad and Nan.

I loved dressing properly as a girl, but was given no opportunity to do so while at home and it was only at nursery that I could try to be the real me. I think that eventually they realised that they were banging their collective heads against a brick wall and they let me get on with it and stopped pestering me about what I wanted to wear.

Things went on this way for a while, but all good things had to end and I left nursery and went to primary school and that ended my chances of dressing as the girl that I knew, deep in my soul, that I was. I had to blend in or go under. That didn’t mean that I forgot about my being a girl, far from it. If anything it made things worse as I was unable to be, act or behave in my true gender.

I had been shy and introverted before, but if anything, things got worse. Don’t get me wrong, my Dad and Nan loved me and never hurt me, but they did not want to see me suffer, so they tried their hardest to make me be a boy and expected the school to follow suit.

It didn’t work.

I still gravitated towards the girls at school, although by then, most of them knew the differences between boys and girls and rejected me out of hand. I did have a few friends though and they helped by sticking up for me in the playground when other kids started calling me silly names.

I somehow made it through infants and junior school, despite the occasional bullying by boys and I regret to say, a few girls too.

I never lost my dream of being allowed to be the girl I knew I was. I had seen on TV sometimes, men who had changed themselves into women and knew that if it came to it, I would wait until I was grown up and then get changed.

It all sounded so simple to a very young kid, but I saw things in black and white in those days and I didn’t really realise how most people felt about boys wanting to be girls and girls wanting to be boys.

Dad gave me some pocket money every week on a Friday. Most kids would go out and blow the lot on sweets, but I didn’t and saved up until I could go into a local charity shop and buy a few girls clothes. If the ladies behind the counter thought that it was strange for a young boy to buy girls things, they never said anything and I was grateful because it took all my courage to go in there and sort through the dress, blouses and skirts.

I hid my clothes behind the side panel under the bath and took them out and put them on whenever I could, which wasn’t as often as I would like as I could only dress when my Dad or Nan were not around. Still it was nice to know that I actually owned some clothes of my own, despite the fact that they were second hand.

Eventually, I turned eleven and went to senior school. The boys’ uniform was almost the same as the girls, except the girls wore blouses and skirts rather than shirts and trousers. Senior school was a bit of an eye opener, as there were over a thousand pupils and the school was about five times the size of my old one. I felt a bit like a tiny pebble on Brighton beach — insignificant.

I was intimidated and like a fish out of water. I didn’t blend in and maybe looked a bit girlie I suppose, as I liked to wear my hair long and my features were still soft and somewhat feminine for a boy.

Add the above to the fact that I had never gotten over my shyness and gentle ways and you can see that it was a recipe for trouble.

The first term was bad and in the second term, it got worse. I hated most games; although I did like tennis, but it didn’t help that the girls played tennis and netball (which I would have liked to try) whist the boys played football and cricket, depending on the season.

It just didn’t ‘t help that I was very intelligent. I stopped answering questions in class, as it just targeted me as being too clever by half and worst of all, nerdy.

All in all I was considered, when people ever thought about me, as beneath contempt and a good punch bag when the bullies’ got bored terrorising other kids.

As I said before, bullying was not tolerated in school and not much happened to me there, just the occasional push, shove or nasty comments like Nancy boy, fag, queer, low life and other terms of endearment.

My Dad wasn’t the best of parents although he tried his best. He knew that I wanted to dress and be a girl when I was younger and just made sure that I had as masculine an upbringing as he could provide, in the hope that I would grow out of it. He was supported by my Nan, who being of the old school, didn’t think that it was right for me to behave in anything less than a boy like manner.

They never knew about my stash of clothes under the bath and maybe that was a good thing, as I would have hated Dad or Nan to find out about me and my little secret.

It was after school that the bullies got their jollies. Many a time I found myself running from them. Luckily, I wasn’t a bad runner, being slight and swift of foot and as my tormentors were more interested in burgers and other junk food rather than sporty things, I, generally speaking, managed to get away from them almost unscathed.

That fateful day was different though.

I knew that I was in trouble some hours before. I was in the school cafeteria eating my sandwiches, made by my own fair hand. I was sitting alone at a corner table, as I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. For me my tactics were to always stay out of the way of trouble.

‘Ere, fairy boy.’

My heart sank as I looked up and there were my twin nemeses, Furbin and Hart.

Mike Furbin and Tony Hart were always after me and were the bane of my short, if eventful life.

They sat down beside me, looked around to see if the coast was clear and then proceeded to tell me what they wanted. Their collective peanut sized brains had had an idea. The idea was that I should do their homework for them.

They made it plain that in addition to doing my own homework, I should do theirs as well, making sure that it wasn’t just a copy of mine and individual enough to pass scrutiny from the teachers.

I knew that if I did as they said, I would have no spare time or life of my own. The school was very keen on homework and we had loads to do, most nights. What they wanted me to do was triple the amount of homework I did and to be honest, there weren’t enough hours in the day or night to do it.

So I said no and for some unknown reason, they objected and threatened me with all sorts of dire consequences if I didn’t do what they said.

With that, I sort of evaded their threatening advances and ran for it.

I wasn’t being brave; I just knew that I would be the one to suffer if I did their homework for them.

I knew though, that retribution would be swift and terrible. Not much would happen at school in the grievous bodily harm department, but out of school it would be open season on me and I literally wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if they caught me.

So I found myself on the common, running for my life. I had a nice one hundred yard advantage on them and it seemed like I might get away with it.

Then I tripped on a root and fell over.

After scrambling to my feet, they were only fifty yards away and closing fast.

If you know Cornwall as well as I do, you will know that the weather can be changeable to say the least. One minute it could be bright, hot sunshine and the next, the heavens would open up.

Ahead of me was the sea and in the distance and, as if by magic, clouds bubbled up, the winds rose and then the clouds raced across the sky towards me.
Seconds later the heavens opened up and the rain fell with an intensity that would put a rain forest to shame.

Looking back, Mike Furbin and Tony Hart had disappeared from view. The fact that they only bathed one or twice in a month may have meant that they would rather take cover somewhere rather than actually get wet, but I was only surmising. I knew that their blood was up and that once the rain had gone, they would be after me with the dedication of hounds on a scent.

Thus I would have to hide somewhere before I drowned in that cloudburst. I ran on, stubbing my toes occasionally on outcrops of rocks.

Then the lightning and thunder began as God started throwing the furniture around.

So there I was in the middle of the common with rain lashing and the lightning trying it’s best to make me just another sad statistic in the local newspaper.

I ran on, desperate to find cover, my feet slipping on the mucky ground. Then, up ahead, I could just see the outline of a building. Looking back, the Neanderthals were not in sight, but that meant nothing, as the visibility was poor.

I carried on towards the building, it looked like an abandoned cottage; there were a few of those in that area, where the owners had either died or didn’t have the funds for renovations.

I didn’t care if it was a shed, I needed to get under cover before I drowned or got fried.

After pushing the rusty gate open, I ran up the weed-ridden path and went through the open doorway. Once inside the sound of the rain drumming outside was still clearly heard, but it seemed a lot less intense.

Looking around in the gloom, I was pleased to see that the cottage was relatively dry, just a couple of puddles in a few of the corners and a drip coming from the ceiling over the empty grate of the fireplace.

I went over to the window and looked out and was pleased to see that there was still no sign of Furbin and Hart. With any luck, they would get lost on the common, wander onto the moor and get eaten by The Hound of the Baskervilles or wampant wabbits.

The sky, as far as I could see, which wasn’t very far to be honest, was a wall to wall grey in colour and the rain was lashing down in sheets. All around the cottage were mega amounts of donner und blitzen and I just hoped that said blitzen didn’t strike the cottage, turning it into a fiery furnace with me on the inside being the subject of an impromptu barbeque.

I have a vivid imagination, you may have noticed.

I was shivering from the wet and cold and so I had a look around to see if anyone had left lots of clothes or some logs or coal and also something to light the fire maybe?

A few seconds look around the downstairs showed that the place was devoid of any of the necessities of life, in addition to that, not surprisingly, the electric was off and the water too.

I jumped as a clap of thunder went off right above my head. This wasn’t nice, but at least I was under cover.

To take my mind off my predicament, I went up the stairs. The steps were creaky and lacked a carpet. I moved carefully as I did not want a staircase collapse situation.

At the top of the stairs was a short corridor. It all smelt a bit musty and damp but I was more interested on what was going on outside. Looking out of the cracked window, I could see a bit more of the surrounding countryside.

All around, through the rain, I could see flashes of lightning, shortly followed by the clap of thunder. Over to my left, I could vaguely see the sea. To the right was the common and beyond that the moor.

A movement caught my eye. Gasping, I saw Mike Furbin and Tony Hart were slip/sliding towards me over the mucky ground and heading straight for the cottage!

Their peanut sized brains didn’t realise that it was deadly dangerous to be out and about on a day like this. I conveniently forgot that I had been caught out in that deluge, but we will leave that aside.

The problem was that they were making a beeline for the cottage. It was still pis…I mean, peeing down with rain and I didn’t much fancy leaving my place of refuge, but if they caught me there, I wouldn’t give much chance seeing my twelfth birthday.

I hated the sight of blood, especially mine.

I ran downstairs as I heard them open the squeaky gate. It would only be seconds before I was torn limb from limb and not for the first time I asked myself, ‘Why me?’

I couldn’t go out the front way, so I went through the kitchen to the back door.

There were shouts behind me and some naughty words were said that started with the letters f and s…

Just then there was an incredibly bright flash of lightning and an exploding clap of thunder. I tried to push open the stiff door, although I was almost blinded by the flash and deafened by the sound.

I pushed hard and it suddenly opened and I went out.

I sensed rather than saw a figure in front of me. The figure seemed to go through me somehow and into the cottage as I staggered over the doorway and fell over outside.

The door slammed behind me.

I was stunned for a moment and then realised that the rain, thunder and lightning had stopped as if being switched off by some unseen hand.

I was sprawled on the ground with my face just inches from the gravel path.

There was something wrong.

The ground was bone dry.

My head was curtained with long blond hair.

I had short hair, or did anyway.

I looked up and was surprised to see legs, girl’s legs. I counted eight legs; that meant four girls. Even at that fraught moment, my maths was up to scratch. One of the legs in front of me twitched and the foot started tapping.

I looked up and there were the four girls looking at me, wearing the school uniform of my school with one slight difference, instead of a school tie, they had loose bow ties or rather neckerchief’s around their necks, in school colours. It was strange though, I didn’t recognise any of the girls, although they looked as if they would be in the same year as me. I could tell from a glance that I wasn’t on their Christmas card list. They looked unhappy about something.

‘Well, well, well,’ said the girl with the tapping foot. ‘We’ve got you now, Tanya.’

‘Who?’ I asked, wondering why my voice sounded different for some reason.

‘Forgot your name?’ said another girl.

‘It’s Tommy.’ I replied in that strange Mini Mouse kind of voice.

Before I could say anything else, I was dragged to my feet and I stood there swaying. I looked down and saw that things were not right with little Tommy.

My hair was long and blond, as I said before. I was wearing what looked like my school uniform, with slight differences.

In addition to wearing the same sort of bow thingie as the girls, I was wearing a skirt.

‘We have had enough of you Tanya,’ said another girl stepping in front of me.

The others took one step back, with military precision that would make The Guards look amateurish.

‘This must be the alpha female,’ I thought, even then having nerdish thoughts, despite my predicament.

‘You are not Tommy or any other silly name you want to call yourself. Tommy is a boys name and no matter how much you say you want to be a boy, you are a girl. Boys have willies and girls don’t, thank God!’

I automatically put my hand between my legs and felt myself.

It was a willie free zone.

‘Ooh, gross,’ said one of the girls, looking at me as if I had some sort of social disease.

‘Get this straight,’ said Alpha Girl through clenched teeth, ‘you will play netball for our year. We know that you are good and it’s your pig-headed attitude to girls games that has to stop.’

‘I’m no good at netball,’ I said.

‘You were the best girl in the trials and then you told the PE mistress that you don’t want to play because,’ and with this, she did a silly accent, "Girl’s games are sissy, I want to play football and cricket". I ask you; what girl in her right mind would want to get all filthy playing football?’

I didn’t point out that many girls did play football, as that didn’t seem to be the right moment. Anyway, she didn’t let me say anything and held up her hand in a commanding and rather aggressive manner as she as she went on.

‘You act like a boy and you hang around with the nasty, smelly things, given the chance. People are talking about you. What do you wear out of school? Boy’s jeans and t-shirts, that’s what. You give grunge a bad name. We’ve seen you, haven’t we girls?’

She looked around and there was a synchronised nodding, as if some sort of Borg like mind controlling mechanism had connected them.

Well this was the time when I would get beaten up. It had happened before and it would happen again. Don’t let anyone tell you that all girls are sweetness and light with a sprinkling of fairy dust thrown in for good measure.

I had been turned into an R.G. somehow and girls are allowed to smack girls, I think it’s in the rules somewhere...

She raised her arm and I waited for the smack, punch or kick. Flinching as her hand came towards me, I wondered what was in store for poor little me.

She picked off some grass from my school blazer.

That was different.

‘Oh Tanya,’ she said, ‘you are a disgrace to the school. Tidy yourself up and forget this “I’m a boy,” nonsense. You’ve been saying it since you were in nursery school and everyone is fed up with it.’

She looked at me and shook her head sadly. Turning to the others she said, ‘lets go girls.’

With one final pitying look at me from the girl’s, they turned as one and went down the lane leading back to the village.

I sat on the low garden wall and then, slowly, but surely, I started to freak out.

This was some sort of dream or nightmare.

I had probably been caught by Furbin and Hart and had been beaten to a pulp. I was in a coma at this very moment, I was dying and any minute now, I would see a light at the end of a tunnel and I would go towards it, to the accompaniment of a full orchestra, flying angels and the occasional cherub. Somehow an old favourite of my dad popped into my head, it was the song Stairway to Heaven.

A fly landed on my nose and I went to flick it away. The pest was too quick for me and I just pinged my nose instead.

‘Ouch,’ I said, rubbing my nose.

That was strange. I shouldn’t be feeling pain.

Maybe I wasn’t dead.

I was feeling rather hot, so I took my blazer off and removed the scarf thingie from around my neck.

I scratched a nipple, which was itchy and puffy and realised that I was wearing a training bra.

Interesting…

Looking up, there were no signs of the storm. The ground was bone dry too. It hadn’t rained here in days.

Then it hit me with the full force of a stampede caused by a Harrods sale.

I was a girl. I mean, I really was a girl!

I stood up and looked back at the cottage. It no longer had that abandoned look about it. It was well looked after and the windows frames had fresh paint on them. The garden, instead of being a jungle, was well kept and neat.

Without thinking, I went back up the path and tried to open the door. It was locked. Then I went around to the front and instead of an open doorway; there was a very solid looking front door with a shiny brass knocker.

Tentatively, I knocked on the door.

No answer.

I knocked again, a bit louder.

Nothing.

By now I was in a de-freaked situation. I was well past that point.

I attempted to make sense of what happened as I walked down the lane towards home, if it still was home. In the distance, I could see the girls that had accosted me and as I didn’t want any confrontation, I slowed down a bit and tried to take stock of what was, for anyone, a rather strange situation to be in.

Fact one, I was a girl now, not a boy wanting to be a girl on the outside as well as inside, but a genuine, card carrying, angst-ridden and rather confused girl.

Fact two, I had exited the cottage whilst running for my life and had felt some sort of weird sensation as I crossed the threshold and I could have sworn that I saw a girl walk through me, daft as that sounds.

Fact three, I was now called Tanya, not Tommy and some girls who I had never seen in my life were having a go out me for acting boyishly.

Fact four, I was feeling seriously strange wearing these clothes, although I was used to skirts occasionally. It all just felt different and it took me a moment to realise what the problem was. Then there was a puff of wind up my skirt and I knew. It was the lack of something and a space where that something used to be. To be specific, where my Willie Wonka used to nestle, I now had a space and something else that I didn't want to go into right then.

Fact five, why was I feeling a bit upset. I had my dream; I was now a girl, so why was I so upset about it? Then I realised that I was worried that I might never see my Dad and Nan again.

I shivered; that was enough to be going on with. There were too many unanswered questions. I wanted, no had to know if my Dad and Nan were still in the village and if we lived in the same place or was there some stranger living there.

I did recognise where I was, so it would appear that geographically, nothing had changed.

What had caused this? yet another question!

I remembered when I was younger, my Nan used to tell me tales about Celtic Cornwall and it’s mystical ways. A land where piskies and giants roamed and not all was as it seemed.

As I grew older, I poo-pooed such things, but I the back of my mind, I had an inkling that all was not normal in mystical Cornwall.

I’m not saying that trees whispered to me or anything like that. It was just a sense that things were going on around me like they were just out of view and maybe I felt that I was being watched. Occasionally I went for walks on the moors and I had a sort of mental itch, I can’t say more than that, as it sounds as if I’m as nutty as a fruitcake…

Eventually, I reached the outskirts of my village, Treusva which in English, means crossing.

All the houses, shops and the two pubs were in the right place, but I didn’t recognise anyone who passed me by; but it was somewhat disconcerting when a few people nodded at me and said hello as if they knew me.

Weirder and weirder!

Our two storey cottage was at the other end of the village. It wasn’t that large, but it was pretty and very old; 1666 in fact. It had a preservation order on it, so we couldn’t even hang a painting without asking for permission. Anyone who lives in a cottage that old knows that it can be cold, damp and not very comfortable. Dad had to fight tooth and nail to make the place liveable without the conservation people throwing a wobbly.

Still I had lived there all my life and as they say, “there’s no place like home”.

Or was it my home?

In this reality, if that was what this was, rather the favoured imagination of demented person, i.e., me.

I sort of repeated to myself the earlier question (I was doing a lot of that); did I still have my Dad and Nan or was some stranger living in my cottage who only knew me as Tanya?

That upset me a lot as I once again contemplated the possibility that I may have lost the only people I loved.

That got me wondering what was happening back in my time, place, reality or whatever. Had I been missed and was there a search on for me? Did I cease to exist when I crossed that threshhold?

I swallowed and then put my blazer back on as I felt a shiver go through me. I wondered if I was going to freak out again as I went down the well-worn road that led to my cottage.

My heart was thumping as I finally arrived home. Standing at the gate, I took a moment to look at the cottage. The paint on the door looked newer although it was still black. The curtains at the windows were of a different colour and were a rather brighter than before, pink flowers on a cream background rather than the thicker, red velour type that I was used to.

The garden was well kept and designed slightly differently. This wasn’t where I lived. It was the same, but different, if you know what I mean.

I opened the wooden gate and walked up the path.

I knocked on the door.

I heard the sound of footsteps approaching form the inside.

The door opened and I recognised her immediately.

‘Hello love, where’s your door key?’

‘M…Mum?’

Please leave comments and kudo thingies...thanks! ~Sue