Will the contemptible, way too curious Ida, from TGIF get hers? This prologue is almost guaranteed to confuse my regular collaborators, as it has almost nothing to do with the story they have been reviewing for me. Or does it?

Ida The Spy

By
Holly H Hart

Copyright 2007

Permission to post to other sites is not explicitly granted. Please request permission via private message via Big Closet / Top shelf site

 

PROLOGUE

* * * * * *

Three months before Maggie the Kitten’s TGIF, and four before California Girls

* * * * * *

The figure in the darkened room peered through the tiny opening between the dark drapes, its anger building, until it muttered, “There he goes. That abomination against all womankind.” Turning away, it went to the table where a single candle illuminated a musty book, its leather binding cracked and powdering away.” As it began studying intently, another mutter escaped the pinched lips. “There has got to be something in here to let me punish ‘him’ as ‘he’ deserves.”

Below on the street, a well dressed young woman shuddered, feeling something of the malevolence directed at it. “Every time I leave my apartment I get this awful feeling. It’s like the hate I sometimes feel at school, but much worse.” She set off again, adjusting her blouse at the waist as she left for her Twenty hour a week minimum wage job as a hamburger flipper.

* * * * * *

Two months later

Once again, as she left for work after school, she felt a malevolence that seemed to be aimed at her, but she saw nobody. Where could it be coming from?

As she walked dejectedly along the sidewalk, her backpack hanging from her shoulder, her mind incessantly replayed the drama of her day at school. Sadly, the scenes weren't any different from those of the past three months.

That train of thought led her to remember the day three months before, when her life had suffered a massive shift. Things had been going pretty well until ... that day. Coming home from school to find your father going through your secret stash of clothes and makeup is not something she would recommend to other girls. It had forced her to come out to her parents in the worst possible way.

How do you explain to your parents that the son they thought they had was instead a daughter? Whatever she said had certainly not worked. Even now, it took an effort to not run her hands over her the areas of her body that still bore testament to that night. Even if the pain had faded away, the scars were still visible; the physical ones at least.

The emotional pain was even harder to deal with. Tossed out of her house by her father for being a pervert, with no sympathy from her mother or siblings, she had been forced to grow up much faster than her fellow seventeen year-old classmates.

What had hurt the worst was the looks of disgust from her two sisters, her older sister Deirdre and her little sister Allison. That rejection, from the two people who she loved and looked up to most of all had been enough to cause her to sink into a dark pit of despair and an immense sadness she had never felt before.

* * * * * *

She had just finished cleaning the fryer and replacing the oil when she heard a familiar voice. It was Racinne Witherspoon, one of the few students at school who still talked to her. Still she always felt a bit uneasy around her, despite her pleasant demeanor. Maybe it was Racinne’s goth look, for her black outfits and dark makeup really did stand out, and she always felt creepy when she was around..

She had tried to make friends with Racinne, but they still were nothing more than acquaintances. Yet Racinne had even defended her sometimes when other kids picked on her at school. But like them, she wouldn’t use the same facilities, or undress for gym with her.

Yet Racinne was the only person from school who would seek her out to talk here at work. It was never about much, but at least it took her mind off her troubles for a while. If anyone else spoke to her, it was at most a word or two of recognition, flowed by a food order, or a request to clean up the mess they’ made.

When business was slow, she had time to think, too much time. Tonight she had once again been going over how it had all started. She and her therapist had been going over that, that afternoon. She was unable to put her finger on it. Had it been before, or after her older sister had dressed her up to have a younger sister with whom to play house? Or had it been there even before that? She couldn’t remember.

As far back as she could remember, she’d always felt she was a girl. She’d never been happier than playing with her older sister, Dierdre, as Dierdre’s younger sister. Then Deirdre had outgrown playing with her younger sibling, leaving her nothing to do except … be a boy!

Finally, five years before, she’d asked the family doctor if she could help her grow up to be a girl. Thinking back on it, she was amazed that Dr. Hearns had not only listened to her, but helped her to explore her feelings, eventually deciding that ‘Sean Michael Wilson’  really was a girl trapped in the wrong body. And Dr. Hearns had decided to help her attain her goal, despite knowing her father’s beliefs, and she had done it for free! She’d just said, “All I ask is that someday when you are able, you help others, whether it is this way, or in another.”

At that time, it was too early for any sort of intervention, but during regular checkups, and the special few minutes she set aside for the young woman to see her, she kept track of how things were going.

Eventually, it was time, and she began writing, and paying for, the prescriptions needed to prevent development as a ‘young man entering puberty’. Of course, her father who had always been upset at his ‘sissy’ son, had grown more agitated when ‘he’ never had a growth spurt, or developed facial or body hair. And his voice never cracked, either.

Luckily, he’d taken her to Dr. Hearns, who assured him that this, while uncommon, often happened, and that despite what he’d heard, trying to force things with medications would have ‘unwanted side effects’ that would be worse for him than letting nature finally take its course.

They’d both had a giggle when she told her, “Of course, I didn’t tell him that the unwanted side effects were mostly those YOU do not want.”

When she had her Seventeenth birthday, she still looked like a ten year old, to her father’s disgust. Dr. Hearns and the young woman celebrated, “Just one more year to go. You know, you’re lucky this state is the first in the nation to pass laws allowing Doctors to prescribe any medications they feel necessary without being required to tell the parents. I’m not sure they had these medications in mind, but hey, I’m not the only one using this law like this. We’ve had it checked by attorneys, and even by the State Supreme Court, who stated unequivocally that, ‘It covers all medications currently in use and any new ones that the patient’s doctor feels necessary for their good health.’

She had recently brought in a therapist to begin the year of therapy usually required before the start of actual Hormone Replacement Therapy for someone her age.

Then a month later, three months ago, just after the Winter Holidays, the bottom had dropped out of her life.

As usual, Dr. Hearns picked up the medications for her and they walked back to her office where she put them in innocuously labeled bottles for her to take home. And as usual, she had waited outside the pharmacy for her to make the actual pickup.

But something had gone wrong. Apparently, a new, very nosy employee had followed Dr. Hearns as she left the pharmacy, and saw her hand the bag to the girl for the walk back to the office.

A couple of weeks later, when she had picked up some medicine for her mom, he’d put two plus two together, and unfortunately, came up with four. The day of reckoning was the next day, after he got hold of her father.

She hadn’t seen her father’s car, for he’d put it in the garage. The first she knew of his presence was the moment she’d entered her room to change and be herself for the brief hour she had before her mom came home.

As she came home and closed the door to her room, she heard a voice from behind her while her eyes were still registering the mess someone had made of her room. “I suppose there is some innocent story behind these sissy clothes you had hidden?”

Stunned speechless, all she could do was look at her things, neatly spread out, but no longer hidden. Eventually her father grew tired of waiting for an answer. Getting to his feet from her study chair, he advanced behind her still turned back and grabbed her arm. “Well, is there? Is there?

Still getting no answer he grabbed her arm and turned her around so fast her arm still hurt now, a month later. “Well, tell me the truth!”

Scared almost witless, she tried to tell him, but at her first words, and every time she tried to speak, he hit her, yelling. “Lies! Now tell me the truth!” But he’d never even let her start to tell her the truth, and eventually began calling her names with each blow, not stopping till she was unconscious, with, it was later determined, a number of broken bones. The last thing she remembered him saying was, “I’m going to get that witch who has been giving you medicine in defiance of me.”

Of course, he hadn’t pronounced it with a ‘w’, but the sound led to her last confused conscious thought, “I wish Dr. Hearns was a witch. Maybe then she could cast a spell and give me the body I should have had.”

She didn’t know how near, and yet how far from what was going to happen, that thought was.

* * * * * *

Waking in your back yard, wearing nothing but bruises and aches for clothes, on a blustery January day with a few isolated white flakes falling is not the best recipe for good health. Somehow she had been able to get to her feet, and put on some of HER clothes, for they were all he’d thrown after her before he left. She dragged herself to Dr. Hearn’s office, thankful it was only 6 blocks from home, though the place she was leaving would never be home again.

Dr. Hearns had taken her to ER, and had her patched up, though mainly that was just taping her chest to immobilize the broken ribs as well as they could. Afterwards, Dr. Hearns, who now told her, “Call me Jill,” took her back by the house, which was dark in the winter twilight. Going around to the alley, she showed Jill her where some old suitcases had been stored in a rickety garden shed. Bundling up her things, Jill packed them away and put them in her car.

In the meantime, she had slowly been busy. She had not a shred of anything except her clothes, but she did find her father had forgotten, or never knew about, the key Mom had hidden so her kids could get in if they lost theirs. Letting herself in, she gathered a few thing she wanted, but he hadn’t thrown after her. That included a couple sets of her father’s clothes she could wear to get her money from the bank, her favorite books, her Raggedy Anne patchwork doll, and a check her dad had voided but not shredded. It might have been voided, but it had a nice clean copy of his signature.

As she took a look around her room for the last time in her life, the room where her father had cut and torn all of ‘Sean’s clothing to bits, she thought of her femme wallet, which she’d had in a different hiding place. Painfully bending, she lifted the loose floorboard and took it and a few other things from the hiding place.

Fortunately, maybe the only thing that had made her decide to carry on was the fact she wasn’t destitute. In her account was the first payment from grandma’s trust, money her father couldn’t touch.

Unfortunately, the account was in the name Sean Michael Wilson.

Fortunately, her father had not found the duplicate of her ATM card also or the prepaid credit card in her femme wallet.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know what she was going to do next.

Fortunately, Dr. Hearns helped her get a room for the night in a cheap motel while they tried to figure out what she was going to do.

Grandma’s trust had given her, or Sean, that is, a hefty sum to buy a first car, but Dad had convinced Sean to buy it on credit, with him as cosigner, to build up a credit record. He’d even agreed to pay the interest, so the money could stay in Sean’s account earning interest instead of just being gone. The upside was that the money was still there. The downside was that Dad had taken all of the keys, including the emergency one hidden in the magnetic case in the wheel well. She remembered him saying, “The car is going back tonight.”

* * * * * *

Dr. Hearns had also co-signed for her, so she could get the cheapest apartment in town. She didn’t want to make it too obvious by taking her into her own home, but she couldn’t hold that against her.

The apartment wasn’t much to look at, a simple efficiency with one 'large’ main room, a small kitchen, and a bathroom barely big enough to hold a shower, sink, and toilet.  Still, for now this would be her home and it was her private place.

Surveying her small closet, filled only with female clothes had at least buoyed her spirits and she worked hard to keep the place as clean as possible.  She still had to keep up with school and her boring and thankless job at a well-known fast food chain restaurant.

* * * * * *

One night a few weeks later as she walked home from her after school job, she felt a malevolence that seemed to be aimed at her, but looking around, she saw nothing, nobody.

Several times a week she felt it, always passing the same rundown apartment building, though it was no worse than her own.

One spring evening on her way home after work, she was feeling pretty good, most of the aches gone, the bandages were off, the weather was warming up, and even the harassment at school seemed to be easing off. Her only regret was that Jill hadn’t been willing to start her on female hormones for a few more months. Medications to slow or halt puberty was specifically approved for minors, but medications to begin the actual transition had been specifically forbidden. So even with the new law, there were still almost eight months to wait.

Then she felt it again, that hostile, evil feeling, stronger than ever before, and her good mood was broken. Looking up once again, she decided it must be coming from that room that always had the blinds drawn, for as she looked up, she saw a faint glimmer through a crack.

* * * * * *

Inside the room, the figure watched her go past, hating, then returned to translating the bad French the hand written spell book had been written in, using her French text. ‘Why didn’t they correct the spelling?’ the figure wondered, not realizing the book was older than the first dictionaries, and spelling hadn’t been standardized yet, not to mention that her ancestors hadn’t been all that well educated, either..  Women in the Fifteen-Hundreds had been lucky to receive more than on the job training for motherhood and being a wife.

The person watching the teen make the journey from the high school to the run-down apartment complex was one of her classmates. The figure was disgusted that the school allowed a boy to pretend to be a girl and mock natural born females, and she took a vow to rectify this injustice, as she saw it.

The figure’s mother had taught her that males rarely ever took females seriously. The fact that this male was thumbing his nose at the female population of Warwick High School demanded some form of retribution. The shadowy figure could not conceive of anyone being conflicted about such a basic thing as their own gender.

Thankfully, she had found the old spell book that had been passed down through the women of the family, from grandmother to grand-daughter, as it seemed only alternate generations could make use of its spells. But why, oh why, did it have to be written in a foreign language!?! If there was anything she hated almost as much as this male, it was foreigners. The fact that her own ancestors had all arrived across the Atlantic didn’t seem to matter to her, for it had been centuries since they’d settle in the southern bayous before moving here.

When the sissy was out of sight, she went back to studying the old book. She had deciphered the three spells she needed, and had already obtained all of the ingredients she needed.

She hadn’t realized how important it was to get the right word and get it exactly right, despite the poor spelling, and how important it was to study more than just pronunciation.

* * * * * *

Holly

After an exhausting, but happy three day weekend Holly Happy Hart bicycled her way to work. Although she’d hated to leave Heather Rose, an eight-year-old should not be in a bank all day, even though it was summer, and Heather Rose had begged to go sit out of the way with her artwork. However, Holly felt that as soon as she got to the day care and could actually be one of the kids she’d longed to play with, she’d feel better about it.

Her worries about what to do with her had been banished when she checked her mail after they arrived home the previous evening, and found a note from Mrs. Blomfontaine, who operated the day care center where Heather Rose used to visit. The note was to remind her she needed to pay for July’s day care, and suggesting that she wish to pay for August as well, which meant she didn’t even have to go through any administrative details. Not for the first time since she’d become a witch, she thought, ‘Ain’t magic wonderful?’

They also found that Heather Rose’s bicycle, which had still not been repaired on Friday, was sitting in the front hallway, and ready to go, though now much smaller, but still pink, with a white basket with Hello Kitty carefully hand painted by her little artist.

So Tuesday, she escorted Heather Rose to the place she’d spent a lot of time, wishing she could be a customer, or rather, a customer’s child. As she led Heather Rose though the gate to where she could park her bike, Heather Rose was mobbed by the other kids, all of whom knew her.

The last of her worries flew away as she saw Heather Rose instantly revert to being an eight-year-old, happy to interact with the other kids, but also almost immediately agreeing to help keep an eye on the smaller ones during the busy period when parents were arriving to drop off still more kids.

“Good morning, Bob,” she said with a happier tone than even her usual cheerful greeting as she arrived at work.

“Somebody had a good weekend. You and Heather must have gone someplace nice.”

“That we did, Bob.” ‘I wish I dared tell him that’s an understatement.’

“Good morning, Ray.”

“Good morning, Cathy.”

After greeting everyone with that same happy cheer she raised her voice, “Everyone listen up! Most of us had a three day weekend. We had time to be with friends and family or at least chill out. I want our customers to get a cheerful greeting and service today! A happy employee will make our customers happy and a happy customer should keep you happy. So let’s do it!”

After that pep talk, and the cheerful response from her employees, Holly felt as if she could fly. Actually she could, but she knew she should not do it in front of the customers or employees. She’d noticed a new face, but said nothing, and did not wish to stare, but after everyone had gone to their work areas, she took a look at the nameplate on his desk.

Mark Anthony Jackson. Reading it, she almost went into hysterics, but quickly calmed down. ‘It has to be a coincidence, but no, the face is a bit familiar. No, it can’t be.’

She went to the personnel files and pulled a folder. It verified her suspicions, however. Not only did his name match exactly with the name she’d promised Heather Rose she would never give out, but the birth date and birth place matched perfectly. Looking at the attached photo she began to see a resemblance.

‘It has to be. This Mark is the young man Heather Rose would have become if she wasn’t transgendered. or …a transsexual. … I guess I have another use for Misty’s gadget.’

As fate would have it, her phone chimed pleasantly. Looking at the readout she realized, ‘It’s him!’ Pressing the button for speakerphone, she said, “I’ll be right out, Mark. Do I need to bring anything?”

“No, Miss Hart. I just want you to look at some information on my screen.”

“All right, one minute.” She quickly pawed through her purse, pulling out what appeared to be her usual PDA.

Out on the floor, she leaned down, steadying herself with one hand on the edge of his desk as she surreptitiously moved the PDA around behind his back.

“I can’t answer that one. I suggest you give them a call and see what the proper address is. One of them is obviously a typo.”

On the way back to her office, Ida nearly ran her down. “Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Hart. Guess I was still thinking about the weekend.”

‘I’ll bet you were. Whose privacy were you invading this time? Holly, behave yourself. You don’t know that. Be nice!’ “I understand, Ida. Just don’t roll over any customers, please?”

As she waited for the official opening of the bank for the day, Holly began to play back the PDA’s recordings as Misty had showed her.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she puzzled. ‘He shows indications of being both Gender Dysphoric and Age Dysphoric, just as Heather Rose did, but the signs are a lot weaker than hers were, except in this one area, where they are off the screen. Wait! These say he is a woman, who wants to be a little boy? I don’t ... Oh! I got those readings after I left his desk. They were only seconds old when I got in here. Who? IDA! IDA? I’ve got to call Pipster.’

Before doing that, however, she connected the PDA to a USB port on her computer, and read the PDA output into a file, which she attached to a blank email to the Pipster.

Then she called, and after brief greeting, “Pip, take a look at the file I just sent you and call me back….No, I don’t want to say anything that might make you misread it.…Byee.”

For the next hour she waited, … and waited, … and just for variety, went out and paced the floor. Then she got the call she’d been waiting for.

But it wasn’t Misty. Or at least, not just Misty. “Hi, Honey.” It took her a moment to recognize Gina’s voice. And just as she recognized her, Kimmie and Misty chimed in with hellos of their own.”

“To what do I owe this telephonic invasion?” she asked, though she was thinking, ‘It’s serious!’

“We need one answer before we can say anything. That is Ida’s reading at the end? And who was the first one? He’s a perfectly adjusted man, maybe what, Thirty-Five?”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that is the young man Heather’s family always expected her to become. Even their background, and his name all match up.”

It was as if she could see them looking at each other, even though they had to be far away from each other on the ends of more telephone line. Finally. Gina spoke up. “Uh, Holly, I guess we didn’t tell you about doppelgangers?”

“Doppelganger? Isn’t that a double, or look-alike some say, or an evil twin of a person?”

“If you go by the dictionary, yes. But we use the term for the one person in around nine who splits when we use magic to cure their GD. The doppelganger is invariably a well adjusted person of the apparent birth gender of the body. It apparently doesn’t happen when we do a temporary vacation type change. A couple of us family members have them, and so do some of the ones who come through the Kamp and decide to stay changed. Effectively, just as you noticed, the second version of them is who they would have been if they weren’t transgendered. They are always well-adjusted, at least as far as their gender is concerned, and always the physical gender the body was born as. So yeah, that is Heather, or who Heather would have been if she hadn’t been Heather.”

Misty interrupted, “I have to get back to patients, but first, you didn’t answer. That other reading, that’s Ida the Spy, isn’t it?”

“You’ve got it.”

“Well, if you hadn’t already guessed, that’s one sick little puppy. What has been keeping her … him, together, heaven only knows. That spike indicates he should have been a vegetable long before this. That spike indicates just how much the rest of the chart had to be shrunk to keep it on the screen. His levels are far above Heather’s. You need to get him here, fast.”

Holly looked at the clock, “She … he takes the early lunch, so he’s out the door. I’ll see what I can do as soon as he comes back. Thanks, sis’es.”

 She went out and sat in the central atrium while waiting for Ida’s return. ‘I keep forgetting to thank Scotty for talking me into this.’ She had not been at all sure it would work when he’d suggested building the bank as a U shape, with a large central courtyard built around the huge oak tree already on the site, instead of axing it. Especially when he suggested being able to open the wall from the main lobby area to the courtyard, and he meant, completely open, with bulletproof glass curtain walls that went down to close it off while we are closed.

And then, he’d had her add a superfine mister that provided all the cooling  needed even on the hottest days, which could reach over One-Hundred on a summer day like this. But there she was, sitting in a curtain of cool air, flowing down and then across to cool the banking lobby, and which was also drawn in through vents to cool the offices and vault area. The oak was also noticeably healthier than when the bank had been built around it. Of course, the curtain walls could be closed to keep heat in during the winter and on windy, rainy days.

Holly’s patience was rewarded after 20 minutes as Ida returned from wherever it was she went for lunch. “Ida could I see you in my office for a few minutes?”

“Of course, Ms. Hart.” Her voice was calm and cool, but Holly could see in her eyes that she was worried about something.

When they got to her office, Holly said, “Please close the door, Ida.”

“Is there a problem Ms. Hart?” Ida  asked nervously as she closed the door.

“I don’t know. I understand you know something about the Little Kids Kamp.”

“I do?” Ida denied.

“I know you know something. I got that information from a highly reliable source. How would you like to know the truth about the camp, the whole truth? We owe you some time off. You can have a three days at the camp as comp time that won’t count against your vacation or PTO, ( personal time off ). Other than spending the three days at the camp at our expense, there are no strings attached.”

“How can I trust you, if what I heard was true?”

“It would be very easy for me to make you disappear with nobody knowing that you ever existed, if what you believe to be true about the camp was true. But we made a pledge to do no harm.”

“We?”

“The owners of the camp, which includes me. Besides, it is only for three days. If you leave after work tonight, you can even stretch it to Five days.”

Ida was obviously tempted, but she was wary of the danger. “And if I say, no?”

“Get back to me if you change your mind.”

“Could it be for two days?”

“Or one. Or a week. But anything over 3 working days counts against your PTO.”

“No strings?”

“The only thing we need is for you to fill out a form, so we know what to do.”

“May I see the form?”

Holly opened her desk drawer and magically produced a copy of the change form.

“Are you serious?” asked Ida as she read the paper.

“Quite. Everything is voluntary.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t worry about making mistakes or erasing. I can always get you another copy.”

Ida left, but at 2PM came in with the completed form.

Having Gina’s evaluation of the test she’d run, Holly was only mildly surprised with what Ida had put down.

“I want to see how far you can really go with these supposed changes,” Ida challenged. “You do realize that I’ve faxed a copy of the filled out form to some friends, in case I disappear. And as soon as you countersign, I’ll fax that to them, too.”

“As long as this is what you want we know you’ll be happy for the three days. I need to leave early for the camp, so I’m giving you the rest of the day off with pay. I can leave in about fifteen minutes.”

“OK, I can close my till.”

Holly called Cathy over and told her she was in charge for the rest of the day, but that she’d be back in the morning. Her next call was to Mrs. Blomfontaine, to tell her she’d be picking up Heather Rose in just a few minutes, and that she might not be back until Monday, as she would be with surprise out of town visitors.

Holly drove Ida to her place, so she could get a few things she said she needed. Then she swung by to pick up her daughter, bringing the thought, ‘MY daughter! That has such a wonderful sound to it.’

When she went in to pick her up, Heather Rose was already waiting, so Holly didn’t have time to tell her the whole story. After Heather told her, “Mommy, I misses you,” she just got as far as telling her they were going back to Aunt Shelly’s, and Heather could stay until Sunday if she wished, before they got to the car.

As Ida climbed out of the passenger seat so Heather could get in back, Heather exclaimed, “Hi Aunt Ida! You comin’ to the camp, too?”

“Do I know you?” Ida asked.

Holly saw a momentary flicker of fear in Heather’s face as she realized she’d goofed in recognizing Ida, before she saw a different look that told her that for a moment, at least, either big girl Heather or adult Heather was there.

“Er … uh … Mommy told me who you was when I visit’d one day. She said be good, and I must’a been if ya din’t see me.”

Ida looked puzzled, as if surprised she didn’t remember Heather Rose, but then let out a yell, “Where are we going? The airports are that way.” She’d noticed that they was headed up that almost deserted road. As Holly continued, Ida pulled a small pistol from her handbag.

“Put it away. That thing won’t hurt me,” Holly told her as she turned the pistol into licorice whips. Then she had to do the same with Ida’s knife, except she turned it into raspberry vines. As Ida reached for her cell phone, Holly popped her handbag into the trunk. While Ida gaped, Holly saw her chance, and moment later, they were in Delaware

Giving the GPS, ( Sure, even witches use technology. ), time to recalculate, she headed for the Kamp.

Just before they got to Kids Kamp, they passed Plieades Resources.

“That place is a major polluter,” Ida grumbled.

“Not really, In fact we’ve greatly reduced air, ground, and water pollutants throughout the world. Look at it, do you see any pollution?”

“No, it looks good, but that’s all part of the cover-up The Big Lie.” Then what Holly’d said sank in. “You own it?”

“Yes, we do. My sister Janet and her husband are the CEOs.”

“Janet, that biker chick that comes into the bank sometimes?”

“One and the same. She’s a pretty wild lady when she is not working, isn’t she?”

“What about your problems with the EPA?”

“We’ve showed that the pollutants near the plant have dropped despite the danger of the raw materials entering, yet the EPA is pushing to close us down.”

“But you produce so many toxic effluents!”

“Only by a definition drawn up by a few EPS bureaucrats to let them harass anybody who steps on their friends toes. Their worst complaint is all the water given off, because it came from toxic waste, even though it is hundreds of time purer than the FDA requires for drinking water. We have industrial customers lining up to buy it from us because it is so pure. Everything leaving our plant is a chemical in demand, sold by competitors who create pollution in producing it, and ours is almost always of higher purity than they can supply.”

They were just crossing under the railroad on Children’s Way as Holly finished. “But I didn’t bring you here to listen to me on my soapbox. I brought you here, because we are here!” as they went under the “Little Kids Kamp” sign just before 6PM local time.

“But … but … that’s back east. We just left my apartment!”

“You did sign that paper authorizing us, and I’m one of us, to use magic, didn’t you?”

* * * * * *

Ida

‘What have I gotten into here? If we hadn’t somehow made it from California to Delaware in nothing flat, I’d think Miss Hart is nutso. But how did she do that? Magic? There’s no such thing as magic! But … my gun, and my knife … AIEEEE!!!! What’s going on?’

“Ida? IDA!” Miss Hart was looking at me with a worried look on her face. “Uh, I’m sorry, I guess I was a bit distracted.”

She started to step towards me, and I stepped back. She stopped, and motioned in the direction of a building with a small pink and blue sign saying, ADMINISTRATION.

“I … I’d rather stay outside, if you don’t mind.”

“OK. If that’s what you wish. Heather Rose, would you go in and get whoever Jenna has assigned to show Miss Ida around?”

“Sure, Mom!” My daughter took off as only a carefree little kid out of school for the summer can.

“Jenna? That blonde with all the pink hair?”

“Yes, she’s another of my sisters, and runs the Kamp Kulinary Korp. But when I asked for someone to show you around, she volunteered to find someone.”

I shuddered inside, thinking about the bad things I’d said to some people about the people who run this place, wondering what they are going to do to me. ‘Why did I ever agree to this?’

I did not have long to wait. Holly’s daughter came out with a two pairs of girls maybe 15-17 years old. I’d seen them in the bank, but never knew there were two of them. To my surprise, when they introduced themselves, Alysson and Elsa had a noticeable British accents.

From her accent, I would have placed one of the other pairs of twins as being from somewhere on the East Coast, even without Steffie’s strange ball cap which simultaneously made it clear she was a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, Flyers and Eagles, Her twin, Isobel, was dressed a bit less casually, in neat slacks, with a lace trimmed white blouse and black flats, had a delightful Spanish accent to match her name.

“We’re supposed to show you around the place, Ida, and let you decided if you’d like to spend some time here. Heather Rose, thank you for introducing us. But I think your mom wants you now.”

As the twins led me off, my head was spinning. ‘I still can’t get over Miss Hart having a daughter. And all this ...’ “This place took money,” I commented.

“Yep,” Steffie answered. “But our environmental plants are making much more than we need, even though we can undercut all the competitors. And once we got Kamp up and operating, we were able to build the mall and theme park over there. Now, they provide everything we need to stay afloat, even though we’ve cut our charges and give hardship discounts.”

‘She seems much more up on things than I would have expected from someone her age.’ “Huh?” I realized I’d just missed something Alysson asked me.

“What would you like to see first? If we go over there and sit down, I can make a map for you.”

‘Why would she say “make” a map?’ I soon found out. As we sat down at one of the shaded picnic tables, she waved her had across the table, and a three dimensional map suddenly appeared.

“We’re here.” She pointed at an area and it seemed to grow until I could see three people seated at a table, though only as tiny specks. Over there is admin, and staff and visitor cabins, the playgrounds ball fields, pool, theater, costume shop, and so forth. Over that way are the stables. This one is for the horses most of the staff and guests ride, while over there is the barn the unicorns use to get out of winter weather and summer heat.”

“Unicorns? They’re mythological!”

“You haven’t been to the New York Zoo lately, have you? If you’d like, we can take you down to meet some of them if they are willing to come close. And over there is the area for the Zenghong Peacocks. They were imaginary, until we created them. The St Louis Zoo has a small flock now, too. But we’ve had to put up a barrier to keep the noise from driving everyone crazy, and to keep them from flying away.”

‘Unicorns? That should expose them. I suppose they’ve glued some fancy ivory horns on horses. In fact, I’ll bet they used illegal ivory!’ “Let’s go see these unicorns first.” ‘I know nada about peacocks, so they could sell me any line about them, hook line, and stinker.’

‘If they had produced flying carpets, or broomsticks, I might believe them, but golf carts? Ordinary golf carts?’ Alysson drove, with me beside her, while Elsa had to sit riding backwards. We rode along a very smooth dirt trail, ‘without even raising any dust,’ I noticed. Soon we had passed the horse stables, which appeared to be a substantial structure.

I was just realizing there had been no corrals or fences when we came over a small hill and Elsa, who’d twisted around, called out, “We’re in luck. There are some unicorns now!”

I saw five white horses, and could just make out what seemed to be horns.

“And look, over there where the stream comes out of the trees, the new ones! They’ve bonded with Holly and Heather Rose.”

“This is the first time we’ve ever seen them. Until 3 days ago, they were just a myth,” Alysson added about the black, gold and silver unicorns watching us.

‘Still no fences. How do they keep them in? And if they’re real, keep others out?’

The white ones spotted us and came running, as if to greet us. Alysson stopped the cart and we got off. “Feather,” Elsa began, “This is Miss Ida. She doesn’t believe you exist.”

That drew a snort from the smaller of the horses.

‘No, from close up, they look real … I could swear he …’ Having grown up on a farm, I knew where to look, and realized my mistake after a quick glance. ‘… she is laughing at me.’

As if she could read my mind, she nodded her head and winked at me.

I felt a bit weak in the knees, but kept my feet. “Feather?” She nodded. “May I touch you?’ My question drew a firm nod.

“Just don’t touch the horn,” came a voice from behind me. As I turned, the young man continued, “That is a apparently a very private part, part of what makes them magical creatures. Hi, I’m Jack, down here from the zoo in New York to see if I can spot anything that will make our exhibit better.” This tall black haired young man was dressed in a gray green uniform, with his name and NYZG embroidered on the pockets.

He gestured toward Feather, “Go ahead, touch her. She says she won’t mind …”

“As long as I don’t touch her horn, got it.” I ran my hands over everything except her horn, noting the featheriness of her mane, tail, and fetlocks.

“Feather, would you let Ida ride you?” Alysson asked, answered by an emphatic nod.

“I’ll help you,” Jack’s words scared me. I didn’t want a man touching me. Then I saw he had joined his hands to form a stirrup for me to get on.

“But what about a saddle, and reins?”

“The ’corns won’t let anyone use any tack, but nobody has ever fallen off yet,” he informed me.

Feather stood rock steady while I got on, glad I’d worn a long skirt, especially with Jack there. “Just think about where you want to go, and how fast. That’s what most of us do,” Alysson told me as the twins got on the other two unicorns. She led off, heading towards the three at the edge of the woods.

They stood there watching as we got closer, as Elsa whispered, “I hope they don’t spook. As far as I know, nobody but Aunt Holly, Heather, Aunt Janet, Tamar and Bill have ever gotten even this close.”

But they just stood there, and as we came to a stop, I heard several woodwinds playing a tune I recognized, but couldn’t put a name to. Looking around for a boombox, I saw none, and saw the girls looked as perplexed as I was. As the music came to a close, Alysson said, “I wonder what that song was?”

So help me, I giggled, something I haven’t done since I was around her age, for I’d remembered the name of the tune. “One of you knows. That was ‘Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider’, but it’s from before your time.”

“Maybe so, but we didn’t know it. They,” she waved at the colored unicorns, “are able to play music on their horns. We were told, but now we know.”

As if planned, Feather took me up to where the three surrounded me, and began to play again. This time I could tell the music had to be coming from the trio.

When they were finished, they trotted back into the woods. “I guess they know we want to take you other places.” Alysson led off.

While we were traveling, I added, “How do you make them stay, and how do you protect them from someone who wants a unicorn of their own?”

“Wards.” Seeing the perplexed look on my face, “Wards are magical barriers. They keep us protected. Anyone wanting to harm anything about the Kamp, or for that matter, the Mall or Theme Park, either can’t get in at all, or we know about them, and can keep an eye on them. The merchants don’t know why, but they’ve never even lost anything to shoplifting or employee theft here.”

As I was trying to digest that fact, if fact it was, my ears were suddenly assaulted by some horrible screeches. As I put my hands over my ears, I asked “What in the ….” I hesitated, “… world is that noise?”

 As my ears became a bit more used to it, I heard Elsa yell, “Peacocks! Turn around!”

Feather was already turning, and in a moment, as if a switch had been thrown, it was quiet. “I was hoping we’d get there before they stated their evening tune-up. That sound barrier is part of the wards Mom put around the peafowl area. I don’t know what she likes about them, unless it is just the way they look.” Well, you’ve seen a lot, why don’t we go back and have dinner? It’s late for us, but you’re from California, so Jenna has the cooks fixing something for your dinnertime.”

Holly and her daughter met us at the dinner table.

“Ida, now that you’ve seen a few ‘impossible things’, what would you say to spending a few days as a kid again? Say a little boy, maybe five?”

At her words, I broke down. When I could speak again, Holly had her arms around me. “I was just guessing, but I know you’d like to be a little boy. Would some other age work?”

“N …n …no …Dean is five, or four. But how?”

“As I told Heather Rose, ‘We’re witches. Good witches.’ We have our own technology. After we heard some of the things you’ve been saying about us, and found out how hard you’ve been pumping Maggie, we started calling you, Ida the Spy. But what we wanted to know, was why?”

“This morning I had a little gadget that would take a lot of readings about you, and hoped you’d be willing to come here and let us give you a chance to be, Dean, is it? Would you like to be Dean for a day or so? Don’t worry. You can be Ida again anytime, or at least, as soon as someone on the staff can locate one of the senior staff.”

* * * * * *

Holly

As she pondered my question, I saw a gamut of emotions cross Ida’s face, but slowly, it relaxed, and even before she said anything, began to appear more childlike. In fact, she didn’t say anything at first, but gave me a tentative nod, before whispering, “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said less tentatively.

I leaned down and picked up a small box Shelly had sent down from her office.

“I don’t have trouble with a lot of spells, but I am still learning to handle the big ones, so Shelly canned the spell for me. This is your last chance to back out, Ida. The spell will last till midnight, Friday.”

I removed a glowing silvery sphere, with streaks of red flickering on the surface.

She looked at it, fascinated. “Would you like to hold it? It won’t hurt you.”

She reached out hungrily, and took it from me.

“All you need to do is toss it up over your head, dear.”

She looked at me strangely at the endearment, then with a deep breath, tossed it in the air. As it came down, it burst and pure light flowed down over her, and a moment later a small boy in a tee, short pants, and somehow, already a dirty smudge on his nose and a scuff on one knee was looking up at me, then down at himself in amazement.

“What’s your name, dear?”

“Uh … Dean?”

“Heather Rose, would you go see if you can find Johnny? Dean is going to need another boy his age to show him the ropes.”

While she was looking, I went around to Dean and held out my arms. He lifted his own arms and began to cry, but I could see he was fighting it.

“It’s all right for boys to cry happy tears, Dean.” He squeezed me as hard as he could, sobbing even harder.

The tears were slowing by the time I saw Heather Rose returning with Johnny.

I put him down, and watched as Johnny hugged him, and heard a whispered, “You’re going to have a lot more fun as a little boy than as an old lady. I know!’

The tears stopped as a look of astonishment came over his face, “You?”

“Um, huh! I used to be like you were, except I was an old man. I wasn’t an older woman.”

I knelt and held out my arms to Heather Rose, who was smiling as tears rolled down her face, too.

“Would you like to stay here with Ida, I mean, Dean, until I come back for him? You can get to know your cousins better, too.”

“I’d like to, but…I don’t wanna lose ya, Mommy.”

“You’ll never lose me. Would it help if I come here every night so we can be together?”

“Would ya?” Heather’s face brightened.

“Of course, darling. It only takes a few minutes to get from here to the bank or the other way around.”

As it appeared Johnny was going to drag Dean away, I suggested, “Why don’t you go meet more of the girls here, while I keep an eye on him?”

“OK, Mom.” And she scampered off to look for more friends her age, or close.

I followed Ida…uh, Dean from a distance, hoping he would not notice. I got closer when they became involved in some baseball, or at least a 4-7-year-olds’ version of it. Bodies that age usually aren’t all that well coordinated, and I also knew that most of the boys were real 4-7-year-olds, so their lack of knowledge was normal. Dean was careful to be a 5-year-old, and not show off that her knew more about the game than the rest. Sunset soon called the game, but as they quit, I knew the important thing was, they’d all had fun, There hadn’t even been any fights, which had not been that uncommon when I’d watched before.

As the players dispersed, it appeared that Dean was leading Johnny as they came over to me.

“T’ank you for watchin’ Aunt Holly. Where do I sleep? Johnny wants me stay with him.”

I wasn’t sure. I gave Jenna a call, knowing she was on duty overnight. After I explained the situation, she made a couple of calls and called me back.

“Things are a bit hectic over at Johnny’s place tonight. His mom is expecting anytime. Could the two of them stay with you? You are staying the night, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m staying, but our cabin used to be just my cabin, and it will be tight for more than two.”

“I can fix that. I’ll send someone over to help you move things to Cabin 44, It has three bedrooms, one for you, one for Heather, and one for the boys. Oh, and Johnny’s dad has already approved him staying with you. In fact, I get the feeling he’s counting on it.”

I turned to the waiting boys. “Sorry, but you can’t go stay with Johnny tonight, but …” I let it drag out for a moment, “Johnny can come stay with us, you, Heather Rose and me, if you’d like. The two of you can have one room all to yourselves.”

“YEAH!” the combined cheer made me wish I’d put in earplugs.

I didn’t have to ask if they were up to the ordeal.

Now I only had to worry about whether my princess would go for it. I was not at all surprised to find out that it did not bother her.

So, once we’d found the cabin, we piled in. I was happy to find that Johnny’s dad, knowing the situation, sent over a spare pair of PJ’s for Dean. There was a brief squabble over who got the top bunk, but I settled that.

“I don’t think either of you should have a top bunk,” I told them as I yanked the mattress from it.

I followed that with the mattress and bedding from the bottom bunk.

As I straightened out the bedding, I went on, “Why don’t you pretend you’re camping?”

That sounded okay to them. ‘Squabble over!’ I thought. ‘If I can do this well with Heather Rose, then maybe I can make it as a mommy.”

As I was getting Heather Rose ready for bed, she asked, “Mommy? Can I seep w you? It differnt with boys here.”

She looked so innocent and childlike, how could I say no. It was obvious too, at that moment she was at the youngest end of her little girl spectrum.

I hugged her and told her it was fine with me. “I guess you’ve never had boys in the same house with you, huh?”

“Ony when I was one,” she got out in a sleepy tone.

It had been all too short a day for Dean, since it was after 6PM when we got there. The ball game had barely lasted an hour before it got dark. But Dean had looked happier when he went to bed, than Ida ever had.

Morning came all too early for this California Girl. It was still Four AM back home when I got up to get the kids over for a Seven AM breakfast, so they could join their friends.

* * * * * *

Dean — Dean’s first full day—Wednesday

I woke up A BOY! WOW! The day before hadn’t been a dream. ‘This is amazing! I wonder what I can do today that’s fun. I know! I’ll play pirates with Johnny. Maybe we can fight Sam and Joe from the baseball game. We could use the island in the lake as the boat, or bury the treasure there. With that much lake, there must be rowboats.

I jostled Johnny awake, “Hey, Johnny, you want ta play pirates?”

 

Heather’s mom came in and suggested, “Want breakfast?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Anything that’s good for pirates!” Johnny agreed.

“Just as long as you don’t use the magic swords,” she agreed.

“Magic swords?” I asked.

“We have Excalibur and the “Warrior of Peace’s” sword in one of our vaults.”

That made me remember things from before, when I was a big. … Holly had told me that I’d still be able to remember things if I really wanted to. I’d heard of Excalibur but not the other sword.

“We are holding Excalibur for Prince Harry’s second child. So what if she isn’t supposed to inherit the throne?”

“She?”

“Yes, she.”

“But, but Arthur is supposed to be the once and future king! How can she be a king?”

“You’re Dean, now, and you ask me THAT question?”

“Oh ...”

“Actually, Merlin explained it to Shelly when she got the sword.”

I looked at her confused.

“Shelly, you know, the mother of your paid informant, Maggie.”

“The one with the unusual hair?”

“Yup.”

“How did she meet him? He’s just a myth. And if he isn’t, that was a long time ago.” I was full of questions. “Can I see it? And what’s this other sword?”

“I’ll ask Betty to arrange it for you. That sword is one that Nachman of Brotslav, a Chassidic Rabbi once talked about in a story called, ‘The Master of Prayer.’ It has the power of defeating opposing armies without hurting anyone.”

“Wow!”

“Shelly met Merlin when she went back to invite the unicorns here, since they were being hunted by bad people who wanted their horns, because they thought the horn was magic. They didn’t know it was the unicorns that were magic, and that making a knife from their horn, or that grinding it up and using it on food or in a drink wouldn’t give them any special powers or protect them, or anything like that.

But I’m sure some of the camp counselors can find you all the Pirate swords you need. Swords that won’t let you hurt anyone else or be hurt, too. But now I’m sure you must be ready to get started, so let’s go over to the play center, where the day really starts for all you kids. Heather, Johnny, let’s go.”

I followed Johnny over to the Kamp Day Kare center, running ahead of Miss Hart. Even though she’d called it the Play Center, I could still read …

 

* * * * * *

Holly

Wednesday was a strange one for me.

As I dropped the kids off at the Play Center, I told Johnny, “Your mommy still hasn’t gone to get your baby brother from the stork, but that could happen any time now.”

To all of them, “You be good. I’ll be back before sunset, and Dean, you and Johnny will be staying with us again.”

That drew smiles all around. I was touched when Dean threw his arms around me as I knelt to say goodbye, saying, “Bye, Aunt Holly,” just as Heather Rose had done before she started calling me “Mom.” Johnny copied his words, but didn’t give me a hug.

* * * * * *

interlude.

After I left the kids at Kamp, I returned home, where it was just barely 6AM.I had three hours to kill, as even I could not get into the bank before 9AM without setting off the alarms the insurance company had insisted on.

I decided to go sit in the bank’s atrium, and just relax while I waited.

Once there I thought back over the first 60 years of my 20-year-old body’s life.

I was already 21 when the Beach Boy’s ‘California Girls hit the airwaves, and soon became a term rolling off the lips of people all over, not just in California, where I had grown up. It was 14 years since I’d tried to tell my folks my name was Holly, and 8 years later that they’d caught me ‘playing Holly.’

8 painful years of doing a pretty good job of pretending to be a boy followed, while somehow managing to escape the ‘queer’ label that was all they seemed to have to hang on anyone whose gender was not ‘straight’ at the time. My parents had not made too big a thing of it, but I had promised not to dress again, and I stuck to it until just before I got out of the Navy.

Going into the Navy hadn’t been what I had really wanted to do, but as I suspected, after flunking out of Junior College, it was that or be drafted in 1965. In fact, the Army tried to draft me even after I was in the Navy.

Three and a half years later, with six months to go on my enlistment, the urge to be ME once more grew too much, and I began to dress in private whenever I could swing a couple of days away from the base. But I knew then, that as much as I liked the Navy, it would be too much to wish for to think that I could get away with being ME, for long enough to make it a career.

After getting out, I went to school, working part time jobs to make it on the GI Bill credits I had. Most of my part time work was at a bank, where I drew the attention of the branch manager, who recommended me for a scholarship, which allowed me to go on and specialize in accounting and as a minor, financial counseling.

The bank liked what I was doing, and fast tracked me until at 35, I was a branch manager. I owed them a lot, and know they had me slated for bigger things, but straight banking was not my thing.

I giggled, thinking, ‘And what am I now, but a glorified branch manager, even if it is the only branch, and I own it?’

It was around then that I married the woman whom I’d loved till death did us part, or even beyond, to this day. That was before I had learned much, really almost nothing about Transgender, For 50 years, I thought I was alone in the world with that sort of feelings.

But the financial consulting I’d been doing on the side had caught the attention of one of the big stock brokerage companies. 401Ks were brand new, and really, still experimental. They wanted someone able to think on their feet that could manage the program for a couple of their branches. My program seemed to do better for our customers than what any of our other branches were doing and by the time I was 40, I was running the 401K operation for the entire company, which primarily meant I was training our other counselors on the best ways to help clients with differing needs.

I’d always liked new things, and after a while, that was becoming boring. Then I was approached by a pure investment counseling service into going to work for them. This didn’t look as if it would be dealing with individual people as much as it was with companies. But after talking with a few of the companies that they dealt with, I realized these were small companies trying to become big companies, and I’d be working not with large corporate staffs, as much as with small top management groups, and some very interesting and inventive people.

That is where I met Bill Picklesworth, who said he represented a company with some unique new methods of recycling and toxic waste disposal.

“Our methods are so unique, they, and I agree, should be kept as trade secrets, rather than trying to patent them. To that means, we plan to manufacture all of our reactors ourselves, in a couple of subsidiary firms. We believe that they can turn any waste, toxic or otherwise, into its basic fractions, for less than half the cost of present systems, with the added advantage that we will produce absolutely no toxic waste ourselves.”

That had sounded like a pretty tall order, but he kept at me to at least consult on the side. When I did so, I found that they were already in business in a small way, back in Delaware, where it was easy to incorporate, and the state pretty much keeps its nose out of your business as long as you pay their fees.

When some of the competition began to be worried about the way the company, Plieades Resources was stealing their bread and butter, we, (I was beginning to think of myself as one of them), began to get hassles over even the tiniest bits of toxic waste that spilled from the trucks bringing material to our plants, so I figured out what to do about it. In California I had worked with a major truck trailer manufacturer, so I went to them and got them to come up with a trailer that could be completely sealed so nothing could get out.

With a huge triple layer plastic bag liner, it would not be subject to corrosion. That raised our costs a bit, but still left us well below the competition. And we hired many of the drivers who had been delivering to us, so we had total control over all waste delivery that didn’t come in by pipeline.

Soon, just after my wife passed away, I was working for Bill exclusively, and when not helping Plieades Resources, began helping to finance and set up a strange new business. It was to be a Kamp to help adults and teens with the strange idea that they were really the other gender, and stranger still, needed to be kids. At first, it had been just a series of weekend Kamps, but I began to hear quickly how satisfied the customers, their parents, spouses, or significant others were.

And then looking into it, I began to realize that other than wanting to be a kid again, they were describing me. Holly came back full force, and one day I had a breakdown. That was just a bit over two years ago. When I came out of it, I was at the Kamp, and had been introduced to the owners, I mean, really introduced to them.

I had given up looking into anything about why I thought I was Holly a long time before. I had found out, I knew, ( or thought I knew ), that it was impossible to ever really be Holly. At best, I could go to some surgeon and be turned into a fake, like a couple of transsexuals I’d read about, derided by anyone who knew, embarrassed on daytime TV scandal shows, or the like.

But these women, who ran the Kamps and owned PR, had somehow found out my secret while I was in my breakdown, and they told me that most of them had once been men, too, until they were made witches. I was totally skeptical, until they proved it by turning me into the young woman I am now when I, still skeptical agreed to let them do their darnedest.

I never let them change me back, and soon, was accepted into the sisterhood. I still do the necessary consulting, though things pretty much run themselves now, so Bill gave me this bank as a present welcoming me to true womanhood.

Bob arrived, breaking my train of reminiscing as we talked about inconsequentials. I did mention that Heather Rose was away at camp for the week, when he asked about her, as if she had always been my daughter. I noticed he didn’t ask about Ida, even though we’d left together.

Later in the day, he did mention her, but sounded as if as far as he was concerned, it would be better for everyone if she never came back.

“Sometimes she scares me,” he even said.

Luckily, I have always been able to compartmentalize, or I’d never have been able to do a good job for my clients, as I still spent most of my day as the bank’s financial advisor. In fact, I had two offices, and two different cards, so that most probably never knew I was also the bank president.

But the rest of the day, I spent worrying, wondering how my two kids were doing, and counting the minutes till I could close the doors.

* * * * * *

Wednesday Dean, continued.

After Miss Hart left us, two big boys came and got us and led us away from the girls. Over at the picnic tables, they made a map like Steffie had made. “What would you like to do today?” they asked us.

Nobody answered, so finally I spoke up, “Can we plays pirates?

Suddenly, everyone wanted to play pirates, so we went back to the costume place and soon looked like real pirates, especially after Miss Prue stuck moustaches and beards on our faces. She even gave Johnny a thing so it looked like he had a peg leg.

It was so much fun! When I’d been a kid the other time, all the other kids who lived there were boys, so I always had to be the damsel in distress. I was usually left tied to a tree or something else they were using as a mast, while they had all the fun.

For lunch, we got real pirate food, hardtack ( really biscuits ), dried beef ( jerky), and grog ( some kinda really yummy juice).

After lunch, we played baseball again for a while then went swimming. I had to stop myself and think though, before I realized I could go swimming without a top!

* * * * * *

Heather Rose

At first, when Mom left us to go home and work in the bank, I felt sorta helpless. I tried remembering how long I’d been a girl for, and eventually had to count on my fingers before I’d figgered it’d only been four days, if ya din’t count Friday night. In the back of my head, I sometimes still felt scared of losing her, even though I knew she wouldn’t let me go. Then I ‘membered that she left me at the day care that one day back home, and how much fun I had. Of course, it helped lots that I knew all the kids there from when I visited after work when I was a grown up.

But Mom had said we’d be okay, at the Play Center. Mommy’s really smart. We hadn’t been there more than a minute or two when Aunt Shelly came out with Baruchah and Maggie, telling them, “You two know your way around. Go take Heather around and get into mischief. But not too much, mind you.”

Right behind her were a couple of guys that looked like they was like maybe in highschool. They took Dean and Johnny off to do ‘guy’ things.

One pair of Aunt Shelly's twins, Kay and Karen Anne, led me, Maggie, and Baruchah over to where half a dozen other girls was waiting. “C’mon, Heather Rose. We’ll show you what kids our age can do to have fun.”

They was only like a year older than me but sometimes they acted lots older, 'specially when they was being responsible for younger kids. They were kinda the unofficial big sisters for all the Play Center girls from my age down to around older kindergartener age. I couldn't help skipping as the two older girls led us off to one of the play areas where the camp had lots of dress-up clothes for us.

What was really neat was how instead of being mommy sized and dragging on the ground, they looked like mommy clothes, but in our sizes. At first I wasn't sure how I'd feel about dressing like a grownup, since it wasn't that long ago I kinda had to. I gave it a chance anyways. After a while, I just gave up worrying about silly stuff like that and had fun playing with the other girls.

When we got tired of that, we all went outside and played jump rope. All the songs came back to me. The jumping songs was almost the same as when I’d watched the other little girls jumping rope, and memorizing their songs. It really hurt sometimes when I’d tried to join them and get told, “Boys can’t jump rope.” Baru and Maggie goed over to be with some of their friends, cuz they wern’t beg ‘nff to jump good.

By lunch time we was really, really hungry, so the twins led us over to the Kookhouse, though they pronounced it ‘cook, not ‘kook’, where we had soup ‘n sammiches, ‘n cookies. The younger kids was there, too. Dean, Baruchah, and Maggie (Karen and Kay called them the imp twins) joined us. As soon as we was through, Dean surprised me with a hug before he runned off to play for the afternoon.

After lunch, me and the other girls in my group played beauty parlor for a while. Karen had to call in for help to magic a ponytail back on, while Kay had held the crying girl who lost her hair and promised her it'll all get fixed. Once everything was more settled down, the two K's decided we needed to do something quiet for a while, so they gathered us around one of them really big flat TV's and started up a video for us.  

Eventually, all hurt feelings was forgotten as we all sat and giggled with each other while watching a Little Mermaid cartoon. Karen and Kay had ’corded them for like weeks and weeks, just for a time like this. After watching a couple videos, the girl who lost her ponytail asked if anyone wanted to play Go Fish. Everyone still seemed to feel bad for her and a little guilty about how the beauty parlor game had kinda gotten out of hand, which is probably why almost everyone said yes at almost the same time. Time went pretty fast while we was playing and before ya knew it, it was time for most of the girls' mommies to come get them.

When most of the boy’s mommies had gotten them too, Baruchah and Maggie brought Dean over, and the K twins as almost all the girls on my play group had called them read story books to us. Even though I was a really good reader for an eight-year-old, it was still really nice to have someone read to me. We'd got through two short books and was in the middle of a longer one by the time Mommy came for us.

We all loaded into one of the Kamp minivans and Mommy took us all over to Bob’s Café in town. As we munched on our dinner, she listened to everything that happened to us, then explained why she'd taken so long getting back. She started off kinda late 'cause the bank didn't close 'til like six at night east coast time. I nearly choked on a french fry when she said she got holded up. Once I was breathing again okay and had taken a sip of my orange soda, she explained it hadn't been a bank robbery. She just that she saw a car wreck and stayed to help the woman who was hurt and then tell the cops what happened.

After she dropped Aunt Shelly's kids off at their house, she took us to the cabin, and we went to our rooms to get changed for bed. A few minutes later, I came out wearing my Hello Kitty nightgown. Dean (in his Superman jammies) and Johnny (in his Batman jammies) was sitting at the table and seemed purdy surprised when mommy’s phone started singing bird calls. Johnny put down his milk and seemed to be looking for where the sound was coming from while Dean asked around half a mouthful of chocolate chip cookies, "Where ya got a bird at?" Without even looking at the phone, she opened it up, brought it to the table, and held it out. “Johnny, this is for you.”

Johnny took the phone and stared at it for a second. “I never got a ph .. phone call b’fore.” He put it to his ear, then dropped the phone, and started jumping up and down, “I got’sa sister! I got’sa sister.”

* * * * * *

For the past week, the figure had observed the travesty making his way around town. She had figured out everywhere her unremarkable classmate went, and how often. No longer would she tolerate such an affront of nature. Everything was ready. He would be passing a park near a new residential section of town, where there were still very few people, so this was her best chance.

She drove past the seated monster and parked ahead of it. Walking into the park as if she hadn’t noticed ‘him’, she sat on a bench facing the sidewalk. When ‘he’ got closer, Racinne called to ‘him’, “Hey, got a minute?”

“Oh, Hi, Racinne. Uh. . .sure, I guess I can spare a couple of moments.” The guy who thought he was a girl walked over to Racinne. Stopping, ‘he’ asked, “What’s up?”

While his mouth was open, Racinne threw a handful of dust into the abomination’s face, sure that enough would get into his nose and mouth. Almost instantly, though still alert, his eyes still open, he found he could not move, even to blink.

“You horrid fake … ‘thing!’ You abominable … male! What makes you think any decent woman, or man, for that matter, would want to have anything to do with you? Looking at you makes me ill. My insides want to spew all over you! You’ll never be a woman, and I’m going to make sure it will take along time before you have another chance at even being a man again. But I’d advise you to take that chance, because next time, I, or someone else with the power, may not let you live.”

She tilted the stiff body until it was lying on the ground. Realizing she had to hurry, or someone might notice her standing over this … loathsome, deceitful male … she opened the second jar of powder, and sprinkled it all over the prone form.

The first time she said the words, nothing happened. She thought back to her French lessons, and tried again, with equal lack of success. Was this not going to work? The third time, it once more failed to do a thing. Angry, she yelled it out. Maybe it was the yell, or maybe it was a change in inflection, but almost instantly, Sean’s form shrank, becoming no more than Thirty-Five inches tall if it had been standing. For clothing, it had only many yards of rough cloth wrapped around it. Racinne hadn’t known that modern toddlers under things were just that, modern. The 487 year old spell had clothed the form in what children of the 16th century wore if they wore anything at all.

In a hurry now, Racinne opened the 3rd and largest container in her bag, not realizing that she had made several mistakes. For one, she’d made One-Thousand times as much as called for, and two, she had mistaken one ingredient. She sprinkled it over the confused toddler, who was stiff as a board. She could see terror reflected in the eyes, and almost cackled as she began to sprinkle it over the young child.

When the jar was empty, she stood back and laughed again. “Now you will get the punishment you deserve. When I light this match and drop it on you, you will disappear from here, and reappear in the most horrid orphanage the spell can find. You will remember this forever, as you are tormented day and night.” Racinne lit the match and dropped it.

Instead of the small flash that she expected, there was an earthshaking roar as the powder blew a hole six feet in diameter, and two feet deep where the form had been lying. But Racinne did not see it. She had been blown through the air almost thirty feet, landing on her head, snapping her neck. But she did not die. A passing motorist heard the tremendous roar, and ran over. When he saw her, with her neck at a crazy angle, he pulled out his phone and dialed 911.

When the paramedics arrived, they thanked him for not moving her. “I doubt we can save her in any case, but if you had moved her, it would almost certainly have killed her.”

As the paramedics worked to stabilize Racinne, the police arrived, and began to investigate the scene of the accident, becoming more and more curious as they tried to figure what she had been doing playing with high explosives all by herself. And what had she been playing with? The smell was like no explosives either of them had ever come across.

While waiting for the special equipment they were going to need to properly immobilize her, they took pictures of Racinne’s prone form, the shattered bench, and the hole in the ground.

After the shattered figure was on its way to ER, they found samples of powder in all three powders in jars in the handbag which had been blown a good seventy feet,

Of the small form, there was not a trace. Racinne’s third mistake was in not realizing that the second and third powders, when mixed, changed the action altogether, and her intentions had been erased.

* * * * * *

Thursday

Holly

The next evening, when I returned from the bank Misty grabbed me. “I want you to watch this. Do you know what your daughter has been doing all day?”

“Search me. She’s been a surprise since the day she came in looking for a job, and also looking like she expected to be kicked. I didn’t know why, but we do now, don’t we. She must have had so many bad experiences in trying to be what she wanted to be. But she never gave up. I’ve never had anyone come in to apply for a job wearing pink short-alls over a tee-shirt covered with tiny printed flowers before.”

“And you probably never will again, sis.”

“I asked her about it after she became my daughter. You know what she said?” Misty shook her head.

“She said that she heard one time that you should see what everyone else was wearing, and she’d seen on Fridays, how relaxed I was on wear for everyone but me. That’s when she decided she wanted to work for me. So she decided to push it a bit and see if she could be herself. But that isn’t why you shanghaied me. What has she been up to?”

“Watch!” Misty waved her hand and a vision appeared over her desk. Heather was seated in a comfortable chair in the shade of a tree, doing a pencil and charcoal portrait of one of the girls.

“She’s been doing those all day, about 2-3 an hour, so the other girls will have a souvenir to take back with them when they leave. When some of their mothers wanted to pay for them, she refused. Many of them left some money at the front desk, anyway. We’ll have to figure out what to do with it.”

“If she’s refused it, I don’t think I want to force it on her. It’s not as if I’m not able to grant her every wish. Let’s just tell her some of them left money - to pay for her materials, at least. If not, give it to charity”

“Hi, Mommy.” I turned to find Heather Rose, with Dean, Baruchah and Maggie in tow just coming in the door as Misty quickly made the vision disappear.

“Mommy, thank you so much for finding a way I could still draw and paint. I made so many of my friends happy today.”

“Auntie Misty has been telling me about it.” I knelt and turned, “How about you, Dean? Did you have a nice day, too?”

“Umh hum. We goed hiking, ‘n eated Venison jerky, ‘n wil’ rice we picked o’selves, ‘n’ had Smores!”

I saw Misty winking and guessed not all had been related.

“ ‘N then after we’s rested, we hiked back ‘n sawed the unick corns. T’ only bad thing was Heather was drawing pictures of alla girls, ‘n wooden do none of us.” He gave Heather Rose a dirty look.

“Dean, I said I’ll do you boys tomorrow.”

The frown left his face, and he ran over and hugged her. “Then I won’ be mad no more. I like you after all.”

‘Ah, the changeability of the innocent,’ I thought, comparing Dean to the Ida he had once been. ‘I wonder whose child he will become? I somehow doubt he will want to go back. Besides, there is already a doppelganger back at the bank. Does that mean anything? I’ll have to ask Shelly and see if she knows.’

 

It was Heather who provided an answer. As we walked over to the Kamp Day Kare center, she came over and put her arm around my waist. Johnny and Dean were - out of earshot as she said, “Dean looks lots happier than Ida ever did. Ya think I might have a younger brother in a few days?”

Her question hit me like a bolt of lightning. I wasn’t even used to having a daughter yet, and now she was hinting I might soon have (TWO) kids? I stopped walking as I tried to think about her question, and when I looked down at her, I think she realized what she’d just done to me. I could see it in her eyes. She told me later, that I’d turned white as the proverbial sheet for a moment, then as the color returned, followed the boys once more. But I didn’t even try to answer her question. ‘Why is it that the question caught me by surprise? Now that she’s put it into words, I see it. I may not be able to avoid it. Sh … he has imprinted on me. Now that I think about it, the word “mommy” has slipped from his lips a time or two.’

“Would you like that, darling?” She looked up shyly using just her eyes, with her head down as she nodded.

“I guess I won’t be able to avoid it if he asks …”

“Mommy? don'tcha like him?”

“Well, yes, I guess I do. But this is so sudden. I fell in love with you over several weeks, and even then I wasn’t sure I could take care of one child, even as well behaved a one as you. Please, don’t say anything to him, except to answer questions. It has to be his decision.

 

* * * * * *

Friday - Decision Day.

Holly

While I went back to work, the next day was play day for the kids. On play days we made them mix, instead of the guys doing purely guy things, and the girls doing just girly things. Cooperative games where guys were partnered a girl as 2 person teams competing in activities that made them cooperate were the order of the day.

Heather Rose exempted herself, so she could hold to her promise, and by the end of the day, every kid in camp had a picture of themselves as they were while at camp. I don’t know whose idea it was, but at the end of the day, when she was finished, one by one, all of the kids of both genders came up to her to thank her, most including a hug in their thanks.

That night after the boys were asleep. Heather Rose brought the subject up. “Ya know, Mom? It wasn’t as hard as I thought it'd be to bring the big me up so I could do the portraits. It didn’t leave me all jangly, neither, like I was afraid it would. I guess bein’ the real me most of the time is what I needed. Thanks for giving me this chance.”

“I’m thanking me for thinking of it, too, darling. I don’t know where it came from, but when it did, it just seemed right. But I don’t think it would work for Dean. He seems so happy just the way he is. I don’t think we’ll ever see the old Ida again.”

That was very clear when I returned for the weekend that night. I saw them together on the far side of the athletic fields, and gunned Lady Galadriel, letting the RPMs drop slowly enjoying the burbling of the exhaust. I guess you sometimes can’t take all of the little boy out of the big girl.

They came running, or rather, skipping hand in hand. By the time they reached me, I was out of the car, seated at one of the picnic tables. “Dean spoke first, “Mom? I’s kinda wondrin’, ‘ve you gots room for me when you go back? Heather Rose sez therz another room, but its kinda full of yur stuff.”

“Well, she is right, but I’m sure we can do something about that. I guess this means you want to keep on being Dean?” I knew the spell was wearing off, at least as far as his mind, I could see the effort he was making to keep talking like a kid.

“You bet. I don’t ever want to be that sour old lady ever again.” This was the adult Ida speaking from the 5 year old little boy body.

“And I guess it means that Heather Rose is going to have a brother, then too?”

They looked at each other, then gave each other a high five, “Yeah!!!!!”

‘And here I thought it was going to be difficult to get an answer on the subject. Sort of like Jeopardy. The answer came before the question.'

When I called Shelly to let her know we were on our way to dinner, I mentioned the decision to her.

“I’m glad I didn’t bet against it. I’ve seen it coming all day. Now, that brings up another question, do you want to sit in on the gathering for Dean, or sit it out?”

 

“I’m his new Mommy. Of course I’m in! Just try and keep me away!”

 

Friday night

Holly

 

Since Dean had already had 3 days to experience this life, we did not change him back, but never-the-less the grilling he got, with all of his Ida memories restored, explained a lot. But it was torture for the poor kid. He didn’t want to be Ida at all any more. He relaxed a bit when promised he would have them only in the background, and if any of the memories really bothered him, he would be able to make them go away later even after we told him he needed to have all of Ida’s memories for a few hours.

 

Ida’s story

 

Ida had always been a loner. Having grown up in the same time, I could understand it. In the 1950s, when your mind told you one thing and your body said something else, there was no sympathy from anyone if you tried to tell them. And if your mind told you it was wrong to do girly things, you could get away with a bit as a tomboy, in Ida’s case. But only a bit. If you pushed the limits too far, as we gathered Ida had, you faced ostracism, bullying, and abuse. Ida had faced all of this, but thankfully, not much from her parents. They had just not wanted to know about it, and ignored her attempts to tell them.

 

After graduating from high school because she’d put in the mandatory 4 years, and they never flunked anybody, no matter how abysmal their grades, Ida joined the Marines, trying to get them to make a man out of her, metaphorically speaking. Somehow she ended up in an intelligence unit, because that was a spot for women, who at that time, had to be non-combatants. That didn’t mean she wasn’t so close to the front lines that she wasn’t captured in a Viet Cong raid.

 

But Ida developed a plan, and led a successful escape of almost 2 dozen prisoners while they were being marched north. Before her enlistment was up, she had been contacted by what she called ‘the Company’, better known as the CIA, so our guesses had been right on that score. All her resume had told me when I hired her, because it had been so far back, was, 22 years working for the US Government. She hadn’t liked it, as all she had done was desk interpretations and investigations of financial records needed for others to solve situations.

 

But she had become good at investigating things and what she’d heard about Little Kids Kamp made her mad. These ‘people’ were apparently making a lot of money by faking the ability to provide just what she had wished for all her life. She had been bound and determined to expose us.

 

That was why she came to work for me. She hadn’t tied me to the plot at first, but she knew that for some reason, Shelly and the rest of the family came all the way across the country to bank in my little one branch bank.

 

She had been surprised that we caught her, but was now very happy we had. Being in the offices, she’d always been on the investigating end, but never exposed to those she was investigating before.

* * * * * *

Saturday

Overall, the weekend was just fun and relaxing, and a chance for me to get to know my new and now welcome obligation.

 

At dinner on Saturday, Janet, Bill and Tamar showed up, and Janet made sure they were seated with us. From across the table she spoke up, “Hey sis, We have a proposal for you. Bill and I are good wrenches, and we’d like a chance to get your old Indians up and running for you. We’ve never seen anything but the new ones. You said you have one of them, too, right?”

 

I hadn’t really given the bikes a thought, but it might be fun to ride them, with the kids in a sidecar, as long as we didn’t have too much of our trips near home. There are just too many people, and too many idiots on the road. That is why I’d stopped riding in the first place. Well, that and a wife and too many kids to fit a sidecar.

 

“I know what you’re thinking. Hey, we can do magic, right? Do you think Tamar and I or Bill would ride here if we didn’t use some magic to keep us safe? The spell is easy. It just casts a bubble around you, and anyone coming towards you automatically changes their mind about getting close to you, if they were going to. Heck, it’s safer than lying in bed out there in earthquake country,” she giggled. “Or at least safer than lying in bed without a protective spell.”

 

“Well, I suppose I should let you do it. I’m going to have my hands full for quite a while, what with 2 kids, and looking for a new place to live, and my day job.”

 

“So, Holly, you’re finding out that being a mommy is a 24/7job?” Shelly’s voice came all the way from the far end of the table.

 

“I think it is more like 28/8,” I riposted.

* * * * * *

Sunday

This Sunday was a bit more relaxed than a week ago. We weren’t trying to get ready for a big 4th of July blowout, and Dean had already had more time to find out about Little Kids Kamp, his huge new loving family. Since there was time, I got the kids up for breakfast, dressed Heather Rose in her prettiest non-party dress, Dean in brand new ( still clean ) jeans and a white dress shirt, myself in a conservative, but not old and dowdy dress, with two inch heels, and we went to church.

 

Afterwards, the day was a family day, doing things around Shelly’s as a family

* * * * * *

Monday morning

 

On Monday I let the kids, ( and myself, giggle ), sleep in , just barely getting them up for the last serving of breakfast. Afterwards we packed the things they wanted to take with them, and say our goodbyes before we left.

On the way back to California, I asked, “Did you have a good time, Dean?”

 

“The bestest!”

 

I took the kids straight to the house. Dean looked around at his sister’s pink palace and wrinkled his nose. “Eyuck! This is all too girly.”

 

“Well, I’m afraid you will have to put up with it until I can find someplace with more space, young man. That’s one reason I wanted you and your sister here, so we can go looking at places after work this week.”

 

Once we had everything put away, we bicycled over to Mrs. Blomfontaine’s preschool and day care. Dean was very proud of his ability to ride the small bicycle we’d found in the front room. “Look, Mommy! No training wheels!”

 

After a somewhat tearful goodbye, I went on to the bank, arriving early, as I usually did, there, to find Bob … and … Ida waiting for me.

 

‘Another doppleganger ? At least this one has a smile on her face.’ Not only did Ida have a smile on her face, but she was dressed much better than she ever had before.

 

“Good morning, Bob. Good morning, Ida.”

 

“Did you have fun with your kids?” Ida asked.

 

“You know, I actually enjoyed myself,” I smiled.

 

“I had my grandchildren over this weekend and we had a ball. I now know what they mean about it’s being best if you can have the grandkids first.”

 

‘Grandchildren? The old Ida was single. This is getting better.’

 

“Miss Hart,” she continued. “I understand you have an in at this camp back East called, Little Kids Kamp?”

 

‘Oh, oh! Do I still have my spy?’ “I have some connections. Why?”

 

“Maggie, your niece told me about it the last time she was here and it sound like a fun place to visit. I’d like to take my grandchildren there.”

 

“I think I could arrange that. When would you like to go?”

 

“Not soon. I’m planning for next summer.”

 

I gave a mental sigh, as things were hectic enough, and I wasn’t sure how much she really knew about the Kamp. It might be that they wouldn’t fit. Most normal kids don’t, unless they have close relatives or friends who need the Kamp, and they know their secret.

 

It isn’t that we would refuse them, but we would want to make sure they and their guardians or parents knew what they were getting into. Luckily, our staff could reply with a letter on which a spell had been cast. The letter asked them to call us, and when they did, a couple of words would make them stay on the line until we were sure they knew what we were all about. If they were still interested, a couple more words released them form the spell with full knowledge.

 

However, if it was not what they wanted, different words would make them forget all about us, and made them tear up anything they had in writing, without remembering or noticing what they were doing.

* * * * * *

The month flew by.

 

At work, the new Ida was soon my most productive employee, filling in where the original Heather Rose had been, and taking many of her accounts from Mark, though mainly those wanting a woman’s touch, and adding more.

 

Mark did more than OK, starting an aggressive campaign to bring in new accounts, all on his own. In fact, he even paid for a couple of small newspaper ads from his own pocket. When I heard about it, even before they proved successful beyond our expectations, I reimbursed him, and he soon had earned a nice bonus.

 

On the home front, the only bad aspect of everything was we were crowded. I had to clear stuff from my den/workroom to give Dean a bedroom. Some of it was just stacked against one wall.

 

So almost immediately, we went looking for a bigger house. I really wanted someplace where a lot of the family could visit. At least 6 bedrooms, if I could afford it. But affording it was going to be a trick. With the outrageous home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area, I could get almost $650,000 for my townhouse, but the cheapest 6 bedroom place was over a million. One with any sort of land around it would only be higher.

Friday morning, Dean and Heather Rose began pestering me, quite nicely, to go visit Baruchah and Maggie, and the K twins and all their other new cousins.

 

Mommy is a softy. I held out my arm, and told Heather Rose, “twist my arm, why don’t you?” She took it and gently twisted it behind my back as I pirouetted to make it easier. “OK! That’s enough! I give!” I think my giggle spoiled it. “All right be good at day care, and we’ll go visit everyone.”

 

I hadn’t been surprised at all to have a call from at least one of my sisters each night, wanting me to fill them in on how things were going. I think they didn’t expect me to take to mommying so easily. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t expected it either. But Dean and HR made it easy for me.

 

On my lunch break, I almost always stay at my desk, and either eat stuff I’ve brought from home, or from the deli around the corner. When it didn’t look as if any customers were clamoring for me, I called Shelly. What time is dinner? We can’t get there till about seven, but if you are already done, we’ll take warmed over leftovers.”

 

“I think I can put everything on hold until you get here. The imps have been asking when they can see their new cousins all week.”

 

“OK. We’ll be there with bells on.”

 

I left Cathy to close the doors, and headed over to pick up the kids right at 3PM. By 3:20 we were on our way out Marsh Creek Road. I wasn’t even thinking of house hunting, when Dean, in his elevated kids sat, yelled, “Mommy. For Sale!” In becoming Dean, Ida had chosen to not even be able to read until Dean learned again. And when I checked later, he couldn’t. But he’d seen enough ’FOR SALE’ signs recently to recognize them.

 

I checked to see if anyone was coming behind me, and finding it safe, slowed down. The house was only maybe half the size of Shelly’s, but that meant it probably had at least six bedrooms. But the listed price was $1,950,000 quite a bit more than I wanted to pay. Then a line at the bottom of the sign caught my eyes. “6.6 Acres. Sub dividable.”

 

‘The land should be more than that. I wonder what is wrong with it? It’s worth checking.’

 

“Shelly, we may be delayed. I’ve found a place I want to check on. If it is in as good a shape as it appears to be, I may want to tap some family funds.”

 

“Are you alone?”

 

“Just me and the kids.”

 

“Where are you?” before I could answer, I heard, “Oh, there you are. Are you sure you can’t swing the price for one of those? I assume you plan to turn it into a single home?”

I turned to see her staring at a row of three duplexes, which were posted at $670,000 a pair, as investment properties.

 

I turned and hugged her as the kids hugged her legs, and used the hug to turn her around. “Sis, this one.”

 

“It’s perfect! Grab it before it gets away!” She screamed.

 

“Shelly, I don’t have two million dollars for a house. Besides, there may be, must be, something wrong with it. It’s too cheap.”

 

“Too cheap? It should only be half that.”

 

“Sis, this is California, where land ain’t cheap, and houses are dear. Only a few miles from here, a quarter acre lot with nothing on it is going for over $250,000 dollars or more.”

 

“OK. We’ll give it a miss. Or better yet, let’s get the kids to my place and come back tomorrow to find out why it’s so cheap.”

 

As soon as we were in Lady Galadriel, Shelly used her powers to jump us right into her garage. Boy, I wish I was 1/10 as strong as she is.

 

We got into the house in time for dinners, and sent the kids out to wash up, as dinner had been waiting a few minutes.

 

After they’d eaten, we let the kids out to enjoy the twilight while we did the dishes, then got onto the Internet. ( Yes, we’re modern witches. Some of us are even pretty geeky ).

Using maps and satellite overhead views, we realized that the four properties were in a notch sort of cut into the side of a state park. Some time back, from the looks of it, someone had cut some roads into the almost mile square chunk of land, but it appeared that whatever had been planned had later been abandoned. But we still didn’t know what a windfall we were about to step into.

 

Shelly didn’t jump us right away, saying, "There is someone there.” But then she jumped Lady Galadriel, herself, me, Misty and Prue to a spot right in front of the big house. I drove back towards town a few hundred yards and turned up the overgrown roadway we’d seen on he computer. Once we were of the roadway, I stopped and we all got out.

 

Hiking up the bulldozed strip it was readily apparent that whatever work had been done, had been abandoned, judging by the weeds coming up where the blade had scraped everything bare By my judgment, however, it went up more than halfway to the park boundary.

 

Prue and Misty decided to go cross country back to the houses, but Shelly and I walked and drove back. We were already nosing around behind the house when our sisters showed up. From the outside, everyone thought it looked as if it was in very good shape, Once I explained again about local property values, we were all wondering why it was so cheap. "I guess we’ll just have to go in and see the realtor,” I told the others. “Luckily, I know the branch manager, and we are in several clubs together."

 

As luck would have it, as we came around the side of the house, my friend Jack Palmer was in the process of doing something to the sign. “Hey! Jack!” I yelled., “don’t tell me we’re too late. Tell me that’s not a sold sign.”

 

“Holly? No, It’s better for you, and worse for me, if you should buy it. The sellers just gave me orders to cut the price 20% for a quick sale. Why? You aren’t really interested, are you?”

 

“We might be, if we can figure out why it isn’t selling. What can you tell us?”

 

“Why don’t we go inside and sit down while I explain.”

 

The house was fully furnished, so we arranged ourselves on three of the couches in the huge front room, while Jack took an overstuffed chair. “OK, what’s wrong with the place?” I asked.

 

“There is nothing wrong with the house. The problems are with restrictions the county and the previous owners put on the place. Their heirs thought they had a gold mine, and began to dump a lot of money into clearing the entire chuck of land. They inherited almost a square mile here. You might have noticed the dirt road headed up the hill back towards town aways?”

 

I just nodded, and my sisters also said not a word. “They planned to subdivide and sell a few parcels and use the profits to finish fixing it up and sell everything else to a developer. They’d put almost all of their ready cash into it when a developer gave them the bad news. While their parents owned the places, they could uses the common septic system they’d installed for all four parcels. But now, they must connect to the local sanitation districts pipes before anybody can move.”

 

I nodded non-committally as I waited for him to continue. “That is when they were hit between the eyes. Until somebody else comes along and hooks up to the line and starts to repay them, they must pay for the entire connection, That’s over 5 miles of line just along the Marsh Creek Rd, plus branches to every parcel before they can be used. They ran out of funds, but are hoping to make enough off these seven units, somehow, to get them started again, but to be honest, I don’t think they are going to clear enough to even break even, after the price cuts.”

 

“And another thing. They also didn’t know that the entire top half had been green belted, and they couldn’t sell it for development without returning many years of back tax breaks, and the owners of this house, or someone they get to manage it, are responsible for making sure it is never developed. That meant more expense, or less income. Then they found that the four developed properties can’t be split because of deed restrictions put on before their parents bought the places. All in all, now they are just trying to get what they can and run.”

 

“What about the rest of the land? Is it available?”

 

"Yes, and no. They’re hoping to be able to sell it later. Right now, they just want to break even on the cost of making the land usable.”

 

“Is it able to be used commercially? For say, a recycling center?”

I suddenly saw where Prue was going. We had just begun negotiations with the city for a Plieades Resources center, and were facing stiff opposition from local recycling interests, who were using the same lies that were being used all over in attempts to stop us, the ones Ida had alluded to.

 

As if to bear me out, Jack asked, “You don’t mean you would try to let those Plieades people in to pollute, do you?”

 

“Jack, I don’t know exactly who you are getting your information from, but Plieades removes pollution. They cleaned up our 10,000 acres back in the Delmarva area when nobody else would touch it because of all the toxic waste at the military base.”

 

“Miss, Prue was it? You seem to know a lot about Plieades Resources. What’s your interest?”

 

“Well, as I said, they cleaned up the military base we bought for development. We, my sisters and I and our husbands, own EWF Enterprises. In turn, EWF owns the Delmarva Mills Mall, Legends of the Past theme park, and a special Section, Little Kids Kamp where young people can live a relaxed Kids life, without modern distractions such as television, and until after dinner with their parent, the internet or cells phones and the like. And EWF also owns a number of other businesses around the US, England, Australia and New Zealand.”

 

I noticed she carefully did not admit to owning PR. She went on, “We were very careful to check on PR’s operation. Their toxic customers load the PR trucks, and there might be some dust or spills there. The trucks have never leaked, even when shot at, and nobody has ever found any toxic escapes from the plants, despite claims to the contrary. The outputs are chemically pure to the limits of detection. Any toxic materials leaving the plants are purer forms of the same substances being produced and sold by some of the big chemical firms a few miles north. They are in great demand from labs around the world. And nothing toxic leaves the plant except in triple walled railroad tank cars.”

 

“The misinformation you are getting is put out by competitors who are being put out of business by our operation … ” “Oops, I think I just let the cat out of the bag,” “… s. And at far lower costs and with a far cleaner operation.”

 

Jack was sharp. “Uh, Holly, did you say ‘our’?”

 

My face, which had, I think, turned pink at my slip, got hotter, and as Misty teased me later, got redder. “Yes Jack. Some of those other operations Prue alluded to include Plieades Resources. We’re just trying to clean up the mistakes of our ancestor’s dirty work, as well as our own generation’s excesses.”

 

“To get back to the original question,” Misty put in. She and Shelly had been conferring while Prue and I had Jack’s attention. “How much would they want to sell the entire operation, lock stock and barrel?”

 

“You mean the entire 500 plus acres? I don’t know. They’ve never talked about selling all of it. And do you know how much it is going to take to make it usable?”

 

“Not exactly, no. But believe me, we can afford it. Jack, you know me. Would you trust me with the key to the place while you go to the office and confer with your clients?”

 

“I can do that from here. The Harison clan, one ‘r’, live in Delaware.”

 

“Would that be George, Mary, Roger, and Jane, well, Harison was her name before she married, Harison?”

 

“What? You know them?”

 

“I did say we operated out of the Delmarva area. That’s where Delaware, Maryland and Virginia come together. George is on the school board where we live, and Mary is on the city council. And we know all of them socially.” Shelly was all excited. “Why don’t you let me deal with them while you show the others what we are buying.”

 

Jack looked stunned, but gave her George’s phone number, though in fact, she already had it.

 

We quickly found that the house was immaculate, fully furnished, even to toys in the bedrooms they kept for their grandchildren All the non-perishables had been removed from the kitchen, pantries, yes, two pantries, and storeroom. And we’d already seen that the ground had been kept up.

 

When we came back downstairs, Shelly announced, “I think you just earned yourself a million dollars for your morning’s work, Mr. Palmer. They’ve agreed to sell the whole shebang for 17 million.”

 

“Not bad for an hour’s work, Jack. I’ll tell you what. You have a lot of influence here. Why don’t you and a few friends fly back to Baltimore, and do some investigating of PR? Talk to the people who live there, the county people, and I’m sure you will be able to give you a plant tour. I’ll tell Scotty to be expecting you. He’s the main plant manager and Plieades Troubleshooter. Oh, and he was also the one came up with the idea of the bank’s atrium and layout you like so much.”

 

“I think I can afford to take you up on that now. How soon do you want to close?”

 

“As soon as we can, but I realize it might take some time to get everything taken care of, as many restrictions as have to be met,” I replied. “Jack, thanks a million … I guess that’s literally, isn’t it?” Thanks for being so honest with us.”

 

“You know me, I would be anyway. But it’s the law, too. I found out all that after I started studying the deeds, before I posted the places for sale.”

 

“Keep being honest. How many of your competitors would have been that open about it?”

 

“Hey, we’re not used … I think most of them would be. Not all, but most.. But seriously, what do you need from me now? I guess from the size of the commission you mentioned, that I’m working for you, as well as the Harisons? I guess I will need you to sign some papers then. How many of you are there?”

 

“It is a big family,” Misty told him. “But Holly has power of attorney to handle money matters like this.”

 

Jack’s jaw sort of dropped. “She can handle a seventeen million dollar deal all by herself?”

 

“No, not the main deal, but I thought you were talking about the agency paperwork.”

* * * * * *

Time passes

Things began moving pretty quickly after that, but resolving some of the restrictions took some time. Jack chartered a small plane and flew the County Board back to view the Delmarva facility and talk to anyone they wanted to, and changed their minds. It was in his best interest, too, as removing the restrictions would open up a number of other possible sales that had been held up by them. Now all we needed was an OK to build a Plieades plant close by.

 

When the hearing came up with the city and county over allowing permits to allow Plieades Resources to build a plant on the edge of the land we were buying, it turned into a media circus. So many local citizens wanted to be there, that it needed to be moved to the civic auditorium.

As both the only local resident who also officially represented Plieades, I was on one side of the stage with other supporters such as Jack, and the opposition was across from us at another row of tables.

 

It was pretty much an open and shut case as far as the city council and County board of Supervisors were concerned, after their visits to several of our existing facilities. But arrayed against us were lobbyists from our competition, and local citizens who apparently had listened to them.

My eye was caught by one of the opposition, who was introduced as Christopher Scott. My mind wandered as I remembered a long time friend by that name I’d lost track of some time back. Chris had been one of my closest friends, ‘face it, girl, one of your only friends’. While neither of us was a great athletes, we has enjoyed participating in pickup games, whether it was just the two of us, or enough for official sized teams.

 

But where Chris had breezed through high school, just missing being valedictorian, I had struggled. I know now that I’d had the smarts, but I’d let my gender issues distract me from applying myself.

 

Thankfully, my four years in the Navy had straightened me out before I returned to studying after deciding not to go career.

 

Chris had gone on to the Air Force Academy, and the last I’d heard from him, was a Lt. General serving in the Middle East.

 

The more I looked at him, the more I began to hope that this was my old friend, and I decided to look him up after the meeting broke up.

 

Nothing was settled that evening, except to decide to hold a number of daytime meetings to let the two sides hash things out.

 

The kids were back at Shelly’s as we’d expected this to drag out a bit, so I joined them for the night before going back to the bank for half a day the next day. Thursday I planned to stay in the townhouse in case it dragged on late again.

 

Surprisingly, it didn’t. But rather than change my plans, I decided to stay home and get plenty of rest. It was almost bedtime back east, and the previous night I hadn’t got there until the kids were in bed, anyway.

 

I relaxed for a bit, then went out for a late dinner by myself. My reservation at my favorite restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown was honored, but when the place filled up, the waiter asked if I would mind if he seated another woman with me.. When I acquiesced, he brought an older woman and seated her. When she looked across the table at me, I saw a flicker of dismay cross her face, and wondered why. Then I took a second look, and realized she looked fam … “Chris …tine?” I blurted without thinking. The last part was a guess, but somehow, I knew this was my old friend.

 

There was no doubting the dismay on her face, and I was dismayed at what I’d said, too. ‘How do I explain that I’m forty years younger all of a sudden?’

 

“How did you know?” she finally got out. ‘I was sure nobody around here knew about Christine. And I don’t recognize you at all, except from sitting across the table from you. You’re Miss Hart, aren’t you?”.”

 

“Yes, That’s me. And your last name is, or sometimes is Hart, too.” I made it a statement, not a question. I’ve known Chris a lot longer than you would believe if I told you. And I can’t tell you about it here. I promise to tell you all about it if you can hold your questions till after dinner. And I want to hear your story, too. It doesn’t look as if you were planning to go back to your hotel right away?”

 

We were both itching to talk things over, and once our dinners arrived, rushed through them, not giving them the attention due them. Do you trust a member of the opposition enough to go with me? Or do you have a car of your own stuck in a garage?”

 

“No, I came by taxi.” Chris/Christine followed me back to the elevator at the back of the restaurant. Downstairs Chris was amazed to find my pony in a tiny sub-basement garage. And then she recognized the car. “What? How? I know that car, but how did you get it? … You’re too young to …”

 

“I knew you were sharp. Christine, I’ve known you since we were both wearing three cornered pants.”

 

“No way in … It can’t be. You’re at least 30 years too young. And I know you never cross-dressed.”

 

“I could have said the same thing, but we’re both wrong, aren’t we?” Since we hadn’t gotten into the car yet, I gave her a big hug. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk, Colonel.” I added the last just to make sure Christine knew I knew exactly who she was.

 

Once in Lady Galadriel, I pressed a button and the door rolled up so we could get out. “I’m not going to ask how you rate a private parking spot here. But how?”

 

As we drove back to my place, I told Christine everything, and though she didn’t want to believe it, no other explanation fit. “Occam’s Razor*,” she finally said when she came up for air.

 * The explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions. Or, until proven wrong, accept the simplest explanation.

 

Before we had parked, I made my mind. “Christine, I can prove it to you, right now. Would you like to visit a Plieades facility and see for yourself what we’ve been telling you.”

 

“But how? There’s no time.”

 

“Magic, I told you.” Fifteen minutes later we were on the East Coast. While getting to my jump space, I’d called poor Scotty and got him out of bed to meet us at the plant.

 

“Scotty is our expert. He knows as much about the overall operation of every plant as anyone,” I explained as I introduced them to each other.

 

“Scotty, this is my cousin, Christine Hart, Christine, Scotty Bishop.. “Scotty, I want you to give Christine the deluxe tour. Not the nickel tour, or the twenty cent tour. Make it a least a five dollar tour.”

 

Poor Scotty decided not to even go to bed, as his regular shift started in only two hours. But his openness in showing Christine everything converted her. She’d seen how we kept everything spotless. The sealed trucks drove in and were emptied over grates where anything that spilled was washed down and into a converter. And everything else came in by pipeline.

“I can’t tell you how the converters work,” Scotty was honest. “I can’t figure out the principles myself. All I know is that it’s not like with computers. “Garbage in, no garbage out.”

 

When we got back to California, it was barely one AM. “I’m not going to seduce you, but you’re welcome to stay at my place if you’d like. It’ll save you some travel, at least.”

* * * * * *

After two days of acrimonious debate, Chris surprised everyone but me by standing up and stating, “All of the figures my side has been giving you are fiction. Puffery intended to sway your votes.” Turning to the chief of the opposition, “I dare you to show us any facts to put behind your lies. Go visit any of their facilities and take any measurement equipment you want. You won’t find any pollution, unless you bring it in yourself.”

 

“You’re fired!” The leader didn’t seem to realize he was making it obvious that the opposition was all paid help to back their stories. Chris made that obvious, by pointing it out, naming each of the committee who were in the pay of our competitors, and one by one, naming who their true employers were.

 

The talks were recessed for 3 days, and when they resumed, all of the people he’d pointed out were not there. The rest of the opposition was disorganized, finding itself dependent on statistics we had been calling lies all along.. When it was recessed after two hours, it went back to a combined meeting of the Board of Supervisors and City Council the following week.

 

Chris wasn’t bothered at all. “They were just using me and my prestige, and suckered me as much as they did the rest. I certainly don’t need their money.”

 

“I’m sure we can make it worth your while to attend similar meetings. …”

 

“No, I can live without your money too. But I’m going to do it anyway because I’m so ashamed I got caught out. I’m beginning to see that the reason I was elected to the boards of directors of several of your opponents, was to be a figurehead, silently endorsing their lies by my silence.

 

By this time I had heard his/her whole story. It had both many parallels, and differences from my own. We’d both suffered in silence, fearful of losing our best buddy if we said anything. We’d both entered the service at nearly the same time, but Chris’ better grades and loftier target had let him go places I could never dream of. As a trained flight surgeon, put through medical school by the Air Force, Chris had learned a lot more than I has about transgender than I had, and as an officer had more privacy to be Christine than I ever had in the Navy. Even so, he was taking a chance, but it had paid off. Also, For Chris, it began and ended with crossdressing. He had no intention of ever transitioning and especially not going all the way.

 

That being the case, I didn’t tell him what we could do for him, and let him believe I was a surgical transsexual, rather then a real woman. After a couple of days, I was able to find out where we planned to build more facilities, and pass that along. With “Keep in touch!’ coming from both of us, I wondered how long it would be before I saw either Chris, or Christine again.

* * * * * *

In the meantime, we were coming together as a family. Dean and Heather Rose were best friends. Heather remembered the Ida of old, but as he’d wished, Dean no longer did. The next weekend we didn’t go to Shelly’s, as it was time for my periodic checks of the family businesses on ‘The Street of Dreams’ as I call it in my mind. Sure, I know the real name, but we do not want to attract a lot of lookie-loos.

 

As the family businesses in Delmarva started to take more and more time, Jenna, Amelia and Prue had needed to turn more and more of the day to day operation of their shops over to hired management and employees. So I went in to look for any funny business in the books. The kids stayed at their Auntie Jenna’s Toy Shop, R & J Toys, in the back room out of the way. Jenna and I had agreed that she would have some new toys set out and they would be ‘official toy testers’ while I was busy.

 

When I was finished with my audits, I stopped at Amelia’s for the usual ‘surprise’ I always got, then went across the street to pick up the kids. Until the weather got bad, we always went down the street to the park to eat, after a stop at Bob’s Café to pick up the hot meals they always prepared for me. I always did my last audit at the cafe, so I could place my order when I finished and know it would be hot and fresh, not cold and stale, or not finished, when we came for it.

 

I took my time eating, knowing that the kids had a lot of pent up energy to burn off. When they finished their sandwiches and potato salads, I let them go. I worked on the papers and files I had collected, looking up every minute or so to check on the kids.

 

After a bit I saw Heather Rose walking over to look over the shoulder of an old woman who appeared to be sketching on a large pad of paper. After a moment of looking at her I realized I had seen her there before. I decided to stop working and put all of my attention on her. Heather Rose seemed fascinated by whatever she was looking at. I was just about to go over and see for myself, when the woman put everything in a large shoulder bag, got up and walked away.

* * * * *

We went on back home, with at least half our weekend remaining, and I took the kids out to see a movie, since in California, it was still early.

 

The next day, Shelly and Misty came out and met us at the house. Maggie, Baruchah and Steffie came with Shelly so they could see my kids, ‘MY kids’, I still couldn’t get over it. From being alone, to a family of 3 in less than a week, and now we’d had three months to become even closer. “Steffie, you’re the oldest, so you’re in charge. Keep an eye on your cousins, and most particularly on your sisters while we’re looking around,” Shelly charged her.

 

“It looks as if we can close this week, maybe as early as Tuesday,” Misty informed me as the kids were going off to explore.

* * * * * *

Many weeks after Racinne had dumped the powders on it, and lit them, a small form appeared on the dry mountainside in the shade of a tall wide spreading tree whose glossy, yet dusty leaves prevented sunburn and dehydration for several hours. The form opened its eyes at a strange snuffling sound, seeing a lean tawny shape wrinkling its nose at the strange odors. The tawny beast would take a step closer, then as the odors became too strong it would back away a step or two, only to repeat the process a moment later.

 

The form tried to move, to say anything, but barely stirred. However, the movement was enough, when combined with the odors to make up the shape’s mind. The puma would look for its next meal elsewhere.

 

The form moved again near sunset, not knowing it was already over twenty four hours since its arrival on the dry hillside. Eventually it was able to sit up. But by the time it could stand, the sun had set. It wrapped the long shroud around itself for warmth, vaguely happy that it had it, just as vaguely wondering where it was. Off in the distance, downhill, it could hear the occasional sound of traffic, but did not know it for what it was. At one point it saw the bright flash of headlights. Wobbling in that direction, barely able to stay on its feet for more than a few steps, it headed toward the light.

 

The tenth or eleventh time it tripped over an unseen obstacle, it sat once more, lucky not to have been hurt worse by falling over a cliff, for the only light was starlight and a little bit to the right of where the sun had set, the skyglow of a city. Wrapping the cloth around itself, it went to sleep between two boulders.

 

Sunlight came again, and the determined little figure wobbled down the hill again, eventually reaching a small, make that, a tiny stream, for it was only as wide as the baby’s hand. Still, the child was thirsty, and knew that it needed this water, for it was very thirsty and hungry. The water would not help both, but at least would take care of its thirst.

 

Its thirst satisfied, the tiny form resumed its trek. Eventually, though it was still just mid-morning, it reached the road it had seen, just as a troop of children, all of them larger than the form, approached the spot. For a moment, the small child didn’t know whether to go to them, or hide, finally settling on the latter, dropping to the ground at the base of a small tree.

* * * * * *

The redheaded twins were ranging ahead of the others, but not so far that Steffie had to worry about them. But she had to call them back once in a while so Heather Rose could point out a new plant to them, for the west coast plants were far different from those where they lived.

 

Steffie saw them stop, turning their heads back and forth, She heard a faint “Eeeuuuuw! Sompin small bad,” and hurried forward, afraid they’d found some poor unfortunate animal that had been hit by a car, and fallen to the ground off the road, mortally injured.

 

Before she reached the twins, she smelled what they had smelled. It was horrible, whatever it was. “Baruchah! Maggie! Stay where you are. Don’t move!” She motioned to Heather and Dean to stop where they were, too. She turned back to the twins before she could see that her motion had been misinterpreted.

 

It wasn’t until she reached her siblings that Steffie recognized the smell, or smells. There was a strong odor of brimstone, and underlying it, the smell only a trained mind could detect. The odor of black magic!

 

Quickly gathering her sisters, she turned to go to where she’d left her cousins, only to bump into Heather Rose, who asked, “What’s that smell? It’s kinda like fireworks, but worse. It was Dean who spotted the small white form as it got to its feet and came towards them.

 

Steffie was about to grab the kids and run when she saw a small innocent face peeking from the dirty white cloth. Her powers, unlike her cousins and sisters, were such that she was able to discern the true innocence of the child despite the overlying miasma of evil. “”Don’t move, any of you!” she ordered the tribe for which she was responsible.

 

It took a lot of will power to approach the little figure, which stopped and sat down as she approached. Somehow though, the sense of innocence grew stronger more quickly than the evil. As she was about thirty feet away, she saw that the lower portion of whatever she, somehow Steffie knew it was a little girl, was wearing, was tinged with red.

 

Abandoning her caution, Steffie ran to her, “What are you doing here? Who are you? Where are your mommy and daddy?” The questions poured from her so fast that the poor child really didn’t have time to answer. When she got to “Where are you from?” the child pointed up the hill, and looking in the direction she pointed, Steffie was able to make out marks on the dusty ground where her ‘rags?’ had been dragging.

 

She took out her phone. “Mom. Come here, quick!” before she could say more there was a quiet ‘pop!’ as Shelly arrived, trying to look in all directions at once, before her nose and witch senses centered her attention on the form in her daughter's arms. “Steffie, put that down and get away! I thought you knew how to identify black magic.”

 

“Yes, but I’m sure she is innocent. The black magic was used against her.”

 

“She?” Shelly slowed down and took a good look. “I think you’re right,” she apologized. “But where did she come from? Who is she?” She began to ask many of the same questions Steffie had.

 

“Mom! The questions can wait till later. She needs help. All I know is she said she came from up there. And something tells me we had better not use magic to move her. Something is dreadfully wrong here.”

 

Shelly took another look and agreed. Taking out her own phone, she called Holly, “Sis? We need you to come here at once … No, In your pony. We have a badly injured little girl, injured with black magic, so we can’t just take her to you. Yes, the kids are all here and they’re all okay. Get moving, sis!”

* * * * * *

When I got the call from Shelly, I ran for the car, yelling back to Prue and Misty, “No time to explain. Shelly needs me fast!” As I got in the car, I realized I didn’t know where Shelly was, but I did know which way the kids had gone, so I headed east.

 

 Over a mile from the house, I spotted them, and with them, Misty and Prue. I was just reaching the point where I could move myself anywhere I wanted to go, but not yet powerful enough to take anything with me.

 

As I pulled to a stop, they came rushing to me. Shelly piled in the shotgun seat and turned to accept a bundle of rags from Steffie. “Ok, step on it. We’re taking her to your place.”

 

‘Her? My place? Oh yes, my place?’ Before I could ask anything I punched it and did a half a donut, because the road was too marrow for a U-turn.”

 

Shelly anticipated my question, ignoring the fancy turn I hadn’t done since I was a teen, what was it, forty years ago? “I’m not sure what happened, but someone used black magic on her, and we don’t want to take a chance moving her magically. It’s the magic that makes me not want to move her magically until we can check her out. And for the same reason, we can’t take her to a hospital. Prue and Misty will meet us at your place. Misty didn’t bring her bag. She said she had everything out of it, doing an inventory. She and Prue will have everybody meet us at your place, and Gina will make sure all Misty’s stuff is there, too.”

 

“What’s that smell?” I finally asked, hoping it wouldn’t permeate Lady G’s interior forever.

 

“That’s right. You’re only just finished with Spells 101. That, my dear, is brimstone. Mostly sulfur, but mixed with a lot of other things I haven’t tried to identify, and it was all used on this poor innocent young lady.”

 

I made record time, thanks to Shelly using a spell to make us invisible to the eyes of the law, even the radar gun one cop was using. When we stopped, Shelly waited for me to get out, handed me the odiferous bundle, and grabbed my keys from my hand, “I’ll get the door.”

 

When Shelly let me in, I found that she was right. My town house, cozy for one or two, a tight squeeze for three, now held almost two dozen, well, a dozen and a half or so. The nine of us who had gathered earlier, and all the rest of my sisters, plus a couple of Shelly’s older girls. Poor Dean found himself the lone male, till Shelly noticed and asked, “Would you like to go to my place and be with your cousins? She hesitated, looking at HR, who shook her head.

 

When Shelly looked speculatively at the imp twins, they knew instinctively what she was thinking. “Awww, Mom! We finded her,” they chorused in unison

 

Shelly relented, “OK, Dean, it looks as if you have to go on your own.” Prue was already talking to Alysson on her cell, to warn her of Dean’s imminent arrival. She looked at Shelly, who nodded as she pointed at Dean, and shook her head when she pointed at the twins. A moment later, Dean was gone, to the sound of a faint pop.

 

Misty and Gina were already examining the young girl, and we were sure by then that it was a girl, when Angel arrived. They quickly verified that the thing she seemed to need most was water, followed by nourishment, even before they went to work on her shredded feet. By the time she had some milk and soup she was falling asleep.

* * * * * *

Racinne’s fourth mistake , due to her limited French, had been mispronouncing a gender specific word, creating a two year old girl, instead of a two year old boy. You see, she only took enough French to learn approximately how to pronounce the words.

* * * * * *

As she slept, Gina and Misty cleaned her feet and put a potion on them that would heal them quickly. Then we all began trying to determine what had happened to her. I was beginning to gain more power, and working with my sisters, could feel almost everything they did.

 

Of course we all felt the wrongness of the black magic, but we got a real shock when we realized that until two days before, this young girl had been a young man!

 

I began to lose the thread when they got to the subtleties. More investigation convinced them that he, had been a she inside, a transsexual like us, but try as they might, they found no signs of Age Dysphoria such as had bothered my daughter.

 

We could get no further, so Shelly asked most of them to go back home so there would be less confusion when she woke.

* * * * * *

I think I was the only one alert when she woke in late afternoon. When I saw her stirring, I went over, kneeling beside the couch. When she opened her eyes and looked at me, she gave me great big smile. Wiggling her arms out form under the blankets we’d put over her and reached out her arms. “Mommy?”

 

‘Oh no!’ But I put a smile on my face, “Helloooo, pretty girl. What’s your name?”

 

I thought I saw a flicker of confusion in her eyes, but it was gone almost instantly. “Mommy,’ she burbled happily. Then, “Shannon Michelle.”

 

“Shannon Michelle,” I repeated. “Do you want me to be your mommy, Shannon?”

 

The smile she gave me would have melted the Antarctic ice cap.

 

“An eight year old, a five year old, and now a two year old.” Shelly said from behind me. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

 

What?”

 

“It means you have about 3 months to find the right man to continue the 3 year progression.”

 

“Eeep!”

* * * * * *

Finis

* * * * * *

There will be more to the story of Holly, her kids, and the little kids camp.

I’m not sure if that is a threat, or a promise.